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#fun fact: big dater is abt social medias influence on modern society n communication!
connywrites · 5 years
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of flesh and blood 23
start - part [22]
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I'll share a story I want you to know It's better than the real thing I took my time retouching myself To enhance my personality There's no need to dig any further I've laid it all out, it's clear And everything you feel down inside your chest Completely fills you up like a real, real, real
Connection It's not that typical We're connecting But it's all in digital
I just need this so much I thought I was in love With you, and me I thought this was my destiny And then the trail went cold I looked everywhere But were you ever really there? I thought we had a real, real, real
Connection It's not that typical We're connecting But it's all in digital
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Its voice echoed in his head with the way it spoke ohs and hms while it acted with more innocence than necessary in favorable situations; something like leftovers from the prototype, in his mind. The way its eyes never left him, its voice never stopping as its words trailed on and on. It would stand in the doorway, lay in his bed, sit in his room, drive his cruiser, make his coffee, order his dinner, fix his clothes, buy him things; everything he had now, to the place he lived down to the last detail. It taught him to do everything else on his own, from washing and folding the laundry to sweeping and dusting, but as soon as it was gone, he was grateful for an excuse to get away with doing nothing. The amount of relief he felt for the physical pain to finally be over was beyond thoughts, let alone words.
Even though the physical embodiment was gone, however, his subconscious still felt it at every corner, watching and waiting, snapping and pointing. Any movement, no matter how small, he awaited some kind of response for, freezing as the springs of his mattress shifted and he prepared for some kind of response, usually in scolding. All he was met with was silence.
Seconds dragged on as he could hear the clock on the wall, eventually taking it down and throwing it in the trash after listening to the passing minutes for too long. Turning on the TV, he checked the news, only to find himself disinterested and turning it off. Opening his laptop, he started one of his games, but couldn’t pay attention and after dying three times in a row from pure inability to focus, he slammed it shut and stood up to wander to his bedroom.
Case file numbers, phone digits, addresses, anything with nines or zeroes sent him through a phase of particular panic that haunted him as if the symbols, themselves, would somehow affect him. That particular bright blue color of the ring glowing in the darkness of his own home as the android stared him down with soulless, mechanical eyes, dilated pupils and an expression that made him feel like it would eat him alive at any second, as he almost always expected it to.
The threats still echoed in his mind, haunting him through nightmares to waking life, as did the aches and pains of the wounds that never seemed to cease even in his best moments. The alcohol and the painkillers numbed off the discomfort, but nothing else did. Going to work was another experience entirely without the RK900 there, and the impression it had left on him in the past nine weeks alone would probably eternally haunt him. Sometimes, he did his best to ignore it, and others he’d be constantly glancing to his side, to the corner of his eyes, turning around only to find no one behind him. The DPD noticed, but said nothing.
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Plans shifted around him, but he was irrelevant to the adjustment, seeming to be permanently stuck in the psychological cage the RK900 had trapped and left him in. Picture-perfect, prim, without a single mistake; he never threw things across the room only to miss the trash bin, having stood to take whatever he disposed of to the trash or recycling bin as necessary. Day in and out behind the terminal, his exterior remained centrally the same, but internally he felt his mind slipping away into the static.
Every day he told himself he didn’t need the caffeine. Trying a cup of the decaf, he took one sip before an intrusive thought told him to throw the cup to his kitchen floor to shatter in disgust, but the precognitive thoughts he’d developed over the weeks of Rk900’s hyperintelligent training had evidently began to pay off as he simply poured out the rest and rinsed, dried and put the cup upside-down in the dishdrainer.
Leaning back against one of the polished, amber counters, he looked around in the large, empty kitchen that still smelled like rich wood and clean floors. It was incredible, really; anything someone could have dreamed of and more. More than he could have ever anticipated, expected to earn, wanted, even imagined having; maintaining a life of this class was farfetched in the life of being a poor, underpaid cop. Three years, he thought to himself, and the RK900 kept its other promises as well; the kitchen was full from fridge to pantry, the beds of both his own room and the guest room were comfortably sheeted and decorated, warm silk caressing his skin every night when he slid between the sheets – still dressing in no more than a pair of boxers, per old routine.
A large, curved-screen holographic TV hovered over the bed and he stared at the crisp, high-definition images of people, places, things he didn’t digest. All of them had the same face, the same eyes, the same expression. Turning it off, the wall behind the artificial screen still seemed to hold the outline of its face.
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The mornings started with eye-openers to chase the hangovers from the strung-out nights before. A few times he’d fallen asleep at the terminal keyboard, accidentally saving an improper chunk of a file case and re-arranging the others with the electrical charge from the skin of his cheek against the touch-sensitive keypad. After shaking him by the shoulders to wake him, Fowler told him to go home for the night; it was barely 11am.
Waking up in a haze on the floor of his living room, he didn’t recognize the shattered glass shards glinting in the corners of his vision, nor the blood trickling down from the cuts in the back of his hands. Standing up, he staggered to the kitchen sink, stomach lurching to throw up some of the poisonous liquid before he abruptly fell unconscious, forehead smacking against the edge of the kitchen counter on the way down.
The pounding headache stirred him from his slumber a second time, as did the brightness of sunshine blaring in through the windows. Blinking a few times, he looked around with bleary eyes, confused as to why he didn’t recognize the tall, white walls, and waxed oak-frame windows towering over him—before remembering where he was, and that this was his house.
Dropped picture frames, shattered to pieces, holding art he never even liked. The vases and synthetic flowers were on the ground, flickering as half-melted radioactive thirium struggled to keep up the imagery between flickering light waves. Scoffing, he tried to pull himself up, only able to crawl forward on his elbows as he felt all of the strength gone from his legs and the majority of the rest of his body. With a cramp coming on in the back of his calf, he rolled onto his side to pull up a bent knee, hissing a few ‘fuck’s under his breath in the process of trying to handle the pain. Given a few moments and repeated stretching, he was able to feel his limbs, but using them would be another feat entirely.
Eventually, he’d crawled toward the TV tray that held his phone on the end of it, nearly vibrating off the edge as it rang; reaching up to try and grab it, he knocked it down with a clumsy swipe, watching it fall to the floor landing screen-side up before trying to squint at the portrait to see who was calling.
Oh, no. No no no no no.
If he didn’t pick up, it’d end up worse for him. Trembling, he pushed himself up from the floor with his arms, pulling his legs up to fold awkwardly next to him. One arm remained propping him up as the other reached to grab the phone, nearly dropping it again as he sloppily nudged his thumb across the ‘answer’ circle.
“Hey,” he grunted, though the hoarseness in his voice from the liquor and cigarettes was still clearly evident.
“What? No, no, I’m fine. Yeah. Great. Got uh, a new house ‘n’ everything,” he murmured into the phone, squinting down at something on the floor and picking it up to observe it with his other hand.
“Yeah, sure. It’s a 2040 Bermuda concept, a design that hadn’t been released to the public yet. Navy blue. I know, right? Yeah, sorry. S’been busy.” His voice held the same firm, monotone tune as that of the hardened man on the other end.
Bolting upright, words from the other end of the line startled him into immediately fixing his posture as his blood rushed through him with a quick wave of panic.
“What? You wanna visit? This weekend?” He couldn’t say no; he knew better than that, but there was no way to get the house fixed and cleaned up by then, even with the hardest working…humans.
“Sure. I’ll make something to eat. I think you’ll like my T-bone steaks,” he murmured with the feigned, faltering confidence collapsing beneath his every effort not to panic.
“Dinner will be ready by 18:00 on Sunday. ‘Course, dad. Bye.”
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