Good Cop Bad Cop: Chapter Two

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Ellie watched Shane suspiciously. Was he trying to teach her things again? Hmm.

"Wow, series four?" Matt looked surprised. "I can see that being super distracting. Then again, where I grew up we had a wind turbine and those things are stupidly noisy. As are water wheels, which we also had. You kinda just.. tune it out after a while. " He frowned. "oh man, I hope I didn't make things all like.. awkward for him and Kay by mentioning it. oops?"

"Yeah, Fours weren't even sentient, we think. Totally early tech, they couldn't really smile or anything. They just obeyed, and their speech syntax was so weird. Man, it's really freaky to look into the eyes of someone just like yourself and there's... not really anything there." James smiled, "Yeah, you get used to noises. Gotta tune them out eventually or they eat your soul."
He laughed, "Eh, you might have embarrassed Asher a bit. He'll be fine I'm sure."

Matt shuddered. "That.... yeah.. that is creepy. We met some .. I think 5s back at the beach planet and they were a bit ... off. Like.. really polite and all that but... off. I think I prefer you guys being well.. you know... people. There's something a bit unsettling about someone that looks like a person but acts totally like a machine you know? No.. no offense or anything." Yeah he still found androids kinda... weird. The 7s were way easier to deal with because you could easily forget they were robots. He preferred that.

"Aww, Fives can't help it. They don't have great control of their faces, and natural language is tough for them, but they're people too, with feelings and stuff," James smiled softly, he'd grown pretty fond of Scott's older androids while he was at that shop, "You met Daniel while you were there? He's a good guy. Super old, he'd be forty-eight now I think."

"I dunno, maybe? " Matt shrugged. "poor guys, so they're just.. not able to express themselves like you? That must suck." He looked impressed. "Fourty eight? man, that's impressive. How long do you guys like.. live... for anyway?" They didn't die like organic people right? So... how'd that work?

"Yeah, they can think and feel just like more recent androids, they just don't have the computing power to speak really naturally, or the hardware to show emotions well. God, speaking takes a ton of computing power to get right, you have no idea." James smiled a bit sadly. "We shut down automatically at about fifty, which is when we run out of storage, and our processors aren't physically capable of computing the amount of data we have stored. Funny, isn't it? Seems like we could be immortal, but we just aren't."

"Wow... fifty years? that... really sucks." Matt shook his head. "I have no idea how long i've got, hybrids are a bit ... uh.. tricky. Sooo many problems." He frowned. "I wonder if there's a way to fix that limitation with you guys... I dunno, computers confuse the hell outta me." He frowned "man now I feel super sorry for those 5s. I mean I get you on the language thing, common isn't my native language and you have NO idea how damn hard it is to stop myself switching into Satare, especially when writing. " He shrugged. His galactic common was pretty impressively good considering, and he even managed a pretty neutral accent which given how strong Luka and Esk's accents were, couldn't have been natural. "Brain power, computer power... kinda.. similar right? Language is just hard."

"Yeah," James shrugged, "Hey, fifty years isn't that bad though, really. Gives you time to have some fun. And we know right from the start, so it's not like 'surprise! You're gonna die today." Well, usually it wasn't, anyway. "That's gotta be kinda weird having no idea how long your life expectancy is."
James nodded, "Yeah, I guess you would know actually. Language is so hard sometimes." He smiled slightly, "The Fives do okay, they usually pretend to be emotionless around outsiders to keep things simple, but they're pretty good at getting their thoughts across around people they're comfortable with. Writing is a robot's best friend, no need for inflection and stuff."

Matt laughed. "Man, Kay would get on great with them then. They can all write snarky notes to one another." He shrugged. "I don't mind not knowing, I mean, it means you live each moment right? I could live like 70 years, could live a few hundred, could die tomorrow. Who the hell knows, but it's fine. No regrets right? Always been my philosophy anyway, look forward and just... go with the flow, see where it takes ya. " He smiled. "It's pretty weird being a half breed anyway, everything's always a bit of a surprise. I mean, our eldest sister has no elemental, or if she does she's repressed it so much it's never manifested. We had no damn idea what we could do till we just.. did it. It'd all probably have been easier had dear ol' mom and dad been around to tell us stuff but.. they weren't so.. even then, not sure how much help dad would have been for me. He was a fire elemental, I really can't see him being much good at showing me how to freeze stuff." Matt shook his head again and waved a hand dismissively.

James laughed. "Get Kay to go to the websites they frequent, make them be pen pals, read the results. Could be pretty entertaining."
He nodded, "Sensible. Makes things crazy confusing I'm sure, but at least it won't be boring I guess. Man, it's weird how huge the range of life spans is here though. From Swarm, to Merith. Like, what the heck?"

"yeah, it's... a bit hard. " He thought of Thalia and how awkward that all was. He sighed, not worth moping about. "it's really wierd for my family because like.. NONE of us have any idea what our life span is. We're all hybrids of... two pretty different species. I dunno.. I think I selfishly would prefer to be one of the shorter lived ones, just... so I didn't have to watch the people I cared about grow old. I'm a jerk like that." He chuckled, but his heart wasn't quite in it. "right, so... next dance?" he changed the subject.

"Yeah! Let's dance!" Enough depressing stuff, oh yeah. Time to be distracted with weird dances. "Or joust," James added with a snicker. Apparently his hand hadn't scared him off jousting after all.

Matt laughed. "Man, I think if we ended up back in the medlab with jousting injuries Kay and Asher might give us.. the glare!" Matt feigned a horrified expression.

"What, you don't like their looks of intense disapproval?" James said, amused. "But it's funny because they're harmless!"

Matt laughed. "Kay's not harmless, he's mean! He totally throws stuff or worse.. lectures you. Oh man... you're lucky you're immune to those, the telepathic lectures are the woooorst!"

James looked smug. "Okay, he's harmless to me. Which is all that matters because I'm the important one."

Tala snorted.

Matt snickered. "Love you too man."

James blew Matt a kiss and started looking through the holodeck options.

~~
Asher played with his disassembled tablet for a while, trying to turn it into something actually useful again. Eventually he decided he needed a break from computer projects; even his great patience for electronics wasn't eternal.
He asked Vestia where Kay was. He was still a bit embarrassed by the possibility that maybe Kay liked the sound of his motor, but that didn't mean he wanted to avoid the guy. That would just be silly.

Kay had retrieved his books from Luka who thanked him, and was somewhat cautious around him, like she expected a lecture. That gave him a pretty good sense of satisfaction, so he didn't lecture her, no... she was already unsettled, his work was done. HAH.

Currently he was doing a Sudoku puzzle on one of the observation decks.

---

Matt snickered and leant over James' shoulder to look at the selections. "So what now?"

Asher knocked lightly on the door frame. "Mind if I join you?" He asked, smiling. Man, Kay must be getting good at Sudoku.

~~
"I think I'll wear out my joints from dancing, maybe we should go bowling now," James said.

"Oh, bowling sounds fun" Shane agreed and smiled at the group "We can do teams'

"ooo bowling. I think I probably suck at it." Matt laughed. "but sure, let's do it!"

--

Kay smiled softly and nodded, switching his tablet to text mode. [How's your project going?]

"You can be on my team Matt, I'm good at bowling," James said cheerfully. He selected the program and suddenly they were in a bowling alley.

Ellie grabbed Shane's arm, "I'm on his team!"

Tala looked around, confused.

~~
Asher sat down next to Kay. "It's all right, very slow going though, and I'm not sure I can find all the parts i need. How's the Sudoku?"

Shane chuckled and looked around "How many on each team?"

Kay shrugged. [It passes the time. It's somewhat relaxing to make it all fit, I find it clears my mind of anything else.] Yes, numbers, he liked numbers. they were undisputable, couldn't be misunderstood. And putting them into their little boxes was extremely satisfying.
[ Do you think you can get a hold of the parts next time we stop for supplies? or... cannibalize something else broken for them?]

Matt looked around. "Uh.. we have an uneven number right? Who else is terrible at bowling? Two of us equal one person with hand eye coordination!"

"Or have one keep score" Rigel suggested and chuckled "I will do that"