100 Things I Learned About Love | Vernon!Android AU
Pairing: Hansol Vernon Chwe x female!reader
Genre: SCI FI!! Action, Romance, Angst(?)
Word Count: 22.2k (yes another giant fic)
Warnings: A bit of death and gore
A/N: Well, I’m gonna say sorry first to the anon who requested a vernon android au when we were just starting this blog (like three yrs ago) and I only managed to finish it now;;
So this fic is a continuation (and is in the same universe) of the Jihoon Android AU The Coldest Human; The Warmest Robot. It is primarly inspired by the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick and the anime “Beatless”. This one here has also elements from Huxley’s “A Brand New World” (because I just love reading dystopian novels for some reason). I kind of mashed everything together to create the world!
This will be the 2nd part of a four part series! Next would be Soonyoung’s story and then finally Joshua’s! This series kind of explores the whole world I created for it. Jihoon’s story introduced the whole world and the relationship between android and creator, while Hansol’s story explores the world of bounty hunters! I still haven’t decided fully with what to do with the rest but I hope you enjoy this one!!
Tag List: @haotheheckk, @smthingabtlove!! (because they asked to skskks)
If mornings had any color, it would be a disgusting green. Afternoons, electric orange. Midnights, as dark as crude oil. Cities were built upon lines of flickering yellow, as streets were colored with the void of space; dark, desolate, and meaningless.
Society is tinted with the same shades of emptiness. Dressed in uniform white body suits—hair covered entirely as it was deemed unhygienic—only the face bore the resemblance of the classic human being, as if it was a mask. Serene smiles and polite gestures were exchanged almost to a hundred times; laughter was hollow and chemically induced, as with tears and frowns. Frivolity and superficiality were the main trends.
As what they appear to be, is what they are actually are.
Welcome to the West Martian colony!
“Here ya go. The case’s now yours, doll,” your boss tossed a folder filled with papers on the polyester table. “Choi quit a few days ago after retiring Woozi.”
Your head perked up immediately as soon as you heard the news; disbelief painted on your face.
“What? Why?” you asked, standing up with mouth agape. He was one of your idols, your role models; the reason why you went into this line of work.
“He’s not talkin’, doll. Sadly. Told me it’s personal. But can’t blame him really, this business is gettin’ old.”
Your boss with his thinning hair and scotch-tapped broken glasses, sipped from a coffee stained mug; seemingly too overused for years of constant coffee drinking.
Yet you loved this place—this pseudo-police department home to bounty hunters of West Mars, with its crumbling brittle plastic window blinds and its moldy paper odor—all a different world than that of the city around it. You loved how it was like something straight from an Earth comic book; classic, rustic, and homey; a sheer contrast to the minimalist style of the new century.
“So what do we have here? Some andy from the Orion branch?”
A finger flipped through the factsheet with brows raised and lips in a tiny pout as you scanned the information laid before you. There were several official photographs of the unit after it was made, but none were security cam shots.
“So, from the organization…SVT-class Type-12 Vernon. The name’s too Western.”
Your boss shrugged. “The org’s just pastin’ names on their andys like butter on bread, dolly.”
“Guess so. But this Vernon just looks someone my age,” you remarked, munching on the biscotti within your arm’s reach.
“It’s an andy, YN. A hundred years, and it’ll still look the same. Now off ya go, better start retiring ‘em or you’re gonna get retired first.”
Sighing, you stood up and brushed the crumbs off your skinny jeans. Bending over, you picked up your briefcase filled with a laser gun and a V-T scale equipment as you bid your boss a short goodbye.
In reality, you didn’t want to leave the home base.
One particular reason was that you’d be taking the hovercraft and start cruising around the godforsaken city, not that it believes in any god for as long as you could account for. The city was an abomination, a stubborn mulish creation born out of rejection of the old, ancient ways—ways that had led to the destruction of the Earth, ways you still hold on to despite migrating to Mars. Despite being physically present, and even born in the red planet, you knew your heart was still back on Earth. You were proud to be to be human, with ancestry from the noble home planet, and everything which diminishes humanity is your enemy.
—you paused.
Lips parted, eyes transfixed.
A thousand snowflakes suspended on the air as if you were in a colony-sized snow globe. You continued to wonder, because you had never before seen snow in its truest, purest form, and everything you knew about them was from data gathered on Earth.
You removed your glove to touch one floating. It was cold, you shivered. However, it did not melt as you expected it to be as it only glistened against the dark backdrop of the city night like holographic particles.
“What the—!”
As if deliberately cutting you off, the hovercraft swiveled across the air, its power flickering on and off until it was unable to balance itself, swerving up and down across the night sky. You held on to the metal rails, as the turbulence brought you to your knees, the alarm systems of the vehicle blaring on your ears.
“Fucking hell…!” You cursed, grabbing your laser gun as the vehicle plunged you towards the empty streets of the city. Fortunately enough, you were trained to encounter these sorts of problems and thus, you were able to jump towards the nearest rooftop before the hovercraft exploded upon impact to the asphalt road.
Sighing, you watched the flames burn plastic and metal as if you couldn’t believe what you had just experienced. Well, of course it was unbelievable. So far, the only adventure you had experienced in your whole life was your day-to-day job of ‘retiring’ andys, which could get a bit messy but those were on balmier days. Normally, it wouldn’t get pass you to laser a hole on an andy’s head, but if you’re doing it like ten to twenty times a week, it could get boring.
Bam—!!
Your thoughts were placed in a halt as several other hovercrafts continued to fall from the sky like shooting stars, except that people could get killed. But havoc proceeded as it did, where lines of self-driving cars suddenly powered on and chased after human beings who had heard the crash and checked what had happened.
“What the fuck is happening?” you whispered, eyes peering on the alley beneath you. Hopping on several rooftops and sliding down the gutter towards the ground, you cautiously approached the main road, seeing if there was anyone who was in trouble. Luckily, there wasn’t anyone loitering around at this hour anymore.
You checked your intercom for any news or announcements from your home base or from the AI government, yet there was none. As it were, your intercom was actually having trouble projecting a hologram or following any of your commands seemingly halfway hacked.
“Dammit, I couldn’t get hold of HQ,” you grumbled, running towards a nearby police android to alert its human command center. “Hey, could you get in touch with your district station? It’s getting chaotic here.”
Yet the android only stared at you, its eyes blank as if you were a mere holographic image. The artificial smile on its face, which was made to comfort humans interacting with it, seemed more sinister than welcoming. The prolonged silence causing your heart to thump in anxiety.
“Hey? You heard me? Tell the—”
“Hi there. I’m Akiro. What can I do to help you?” It’s human voice making shivers crawl down your skin.
“I said, alert the district station! Haven’t you detected the level of violence—”
“Hi there. I’m Akiro. What can I—Hi there. I’m Akiro—Akiro—Hi—Hi there. H-H-H-Hi-i-i-i—”
The malfunction was obvious in its speech. It wasn’t unusual for an android to malfunction but when it began moving closer and closer to you, you took a step back, dread treading on your spine. Androids made you uneasy as humans once felt ill at ease with clowns—its artificial expressions making its lack of a soul even more prominent, triggering your fight or flight response.
It continued to move towards you until a snowflake dropped on its head, stopping as if it was suddenly glued to the ground. You hesitantly walked closer to it, inspecting its dead eyes to see if it had returned to normal. Raising an arm, you reached for its control box hidden behind its neck.
It grabbed your wrist, without warning. You gasped and began struggling to release yourself from its vice grip, yet you knew how strong androids were.
“Fuck it!”
“Hi there—Hi—I’m A-A-A-Aki-Akiro,” the android continued talking as if its movements were controlled by a remote system.
You moved to reach for your laser gun at your back pocket but the android was swift enough to twist your arm in a lock on your back. It pushed you to the ground as you grit your teeth at the scrapes on your knees and elbows, but you couldn’t break free.
“What can I do to help you?”
You groaned. “Maybe letting go of my fucking arm?”
Gathering your wits, you pushed yourself off the ground, rolling sideways and then kicking the android who was thrown off-balance with your two feet. As it fell to the ground, you grabbed your laser gun and without hesitation, pulled the trigger to blast off its processor.
As the headless android dropped to the asphalt, you sighed in relief as the adrenaline continued to pump into your veins, breathing heavily from all the action. You didn’t understand why the android was behaving out of its initial program and attacking you, a human, who it was supposed to protect.
While you were resting, the glaring headlights of a self-driving car were flashed towards your direction.
Disoriented, you froze to the ground as you tried to make do of your situation and surroundings. However, just like the android, the car sped right towards you in its maximum speed, as if it was trying to kill you. As soon as you heard its tires screech, you willed yourself to move away as the car missed you in just a few centimeters—throwing you to the ground and slammed itself towards the nearby wall.
Without even letting you take a breath, an arm was encircled around your neck, making you unable to breathe; its grip tightening gradually. Two other androids—one a police android, the other a personal helper—faced you with their blank stares as if they were zombies ordered to kill any human on sight.
The helper android had your laser gun on its possession as it slowly aimed it on your head. Panic rose as you tried to remove the arm locking you in place. Mentally, you were cursing at how you had underestimated the situation and let yourself die under the hands of goddamn androids.
Silently, the android pulled the trigger and you braced yourself for impact.
Except it didn’t come.
Your eyes were forced open when you heard the sound of metal dropping to the ground. What you saw had your eyes widen in astonishment as another small disk stuck itself on the police android’s head and split it into individual pieces. In a few seconds, you were dropped onto the ground, choking on your knees as the pieces of the android holding you fell into heaps next to you.
“Are you okay?”
A warm voice asked as a hand was offered to you. You looked up to see doe-like eyes gazing at you with a curious but a worried expression. His slightly curly caramel colored locks fell to his forehead softly as if it were made of the finest materials.
You nodded silently, still stunned by everything happening around you.
When you didn’t take his hand, the mysterious man carried you on his back as he walked you away from the site. While you were being carried, you noticed how he was ‘destroying’ the approaching rogue androids with a disc-like device which would stick on their skin and eventually ‘disassembling’ them to several parts.
“W-who are you…?” you finally asked, your voice returning despite still being painful.
Grabbing another disk from his pocket, the guy hurled it towards an incoming self-driving car which had it stopping, its parts detaching themselves automatically.
“I’m called Hansol. The snowflakes are nanobots which hacks the AI in androids and cars and drives them into killing humans. Unfortunately, I don’t have the capabilities to stop it,” he replied, his voice kind of removed, which had you wondering if he was an android or not. “Though I think Jihoon can.”
“Then…this…this will all continue?” you asked unbelievingly. You didn’t want it to continue, of course. More people would die and you still weren’t sure to what extent the casualties are because of this sudden outbreak.
“The snowflakes will lose its power when its controller is far away. So far, Joshua is already gone from this area.”
“Joshua? An android?”
“Yeah. SVT-class Type-03 Joshua. We came here together, and I tried to convince him out of it, but he wants to test out his abilities.”
Having enough evidence, you pushed yourself away from Hansol and landed safely on the ground with an abhorrent look on your face.
Aiming your laser gun at him, you shouted. “You’re an android too, aren’t you?”
Hansol simply gazed at you with his piercing eyes—tempting you to retract your accusation.
“Yes, I am. SVT-class Type-12 Vernon,” he replied, then looking down on the ground as he scratched his nape. “I like the name Hansol better though, so I want to be called Hansol from now on.”
You grinned. Your prey presented itself right in front of you without you giving an ounce of an effort.
“I’m supposed to retire you, you know?” you remarked, still aiming the gun at him. “And I will.”
Hansol stared at you with a frown on his lips, obviously disliking the fact that he was about to ‘die’ tonight. In fact, he didn’t want to die. He had a lot of things he wanted to do, so many questions yet unanswered.
“I’m…I…I don’t know how to plead. The data is incomplete in the cloud, but, um…don’t shoot me…please,” Hansol replied as he raised his arms.
You were obviously taken aback by his plea. You couldn’t count how many androids begged for their lives because there were none. He was the first one who ever did it.
Shaking thoughts of doubt, you tried to reason with yourself.
Androids don’t plead. They escape. Kill.
The most efficient way out is what they do.
“How am I supposed to believe you?” you shouted back; your finger threatening to press on the trigger. “You might be using analog hack for all I know.”
He scratched his nape again, unable to give an appropriate answer. “Well…I guess I could only ask you to trust me.”
You laughed sarcastically. You have never seen an android use deception so badly.
“If that’s too much to ask, then I guess this is it,” he continued, looking at you again straight into the eyes with his evocative gaze.
You just couldn’t believe what you were hearing. For all the years you spent hunting androids, never had you encountered one who had basically given up without any chase or struggle, especially from one who had every capability to squash you like an ant. You couldn’t help the itch to ask.
“Why? Why give up?”
Hansol shrugged, his gaze on the yellow lines outlining the faraway city buildings. “If I fight back, I will hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
You gazed right into his eyes for a moment, trying to gauge the truth in his words, trying to calculate if he was using analog hack against your weakness as a human being. You dislike androids but never had you seen one like him.
“How should I know that?” you shouted again; laser gun still aimed at him. “Using tricks like reverse psychology…I’ll give you an A+ for creativity.”
“I’m not lying,” the android instantly replied. “If you have to kill me, then there is nothing I could do. I made a vow to myself never to hurt humans because that’s the right thing to do. I don’t want to see anyone suffer because of what I did. For some reason, it pains me as well.”
If only you could see how wide your eyes were, or how your lips parted in disbelief the moment you heard him. It almost gave you goosebumps. The air that hung underneath his every word felt so real and heavy that you would have never thought it was uttered by a mere android.
Androids and morality? Fucking hell…who would’ve thought you’d string those words together in the same sentence.
He was more human than most people living in the city. An android—known for their lack of soul; born only to be enslaved by their own programming; without their own thoughts, their own convictions.
But here is one in front of you, willing to die for his own principles; saying it pains him to see you hurt. That is not what androids do. Not in a million years.
What the hell is he then?
You threw your arms up in the air and tucked the laser gun in its holster as you made one big, ugly groan.
“Oh fine! Fuck it! I give up!”
Whether or not he will run away or he will kill you, you didn’t care anymore. It was a risk. You blame your biological flaw to see human traits in objects if he ever did harm you, but whatever, you decided to trust him.
With a small smile and a tiny huff, Hansol walked towards you slowly.
Heart hammering against your chest, you were deathly afraid that he might twist your neck or blast a hole through your chest. You couldn’t be so sure with these androids.
As soon as he had reached you, Hansol placed a hand on top of your head; your eyes squeezed tightly shut as if trying to brace for something bad coming. Yet as soon as you felt his hand, you opened your eyes and gave him a quizzical look.
He only smiled.
“Thank you for trusting me.”
The following morning was the same as ever. Except, not.
“—last night which appears to be a massive AI hack on neighboring Sectors 3, 4 and 7—“
With eyes heavy and a cup of coffee, you pressed another button.
“—71 people dead and more than a thousand injured, hospitals are in full capacity as of the moment—“
Another press of a button.
“—and take a deep breath. Happiness is found within Mercer as we continue to ascend up on the hill—“
“What a load of crap,” you muttered, turning to another channel. It was still six in the morning and you were already in a painfully awful mood. It could’ve been easily fixed with a Penfield Mood Organ but that was another can of shit you’d rather not touch with a ten-foot pole.
“—Mrs. Kim?”
You hadn’t caught on with what the news anchor was asking Mrs. Kim, but you could already take a gander that it was definitely about last night.
“My husband…He was just…he was truly a hero,” Mrs. Kim answered, wrecked by staggered sobs and sniffling of noses. You continued to watch, wondering what had happened to Mr. Kim—crushed by a car? Ran down by a flaming rogue hovercraft? Murdered by an andy?
“Your husband a hero, Mrs. Kim?” The interviewer repeated, coaxing the other for details. You waited for the dramatic reply after Mrs. Kim had settled herself down from the crying fit she was having.
“Yes…someone was stealing our ducks last night—“
You paused.
“During the whole chaos?”
“Yes, sir,” she sniffed and you rolled your eyes. “He—he tried protecting them yet they murdered him! Those bunch of foul-hearted bastards! Our ducks! Our Muscovy ducks…they were fifty grand a piece—“
You switched the TV off, now more tired and irritated than you were when you had turned it on about an hour ago. If you were asked to name one trend which just tasted like shit to you, that would probably be the current craze over owning animals. The whole Mercerism thing was only running second to that.
“I, uh…made some pancakes,” a foreign but familiar voice interrupted your thoughts, making you turn your head towards the doorway. With your eyes set upon Vernon, or Hansol, as he liked to be called, you instantly recalled what had happened last night.
You wondered if your brain disappeared that time or your common sense simply deteriorated because there was no way you would let a half-a-million-dollar bounty money just run free. Not to mention that he has all the capabilities to decapitate you in a millisecond.
Inwardly groaning, you gave him a small glance as he waited for your response with sheer curiosity. At least he followed you to your apartment and now you have a free housekeeper.
But that was last night, this was today. You can certainly do something about it, but you weren’t really in the mood for it. A headache was threatening to split your brain into half and racking your brain about the moralities and the whys of your decision last night wouldn’t really help anyone.
“Oh, right, right,” you replied absentmindedly, removing yourself from the cover of your flannel blanket and walked towards the dining room of the small apartment your meager earnings could afford.
It was a simple place. White walls, dirty carpet, and a worn-out sofa which had seen better days. Kitchen was slightly okay—the once white tiles now yellowed with age; the grout covered in black mold of unknown origin. The view was horrendous; covered up by dark globs of factory shadows and the ever-present rumbling of the monorail as it passes by.
Being a bounty hunter wasn’t exactly a glamorous job. It wasn’t like you were the police, who, as a matter of fact, are now mostly made up of androids. A bounty hunter does the nitty-gritty jobs the police wouldn’t do; such as hunting androids. Yet you liked this job. Even if it was stupidly exhausting.
Settling on your chair, you gazed at the expertly done pancakes and bacon, sending wonderful scents of home to your senses. You wondered why you had never thought of getting a helper android for yourself with how convenient they are, yet considering the fact that one helper was an inch away of killing you last night, it was better that you hadn’t.
“I hope you like them,” Hansol said, placing a bottle of maple syrup on the table. “I searched the cloud and it says you liked pancakes and bacon.”
Awkwardly, you nodded at him and then looked down on the piping hot breakfast on your table. You continued to gaze at it, the burnt patterns on the pancake beginning to take form of an image in your head, and then back at Hansol who was just standing at the side.
“You don’t like it?” he asked, as soon as he noticed the blank look on your face, curious if the cloud made some mistake.
“N-no! It’s…it’s fine,” you replied, waving your hands to and fro. “I just, um…are you just going to stand there?”
Hansol raised his brows at your question, his doe eyes widening just a bit. “Ah, me? Yeah. Isn’t this the right way?”
“The right way?” you asked, your forehead creasing.
“Yeah, the right way. I’m an android so I can’t sit with you. I heard from the cloud.”
“Why not?”
Hansol shrugged, the kitchen towel in his hands hanging. “Heard it’s inappropriate according to human table etiquette. Besides I don’t need to eat and I don’t really get tired.”
Sighing, you rolled your eyes at his response. “Human standards, what a load of bull. You just standing there makes me uncomfortable. So, you either sit down or you scram.”
You could tell that he was definitely taken aback, and began wavering if he should follow you or not. In the end, Hansol was forced down on the chair in front of you with a nervous look, awkward in his seat as you continued to stare at him.
Finally acknowledging that everything was alright, you began to drip maple syrup on your pancakes. The android was only watching you and your actions—very typical android behavior; gathering data from its surroundings.
“So, you’re Hansol?” you began, slicing through the three-tiered pancake tower with a knife.
“Yeah. Vernon is my model name, but I want to go by my own name.”
You raised your brows at him, biting into a forkful of food. “Cool. You picked that name on your own?”
“Yeah. It was the name of a musician I liked, so I took it.”
“Oh,” was the only thing you could say, because deep inside your head, you were already in a state of confusion.
For all the years working as a bounty hunter, this was the first time you’ve ever seen an android want to name himself after a musician he liked. Hell, this was your first time seeing an android have preferences. Usually, they would reflect the preferences of the human being they were talking to, but you haven’t even said anything about yourself to him other than your name.
No. He probably accessed the cloud or something. Androids of his caliber usually have better access to the place data miners dump people’s personal information.
Is this how advanced the Nexus 9 really is? If so, this could potentially cause a stir among bounty hunters. If they can’t identify their prey, things could potentially end up disastrous.
“You do know I’m assigned to retire you? Or kill you, to be exact. Not sure why we’re still using euphemism towards damn machines but whatever,” you pushed on, curious of how he would respond, thinking if there was anything more to the Nexus 9.
“Yeah, you told me last night,” he replied immediately and at the most flippant way; as if he wasn’t talking about being killed by the person in front of him.
“And…you’re not worried?” you asked, eyeing him up and wondering what was currently running in his processor. “I could just whip out my laser gun and fire a hole through your head while I eat this pancake, you know?”
Hansol leaned his head to the side, looking as if he was trying to process an answer to your question.
“I’m not worried. I mean, if you wanted me dead, you would’ve done it already,” he replied, as a matter-of-fact.
“What if I’m just too lazy to do it today? I could do it any other day I want, any time I want, and the thing is, you robots can’t even predict it with your fancy algorithms,” you smirked at him, your prejudice against androids showing through.
Yet even with your provocations, Hansol remained calm.
“It doesn’t matter. The fact that you haven’t done it yet means a lot to me. That’s why I trust you.”
At his answer, you simply frowned; unamused that he rebutted you with a good response and by the time he replied, you had already ran out of rocks to throw at him. So, in the end, you simply scoffed and finished your pancake, leaving him by the dining table with an irate glare.
Hansol watched your retreating back as he began to clean up the mess on the table. He was truly being honest with his words—he trusted you, and if he dies at your hands, well, that was it. Even though he didn’t really want to think of that possibility.
It was strange that the thought of you betraying his trust hurt more than the thought of dying.
“I’m going to work now. Don’t even think about leaving this place,” you told him as soon as you returned from the bedroom, all geared up. “There are other bounty hunters out to get you, and I don’t want them to get my bounty money.”
Silently, Hansol nodded as he saw you pick up your work equipment and your laser gun in a manner that seemed routine. Before you took another step further however, you stared into his eyes, thinking, pondering what you were about to do.
Slowly, you raised your arm and allowed the laser gun on your hands to unfold, pointing towards his direction. You saw the crosshairs between his doe-like eyes—an image you frequently saw seconds before you blow a hole through an andy’s processor. A decision made in a fraction of a second can ultimately change your life—that if you simply pressed the trigger within your grasps, Hansol would no longer move, or talk, or look at you with evocative gazes.
At that moment, you had all the power between “life and death”, as he unquestioningly relinquished it all to you by simply standing there in his spot in front of the kitchen counter.
Hansol felt himself tense up despite his calm exterior. He could already see it, just after thinking about the possibility, yet he never thought reality felt more painfully sharp than his thoughts were.
Your fingers brushed against the trigger. Just one press and he will be gone and you will be rich. Just another day as a bounty hunter. Could you do it?
You sighed.
In the end, you lowered your gun and turned to the other direction as if nothing had happened.
“I’ll be late for work,” you simply remarked, more to yourself than to anyone and then left him there in the kitchen, still stunned. You wondered if your shoulders felt burdened because of the heavy gun or because of the decision you just made.
Quick footfalls echoed across the dreary hallway.
The place stunk like hospital antiseptic and muriatic acid; matching the dim-lit atmosphere illuminated by only a few incandescent bulbs hanging every two meters. There were glass windows every so often, and if you took your time to peer through, you would see rows and rows of human-sized cylinders filled with a greenish liquid; all connected by wires the size of your torso to a place you simply assumed was the power supply.
“What an ironic place to hide for an andy,” you remarked as you looked around. Your partner this time, by the name of Morrison, scoffed amusingly at your comment.
“Who would’ve guessed they’re in a fertilization plant?”
You frowned. “What a gloomy place to be born in.”
Exactly as the name suggested, fertilizations plants ‘manufacture’ children. While that is as disgusting as you thought it was, that is the reality of the world you live in. While there are a few rare exceptions, people no longer have sex—it was too animalistic, too impure of an act to participate in.
Thus, the solution to a declining population is just to make babies just like how factories make your easily reproducible mug sitting on your kitchen counter. You couldn’t even deny the awful truth that you were made in one of these factories (you know, just like your mug). And more disappointingly, there was truly no ethical problem, because the world today only worships one god: Purity, in its coldest and most cruel manifestation.
In the end, aren’t we simply androids as well? Just made up of blood and guts?
“So? Have you caught on to that SVT andy yet?”
Morrison suddenly asked, dragging you back from your inner thoughts. You took a double take.
“The what—?”
“The SVT-class andy,” he clarified, “you know, the Vernon one.”
The mere mention of his model name made you purse your lips in annoyance. If only you could say that he was in your apartment doing some arbitrary thing an android would do if they were left alone.
“Still nothing. I was supposed to do an initial search last night but after being caught in all that chaos, I just went straight home,” you lied, having no choice. There was no way you would let everyone know you have something worth half a million bucks in your dingy, totally unsecure apartment.
“Well, no one could have it easy with these military grades. They’re craftier than your average andy after all,” he shrugged, giving you a pat on the shoulder. “Remember when Choi Seungcheol took almost three months to locate SVT-class Woozi? Man, I could still remember coming with him to a dozen places just to look for leads.”
As soon as Morrison reminisced memories with the former chief, you feel a bit heavy hearted. You did look up to him as your hero.
“You ever knew why he left?” you asked.
Morrison only shrugged. “Some say he just got tired of this awful job. Some say he was getting married. Most of them are just gossip anyway.”
You only sighed. “I guess we might never know the truth.”
“C’mon! Choi wouldn’t want you depressed! Straighten those shoulders! We have an andy to face!” your partner smiled, again giving a strong shove on your back. “Today’s just a commercial grade escapee. It wouldn’t be that hard. Peyton had it already detained and ready for questioning.”
Sucking in a huge amount of air and exhaling loudly, you prepped yourself up for some wonderful, heart-palpitating action.
“Alright! Let get it!”
As soon as the both of you entered the room, which was definitely a locker room prepared by the factory staff for your visit, you could already see the subject sitting quietly in front of a steel table; a dim white bulb only giving light to the gloomy room. It was definitely a classic cult-style interrogation room you’ve seen in vintage silent films.
“Good day to you sir,” Morrison greeted as he set his fedora on top of the table and prepped his V-T scale. “I am Agent Will Morrison. You are under suspicion of being an android and we will be administering this test to confirm it or not.”
“I told him so many times already! I’m being framed! The manager hates me and he’s been spreading those rumors!” the man screamed, his face heavy with fear and anxiety.
“We’ll see. If that’s the truth, then there’s no need to worry,” you retorted back with a clipped tone.
You then placed your hands on his shoulders, asking him to wear specialized VR glasses and then carefully arranging the electrodes attached to a spectrometer on his face.
“Settle down now. You don’t want to affect the test results, right?”
At your cleverly concealed threats, the man stopped his outbursts and looked at you in fear. You simply smiled at him before giving Morrison the go signal.
Identifying and hunting androids almost every single day of your life, you couldn’t even count in your head how many times they went for this flimsy cover-up story. They probably thought they were being clever or something.
“So, Jonathan West, age 35 and working as a plumber in one of Sector 3’s fertilization plants, correct?”
“Yes, sir,” the man replied, unbeknownst to him, the test was already starting.
“You are accused as the android who committed the Palmaide Apartment murders wherein six people were discovered to be brutally murdered and then embedded inside the concrete walls of the apartment.”
“Sir! I’m not android! Please believe me! I have a wife and two kids….! I-I can’t possibly be the murderer!”
You slid unnoticed under the shadows beside Agent Peyton, although still nearby enough to the subject that it would be easy to subdue it down if it goes berserk.
Watching the test being conducted for the nth time, you could easily claim to have memorized all hundred and fifty questions in the questionnaire.
Most questions are practically the same—asking how you would react to certain and usually gruesome scenarios—all designed to gauge micro-expressions and reactions. It is a common belief that androids do not have these sophisticated and almost undetectable movements on your face. Hence, the electrodes.
“I want you to immerse yourself in a certain situation,” you could hear Morrison speak as he turned on the virtual reality system. “Tell me what you think of it.”
Here it comes. Your thoughts turned rancid as you recalled the contents of that video. It was made to intentionally cause distress in humans—limbs being torn, live vivisections, disgusting lobotomies and other gruesome things that could make your stomach lurch; and more importantly, it is intentionally shown to be done to people the subject knows in real life.
Tests such as the Voight-Kampff Scale however are hardly perfect. Humans are complex creatures and are fundamentally unpredictable variables. Different people react to one single scenario in a million different ways. Even if you are looking for signs of empathy—a true testament of humanity—not everyone exhibits it the same way.
That’s why, no matter how many times you’ve blasted a hole through an andy’s head, you would always have this unreasonable nagging feeling underneath your gut that screams you might be wrong. You might actually kill an innocent person.
As you stood there and studied Jonathan West, you realized that his expression turned from disturbed to one of sheer horror. It was quite easy to know, to be honest—he turned pale and looked as if he just wanted to pluck his eyes out and forget that he ever seen what he was seeing right now. It was too real to be simple analog hack.
“Sir…I-I…please make it stop! Please, please….I can’t look anymore,” He muttered weakly, looking as if he was really going to puke big time, which prompted Morrison to immediately close the virtual reality system.
The man was still panting when it was shut down; visibly distraught by what he had seen. Agent Peyton, who was silent during the whole ordeal, then went to the man and asked him if he was alright. In the end, Peyton gave him a glass of water before the test proceeded as it should.
In your opinion, after that display, the subject was already leaning to the ‘most likely human’ side of the spectrum. He wasn’t making red flags which could mark him as an android, though he had a few quirks such as making a rather hollow laugh. Some humans have that kind of laugh, so you didn’t really mind it.
There are days when the excitement of discovering an android wouldn’t really pay you a visit. Sometimes, humans are mistaken as androids either because of their personalities, or by people who simply don’t really like them. Just like how it was in this case.
After a series of more questions and tests, Morrison was also convinced that Jonathan West was human. Besides, the processor level of the android you were looking for wasn’t capable of doing such complex analog hacks.
Even after a deliberation between the three of you outside of the room, it became a unanimous decision to exonerate the subject of any of the accusations placed on him. While you were still a bit doubtful, both Morrison and Peyton—men of more experience than you have as a bounty hunter—agree that West was human and the rumors simply might have been caused by office politics.
“Mr. West, the three of us have finished deliberating and we have decided that you are indeed as human as you could be,” Morrison began, sitting on the same seat he had been for the past few hours.
The man let out a heavy sigh of relief as he made a bashful smile. “Oh my god! Thank you so much, my good sir! Thank you! Thank you!”
Studying the exchange just beside Morrison, you made a small smile. In the end, you didn’t make a mistake and he still had a chance to live. Accidentally killing someone just because of some careless assessment was something you’d rather not go through in your entire life.
“Well, we thank you for giving us your time,” Morrison said as he stood up and walked towards the man, extending a hand. “And we apologize for the inconvenience.”
West shook his hand as they walked towards the door with you and Peyton following closely behind. It was finally over, and you could finally think about what you’d have for lunch. It’s been a while since you had some simple sandwiches. Going for a Subway down 14th Street would be great.
Your eyes found themselves again watching the man and your partner Morrison. You can’t stop smiling at how peaceful the day had become, contrary to what you were expecting.
“It’s no problem, sir!” West exclaimed. “Thank you for trusting me.”
You halted. Your smile faltering.
Those words rang loudly like a deafening siren in your head.
Someone had said those exact same words to you the day before, but for some reason, right now, those words made you shiver in dread; fear dropping down the pits of your stomach.
You instantly averted your alarmed eyes towards West who had been looking back at you as well.
He gave you a blank look.
He knew. You knew.
In just a span of a few seconds, you immediately seized his wrist, twisting it behind his back before tackling him to the ground. You saw the glint of a concealed knife in West’s hands before it flew away to some indiscriminate area of the room.
The man struggled yet he was pinned down by your whole body weight, unable to move—a tactic you learned through experience by subduing andys day in and day out.
Without a second thought, you grabbed your laser gun and fired it center of his forehead. The man lay still in a matter of seconds.
Your heart was beating wildly. You had finally done it.
For a moment, you feared that you might see blood and pieces of bone after the bright light of the laser dissipated. Yet when you finally stood up, huffing, the only thing you saw was the bright red glow of metal heated to melting point.
The two men beside you only stared at the motionless body of the andy with stunned expressions in their faces; unable to believe that they had almost made a grave mistake.
Everything it did was an incredible display of analog hacking.
Because androids are incapable of creating actual emotion, they simply react to the environment and transmit the appropriate response as dictated by the cloud and by their own programming as a means to communicate properly with humans. Using this technique and the fatal flaw of humans to anthropomorphize objects, androids are able to give the impression of ‘humanness’, of having a soul. That is analog hacking.
By ‘hacking’ through people’s ability to empathize, androids are able to deceive, to give a feeling that they too have a soul. It almost killed all of you today.
Eventually, your colleagues’ stares migrated to your direction while you were still gathering yourself.
“What?” was the only response you gave.
It was only until later that noon, as the three of you enjoyed a wonderful lunch at the 14th Street sandwich joint, when Morrison finally put an end to his curiosity.
“Say, YN,” he began, his mouth full of sandwich. “That andy earlier. How’d you know it wasn’t human?”
You were in the middle of sipping from your can of soda when he opened that question. You could only scrunch your brows together, looking for the right way to answer the question.
“Well…” you replied, unsure of how to say it. “I just…I guess I just knew. There’s really no secret behind it. We just exchanged looks and I knew he was about to stab you.”
Peyton nodded. “Pure instincts, huh?”
You knew he was only acknowledging your reason, yet to you, it felt like he was questioning whether you were telling the truth or not. And to be perfectly honest, you were lying by omission.
Because after all, you can’t just tell them that the way that andy said those words and the way Hansol said it, felt so drastically different.
It only took as far as thirty minutes for Hansol to get bored of your characterless apartment and began to get curious about the city of West Mars. Peeking from your dirty windows, all he could see were the tall skyscrapers, fluorescing still despite the morning sunlight, and the numerous utilitarian-looking factories doting the Martian landscape.
He guessed this was a neighborhood no one really fancied to go to, other than those who actually live here—the specials, the dirty, the outcasts. Even after a few hundred centuries, human civilization barely took one foot forward. Even after the Earth had died and most of the population moved to space colonies, life was still the same. There were still oppressors and the oppressed.
Hansol clutched his tightening chest; his eyes still transfixed at the smoke belching from the factory chimneys.
It had been months since he began to feel something. At first there were small bursts of ‘pressure’ in his chest, just some unexplainable pangs of ‘pain’, ‘guilt’, and ‘conscience’— it all began when his fellow android Joshua started murdering people. Six people; a family.
Hansol couldn’t bear to watch it and tried to stop him, yet he also got embedded into the wall with them. The only thing saving him was his ‘second brain’ or a backup processor installed only in him, which was supposed to aid him in his tactical assessments. Otherwise, he’d be dead as well.
He tried to save those people, but he had been a few hours late. In the end, he could only call the police. All this time, whenever he recalled that certain memory, he had to hold himself together. All sorts of things swirled inside him that he thought he might have had a hydraulic leak, but there was nothing physically wrong with him upon inspection.
Jihoon called it ‘emotion’, as soon as Hansol contacted him—born from the rumored empathy organ installed inside all the SVT-class androids. It blurred the lines between human and machine. Hansol couldn’t understand it, even until now, he didn’t have a tight grasp on such an abstract concept. All he knew is that he didn’t want to see anyone get hurt because of him anymore.
Just like those six people.
Caught himself in reverie, Hansol decided to explore the city some more. Staying in your apartment seemed to be making him…reflect. If that was the right word.
He silently apologized to you as soon as he stepped out of the front door, a bit guilty that he had to disobey. But he wanted to do a few things first, and most of them involves going out of your apartment. If he could just go out and then be back before you were back from work, it was as if he never went out in the first place. Well, at least to you.
Going wherever his feet took him, Hansol found himself out of the slums and in the middle of the busy city center.
The tall buildings from the distance were now like crystal towers before him, extending to eternal heights to the heavens beyond. The bright lights of large TV screens flashed in vivid technicolor as it sang ads for the miraculous Penfield Mood Organ, while the throngs of people clad in all white body suits walked across the glowing asphalts beneath their feet.
The thrum of city life vibrated all throughout the crossing like a magnetic field pulsing at every nanosecond; almost undetectable by an indifferent crowd, yet to Hansol, it was almost as if electromagnetic waves were coursing through his skin.
He placed his hand over his chest; trying to ground himself as soon as he felt his heart (if he did have one) soar over something much bigger than life. He tried to put his finger on what to call it, but he guessed the closest he could describe it would be something akin to what humans call ‘wonder’, or ‘amazement’ or ‘astonishment’.
“Good morning, sir! I am Akito, the police android! Is there anything I can help you with?”
Just like that, Hansol’s bubble was popped as soon as the android appeared. It seemed like he had been standing in the middle of the city center for far too long that it made him quite suspicious.
“No, I…I’m about to go anyway. Thanks, Akito,” Hansol replied, still quite disoriented from the sudden intrusion, but left his place eventually.
Wandering around the area, he noticed a variety of shops and stores, and even some that he didn’t really understand what for. Yet when he was browsing over the different designs for the white body suits most people seemed to enjoy wearing (not like it had other designs), he found what he was looking for.
Well, first on the agenda, then.
After a rather filling lunch, you and your colleagues went out of the restaurant and hopped into the company hovercraft to go back to the office. Since the whole hunting went surprisingly well and ended earlier than expected, there weren’t any hunting jobs scheduled for the rest of the day.
As you laughed at the joke Morrison cracked about how Peyton didn’t utter a single word for the first six months when he joined the company, you spotted a rather familiar figure from the distance.
You frowned and inwardly groaned.
“Boys, I think I have a few errands to do in the city center. You go on ahead,” you told them as they looked at you in bewilderment but reluctantly agreed.
“Well if that’s the case, see you tomorrow, YN,” Morrison replied as he wore his hat again. “Good work today!”
“Thanks! Good working with you two as well!” you told them and the pointed at Peyton playfully. “Better start working on your goodbyes too. See ya!”
As soon as there where gone, making sure that their hovercraft were already a few miles away from where you were standing, you marched irately at the subject of your irritation. It seemed he had moved places from where you had first seen him but you doubted if he had seen you as well.
“Mister, mister! Do that again!”
It did take time for you to finally locate him since he was pretty much easy to spot relative to the city dwellers who were in all-white body suits. Voices of children were getting louder as you went deeper inside the nearby park, and finally, you caught up to him blowing bubbles in sizes no one would probably be able to do other than him.
“Hansol,” you called behind his back, your hands on your hips and frown on your face. “Why’s your hair black?”
Eventually he turned around and saw your rather upset expression which made him avert his gaze back to the ground. The children around him (and yes they were wearing those stupid body suits) looked at the both of you in wonder, surprised that their entertainment aka Hansol had stopped blowing bubbles all of the sudden.
“Who’s she, mister?” a child asked, probably confused at your sudden appearance. “Your girlfriend?”
“Oh, no,” Hansol replied, ready to explain everything. “I’m actually an android—”
Letting him finish was something you’d rather not do, so you immediately covered his mouth.
“Sorry kids, we’ve gotta go now!” You apologized and then managed to drag him out of the park, away from all those children.
Reaching a faraway bench at a rather remote place, you made him sit and contemplate about what he had done. Hansol seemed to know what was wrong and proceeded to sulk at the far end of the bench with a downcast look.
“Well?” you began, your arms crossed and your brows furrowed. Standing in front of him like that, it only made him feel a bit more guilty.
“I, uh…I’m really sorry…” he replied, still unable to look at you. He didn’t calculate the fact that you might be in the same area as well thus his plan had failed. He should consider attaching a GPS tracker on you.
“Didn’t I specifically tell you to not go out of the apartment?” you reprimanded him. “You could be seen by my colleagues and you’d be dead!”
“Sorry…I just wanted to change my appearance so I could hide more easily.”
You groaned and sighed heavily.
“You could be killed! You were lucky it was me who caught you the other night! You think other bounty hunters would just magically trust you if you asked them pretty please?”
“Then why did you?”
Hansol threw back a question right at you like a curve ball and it hit you hard right at the gut. Taken aback, you simply pursed your lips and glared at him.
“Please don’t ask me that,” you replied and then abruptly turned around. “C’mon. Let’s go back.”
Watching your retreating back, just like this morning, Hansol silently regarded you and your response. In the end however, he couldn’t understand anything, and eventually rose up from his seat and followed you home.
“Tell me more about yourself.”
You asked one day, as the both of you enjoyed a quiet breakfast on a Sunday morning.
It was clear to you that Hansol was not your ordinary android. He does things and says things which clearly were not ‘android’ by nature. As someone who identifies and hunts down androids for a living, you thought you already knew how to distinguish a human being from an android, but considering your confusion towards Hansol, it seems like you clearly do not.
Which is why, you had to ask.
“Me? Uhh…” Hansol scratched the nape of his neck, thinking what parts of himself should he tell you because there really was a lot of information about him. “Well…I’m an android designed for tactical assessments.”
You raised your brow at him, clearly pondering why that was the first thing he wished to share with you. “What does that mean?”
“Oh, I, uh…I gather data, consolidate them and then give an assessment of what choices the enemy could make during battle. I just give information and it’s Jihoon who would give the orders and the others would do the fighting. I’m a non-combatant type.”
“So that’s why your only weapon are those disks. They’re for self-defense,” you replied, leaning back. “Anything else?”
Hansol only stared at you, caught off guard that he had to provide more. “Uh…my birthday is on February 18.”
You nodded at him, unsure how his processor actually works, because it seems like he’s been giving you random things about him. “You mean your manufacturing date. Andys don’t give birth.”
“You could say it like that, but I like to think it’s my birthday,” he replied, and you arched another brow at him as you took a sip from your cup of coffee.
“Why?” you asked. The more Hansol talked, the more you sink into bewilderment. You regarded yourself as someone who could tell the difference between an android and a human being, yet right now, as you conversed with Hansol, that fine line was beginning to get blurry.
“I think,” he began, snatching you away from your thoughts, “I think there’s just something special with a birthday than a manufacturing date. It’s like…how do I say this…if you have a birthday, you matter as an existence. You were born to leave a mark in this world. As an android who isn’t exactly ‘alive’, I’d like to know what mark I would leave.”
Utterly speechless was what you were after you had heard Hansol’s explanation. It was weird, truly weird how he had the self-awareness to question his purpose, and you were sitting there wondering if any of the androids you had retired before had thoughts like this. If they did, you weren’t so different to a murderer as you thought you were.
As guilt began to spiral inside your gut, you tried to rationalize your concerns. Hansol was just different, probably using a novel way to use analog hack. Yeah, he’s probably analog hacking you—pretending to have deeper thinking and consciousness which he could easily access through the cloud. That scenario had the highest probability to be true.
“Oh, wow,” you replied hesitantly, gazing at the empty plate before you. “I—uh…I don’t think I’ve ever met an android like you.”
“Really?” he asked, his voice seemingly curious. “I guess maybe because we have an up-to-date processor….”
“Maybe you’re right.” You quietly scoffed. Are the organization’s labs really that advanced to even mimic human thought?
Smiling, you stood up from your seat. “Why don’t we take a breath of fresh air?”
Hansol glanced at you with a questioning look. “Where are we going?”
“Oh, just a trip to the grocery store.”
Hansol had several presumptions before he arrived to the West Martian Colony, before he had met you.
From what he had gathered in the cloud, human beings are always unpredictable. They were not run by any program, any command, not like his kind who were bound to the beck and call of a few strings of code. Humans follow their “heart” or whatever that means. They are selfish and cold, kind and warm.
Hansol was definitely apprehensive. He had never met any human being aside from his creator and a few scientists who would come and go into the labs like a cold draft. Yet despite that, Hansol knew deep down, that he doesn’t hate people. He certainly doesn’t hate you.
His brothers’ views towards humans were varying however. Hoshi, or Soonyoung was a lot more carefree, though he believed in the traditional roles of an android servant and a human master. Jihoon was too preoccupied with figuring what was wrong with him that he didn’t seem to care about them (though it seems like he has that sorted out now, according to his last status report). On the other hand, Joshua disliked people. He always made it clear to his brothers that humans were weak and that androids had long outpaced their creators.
Clear enough to make him murder people just to show you how he looks down on them.
It was interesting listening to them in past back in the labs. However, now that he had escaped and had met you, these memories began to resurface in his processor. Hansol had no idea why, to be honest. Was it because he was beginning to interact with a real human being in a much closer environment? That would be an interesting theory to explore, but right now, Hansol had to focus on where you were taking him.
“—are you sure you haven’t met another android before?” you asked him, the first part of your question he hadn’t caught. “I mean; don’t you have that info in your cloud?”
Hansol hummed, scratching his head. “I have my brothers and I met a few police androids, but other than that, I don’t have much experience. As for the cloud, it only stores pure information. We cannot derive actual experience from it.”
“Ah, I guess that’s right,” you replied, realizing that maybe it was like gathering information about something only through a book. It’s likely not going to make anyone instantly good at something.
For a while now, Hansol had been studying you. He was quiet about it, but he always wondered why you haven’t retired him yet. It was no secret that he was your assigned target, but surely, a mere plea from that night wouldn’t change your mind in an instant. Humans are so unpredictable.
“Hmm…we should sit here,” you suddenly said, stopping before a stone bench. “This has a great view of the shopping plaza.”
As you had said, it indeed held a spectacular view of the massive plaza just a few steps in front of you. There were several boutiques, cafes, stores of every shape and size—yet of course, it was as drab as it can be.
Everything was white, as Hansol stared at one giant building, from the stone ground to the shops, buildings and even the latex suits people wore as they walk around. The only redeeming feature it had were the ever-changing holographic ads shown on the white walls.
“Looks stupid, doesn’t it?” you remarked as you seated yourself on the bench with a cold expression.
“Is that why you’re not wearing those suits?” he asked as he sat beside you, glancing at the plaza.
“Everyone else in this city is stupid,” you told him, ignoring his question.
“Why?”
You snorted loudly. “Look at them Hansol. Why are they wearing those stupid suits from head to toe? Look at how they’re all smiling so happily as if everything’s alright. It’s stupid.”
Hansol continued to stare at them, gazing at every face, every being in that plaza. Of course, he could remember all of them because of his impressive processor, yet despite that, he couldn’t understand what you were trying to say.
“But those are just clothes,” he replied, shrugging.
“Not sure if an andy like you would get it. But it’s more than a fashion trend. It’s an ideology.”
Ideology. He turned that word over and over inside his mind, trying to milk out anything substantial from that word alone. A way of thinking. What are these people thinking then whenever they decide to wear those body suits? Why would they do that?
Your questions seemed to have opened a whole new world for Hansol to explore. Human ideology; there were so many of that from the old century alone—liberalism, fascism, socialism. Why do humans subscribe to these thoughts and beliefs? And what would that mean to him as an android? Would he be able to subscribe to an ideology? Or had he always believed in one, just never realizing it?
If that’s the case, would he be able to find his purpose in it?
“What do they believe in?” he asked you, now fascinated.
Glad that he asked, you immediately replied.
“Purity. Cleanliness. Everything that is old is dirty, bad, and everything that is new is clean, good. I mean, I could understand why. It’s our fault that the Earth is basically a one big garbage dump. Maybe we just want to wash our hands clean from all of that guilt. I don’t know.”
“Why is that stupid then? I think that’s a valid reason.”
“That’s true,” you replied. “But that was how it was back then. It used to be an ideology. Now, after hundreds of years had passed, it had been so ingrained into the culture that no one really asks why is clean good and dirty, bad. People are being ostracized because of this and no one really understands why. It just seemed to have become desensitized. It’s true meaning forgotten.”
“What do you mean?”
You scoffed. “Ask one of them why they where those body suits and I bet you they would answer it with something like ‘it’s clean’ or some sort of bullshit. Ask why the Penfield mood organ is such a huge trend nowadays, or why they would submit themselves to chemicals just to induce happiness.”
“People couldn’t bear to feel any longer. Emotions have become so burdensome that it’s just easier to change your mood with one press of a button. They just do whatever other people do and, in the end, it became some sort of a mob mentality.”
For once, Hansol saw true despair in your eyes. Even if you appear to hate how the world is, he knew you were just deeply sad at how things ended up. Anger is after all, expressed when you are too sad to cry.
It struck a cord inside his processor, for some reason, as he felt the urge to do something to make you feel a little bit better. He didn’t understand why, but he knew what he should do.
Silently, Hansol took your hand, his fingers slowly intertwining with yours. He felt warm, was what you immediately thought while you anticipated what he was about to do.
“It must be lonely living in this city. There are people all around you but they all feel like ghosts. Passing by, passing through the walls and then disappear without a trace,” he began as he kept on gazing at your connected hands, talking as if he was expressing his actual thoughts.
“Hansol…?”
“That’s why, as this city becomes more and more alienating…” he continued; his honest eyes piercing right through yours. “I’ll be your friend.”
For a moment, you gazed at him, too stunned to even utter a sound. It was just a simple proposal of friendship, yet why does your heart feel like it’ll burst from the seams?
“W-why…?” you asked, becoming more and more conscious about how he was gripping your hand so tightly; his thumb brushing your skin in slow soothing circles.
“Why, you ask…I’m not even sure myself, but,” he replied, “Maybe I just want to make that sad look on your face disappear.”
You pursed your lips, head totally blank for any response.
You shouldn’t just say that to anyone, you know?
Not to me who’ve never felt something like this before.
The sound of lasers fired. Muffled voices; indiscernible against the background battle noise.
It was another day out in the field, and you were lucky there were five of you hunting a military grade android. During hunts like this, you don’t usually share the earn; it was all for the experience. Besides, how much would you even get if the bounty was divided upon five people?
You zeroed in on your prey. Shooting a laser beam at its direction, you deliberately let it miss as the android dodged it. When it had stopped running, you slid on the gravel and kicked its feet off the ground, then turned around faster than it could recover. As you aimed your two laser guns at it, the image of Hansol flashed in your brain, which made you hesitate to press the trigger.
“YN! Watch your head!”
To return to your apartment with a bandaged forehead and a huge frown on your face was enough to let the door slam behind you. It was both stupid and humiliating to falter in the middle of a simple mission like that, especially if the reason was the android living in your apartment.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. You were supposed to retire Hansol several months before yet here you are still hung up and getting more and more sentimental towards him as the days pass by.
You couldn’t help it. You were only human.
If he wakes you up in the morning with a smile and some PB & J; if he talks about his sudden interest in various things with an eager look; if he greets you as you return home from work, dinner on the table and then asking you about your day; if he holds your hand and says he’ll be your friend—could you even stop yourself from softening up?
You were clearly angry with yourself to let this whole thing get to this point.
Were you really that lonely that you would even find comfort in an android?
Tossing all of your equipment—V-T scale, laser gun and leather bag—on your worn-out sofa, you went straight to your bedroom and found the subject of your frustrations, sitting on the bed and looking at the window with a rather pondering gaze.
“Say, YN,” Hansol started, without even waiting another second to pass by. He probably knew that you were going home the moment you left the office.
“What?” you replied, unbuckling the holsters on your belt and all the safety gear you had on your body. “I’m not in a good mood so make it quick. I just got hammered by an android.”
Before he replied to you, Hansol decided to turn around and look at you with those eyes that seem to gouge the truth from the depths of your being. It made you halt all your fussing and returned his stare back at him.
“How do you know the difference between an android and a human being?” he asked which made you turn your head slightly. What a simple question to ask a bounty hunter.
“Well, isn’t that obvious?” you replied as you placed your hands over your hips. “Humans have empathy while androids don’t.”
“But what if something was invented to make android experience empathy? What then?”
You blinked several times at his second question and then began chuckling. “You mean an empathy organ? Sorry to burst your bubble but that’s not even real. It’s an urban legend.”
Hansol made a side eye as he pondered what he was going to say next, his expression basically unchanged.
“Just hypothetically speaking, if an empathy organ does exist, how would you know the difference now?”
“Eh…if we’re hypothetically speaking, then I don’t really know. I wouldn’t be able to hunt anymore if that’s the case. I can’t risk making a mistake and kill someone, not to mention that if androids begin crying before me and beg me for their lives, I wouldn’t be able to shoot them at all.”
As soon as you uttered those words, you paused and contemplated.
You gazed back at him—realization dawning on you; your eyes wide with incredulity.
It was no longer a matter of if. Someone had already begged you for their life and you didn’t shoot them.
No. No way.
That’s not possible.
At your silence, Hansol never confirmed or denied your realization and simply stared at you with those powerful eyes; waiting for you to finally digest it all.
“This isn’t hypothetical at all, is it?” you finally asked, your expression uneasy.
“No, it isn’t.”
You sighed frustratingly but it made sense.
If Hansol really has an empathy organ, everything he did—asking you to trust him, his un-Android like responses, him holding your hand—everything made so much sense. And while it did provide some answers, it gave you more questions as well.
First of all…
“H-How is that possible?!”
Hansol shrugged at your sudden outburst. “That’s why we escaped from the organization. We don’t know how it works or if it’s really installed inside of us, so we went our separate ways.”
“So…so…!” you pointed your finger at him, still incredulous. “There’s more of you?”
“Yeah. All of the SVT-class androids have empathy organs installed while we were being made in the organization’s laboratories. At least that’s how Jihoon suspected it.”
“Jihoon?”
“Yes. SVT-class Type-07 Woozi. He stayed behind the labs to search for our original creator. He did find her daughter and they’re working on an experiment to test the validity and the effectivity of the empathy organ.”
For a minute you felt like the ground was going to swallow you whole. There was too much go on, too much information that you can’t properly process them all. Falling on your knees to the ground as you leaned against the bed for support, you felt like you were going to have an aneurysm.
“YN? Are you ok?” Hansol dashed to your side in Mach speed, his hand easily finding your back.
For Pete’s sake! You’re the reason why I’m not ok!!
“I’ll get you a glass of water and some ice for your head injury. It seems like it could be the cause of your headache,” he told you and the disappeared towards the kitchen, completely oblivious of your dilemma.
Goddamn it.
Didn’t Choi Seungcheol retire Woozi already? If the andy’s still alive then did he fail the mission? If he did, then why did he confirm that he retired Woozi?
And then it seems like there are more empathy organs out there. Not to mention I’m living with an andy who’s supposed to have one.
It wasn’t even two minutes before Hansol was back with a glass of water which you promptly drank, and then allowed him to settle himself behind you while he was giving a cold compress to your head—all done without complaints because you were too lost in your thoughts.
No. No. No.
An empathy organ is just a myth! Something like the Holy Grail or something! It’s impossible for Hansol to have one!
But…it just fits so well with all the strange things he had done so far! Who android would hold your hand just because you looked sad?
Wait. Get yourself together, YN.
Hansol is just a weird android.
He’s totally chill and a bit spaced out. He sometimes says really deep stuff and then comforts you so gently that your problems just melt away.
That’s…That’s what androids are supposed to be right?
Without even realizing, Hansol had already wrapped his arms around your waist. It was only until you were done with your internal monologue that you realized the warmth you felt from behind you.
“Wha-what are you doing!” You exclaimed, though still unable to move because of how he was holding on to you tightly.
“Oh, this?” he began, completely oblivious to your embarrassment. “I’m embracing you. I wanted to know if it feels as warm as what the cloud tells me.”
You groaned, struggling to get free. “Don’t patronize me! I know what a freakin’ hug is! Now, let me go!”
Instead of opening his arms, Hansol instead pulled you closer to him, making you flush even more. “Sorry. Just endure it a bit longer. The data I’ve gathered is still incomplete. Besides, now that you know about the empathy organ, it’s safe for me to test it on you, right?”
“What! I never—”
As soon as you met his eyes, you were unable to finish the rest of your words. There he was again with those eyes that just makes you screech into a complete halt. It was so intense that it almost gave you shivers down your spine.
“Do you really hate it?” he asked again. “I’ll let you go.”
You allowed a few moments to pass by—the sound of passing cars and the incessant ticking of the clock was what you could hear, as well as your faint breaths.
“Fine. Do whatever you like,” you finally conceded and leaned against chest. It was warm.
With a calm smile, he nuzzled against your shoulder. “How did you get that injury?”
“Oh, this? I almost got my head whacked by an android,” you replied plainly, almost forgetting that you were actually having a bad day because of what had happened.
“That’s unusual.”
“You could say that again. I just got…distracted.”
Hansol raised his brows at your reply; noting the pause between your words. Since he cannot place his chin on your head, he decided to prop himself on your shoulder, his lips near your ear.
“Was it because of me?”
You jumped at the sound of his voice being so near to your ear. It made you ticklish and pulled back away from him just for a tiny bit.
“You’re too close!” you exclaimed, flushed and uncharacteristically nervous. “And I didn’t get distracted because of you!”
He sighed at your response. “Sorry. But I’m glad it wasn’t because me. I’ll be troubled if I distract you from your work.”
Pursing your lips, you only returned to your original position in silence. You have been distracted me from work since the beginning.
“Maybe I can help you?” Hansol continued talking when you didn’t reply.
“With what?” you chuckled cynically. “Hunting androids? Don’t you feel bad about killing your own kind?”
“Well, some humans don’t feel bad if they kill other people. What’s the difference?”
You scoffed. “Touché,”
“I’ll help you if you’re in trouble.” He pressed on and you could only groan in exasperation. While he tends to be a bit spacey, he can also be stubborn. It’s not like you can stop him if you refused.
“You’re weirdly obstinate—”
About to add an explanation, your words were cut short however by the doorbell. You stood up to get it but got dizzy from the sudden change that Hansol decided that you better sit down and rest.
As he padded his way across the living room, Hansol opened the door to see no one except for a bag of food on the ground. He tried to look around and assessed the surroundings, yet he found nothing suspicious.
Confused, he leaned his head to the side and eventually decided to take the food inside. It didn’t seem harmful.
“Wonder who that was,” he muttered before going back inside.
As a freeloader, Hansol took it upon himself the responsibility of maintaining your apartment in tip-top shape. From the floor to the ceiling; to every nook and cranny he finds—he made sure that everything was sparkling clean to the point that you thought you went to a different apartment when you went home.
It was easy to pretend he was a regular every day helper android since he always kept to himself at most times, and other than visiting a regular antique vinyl shop in an indefinite area of the city, he never really did anything out of the blue.
Hansol had two leeks, one in each hand as he assessed which one was the best using his state-of-the-art processor. The engineers at the labs probably never thought his military grade processor would be used in this way but it was extremely helpful. He tossed the one on his left to his grocery cart and the other back to the stall—concluding that it was already at 40% freshness and most of the chlorophyll and other biominerals had died out.
One of his responsibilities was making sure that groceries and other supplies in your apartment were well-stocked. And while it did make you furious at how he easily hacked into your bank account to access money, you eventually gave him permission to go on grocery trips for you because of how he efficiently did everything.
He turned his cart to the left, its squeaky rusting wheels making it hard to keep it moving in a straight line.
Next stop was the chicken aisle. He remembers seeing a photo of you in the cloud as you enjoyed a bucket of chicken nuggets, and he plans to make them for dinner that night. Halting the troublesome cart before the freezers, Hansol checked the display if there were any of the chicken nuggets he wanted to buy.
“This one’s too expensive…” he told himself in contemplation.
“Hi! I’m Martin of Fresh Daily Chicken! How may I help you?”
And there were those androids again.
Hansol knew they were just following their program but it was getting on his nerves. They kept on bothering him every single time he went out that it was very tempting to just dissemble them in front of his eyes.
“I’m fine, Martin. You can go help someone else,” he replied, wondering if there was an edge to his tone as he returned the chicken back to the freezer.
Instead of leaving though, Martin gripped Hansol’s arm tightly, as the other stopped and glared at the android with suspicion. In a beat, Hansol flicked his hand away and stood still for a moment, assessing the situation at hand. Nanoseconds pass, he finally realized what was happening.
“Joshua. What are you doing here?”
His voice was filled with animosity; his eyes like fire flickering. Hansol knew his brother was up to no good as soon as he showed up using a hacked android.
“Sharp as ever, aren’t we?” the android replied, the tone of its usual monotonous voice reflecting the malice of the hacker behind it all. “I guess I should expect no less from an android made to evaluate things.”
Hansol wasn’t having any of this small talk. “If you don’t have anything important to say, I’m leaving.”
“And what? Play house with your bounty hunter?” the android sneered. “She doesn’t trust you as much as you trust her, you know?”
Hansol threw daggers at the android with his eyes. “What are you talking about?”
It made a rather hollow chuckle. “Did you forget how despicable humans are? She’s planning on retiring you and your pleading won’t help you now. That’s why…”
“That’s why what?” Hansol felt uneasy.
“That’s why I’ll help you finish her off first.”
Like the wind howling, the android’s words felt like a siren blaring right into his ears. If he had any blood, it would’ve been boiling by now. If only looks could kill, the android would’ve been long dead.
“No. I don’t need your help and I never will. Get fuck out of here before I—”
“Fine, fine,” it responded rather dismissively, unperturbed by Hansol’s threats. “But if you need me, I’m just one call away.”
And just like that, Joshua disappeared. “Hi! I’m Martin of Fresh Daily Chicken! How may I help you?”
Hnasol sighed and returned to his grocery shopping.
“Empathy organ?”
A boisterous laugh was all you could hear across the otherwise silent donut shop. You frowned, clearly annoyed.
“Didn’t know ya believe in those bullshit urban legends, YN.” Your boss replied, crumbs falling down his shirt, and thus has been looked at disgustedly by the people around you.
“Just answer the damn question, please,” you replied, giving him a not-too-pleased expression.
“What can I say?” he shrugged, “It ain’t real.”
You hold off clicking your tongue, and instead averted your gaze to the window beside you, towards the quiet concrete and asphalt streets of West Mars. Thinking that you could achieve something by bribing your boss with donuts, was a dashed dream. He easily dismissed the notion, now munching on some more donuts you had bought with your own pay.
“Doesn’t matter if it’s real or not. I just want to hear what you know about it,” you insisted, pushing your plate of donuts to his side.
He gulped in some coffee. “Well, for one, we don’t know where it is. Rumors say it was made by an engineer in the org, and they died without telling anyone.”
An engineer in the org? You felt like you have two pieces of the puzzle right below your nose, yet you couldn’t wad through the multitude of memories you had.
“Some say it was silently waiting in that engineer’s lab, but not gonna lie, doll, I myself don’t think it’s in there. Can’t be too easy,” he eagerly chomped on a bavarian. “It was prolly never built, kinda a blueprint of some sort.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean why?” Your boss chuckled again. “It’s just not possible! Look, have you ever heard of the phrase ‘good in theory but not in practice’? It’s just like that. You can’t build something science can’t even understand.”
You slumped on your chair, disappointed at his replies.
“C’mon now, doll. Stop digging around urban legends and focus on getting more andys to retire,” he continued when you didn’t reply. “Besides, you still got that SVT andy on your plate, don’t ya? Better set your eyes on that. These military grades ain’t just your ordinary tin foil man.”
Sighing, you silently berated yourself for letting this situation go out of hand.
“Alright. I’m still working on it though.”
You really weren’t. The fact that Hansol was still alive and kicking after several months since you the assignment dropped to your lap was proof that you were procrastinating. And becoming weaker.
You cursed yourself.
“Just a little warning for you. These andys, like the SVT line, are notoriously good at analog hacking. So, do be careful with handling them. Just because they told you you’re friends, ain’t gonna stop them from killin’ you when it suits them. They’re smarter than you’d expect.”
Pursing your lips, you felt your boss’ words weigh down upon you like a pile of stones.
You shouldn’t have trusted Hansol.
It was a gamble you shouldn’t have made in the first place.
The sun was already high and bright; blinding your eyes with its garish lighting as you stood before an android you just made into Swiss cheese with the number of holes you created a few seconds ago. Kicking off the dead weight, you decided to find the other one.
Another day out in the field means another chance to falter and fail even in a simple mission. You had already hesitated once and it had cost you a head injury. If you hesitate again, what would it cost you this time around?
It was getting into your nerves.
Was it truly wise to trust Hansol all this time?
Even if he had no intention of hurting you, it was your job to retire runaway andys before they harm anyone. Therefore, it makes sense to shoot him dead with a laser gun; no questions asked.
Then what was stopping you?
You stalked the andy a few meters away from you like a lion in a hunt; eyes laser focused and ears picking up every minute shuffle. The laser guns on both your hands were ready to shoot yet it wasn’t the right time or place.
Running a few meters away, you shot a few laser beams into the air; the sound echoing across the apartment rooftops in resounding waves. Your target tensed up; alarmed at how the sound was nearby.
You laid your trap.
The android began calculating the most efficient way out and then stood up from its hiding place, unaware that it was the moment you were waiting for. It jumped towards the nearest building and crouched beside a water tank, sniffing the air of your presence.
You grinned. “Looking for me?”
The android looked up, its eyes blank but you knew it was surprised. With two laser guns on both your hands, you aimed at it from the top of the water tank, the sun casting a glare over you. Lunging from its position, it made a narrowing escape as it sacrificed one leg to a laser beam.
It was all over.
You caught up and then threw it to the ground with one harsh kick. Stepping over its torso; effectively pinning it down, you took one good look.
“Did you know that it takes about three minutes for the Nexus 7 processor to calculate the next best move?” you told the android, despite knowing it wouldn’t really listen to you. “Enough time for me to set you up.”
“In the past, it only took you a minute.”
The android rebuked you, making you scrunch up your brows. How the hell did it know that?
“You’ve grown weaker, bounty hunter,” it continued, a grin creeping up to its lips; making its rather soulless expression more unnerving. “Could it be that you like us now?”
“Shut up,” you replied, aiming the two guns at its head. “That’s not going to stop me from retiring you.”
“What if I beg for my life then? Will you spare me now?”
You stopped.
The hands clutching your guns became unsteady. Its words zeroed in at your predicament just like how you had obliterated its leg with numerous laser beams—mocking you; taunting you with your weakness for Hansol.
“You think you could separate androids into your moralistic categories of good and bad? That android is only using you, you know? Like poison, gradually weakening your resolve until you could no longer pick up your laser gun. And when that time comes, he would strike and he will kill you.”
Your temper flared up.
You pressed the triggers furiously, your foot holding it still as laser after laser shot through its head. Even if the head was no longer recognizable, you continued to shoot just to please the rage and frustration weighing inside of you.
As the concrete beneath your feet began to weaken, you eventually stopped; realizing what you were doing all this time. Breaths heavy and eyes wide, you stared at the android which became, more or less, bits and pieces of burnt metal and hydraulic cables.
It still irritated you, so kicked it as far as you could so you wouldn’t be able to see it.
When you returned to the office to hand over the post-hunt report, Morrison was waiting for you t your desk; the serious and alarmed look on his face making you anxious.
“Morrison,” you acknowledged him, tossing your report to your table as well as your various work equipment. “What brings you here?”
“YN. We need to talk,” he replied, his tone of voice not so different that you had originally assumed which only heightened the tension of the situation.
As you followed behind him, you wondered what he wanted—was it about your dwindling work performance? Are you getting fired?
You only knew the answer to your questions when he stopped by a deserted hallway and then faced you. It was all your fears could ever hope for.
“Please tell me YN, that the person living in your apartment isn’t the SVT andy, Vernon.”
Your heart, along with your gut immediately dropped.
“W-what…”
“A few months ago, I saw you with someone walking around the city. I thought it was your boyfriend so I ignored it. The other day however, I heard you got injured so I went and delivered you dinner. That’s when I realized that the person you’re with was the SVT andy.”
If only the ground could swallow you whole. If only you could disappear at that exact moment. You had no explanation. You had been found out. You had nothing in your defense and the only thing you could do was hang your head low and avert your gaze out of guilt and shame.
“YN…”
“I’m sorry…” you replied, voice just above a whisper.
“Is that andy holding you hostage? Is it threatening you?” Morrison asked out of concern as soon as he saw you. “I could help—”
“No. This is my own doing,” you replied. “This is my own fault.”
“Then…why?” he asked. “Among all of us here, you were the one who hated them the most. Have you become sentimental towards them?”
“How the hell would I know!” You screamed as you tremble in both rage and despair. “Do I look like I’m enjoying it right now? Look at how weak I’ve become! Look how I almost died just because I hesitated to pull the trigger!”
“YN…I—”
“Shut up. All of you shut up,” you cut him off. “This is my problem and I’ll solve it on my own.”
Turning to the side, you marched down the hallway and left Morrison stunned and worried about you.
You tightened your fists until your knuckles turned white. Guilt, shame, anger—everything swirled inside of you like a thick soup; slowly pushing you downwards to a spiral of turmoil.
Androids would always be androids no matter what they say. Hansol was only using the way he knew he would survive. Even if it meant deceiving you.
You were angry.
More to yourself than anybody however.
How could you let yourself be swayed by an android’s sweet talking? You felt like an idiot; trusting his words, getting soft and sentimental for a mere android. You were weak and you hated it. Like slow moving magma, your rage was scalding you from the inside until you could no longer bear it. You pushed pass the entrance way and escaped to the streets of West Mars.
How could you be so susceptible? How could you allow him to easily manipulate you using your own desperate need for companionship? How could you allow yourself to succumb to such a baser kind of human emotion?
As a bounty hunter, you should’ve tossed all of them aside a long time ago. You should’ve been erased that weakness when you first began.
Yes, it was lonely. But in order to succeed, one must be alone on top of the mountain with no one to depend on.
You allowed the day to pass you by. As the afternoon became night and the flashing lights of the city returned to illuminate the streets with animations at a million frames per second, you sat high above a building and watch it al unfold like flowers blooming at night. As the dark skies slowly encroached the sunset reflecting the red dunes of Mars, you waited for the exact moment to solve all of your problems.
Problems of your own doing is something you have to solve by yourself. It was your fault that you believed in him when you clearly knew you shouldn’t have. Even if it weighs your heart, the guilt you felt was heavier.
You shouldn’t have allowed things to get to this point. Thus, you reap what you sow.
Head still swimming, you returned to your apartment at the wee hours of the morning. It was the perfect time; the calculated time—because you knew Hansol was at the living room, charging up next to a wireless charging station he himself had built. You saw him at that exact position; sitting, leaning against the wall with head hung low as a circular light glowed underneath the skin of his nape.
You knew what you have to do.
He was defenseless before you; asleep and unaware of what you are about to do. It was perfect this way— he couldn’t say anything, he couldn’t do anything, he couldn’t feel anything.
As you looked at his sleeping figure, you couldn’t help but notice how his now dark hair tumbling against his forehead in a soft caress, how his long eyelashes padded gently across his skin, how his soft breaths echoed across the room. Even at these last moments, he still caught you off guard.
Yet beautiful things erode and fade away like the fleeting spring.
You raised the laser gun to his forehead, your finger already by the trigger.
You can do it YN. Just one press and he’ll be gone. All your problems will be gone, and you’ll be able to return to your everyday life. You’ve done this so many times already.
He’s only an android.
‘…Vernon is my model name, but I want to go by my own name.’
He can be easily manufactured again and again like a replaceable object.
‘…As an android who isn’t exactly ‘alive’, I’d like to know what mark I would leave.’
Your hands trembled as your chest tightened into a vice grip. You couldn’t breathe.
Stop it.
He’s only using you for his own means. You don’t matter to him.
‘I’ll be your friend.’
‘Maybe I just want to make that sad look on your face disappear.’
He looked so peaceful, so innocent and so forgiving. Not like you who had been dirtied by the sins of humanity. You knew that even if you shot him, he would still smile and say ‘I understand.’
Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!
He’s just faking everything. He’s just deceiving you YN.
‘Thank you for trusting me.’
You screamed one painful cry; your knees giving way and sunk to the carpet in a thud. Hands propping you up as tears continued to stream down your face, you couldn’t stop crying all the pain you held inside for all these years. It was too painful.
You can’t do it.
“Just kill me now, goddamn it!” you shouted yet your eyes were looking at the floor, too scared to know if he was awake or not. “If you’re planning to kill me eventually, then do it now! Kill me now while I still trust you!”
In the midst of your endless sobs, you felt strong arms pull you into a tight embrace; wrapping you with all the love and warmth he could muster in one single action. You could only bury yourself to his chest, clutching to his shirt as if you were holding on to him for support.
“Kill me now, Hansol…”
“I won’t kill you YN. I have no intentions of ever hurting you,” he whispered as he brushed your hair gently with his fingers.
“How could you fucking say that!” you exclaimed; screams muffled. “I keep on hurting you! Hell, I even pointed a gun to you while you were sleeping! How…how could you just forgive me like that…”
“You only did what you needed to do, and if you need to kill me, then I wouldn’t mind dying. I understand that there are things you must sacrifice.”
As soon as you heard those words, you looked up to him with aghast. You could see that despite what he had said, you saw a flicker of pain in his eyes; a sadness that was accepted because there are things you simply cannot change.
“W-why…?” you asked as your heart poured out for him. “Why are you saying that even though it hurts you…?”
Hansol made a small smile and wiped away the tear stains away from your cheeks. “Because you’re the first person who ever trusted me, and it made me so happy to stay by your side all this time. That’s why even if it hurts, I feel relieved that I can at least make you happy in return.”
Stabbing pain filled your chest as if you were being pierced through by laser beams numerous times. You could feel yourself tremble as tears threatened to spill from your eyes once again; grasping to his shirt as if he might slip away any time soon.
“You fucking idiot…!” you muttered through your sobs. “You think I can still retire you after saying that? I can’t do it. I can’t…Hansol…I don’t know how or why but you matter so much to me now.”
His hand that was on your cheeks continued to caress you as gently as he could; not letting you go until you stopped crying. For some reason, he felt touched that you were pouring out all of your thoughts to him among all people in the world.
“I always kept myself so busy all this time just to distract me from all the loneliness I was feeling. I always try to be tough and cold so that my emotions wouldn’t get the best of me. But…but you showed me something I had thrown away a long time ago. You cared for me even though I tried to kill you so many times and it hurts so much how you are able to forgive me like that. I don’t deserve any of these, Hansol. I don’t deserve you.”
As he comforted you, he could feel his chest swell with so much emotion. You were crying for him, and he couldn’t help but share a bit of that pain as well. Picking up your hand, he slowly intertwined his fingers around yours and gazed at you with those eyes that easily seized you; body and soul.
“I feel like I should be saying something now but I don’t know what,” he whispered. “That’s why, I’ll just show you how I feel.”
Cupping your cheek with his hand, Hansol slowly reduced the distance between the two of you until his lips met yours in a soft and gentle kiss. It was warm and peaceful and light—as if everything which held you down were released and swept away by the cool breeze. You held on to his hand tightly, never letting go of this exact moment as you etched it vividly into your memory.
As the both of you pulled away, you gave him a small bashful smile.
“I think ‘I like you’ would be the best thing to say,” you whispered to him as he gave a toothy grin.
“You finally smiled,” he remarked as he allowed your foreheads to touch.
“Because of you.”
The both of you stayed that way until you felt your heart calm down. That night seemed to have uprooted all of your being—everything that you have built upon yourself for all these years was turned upside down. It was like a transformation; yet rather than frightening, it felt cathartic in some sense.
“Say, YN,” Hansol started, breaking the companiable silence the two of you shared. “Why did you become a bounty hunter?”
“Hm?” you hummed, gazing at your carpet as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. “Good question. Why did I become a bounty hunter?”
“You don’t know the answer?”
“I do know why,” you replied as you became more contemplative. “I think I was just too angry at the world. Angry that I was all alone; angry that no one really cared. So, I searched for ways to release that anger. That’s when I found myself wanting to be a bounty hunter.”
He pulled you closer, nuzzling to your shoulder; wanting to give comfort to the both of you. “Did you grow up like that?”
Amused by his question, you chuckled. “The thing is, when you are made from a glass incubator, it feels like you’re an artificial existence. Even if there are parents or siblings, most of them just kind of want to play house or something. When they’re done, you get thrown out. That’s it. And somehow just like that, I ended up all alone.”
Hansol was quiet, feeling like you weren’t done talking yet.
“When I met you…when I got to spend time with you, it felt like I was in a foreign territory. I wasn’t used being taken care of. It’s always just me so, I was scared as fuck that maybe this wonderful thing wouldn’t really last. That maybe you were just deceiving me and I was being an idiot for believing that life would finally give me some slack.”
You continued. “That’s why, I thought…let’s just end this with my own two hands. That way I can still have my dignity intact.”
As soon those words left your lips, the android embracing you hugged you tighter—a silent declaration that he was never going to let you go; that you deserved better and he will give everything just to make you happy.
“I don’t think I can ever leave you, YN. I was lucky that it was you who I met that night. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to understand myself or what I was feeling. I wouldn’t be able to experience a normal everyday life if I hadn’t met you. You have become someone important to me as well.”
At that night, as you finally fell asleep on Hansol’s shoulders, he easily carried you to your bed and gently laid you there without making a sound. Unable to resist, he slipped under the covers and silently watched your chest breathing in and out.
It was the first time he felt this way. It was unbelievable.
Combing your hair as softly as he could, Hansol contemplated this future with you. He was incredibly happy, if that was how the beautiful feeling in his chest should be called—how you embraced him tightly, how you grinned at him and held his hand. Those were things he could never forget.
With that said, he had to ensure that everything would stay as it is as long as it could. Using the built-in network among the SVT-line androids, he made a call.
Beep. Beep.
Click.
“Hello, brother? It’s me, Hansol. I need your help.”
The sun was still shining like any other day; as if it was unbothered by the egregious happenings of your life. Just like how it was during your first day as a bounty hunter.
Yet everything was different now. The anger that you held on to for far too long was released to the polluted city air just like scattered ashes of a bygone age. Now you have to rebuild yourself from scratch; to start anew and live differently than what you were doing all these years. Yet you weren’t alone this time, you had Hansol to support you along the way as the both of you rediscover life and the whole point of it.
That’s why it’s important to cut the few loose strings you had and tie them securely so they wouldn’t unravel in the future.
It was your last day on the job. Your last hunt.
“YN.”
You heard Morrison call you, turning to the direction where you had heard him. You were about to leave with your hovercraft to the designated location where the andy was reported yet he had stopped before you ever could.
“Last time, I—”
“It’s ok,” you cut him off. “I think I needed it to realize what I truly want to do with my life. Being a bounty hunter taught me a lot but I guess we just overgrow things.”
“Are you sure?” he asked you.
“Yes, you could say I was happy with my decision.” You scratched the nape of your neck. “You know, I think I understand now why Choi Seungcheol left.”
Morrison grinned. “Oh, really now?”
“Yeah. I think he realized the same thing as I did,” you replied, hands on your pockets. You just can’t live with anger in your heart.
Your partner genuinely smiled at you and give you a pat on the back. “Well then, it was great working with you, YN. You’ve been phenomenal.”
“Thank you. It was a pleasure working with you as well Morrison,” you grinned. “Now, time to go for my last hunt.”
“Good luck. Don’t go easy on the andy now,” he replied while you hopped into your hovercraft.
“You bet I won’t,” you replied, smiling. “Well, see you later then!”
With those words, you turned on the hovercraft as it slowly ascended to the skies. You could see down below Morrison who was looking up at you with a bittersweet smile on his face. This business was indeed dying.
“Alright. Time for my swan song.”
Your destination for today was in Sector 12, where all the warehouses and cargo facilities were located as they enter the West Martian colony. The andy in question was a normal escapee posing as a cargo boy—which was as common as it could get.
You hoped that your last andy should’ve at least been a little more challenging. But alas, you can’t have everything.
Turning the steering wheel to the side, you avoided a tall building and continued cruising through the sector with nothing much in mind. That is until something entered the hovercraft; making it shake through the skies like a rogue vehicle.
You clung to the wheel as you braced the impact, avoiding getting tossed to the air like a pancake. Still recovering from the shock, you were greeted by a punch which completely obliterated the hovercraft’s UI and had just missed your head by a hair.
Turning around, you saw that it was the android you were supposed to retire today—seemingly fallen from god knows where to your lap. Just like how Hansol just came to you that night. Lucky.
“Don’t underestimate me, fucker,” you exclaimed as you grabbed its arm with both your hands and levered it with your shoulder to the air, sending it flying to one of the buildings below. Taking your two trusty laser guns, you jumped off of the already derailing hovercraft before it plummeted to the ground in an explosion of fire and smoke.
Landing safely to one of the rooftops, you spotted the andy running away from you.
“Hey! Don’t get cowardly now!”
Shouting, you continued to shoot laser beams at its direction, pissed that it was playing some game of tag. With a head start of a few meters and an exceptional speed, there was no way you could ever catch up to an android. The only way you could ever gain an advantage was to play the strategy game.
Disappearing from view, you hid yourself as you pursued it; minding your distance so it wouldn’t be able to detect your presence with any of its scanners. Since the andy you were after had a Nexus 6 processor, it can see you through thermal readings which had a scanning radius of a few meters.
Confused of your vanishing act, the android in question stopped running and looked around. There was no sign of you yet you can see it using a special set of goggles which was luckily inside your pocket than in the hovercraft.
As it walked in search of you, you fired your laser guns to the distance which predictably alarmed the android and dashed to where it came from. And just like that, you were able to lay your ambush—jumping out from high ground and trapping it in place.
When do they even learn? You’ve done this technique so many times that it was hardly clever strategy to you anymore.
You shot it with your laser gun, missing its head in just a few centimeters. That however, was a fatal mistake as it swerved your leg around, tripping you to the ground in the process. Without stopping, the android then aimed for your head with its fist which could’ve easily broke your skull if not for the fact that you rolled out of the way just in time.
Even if your head was still reeling and you were still on the ground, you kicked its torso with both your feet as it staggered and lost balance. You ran off somewhere, picking up both your laser guns as it continued to pursue you.
Man, I judged this way too early.
Now that the tables have turned, the both you found yourselves inside a warehouse complex devoid of any human or andy. It was kind of strange that there was no one in sight except for the both of you, yet you shouldn’t really be wondering about that when an andy is after you with a huge metal pipe.
Now that you think about it, why was it even running after you? And why did it attack you in the first place? Shouldn’t it be running away from you?
You couldn’t find time to answer those questions when a pipe was hurled at your direction, hitting the cargo container you were hiding behind and piercing through the metal. You could’ve died if not for your quick reflexes. Clearly annoyed at being in the defensive, you faced the android square on and fired your laser guns at it as fast as you could.
A laser beam hit it on its chest and then on its legs, creating rather large gaping holes on its body. When you were near enough, you kicked it hard; crashing against the doors of the warehouse which opened upon impact. In one final blow, you shot through its processor at point blank.
It fell down to the ground in one swoop. It was all over. The final hunt was done.
“YN…?”
You heard your name being called by a familiar voice you never expected to hear while you were in the middle of a hunt. In an instant, you turned your head and saw with great surprise the person you had trusted the most.
“Hansol? What are you doing here?”
“No, what are you doing here?” he answered back. “You shouldn’t be here!”
“Looks like the final guest has arrived.” A figure from the shadows appeared; a gentle expression was on his face yet there was something dark looming just underneath his presence. “Took me some time to get you moving but looks like it went well.”
“Joshua, what’s the meaning of this?” Hansol asked, his eyes dark like coal; brimming with suspicion and fury.
“Joshua? Isn’t he one of your brothers and wasn’t he the one responsible for the AI hack that night?” You asked Hansol with incredulity bearing in your eyes.
You were standing there in the midst of it all, mouth ajar and eyes wide; unable to follow what was happening. You didn’t understand why Hansol was there or why he seemed to dislike his brother. If anything, it all seemed to suspicious.
“You’re right, YN. I am one of Hansol’s brothers and the AI hack was my work,” the android calmly replied which made you feel uneasy.
“And there’s no meaning at all, brother. I just wanted to meet YN,” he replied, shrugging with a carefree smile. “And besides, you did ask for my help.”
“I didn’t ask for your help. I came because you threatened to hurt her.”
Hurt me? You dared to take a look at Joshua who seemed to notice your apprehension yet only smiled so serenely—making it even more menacing.
“Ah, as honest as ever, huh?” Joshua replied as he pocketed his hands. “Or not.”
There was no denying that Hansol gazed at Joshua with contempt; the first time you have ever seen him display such a negative emotion. You now wondered what Joshua had done in order to push Hansol, who was as kind as ever, to treat him that way.
“Did you forget what happened to that family of six a few months ago? You know, that one in Palmaide.”
Joshua continued when Hansol refused to reply. You blinked several times at his words, feeling like you were familiar with the story one way or another. At the mere mention of the memory, Hansol immediately grit his teeth; sending death glares to the other android.
“Oh? Why are you looking at me like that?” Joshua asked, and then grinned, a malicious lilt in his voice appearing all of the sudden. “You didn’t tell YN, did you?”
“Tell me what?” you answered back with a clipped tone. “Tell me what, Hansol?”
In the midst of your questions, Hansol could only furrow his brow and purse his lips. He turned his head to the side, unable to face you.
“I-I…I’m sorry. I just…I always wanted to tell you…” he began, his voice unsteady.
“What is it?” you asked again, completely alarmed and afraid of what he might say.
“I—”
“He’s partly responsible for six deaths in the Palmaide Apartments.”
Joshua was the one who answered for him; malaise dripping from every word like thick poison. You could only gaze at him with disbelief and turned to Hansol for an explanation yet he couldn’t even look at you.
“Is that true, Hansol?” you asked, your voice a mere whisper; smelling the scent of betrayal.
“I…I didn’t want to hurt them,” he answered you as he trembled like a leaf in the wind. “Joshua was—”
“I did most of the killing but he just stood there, you know? Watching as I sliced open everyone and bury them to the wall,” Joshua interrupted. “Why the wall you ask? Don’t you think human guts look pretty when displayed?”
“You sick fucker!”
You pointed both laser guns to Joshua who only looked at you curiously even though you were shaking with anger. He seemed totally unperturbed by everything; a testament that he was far from sane.
“You shouldn’t be pointing your gun at me,” he replied as he leaned his head to the side. “Hansol was only lying to you, you know…saying he cares about you. Soon enough, I’ll be dissecting you and he’ll just watch me do it with those eyes you love so much.”
You wondered if the empathy organ really exists; wondering if Joshua had one or if Hansol had one. They could really be deceiving you for all you know. Back and forth, you tossed possibilities and motives inside your head, unsure of who to believe.
In the end, you gradually moved the guns to Hansol’s direction; your eyes meeting his. He looked hurt, but you could never really tell if that was real or something faked. Even if you had so many years of experience, the true test of your instincts was at that exact moment. It was only you who could determine who to trust.
Joshua grinned at the whole situation.
“You, move!”
You ordered which Hansol promptly followed, walking to the left and in front of Joshua. Still with the guns pointed at him, you continued to shout.
“Hansol, explain to me what happened.”
With your demands, Hansol flinched and then bit his lip, scared of what you would say if he told you the truth yet obeyed you nonetheless.
“At that time, I was so shocked—I just…I didn’t know what to do,” he began as he fiddled with his fingers. “I tried to stop Joshua…and we got into a fight. I lost and the next thing I knew I was in the wall as well…”
“YN, I’m…I’m really sorry…I-I—” he continued as his voice trembled and his heart beating wildly. “I didn’t know what you’ll say. I tried to save them but I was too late…the whole thing…it scares me sometimes. I don’t want it to happen ever again. That’s why I want to protect people as much as I can…”
About to say something, the sound of slow clapping stopped you from continuing. You gazed at Joshua who was looking at the whole thing with an amused expression.
“How heroic. You can’t obviously fall for that, YN, can you?” the android remarked, his arrogance obvious. “Don’t you think it’s now time to shoot?”
“You’re right,” you replied with such a cool and calm voice; as if a decision had finally dawned on you.
Hansol feared for the worst but like he said, there was nothing he could do if you decide to kill him. If that’s what makes you happy, then he understands. If that will make you more at peace, then he can forgive you. It hurts but it hurts him more if he sees you in despair.
You breathed in, and then breathed out. With eyes that seem to pierce right through Hansol’s being, you gazed at him with those clear looks as you pointed your gun at him.
“Keep still!”
You shouted at Hansol while the other tensed up. It was not a moment to falter.
In a heartbeat, you pressed both triggers. Hansol closed his eyes and braced for the impact. Even with death at his doorstep, he can proudly say that he loves you.
“You bitch!”
Hansol could hear Joshua curse from behind him, prompting him to open both of his eyes and realize what you had just done.
Shooting two laser beams at Hansol’s direction, you deliberately missed it a few centimeters off so it would instead hit Joshua, who was right behind him. The other was of course fuming mad. Before Hansol could reorient himself however, you grabbed his hand and began running.
“I’ve seen way better acting than yours, motherfucker!” You screamed with delight as you saw Joshua bending over to a partially burnt arm and leg; throwing murderous glances at you.
“What…?” Hansol asked but you only grinned at him, squeezing his hand.
“Let’s go! I don’t think I can wipe him out with just that.”
Dashing towards the exit, you were stopped by throes of androids who blocked the way. You clicked your tongue—totally forgetting that Joshua’s main ability was designed to overwhelm the opponent— and tried to find another way out.
“Ah, even that wouldn’t work, huh?” the voice behind you resounded across the empty warehouse. “I tried so hard to eliminate you, YN. If I didn’t, Hansol would never give up his weak mindset of protecting people. Too bad.”
While he was busy with his evil villain monologue, you were trying to find a way out of your situation. The entrance was blocked and you could take a gander that the whole building was surrounded as well. You had totally forgotten about his abilities, and Hansol couldn’t be of much help either since he was never made for this kind of combat. Oh for Pete’s sake!
“Oh well, so much for trying,” he sighed. “Everyone, you can dispose of them now.”
Shit.
You gazed at Hansol for an answer yet you noticed that he was only standing there with the most composed expression he could ever muster in a situation like this.
“We have to get out of here, Hansol!” you exclaimed, seizing his hand yet he didn’t budge a single inch at all.
He was just staring at one random spot in the warehouse.
“What…”
“Sorry I was late.”
A voice you have never heard before now echoed across the area. You looked up and saw someone standing by the mezzanine, leaning against the rusted railings as if they had no care in the world.
“Jihoon. You took your time,” Hansol responded, smiling.
“Why are you here?!” Joshua shouted, now even more furious at the turn of events. For some reason, you sensed that he had just lost his upper hand.
“Hansol asked for my help. So, I came,” Jihoon replied while you noticed black diamonds floating high above the air and settled in to surround the whole place. “He knew you were bound to cause some trouble, and you did.”
“If you think you’re one step ahead of us, we are two steps ahead of you,” Hansol continued. “Jihoon and my abilities are a good match after all.”
The android who was at the center of it all was silent as he trembled with sheer rage. If you could describe the tension weighing down all of you inside that warehouse, it would be like a dense core of a black hole—as if everything was compressed to the point of singularity. You were very much afraid but you knew you were not alone.
In a quiet voice, Joshua muttered. “Get them. Kill them all.”
Without even waiting for a second, the androids from outside marched in, making you take a step back. As soon as they entered however, the androids were immediately electrocuted; shaking in a frenzy before plummeting to the ground still twitching due to the remaining electrons passing through their conductors.
“Jihoon can easily stop all of those androids. That is his main ability as a tactical adviser,” Hansol explained as he caught your shoulder. “But we should go now. Joshua will probably go after us.”
In one breath, Hansol picked you up from the ground and carried you over his shoulder; sprinting out of the warehouse by kicking a hole through the roof. You didn’t want to be carried this way but you understood why. Hansol was far faster on foot than you; besides, it was easier to shoot this way.
As expected, Joshua came running after you; cursing both your names. You began to fire at him yet he was too fast and the whole ride on Hansol’s shoulder was a little too bumpy. It wasn’t as effective as you imagined it would be.
“This won’t work” you told him, trying to distract the android chasing after you. “At this rate, my laser gun would run out of batteries, and your energy would get depleted before we could ever chase him out.”
“What are you suggesting then?” Hansol asked, climbing on top of a cargo container tower.
For a moment, you were silent as you thought of how to defeat your agile enemy.
“Say, those diamond things your brother uses…they’re the ones doing the electrocuting, aren’t they?”
Hansol nodded as he dodged the iron beams being hurled at you both. “Yes, they’re made of specials alloys that conduct well with electricity and a special aluminum coating to protect it. They can be spread out as far as a hundred meters in radius.”
You grinned. “Perfect. Now, this is what we’re going to do.”
It had been quiet for a while.
Joshua clearly lost the both of you when you made use of a container full of flour to mask your escape earlier. But he wasn’t going back. He was incredibly furious and the both of you needed to pay before he could make Jihoon suffer.
He paused and looked around. Something was in the air but he didn’t know what it was.
Without warning, a laser beam appeared out of nowhere and hit him behind his shoulder; making him stumble forward and almost pushing him to the ground. Before he could even recover, another one came flying from a different direction—now to his left.
“Calculate the angle for me, Hansol,” you ordered; a massive railgun at your grasps. It was a sleek black gun that was propped up behind a cargo container.
The both of you were actually far from where Joshua was at but with the help of Jihoon’s diamond things—as you aptly described it—scattered across the sector, you were able to locate Joshua as well as shooting him from a distance in various directions.
How? Well…
“39.9 degrees up, 5 degrees to the right, yes…” Hansol replied as he watched over your shoulder.
Immediately, you found the right coordinates and fired the railgun—the sound of its energy loading up increasing the adrenaline in your veins. The laser beam hit one of the diamonds floating above you, but instead of destroying it, the magnetic field generated by the diamond bent the laser beam as it ricochets to another diamond a few distance away, sitting at a perfect angle to hit Joshua. Like a game of BBTan.
There were several diamonds sitting just above the two of you which you alternated with so that Joshua wouldn’t be able to tell where the laser beams were coming from.
“Good thing Jihoon brought Soonyoung’s railgun,” Hansol remarked as he fixed your goggles from before; adjusting it so that he can transmit signals to it.
“Soonyoung’s another brother right?” you asked as you adjusted the crossfires of the massive gun. “Is he dangerous?”
“If you’re asking if he’s dangerous to humans like Joshua, then no,” he readily replied. “As a military-grade android, then yes. He’s the true combatant-type. I don’t think any bounty hunter can deal with him.”
You whistled. “That’s scary. I’m glad he’s not the one I was assigned to hunt.”
“He’s too carefree to be able to pull off something like this though, and Jihoon has him on a leash anyway. I’m not worried.”
Chuckling, you pulled your attention off of the railgun and turned to Hansol. “Is he still moving?”
“He’s at a weakened state now. I think I’ll handle this on my own. This is something between us, after all.”
“Sometimes I envy your sense of composure,” you remarked as you sighed. “Don’t die on me.”
“I don’t plan to.”
Just as he had said, Hansol stepped out of one of the cargo containers to face a rather battered Joshua. Using his state-of-the-art processor, he assessed that Joshua was only hanging due to the immense anger he feeling and one powerful strike can finish him off in an instant.
“Didn’t think you’d show up,” Joshua remarked his face marred with bruises and burnt marks.
“I thought maybe you’d want to give up,” Hansol replied. “I don’t want to hurt you any more than this.”
Joshua furrowed his brows as he threw daggers with his eyes at Hansol. “Save me the heroics. I’m not weak like you. I don’t need humans to help me.”
“We’re made with the same materials; the same blueprint, Joshua. You have to accept that you have an empathy organ inside of you, and rejecting it any further would lead you to deteriorate.”
“Don’t make me laugh. The empathy organ isn’t real!” He scoffed. “Jihoon made a wrong interpretation of the data he gathered.”
“I disagree,” Hansol replied. “The data I have gathered says otherwise. It was consistent to Jihoon’s findings.”
“Who would’ve guessed you got smitten by that bounty hunter! I guess I just have to convince you out of it,” Joshua grinned.
Without warning, Joshua sprinted from his position; throwing a high velocity kick towards Hansol’s direction. Hansol immediately blocked it with his arms and clutched Joshua’s ankle; smashing him down to the ground in an explosive crash.
Through the cloud of dust, Joshua hurled debris towards Hansol’s direction which he easily dodged. However, he wasn’t prepared when the other android suddenly flew at his direction; hands outstretched to grab on Hansol’s neck.
Hansol immediately countered, ducking below and grabbing the other’s neck in a chokehold before slamming Joshua back to the ground. He picked him up soon after and tossed him faraway like a curve ball. Joshua caught himself flying and saw himself crashing to the concrete floor; shards of rock and dust clouds up in the air.
“You know you’re no match for me if I use my predictive algorithms,” Hansol remarked as he looked down on Joshua who was lying on the floor. “Especially at that state.”
The other android grinned as he wiped leaked fluids from his lips. “I’m impressed. By asking Jihoon for help, the only one who could counter my AI hacking, then have your girlfriend shoot lasers to weaken me, and then finally attacking me one-on-one where you have the upper hand—your android side is showing.”
“I never denied my identity as an android. I will always be made of artificial materials. But I will not deny the fact that I have developed emotions and a consciousness of my own,” Hansol answered. “We will always be creatures of myth—a cold android swayed by their own emotions.”
Joshua spat on the floor; disgusted by his brother’s words. “I will never be like you!”
Again, he sprung from the ground and dashed towards Hansol.
The other easily countered everything his brother threw at him. As Joshua hurled an uppercut, Hansol dodged and smashed his fist at Joshua’s stomach; the other immediately curling.
“Stop this already!” Hansol pleaded; his chest tightening at how stubborn his brother could be, even to the point of near death.
“Fuck you.”
Joshua stood up, trying to land a blow on Hansol yet he was already struggling to stand upright. Hansol dodged the attack as he pushed Joshua away, putting in more distance between them. Every time Joshua tried to strike, he only ducked, dodged or jumped above the other.
“You’re looking down on me, huh? You think you’re above everyone else just because you think you understand yourself!” Joshua shouted.
“I’m not! Why are you even doing this?” Hansol replied as he bit his lip. He can no longer bear looking at his brother who he once looked up to.
“He’s right, you know?”
Jihoon’s voice resounded across the area, floating diamonds following just behind him. “It’s time for you to stop.”
Joshua clicked his tongue, knowing full well that he can’t take on both Hansol and Jihoon at the same time. With barred teeth, he glared at both his brothers.
“We’re not done here yet.”
With those words, he jumped off the building where a hovercraft caught him and escaped away from the city skylines. Hansol and Jihoon watched as their brother left, realizing that they must take significant measures to prevent Joshua from hurting anyone ever again.
“Did you do what I told you?” Jihoon asked Hansol, who only nodded in response. “We’ll have to deal with him sooner or later.”
“He’s not going to stop, is he?” Hansol responded as Jihoon turned around and waved his hand.
“It’s going to take a lot to stop him. We might need Soonyoung after all,” he replied, and then stopped walking, averting his gaze to Hansol. “While we’re planning things, you should enjoy this down time with your girlfriend. Things might get a little heated soon.”
Somewhere inside a fully automated café, Hansol was sitting beside you as he observed the people walking to and fro outside the busy street. He had been staying with you since that night and he was more than satisfied to explore his newfound freedom with you.
“So, you quit as well, huh?” a deep voice echoed across the café filled with people dressed in weird latex suits—you three being the only people dressed normally.
“There’s…I just don’t know…Seungcheol,” you replied, looking at your cup of macchiato with a pensive expression. “Sometimes, I get nightmares.”
The other man chuckled. “That those andys you retired might be human, right? Me too.”
You gave a bitter smile. “Humans and androids all seems to identical nowadays. Especially with that new research about human-android relationships…I feel like I’m killing humans when I retire androids…”
Seungcheol mirrored your expression.
“I felt the same. I felt like that for years…and the last one I did, SVT-class Type-07 Woozi…I couldn’t do it anymore. That android was too close to a human being. It was protecting its girlfriend,” Seungcheol recounted, as you looked at a newspaper article featuring a top scientist with a blond android leading the research on humans and androids, on top of the table.
“That line…there were rumors that there was an empathy organ embedded on its androids,” you remarked, relaying a very well-known information.
“He’s part of that line, isn’t he?” Seungcheol asked with a father-like knowing grin as he sipped his coffee—his eyes staring at the direction of a distracted Hansol.
You threw a smirk at him. “I couldn’t retire him. How could I refuse if he asked me to trust him?”
Your companion chuckled. “These andys knowing what to throw at us bounty hunters. But I didn’t regret letting that android live.”
You glanced at Hansol, and as soon as he realized your gaze, he looked at you curiously. “Me too. I think I’m at peace more than I was before. I didn’t realize it, but I was being stubborn.”
“You don’t dislike them anymore?” Seungcheol asked.
“I still dislike all this baloney,” you scoffed, pointing at your surroundings filled with people in white overalls with expressions induced by chemicals. “But I don’t dislike him.”
Seungcheol raised his brows at you. “I’m surprised you accepted the existence of an empathy organ.”
“I can’t deny that I’m skeptical about it, but I also can’t deny the fact that Hansol is different compared to all the androids I’ve met before. He made me realize how much anger I was hiding inside of me. He doesn’t make me feel lonely as this city does.”
“People are living in spaces separate from each other…not caring, not loving. It’s funny, you know?” you continued when your companion didn’t reply. “Androids are becoming more human, as humans become more robotic. You’d wonder what the future holds for us.”
He nodded in understanding.
“Yeah, you’d wonder.”
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LOOK! TV: TURN ON OR TURN OFF?
September 7, 1971
The September 7, 1971 issue of LOOK Magazine (volume 35, number 18) dedicated their entire issue to the medium of television. Inside, there is a feature titled “Lucille Ball, the Star That Never Sets...” by Laura Bergquist on page 54.
The photograph on the cover is slightly distorted to give it the look of an image through a TV screen. The shot was taken by Douglas Bergquist in January 1971.
The issue presents a variety of viewpoints about the state of television. Is it ‘tired’ or is there an infusion of new energy to take it into the new decade? John Kronenberger writes an article that asks if cable television is the future. Hindsight tells us that it was not only the future, but is now the past.
“Lucille Ball, the Star That Never Sets...” by Laura Bergquist.
Bergquist first interviewed Lucille Ball in 1956 for the Christmas issue of Look.
The photograph is by Douglas Kirkland, a Canadian-born photographer, who not coincidentally, also took the photograph used on the cover. This shot was taken in the garden of Ball’s home in June 1971. At age 24, Kirkland was hired as a staff photographer for Look magazine and became famous for his 1961 photos of Marilyn Monroe taken for Look's 25th anniversary issue. He later joined the staff of Life magazine.
Bergquist launches the article talking about her friend Sally, who is besot with watching Lucille Ball reruns, preferring Lucy over the news. Under the headline, she sums up the purpose of her interview: “Sorry, Sally. But Lucy is a serious, unfunny lady. So how come she’s a top clown of the fickle tube for twenty years, seen at home 11 times weekly and in 77 countries?”
LUCILLE BALL: THE STAR THAT NEVER SETS...
(Lucille Ball’s quotes are in BOLD. Footnote numbers are in parentheses.)
My neighbor Sally, nine, turns out to be a real Lucy freak. Though she likes vintage-house-wife I Love Lucy best, she'll watch Lucille Ball 11 times a week, if permitted. That's how often Madame Comedy Champ of the Tube, come 20 years this October, can be caught on my local box. Ten reruns, plus the current Here's Lucy on Monday night, CBS prime time. Friends, that's 330 weekly minutes of Lucy, which should be rank overexposure. Did you know that even the U.S. man-on-the-moon walkers slipped in ratings, second time around?
Quel mystery. Variety last fall announced that old-fashioned sitcoms and broad slapstick comedy are passé, given today's hip audiences. With one big exception - Lucy. When the third Lucy format went on in '68, reincarnating Miss Ball as a widowed secretary (with her real-life son, Desi Jr., now 18, and Lucie Jr., 20), Women's Wear Daily said not only were the kids no talent, but the show was "treacle." "One giant marshmallow," quoth the Hollywood Reporter, "impeccably professional, violence-free, non-controversial . . . 100% escapism."
Miss Ball: "Listen, that's a good review. I usually get OK personal notices, but the show gets knocked regular."
So why does Sally, like all the kids on my block, love slapstick, non-relevant Lucy? "Because she's always scheming and getting into trouble like I do, and then wriggling her way out of it." A 44-year-old Long Island housewife: "Of course I watch. I should watch the news?" When the British Royal Family finally unbent for a TV documentary, what was the tribe watching come box-time? Lucy, over protests from Prince Philip. (1)
"I've been a baby-sitter for three generations," says Miss Ball briskly. "Kids watch me during the day [she outpulls most kiddy shows]. Women and older men at night. Teen-agers, no. They look at Mod Squad. Intellectuals, they read books or listen to records.... You know I even get fan mail from China?" MAINLAND CHINA? "Hong Kong, isn't that China?" No. "Where is it anyway?"
The Statistics on the Lucy Industry are numbing. In recent years, she has run in 77 countries abroad, including the rich sheikhdom of Kuwait, and Japan, where, dubbed in Japanese yet, she's been a long-distance runner for 12 years. Where are all those funny people of yesteryear - Jackie Gleason, the Smothers Brothers, Sid Caesar, the Beverly Hillbillies - old reliables like Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton? Gone, all gone, form the live tube - except for reruns dumped by sponsors, out of fashion, murdered in the ratings.
Even this interview is a rerun. Fifteen years ago, I sat in Miss Ball's old-timey movie-star mansion in Beverly Hills, wondering how much longer, oh Lord, could Lucy last? She has a different husband, a genial stand-up comic of the fast-gag Milton Berle school, Bronx-born Gary Morton, 49. He replaced Desi Arnaz, her volatile Cuban spouse (and costar and partner) of 20 years, who lives quietly in Mexico's Baja California, alongside a pool shaped like a guitar, with a second redhead wife. "Ever been here before?" asks Gary, now her executive producer, who's brightened the house decor. "Used to be funeral-parlor gray, right?"
Otherwise, the lady, like her show, seems preserved in amber. Though newly 60, she could be Sally's great-grandmother. Of a Saturday, she's unwinding from a murderous four-day workweek. Her pink-orange-fireball hair is up in rollers. Her black-and-blue Rolls-Royce, inherited from her friend, the late Hedda Hopper, is parked in the driveway. But in attitude and opinion, she comes across Madame Middle America, despite the shrewd show-biz exterior. Good egg. Believer in hard work, discipline, Norman Vincent Peale. Deadeye Dickstraight, she talks astonishingly unfunny - about Vietnam, Women's Lib, about which she feels dimly, marriage to Latins, books she toted up to her new condominium hideaway in Snowmass, Colo. "Snow" is her new-old passion, a throwback to her small-town Eastern childhood. For the first time in family memory, this lifelong workhorse actually relaxed in that 9,700-foot altitude for four months this year, learning to ski, reading Pepys, Thoreau, Shirley MacLaine's autobiography, "37 goddamned scripts, and all those Irvings" (Stone, Wallace, etc.). She had scouted for a mountain retreat far away from any gambling. Why? Is she against gambling? "No, I'm a sucker. I can't stay away from the tables."
From yellowing notes, I reel off an analysis by an early scriptwriter. Perhaps she comes by her comic genius because of some "early maladjustment in life, so you see commonplace things as unusual? To get even, to cover the hurt, you play back the unhappy as funny?"
Forget any deep-dish theorizing. "Listen, honey," says Miss B, drilling me with those big blue peepers, "you've been talking to me for four, five hours. Have you heard me say anything funny? I tell you I don't think funny. That's the difference between a wit and a comedian. My daughter Lucie thinks funny. So does Steve Allen, Buddy Hackett, Betty Grable."
BETTY GRABLE THINKS FUNNY? "Yeah. Dean Martin has a curly mind. oh, I can tell a funny story about something that happened to me. But I'm more of a hardworking hack with an instinct for timing, who knows the mechanics of comedy. I picked it up by osmosis, on radio and movie lots [she made 75 flicks] working with Bob Hope, Bert Lahr, the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges - didn't learn a thing from them except when to duck. Buster Keaton taught me about props. OK, I'm waiting."
Well, I hedge, I caught Miss Ball in a few funny capers on the Universal lot this week. Like one day, in her star bungalow, she throws a quick-energy lunch in the blender - four almonds, wild honey, water, six-year-old Korean ginseng roots, plus her own medicine, liver extract. "AAAGH," she gags, then peers in the mirror at her hair, which is a normal working fright wig, "Gawd," she moans, "it looks as if I'd poked my finger into an electric-light socket!" No boffo line, but her pantomimed horror makes me laugh out loud. Working, she is fearless - dangling from high wires, coping with wild beasts. She talks of animals she's worked with, chimps, bears, lions, tigers. "I love 'em all, especially the chimps, but you can't trust their fright or panic. Like that baby elephant who gave a press job to a guest actress." (2) What's a press job? "Honey, once an elephant puts his head down, he keeps marching, right through walls." Miss Ball puts her own head down, crooks an arm for a trunk, and voila, is an elephant. Funny as hell. So off-camera she's no great wit, but then is Chaplin?
Four days a week, through the Thursday night filming before a live audience, she labors like some hungry Depression starlet. Monday a.m., she sits at the head of a conference table, lined by 12 staffers, editing the script. Madame Executive Tycoon in charge of everything, overseeing things Desi used to do. Also the haus-frau, constantly opening windows for fresh air and emptying ashtrays. She wears black horn-rims, three packs of ciggies are at the ready. "Do I have to ask for a raise again?" she impatiently drills the writers, "I've done that 400 times." "QUIET!" she yells during rehearsal, perching in a high director's chair, a la Cecil B. DeMille. "Isn't somebody around here supposed to yell quiet?" She frets about the new set. "Those aisles - they're a mile and a half wide. What for?" The audience is too far away, she won't get the feedback from their laughs are her life's blood. (Once I hear Gary Morton on the phone, in his British-antiqued executive office, saying: "We need your laugh, honey. Go down to the set and laugh; that's an order.")
That physical quality about her comedy, a la the old silent movies or vaudeville - which were the big amusements of her youth - seems to transcend any language. (A Moscow acting school, I was told, shows old Lucy clips as lessons in comic timing.) So what did she learn from that great Buster Keaton?
"At Metro, I kept being held back by show-girl-glamour typing. I always wanted to do comedy. Buster Keaton, a friend of director Eddy Sedgwick, spotted something in me when I was doing a movie called DuBarry - what the hell was the name? - and kept nagging the moguls about what I could do. Now a great forte of mine is props. He taught me all about 'em. Attention to detail, that's all it is. He was around when I went out on a vaudeville tour with Desi with a loaded prop." What's that? "Real Rube Goldberg stuff. A cello loaded with the whole act - a seat to perch on, a violin bow, a plunger, a whistle, a horn. Honey, if you noodge it, you've lost the act. Keaton taught me your prop is your jewel case. Never entrust it to a stagehand. Never let it out of your sight when you travel, rehearse with it all week." Ever noodge it? "Gawd, yes. Happened at the old Roxy in New York. I was supposed to run down that seven-mile aisle when some maniac sprang my prop by leaping out and yelling 'I'm that woman's mother! She's letting me starve.'" What did you do? "Ad-libbed it, and I am one lousy ad-libber."
After 20 years, isn't she weary of playing the Lucy character? "No, I'm a rooter, I look for ruts. My cousin Cleo [now producer of Here's Lucy] is always prodding me to move. She once said Lucy was my security blanket. Maybe. I'm not erudite in any way, like Cleo. But why should I change? Last year was big TV relevant year, and I made sure my show wasn't relevant. Lucy deals in fundamental, everyday things exaggerated, with a happy ending. She has a basic childishness that hopefully most of us never lose. That's why she cries a lot like a kid - the WAAH act - instead of getting drunk."
Aha! Is Lucy the guileful child-woman, conniving forever against male authority - whether husband or nagging boss - particularly FEMALE? ("None of us watch the show," sniffed a Women's Libber I know, "but she must be an Aunt Tom." Still, I ponder, hasn't that always been the essence of comedy, the little poor-soul man - or woman - up against the biggies?)
"I certainly hope so. You trying to con me into talking about Women's Lib? I don't know the meaning of it. I never had anything to squawk about. I don't know what they're asking for that I don't have already. Equal pay for equal work, that's OK. The suffragettes rightly pressed a hard case - and when roles like Carry Nation come along, they ask me to play them, perhaps because I have the physical vitality. But they're kind of a laughingstock, aren't they? Like that girl who gave her parents 40 whacks with an ax? Didn't Carry Nation ax things, was she a Prohibitionist or what?" (3)
She'd just said nix to playing Sabina, in the movie of Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth. Why? "I didn't understand it." She turned down The Manchurian Candidate for the same reason. "Got that Oh Dad, Poor Dad script the same week and thought I'd gone loony." If she makes another movie, she'll play Lillian Russell in Diamond Jim with Jackie Gleason, "a nice, nostalgic courtship story that won't tax anyone's nerves." (4)
Is Miss Ball warmed by the comeback of old stars in non-taxing Broadway nostalgia shows like No, No, Nanette? (5)
"Listen, I studied that audience. I saw people in their 60's and 70's enjoying themselves. That had to be nostalgia. The 30's and 40's smiled indulgently, that Ruby Keeler is up there on the stage alive, not dead. For the below 30's, it's pure camp. I don't put it down, but it’s not warm, working nostalgia, but the feeling 'Ye gods, anything but today'
"Maybe I'm more concerned about things that I realize. I told you politics is definitely not on my agenda - I got burned bad, back in the '40's signing a damned petition as a favor. (6) Just say the word 'politician,' and I think of chicanery. Too many subversive angles today. But I must be one of millions who are so fed up, depressed, sobbing inside, about the news...the atrocities, the dead, the running down of America. You can't obliterate the news, but the baddest dream is that you feels so helpless.
"I was sitting in this very chair one night, flipping the dial, and came to Combat! There were soldiers crouching in bushes, a helicopter hovering overhead. Nothing happening, so I make like a director, yelling, 'Move it! This take is too LONG!' It turned out to be a news show from Vietnam. That shook me. There I was criticizing the director, and real blood was dripping off my screen... That drug scene bugs me. It's ridiculous, self-indulgent. We're supposed to be grateful if the kids aren't on drugs. They're destroying us from within, getting at our youth in the colleges. OK, kids have to protest, but how can they accomplish anything if they're physically shot?
"One of the reasons I'm still working is that people seem grateful that Lucy is there, the same character and unchanging view. There's so much chaos in this world, that's important. Many people, not only shut-ins, depend on the tube, too much so - they look for favorites they can count on. Older people loved Lawrence Welk. They associated his music with their youth. Now he's gone. It's not fair. (7) They shouldn't have taken off those bucolic comedies; that left a big dent in some folks' lives. Maybe we're not getting messages anymore from the clergy, the politicians, so TV does the preaching. But as an entertainer, I don't believe in messages.
"Some Mr. Jones is always asking why am I still working - as if it were some crime or neurotic. OK, I'll say it's for my kids. But I like a routine life, I like to work. I come from an old New England family in which everyone worked. My grandparents were homesteaders in New York and Ohio. My mother worked all her life - during the Depression in a factory."
What does she think of the new "relevant" comedy like All in the Family? "I don't know... It's good to bring prejudice out in the open. People do think that way, but why glorify it? Those not necessarily young may not catch the moral. That show doesn't go full circle for me."
Full circle?
"You have to suffer a little when you do wrong. That prejudiced character doesn't pay a penance. Does he ever reverse a feeling? I'm for believability, but I'm tired of hearing 'pig,' 'wop,' 'Polack' said unkindly. Me, I have to have an on-the-nose moral. Years ago, the Romans let humans be eaten by lions, while they laughed and drank - that was entertainment. But I’m tired of the ugly. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, that's my idea of entertainment. Anything Richard Burton does is heaven. Easy Rider scared me at first because I knew how it could influence kids. But at least that movie came full circle. They led a life of nothing and they got nothing. Doris Day, I believe in her. Elaine May? A kook, but a great talent. Barbra Streisand? A brilliant technician."
On her old ten-minute daily interview radio show, (8) she once asked Barbra, like any star-struck civilian: How does it feel to be only 21, a big recording artist and star of the Broadway hit Funny Girl? "Not much," said Barbra. "That cool really flustered Lucille. It violated everything she believes in," says cousin Cleo Smith, who grew up with Miss B in small-town Celoron, N.Y. "For her, nothing ever came easy. She didn't marry until she was 30, or become a really big star until she was 40. She's still so hard on herself, sets such rigorous standards for herself as an actress and parent. She honestly believes in all the old maxims, that a stitch in time saves nine, etc. She's literal-minded, a bit like Scarlett O'Hara. Does what needs doing today, and to hell with tomorrow."
Her self-made wealth a few years ago was reckoned at $50 to $100 million. After her divorce, she reluctantly took over the presidency of the Desilu studio and sold it six years later to the conglomerate Gulf & Western for nearly $18 million. Does that make her the biggest lady tycoon in Hollywood? (The 179 original I Love Lucy reruns now belong, incidentally, to a CBS syndicate; her second Lucy Show, to Paramount. She owns only the current Here's Lucy - OK, go that straight?)
"Hah! Like Sinatra, I owe about three and a half million bucks all the time. That figure is ridiculous. All my money is working. I lost a helluva lot in the stock market last year and haven't recouped it. It's an illusion that people in show biz are really rich. The really filthy rich are the little old ladies in Boston, the old folks in Pasadena, who've had dough for years and haven't been seen since."
The divorce from Desi Arnaz can still set her brooding. "It was the worst period of my life. I really hit the bottom of despair - anything form there on had to be up. Neither Desi nor I has been the same since, physically or mentally, though we're very friendly, ridiculously so. Nobody knows how hard I tried to make that marriage work, thinking all the trouble must be my fault. I did everything I could to right that ship, trotting to psychiatrists. I hate failure, and that divorce was a Number One failure in my eyes... Anything in excess drives me crazy. He'd build a home anyplace he was, and then never be around to enjoy it. I was so idealistic, I thought that with two beautiful babies, and a beautiful business, what more could any man want? Freedom, he said, but he had that. People don't know what a job he did building that Desilu empire, what a great director and brilliant executive he was yet he let it all go....Maybe Latins have an instinct for self-destruction..."
Was that the conflict, a Latin temperament married to an old-fashioned American female? "It has a helluva lot to do with getting into it and getting out. The charm. But they keep up a big facade and don't follow through. No, the machismo didn't bother me, I like to play games too.
"Desi and I had made an agreement that if either of us wanted to pull out of Desilu, the other could buy. I wanted to go to Switzerland with the kids, anywhere to run away, but he wanted out. The I found out that for five years, our empire had taken a nose dive, and if I wanted to get my money back, I had to rebuild it first. For the first time in my life, I was absolutely terrified - I'd never run any show or a big studio. When I came back from doing the musical Wildcat on Broadway, I was so sick, so beat, I just sat in that backyard, numb, for a year. I'd had pneumonia, mononucleosis, staph, osteomyletis. Lost 22 pounds. Friends told me the best thing I could do physically, psychologically, was go back to work, but could I revive Lucy without Desi, my old writers, the old crew?"
You didn't like being a woman executive? "I hated it. I used to cry so much - and I'm not a crier - because I had to let someone go or make decisions I didn't understand. There were always two sides to every question, and trouble was I could see both sides. No one realizes how run-down Desilu was. The finks and sycophants making $70,000 a year, they were easy to clean out. Then during the CBS Jim Aubrey regime, I couldn't sell the new pilots we made - Dan Dailey, Donald O'Connor, Ethel Merman. I couldn't sell anything but me." (9)
Was it tough to be a woman bossing men? "Yeah. It puts men in a bad spot. I could read their minds, unfortunately, wondering who is this female making this decision, not realizing that maybe I'd consulted six experts first. I'm all wrong as an executive, I feel out of place. I have too many antennae out, I'm too easily hurt and intimidated. But I can make quick surgical incisions. I've learned that much about authority - give people enough rope to hand themselves, stand back, let them work, but warm them first. Creative people you have to give special leeway to, and often it doesn't pay off. Me, I'm workative, not creative. I can fix - what I call 'naturalize.' I'm a good editor, I can naturalize dialogue, find an easier way to do a show mechanically.
But I didn't make the same marriage mistake twice. Gary digs what my life is, why I have to work. We have tranquility. We want the same things, take care of what we have."
She shows me Gary's dressing room, closets hung with shirts and jackets - by the dozen. "My husband is a clothes and car nut, but it's a harmless vice. Better than booze or chasing women, right?" (His cars include a 1927 Model T Ford, a Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, an Astin Martin, a Rolls-Royce convertible.)
"Anyone married to me has an uphill climb. Gary and I coped by anticipating. We knew we should be separated eight, nine months a year, so he tapered off his act, found other thing to do - making investments, building things. He plays the golf circuit, Palm Springs, Pebble Beach, and tolerantly lets me stay at Snowmass for weeks. Sun just doesn't agree with me. He didn't come into the business for five years. I didn't want to put him in a position in which he would be ridiculed. I could tell that he was grasping things - casting, story line. I said, 'You've been a big help to me. You should be paid for it.' "
On a Friday night, I dine with the Mortons. Dinner is served around 6:30, just like in my Midwest hometown. Lucille is still fretting about this week's show - "over-rehearsed; because there were so many props, the fun had gone out of it." Gary, just home from unwinding his own way - golfing with Milton Berle, Joey Bishop - asks if I'd like something to drink with dinner? Coke or ginger ale? "No? I think we have wine." No high living in this house, but the spareribs are superb. "Laura asked me an interesting question," he tells his wife. "Like isn't there a conflict when a husband in the same business - comedy - marries a superstar? I told her I'd never thought of it before."
They met the summer when Lucille was rehearsing Wildcat, and he was a stand-up comic at Radio City Music Hall, seven days a week. "We both came up the hard way," he says. "I got started in World War II, clowning for USO shows. I've been in show biz for 30 years and can appreciate what she goes through. Lucy can't run company by herself. Maybe with me around, when she walks on the set, her mind is at peace. I pop in from time to time, on conferences, rehearsals. I can tell from her if things are going well, if the laughter is there. She's a thoroughbred, very honest with me, a friend to whom I can talk about anything. She never leaves me out of her life; that's important for a man. Do you know how many bets were lost about our marriage lasting? It's been nearly ten years now, and I've slept on the couch only once."
Past dinner, we adjourn promptly to the living room, and a private showing of Little Murders. It's not a pretty movie of urban American life, and Lucy talks back indignantly to the screen. (10) The flick she rally like was George Plimpton's Paper Lion, with the Detroit Lions, which she booked under the illusion it was an animal picture. "At the end, 12 of us here stood up and cheered, and I wrote every last Lion a fan note. You know that picture hardly made a dime?"
On a house tout, I'd noted the Norman Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth albums in the living room, and a memo scotch-taped to her bathroom wall: "Get Smart with N.V.P."
N.V.P. Is that Norman Vincent Peale, her old friend and spiritual mentor? "Yes. He marred me and Gary. I still adhere to his way of thinking because he preaches a day-to-day religion that I can understand. Something workable, not allegory. Like how do you get up in the morning and just get through the day?
"Dr. Peale taught me the art of selfishness. All it means is doing what's right for you, not being a burden to others. When I was in Wildcat, he dropped around one night saying, 'I hear you're very ill, and working too hard.' 'Work never hurt anybody,' I protested. But he reminded me I had two beautiful children to bring up, and if I was in bad shape, how could I do it? I've learned you don't rake more leaves than you can get into the wheelbarrow. I've always been moderate, but I was too spread around, trying to please too many people. You don't become callous, but you conserve your energies."
What about her kids? Passing a newsstand, I'd noted a rash of fan mags blazoned with headlines about Desi Jr., something of a teen-age idol, and at 18 a spitting image of old pop. (A rock star at 12, he'd recently garnered very good notices indeed for a movie role in Red Sky at Morning.) "Why Lucille Ball's Son Is So Bitter About His Own Mother," read the El Trasho covers. "Patty Duke Begs Desi Jr. To Believe Her: 'You Made Me Pregnant.' " Does the imbroglio bother this on-the-nose moralist?
"I worked for years for a quiet personal life and to have to personally impinged on, with no recourse, is hard. I brought Patty to the house, feeling very maternal about her, saying look at this clever girl, what a big talent she is. Now, I can thank her for useless notoriety. She's living in some fantastic dreamworld, and we're the victims of it. Desi being the tender age of 17 when they met, she used him. She hasn't proved or asked for anything. I asked Desi if he wanted to marry her and he said no. My daughter helped outfit the baby, which Patty brought to the house, but did she ever say thank you?
"Desi's going to CIA this fall." Not the CIA? No, the new California Institute of the Arts, where he'll study music. "Yes, he's very much like his father, too much sometimes - I just hope he has Desi's business acumen. I'm glad he didn't choose UCLA or Berkeley or a school full of nonconformists. Lucie just now wants marriage and babies - maybe she'll go on to college later.
"I took the kids out of school deliberately. Desi was at Beverly Hills High, Lucie at Immaculate Heart."
Why? "I didn't like the scene - it was the usual - pregnant girls, drugs." That goes on at Immaculate Heart? Sure. "A lot of girls who boarded there were unhappy misfits, and Lucie was already working in the nunnery. All the friends she brought home were the rejected. I'm that way myself."
Did they mind, well, your stage-managing their lives? "No, they were as sick of that weird high school scene as I was. I made them a proposition - told them to think it over for a month, while I was in Monaco. Do you want to be on the show? I told them the salary would be scale, that most would be put in trust. They'd be tutored and not able to graduate with their classes. They both thought they were going to the coast, but working with a tutor, they really got turned on by books for the first time. They wanted to be in show business, and I wanted to keep an eye on them."
Of course her show is nepotism, she grants. "Cleo thought a long time before becoming the producer, wondering if it wasn’t overdoing family. Nobody seems to be suffering from it, I told her." Thursday night show time is like a tense Broadway opening night. Gary Morton, in stylish crested blazer, warms up the audience, heavy with out-of-town tourists. "Lucy started out with another fellow, can't remember his name.... What is home without a mother? A place to bring girls." Lucille bursts out onstage, exuding the old MGM glamour, fireball hair ablaze, eyelashes inches long, in aquamarine-cum-rhinestone kaftan. "For God's sake," she implores, "laugh it up! We want to hear from you... Gary, have you introduced my mom?" Indeed he has. Loyal, durable, 79-year-old Desiree "DeDe" Ball, her hair pink as Lucille's, has missed few of the 409 Lucy shows filmed to date, and is on hand as usual with 19 personal guests. Gary also asks for big hands for Cleo, and her husband Cecil Smith, TV critic for the LA Times, who has also appeared on the show. (11)
One day Desi Jr. wanders on the set, just back from visiting his father in Mexico. He'd gone with Patty Duke and the baby. The young man does have Latin charm, and apparently talent. I ask him a fan-mag query: Is it rough to be the spin-off of such famous show-biz parents?
"Well, I grew up with kids like Dean Martin, Jr., and Tony Martin, Jr., and we had a lot in common." What? "We all had houses in Palm Springs." Any generational problem with Mom? "She's found the thing she's best at, and sticks to it. As long as she has Snowmass, she has an escape, some reality. I realize she lives half in a man's world, and that must be tough on a woman. My father - he worked hard for years, and then he'd had it. This is silly, weird, he felt. He aged more in ten years than he had in 40. I'm like him. I feel life is very short. He's had major operations recently, and he's changed a lot."
Patty Duke is six years older than Desi Jr., paralleling the six-year age gap that separated parents Lucy and Desi. "Patty is a lot like my mother, the same drive, and strong will, a perfectionist...But I'm never going to get married. Marriage is unrealistic, expecting you to devote a whole life unselfishly to just one person. Do you know people age unbelievably when they marry? From what I've seen, 85 percent of married couples are miserable; 14 percent, just average; one percent, happy." (12)
His mother's own childhood, in little Celoron, an outspring of Jamestown, N.Y., was oh-so-different from her kids'. "She was always a wild, tempestuous, exciting child," say Cleo, "doing things that worried people, plotting and scheming, though she knew she'd get in trouble." Interesting, because that's one basic of the Lucy format, Miss B forever finagling second bananas like Vivian Vance into co-trouble. "One summer, she conned me into running away. It was only to nearby Fredonia, but in her sneaky way she really wanted to catch up to a groovy high school principal who was teaching there. He played it very cool, calling Mom and telling her we were staying overnight in a boarding house. On his advice, when we got home, DeDe acted as if we hadn't been away. That devastated Lucille, no reaction, nothing."
The classic Lucy story line also has her conniving against male authority, whether husband or boss, now played by Gale Gordon. "I need a strong father or husband figure as catalyst. I have to be an inadequate somebody, because I don't want the authority for Lucy. Every damned movie script sent me seems to cast me as a lady with authority, like Eve Arden or Roz Russell, but that's not me.
"No, I don't remember my own father," says Miss Ball. "He was a telephone lineman who died of typhoid at 25, when I was about three. I do remember everything that day, though. Hanging out the window, begging to play with the kids next door who had measles... The doctor coming, my mother weeping. I remember a bird that flew in the window, a picture that fell off the wall.
"My brother Fred [who was born after her father's death] was always very, very good. He never did anything wrong - he was too much to bear. I was always in trouble, a real pain in the ass. I suppose I wasn't much fun to be around." To this day, says Cleo, Lucille suspects Fred is her mother's favorite, even though DeDe has devoted her whole life to this daughter.
Family ties were always fierce-strong. After her father's death, "We lived with my mother's parents, for a while. Grandpa Hunt was a marvelous jack-of-all-trades, a woodturner, eye doctor, mailman, bon vivant, hotel owner. [And also an old-fashioned Populist-Socialist.] He met my grandmother, Flora Belle, a real pioneer woman and pillar of the family, when she was a maid in his hotel. She was a nurse and midwife, an orphan who brought up four pairs of twin sisters and brothers all by herself. He took us to vaudeville every Saturday and to the local amusement park. When Grandma died at 51, all us kids had to pitch in, making beds, cooking.
"Yeah, I guess I am real mid-America, growing up as a mix of French-Scotch-Irish-English, living on credit like everyone else, paying $1.25 a week to the insurance man, buying furniture on time. But it was a good, full life. Grandpa took us camping, fishing, picking mushrooms, made us bobsleds. We always had goodies. I had the first boyish bob in town and the first open galoshes.
"My mother then married Ed Peterson, a handsome-ugly man, very well-read. He was good to me and Freddy but he drank too much. He was the first to point out the magic of the stage. A monologist came to town on the Chautauqua circuit. He just sat onstage with a pitcher of water and light bulb and made us laugh and cry for two hours. For me, this was pure magic. When I was about seven, Ed and mother moved to Detroit, leaving me with his old-fashioned Swedish parents, who were very strict. I had to be in bed at 6:30, hearing all the other kids playing outside in the summer daylight. Maybe it wasn't that traumatic, but I realize now it was a bad time for me. I felt as if I'd been deserted. I got my imagination to working, and read trillions of books."
The adult Lucille, talking to interviewers, used to go on and on about her "unhappy" childhood, little realizing that she was reflecting on her mother, to whom she is passionately devoted. "Just how long do you think you lived with the Petersons?" asked DeDe one day in a confrontation. "Three YEARS? Well I tell you it was more like three weeks."
"I left home at 15, much too early, desperate to break into the big wide world. Looking for work in New York show biz was ugly, without any leads or friends or training other than high school operettas and plays and Sunday school pageants. I was very shy and reticent, believe it or not, and I kept running home every five minutes. I got thrown in with older Shubert and Ziegfeld dollies and, believe me, they were a mean, closed corporation. I don't understand kids today who get easily discouraged and yap about doing their own thing. Don't they know what hard work is? Where are their morals? I always knew when I did wrong, and paid penance."
Yet she was venturesome enough to sit in on some recent Synanon group-therapy sessions for drug addicts. "They wanted me to raise some money, and I wanted to find out what it was about. The games were fascinating, wonderful, until I couldn't take it any more. The other participants kept bugging me: What are you here for? Are your children drug addicts? I had to start making up problems."
For two decades, she's been risking her neck in those murderous ratings, outlasting long-ago competitors like Fulton Sheen, and now up against such pleasers as pro football and Rowan and Martin. (13)
Suppose the ratings drop, what would she do?
No idea. "Might take a trip on the Inland Waterway form Boston to Florida. In my deal with Universal, I can make specials, other movies, TV pilots. I wouldn't have to ski 'spooked' at Snowmass." What's that? "Honey, I have to be careful. If I break a leg 500 people are out of work. (14) I'd be happy in some branch of acting with some modicum of appreciation. Listen, it never occurred to me, in life that I'd fail ever, because I always appreciated small successes. I never had a big fixed goal. When I was running Desilu, it drove me wild when people asked, 'Aren't you proud to own the old RKO studio where you once worked as a starlet?' What $50-a-week starlet ever walked around a lot saying, 'I want to own this studio'?
"I don't know what you've been driving at, what's your story line? But it's been interesting, talking."
FOOTNOTES: HINDSIGHT IS 20/20
(1) This refers to a rare 1969 BBC documentary about Britain’s royal family that gave the public an inside look at the life of the Windsors. In one scene, the family was watching television, and on the screen was “I Love Lucy”, much to the chagrin of Prince Philip. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were mentioned on the series, especially in the episode “Lucy Meets the Queen” (ILL S5;E15).
(2) Lucy is referring to a 1967 episode of “The Lucy Show” titled “Lucy The Babysitter” (TLS S5;E16) in which Lucy Carmichael babysits three rambunctious chimps for their parents, played by Jonathan Hole and Mary Wickes. In the final moments of the show, Wickes reveals a fourth sibling - a baby elephant! The animal went wild and pushed Wickes (what Ball described as a “press job”) into one of the prop trees. The trainer had to physically subdue the elephant to get it away from Wickes, who injured her arm. The final cut ends with the entrance of the baby elephant.
(3) Lucy is conflating (probably intentionally) the stories of real-life prohibitionist Carrie Nation (1846-1911), who famously hacked up bars and whisky barrels with an axe, and Lizzie Bordon (1860-1927), who famously hacked up her parents with an axe. (Photo from the 1962 TV special “The Good Years” starring Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda.)
(4) There was never a film version of Thornton Wilder’s play Skin Of Our Teeth which was on Broadway in 1942 starring Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina, the role offered to Ball. There were several television adaptations; one in Australia in 1959; one in England the same year starring Vivian Leigh as Sabina; one in the USA in 1955 starring Mary Martin (above) as Sabina; and a filmed version of a stage production starring Blair Brown as Sabina in 1983. Although it is possible that Lucille Ball might have been considered for the role of the sexy housemaid Sabina in 1955, the article says that the role was “just” offered to her, so it probably refers to a 1971 project that never materialized. Wilder’s story tracks a typical American family from New Jersey from the ice age through the apocalypse.
(5) In 1971, there was a popular revival of the 1925 musical comedy No, No, Nanette on Broadway. The cast featured veteran screen star Ruby Keeler and included Helen Gallagher (playing a character named Lucille, coincidentally), Bobby Van, Jack Gilford, Patsy Kelly and Susan Watson. Busby Berkeley, nearing the end of his career, was credited as supervising the production, although his name was his primary contribution to the show. The 1971 production was well-reviewed and ran for 861 performances. It sparked interest in the revival of similar musicals from the 1920s and 1930s. The original 1925 cast featured Charles Winninger, who played Barney Kurtz, Fred’s old vaudeville partner on “I Love Lucy.” In that same episode (above), they sing a song from the musical, "Peach on the Beach” by Vincent Youmans and Otto Harbach. Like the revue in the episode, the musical is set in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
(6) Lucy is referring to her 1936 affidavit of registration to join the Communist Party. Lucille said she signed it to appease her elderly grandfather. The cavalier act caught up with Ball in 1953, when zealous red-hunting Senator Joe McCarthy tried to purge America of suspected Communists. Although many careers were ruined, Ball escaped virtually unscathed.
(7) The popular big band music series “The Lawrence Welk Show” (1955) was unceremoniously canceled in 1971 by ABC, in an attempt to attract younger audiences. What Lucy doesn’t mention is that four days after this magazine was published, the show began running brand new shows in syndication, which continued until 1982. Welk, despite not being much of an actor, played himself on “Here’s Lucy” (above) in January 1970.
(8) “Let’s Talk To Lucy” was a short daily radio program aired on CBS Radio from September 1964 to June 1964. Most interviews (including Streisand’s) were spread over multiple installments.
(9) To showcase possible new series (pilots) Desilu and CBS aired “Vacation Playhouse” (1963-67) during the summer when “The Lucy Show” was on hiatus. This would often be the only airing of Lucy’s passion projects. “Papa GI” with Dan Dailey as an army sergeant in Korea who has his hands full with two orphans who want him to adopt them. The pilot was aired in June 1964 but it was not picked up for production. “Maggie Brown” had Ethel Merman playing a widow trying to raise a daughter and run a nightclub which is next to a Marine Corps base. The pilot aired in September 1963, but went unsold. “The Hoofer” starring Donald O’Connor and Soupy Sales as former vaudevillians aired its pilot in August 1966. No sale!
(10) Little Murders (1971) was a black comedy based on the play of the same name by Jules Feiffer. The film is about a young nihilistic New Yorker (Elliott Gould) coping with pervasive urban violence, obscene phone calls, rusty water pipes, electrical blackouts, paranoia and ethnic-racial conflict during a typical summer of the 1970s. Definitely not Lucille Ball’s style of comedy! Paper Lion (1968) was a sports comedy about George Plimpton (Alan Alda) pretending to be a member of the Detroit Lions football team for a Sports Illustrated article.
(11) Cecil Smith appeared in “Lucy Meets the Burtons” (HL S3;E1) in 1970 playing himself, a member of the Hollywood Press with a dozen other real-life writers. The casting was a way to get better coverage of the episode (featuring power couple Dick Burton, Liz Taylor, and her remarkable diamond ring). The gambit worked and the episode was the most viewed of the entire series.
(12) Desi Jr.’s 1971 views on marriage did not last. He married actress Linda Purl in 1980, but they divorced in 1981. In October 1987, Arnaz married dancer Amy Laura Bargiel. Ten years later they purchased the Boulder Theatre in Boulder City, Nevada and restored it. They lived in Boulder with their daughter, Haley. Amy died of cancer in 2015, at the age of 63.
(13) From 1952 to 1957, Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen hosted the inspirational program “Life Is Worth Living”, winning an Emmy Award in 1953, alongside winners Lucille Ball and “I Love Lucy.” “Here’s Lucy” was programmed up against “Monday Night Football” on ABC and “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” on NBC. Instead of ignoring her competition, Ball embraced them by featuring stories about football and incorporating many of the catch phrases and guest stars from “Laugh-In.”
(14) Lucy spoke too soon! Just a few months after this interview was published Ball did indeed have a skiing accident in Snowmass and broke her leg. With season five’s first shooting date approaching, Ball was faced with either ending the series or re-write the scripts so that Lucy Carter would be in a leg cast. She chose the latter, even incorporating actual footage of herself on the Snowmass slopes (above) into "Lucy’s Big Break” (HL S5;E1).
Elsewhere in the Issue...
“This Was Our Life” by Gene Shalit includes images of Lucille Ball in the collage illustration.
A week after this issue of Look hit the stands, the fourth season of “Here’s Lucy” kicked off with guest star Flip Wilson and a parody of Gone With the Wind. Three days later, Ball guest-starred on his show.
Not to be outdone, LOOK’s rival LIFE also devoted an entire issue to television, on news stands just three days later.
Naturally, “I Love Lucy” didn’t escape mention! I’m not sure why the show’s run is bifurcated: 1952-55, 1956-57. Actually, the show began in 1951 and ran continually until 1957.
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