Natural Selection (Elijah Kamski x Reader)

Part III: The Alpha

Inquiry: What will prevail in the end? Machine learning, or natural selection?
Posting results...

People outside of the CyberLife tower cleaned their houses, went to work, watched their children play in parks, and carried on like it was just another day of the week. They drove fuel-powered cars that still required manual operation. They traversed through a city that only spied on them through its very infrastructure.

They slept.

And while they daydreamed through another 24 hours of labored existence, you wrote their future credentials as slave owners – one android-selling CyberLife marketing slogan at a time. It didn't matter that they weren't ready to be sold to the public, that the commercial use of androids had already sparked wildfires across the globe and struck gold in the veins of activists. It didn't matter that an android had yet to actually pass the Turing Test. The posters were printed. The flyers were stocked. The billboards lay waiting in a warehouse across the bridge on the docks. PR looked over their statements for last minute changes. The media was on standby.

"You can still change your mind-...We can still change our minds-" You walked quickly alongside Elijah down the hall towards the elevator, "We don't have to go forward with this. We can cancel the whole thing, no one would be the wiser-"

Both of you entered, turning to face the white floors drenched in natural lighting from glass walls...all gone at the press of a button.

"Enough."

The doors shut, and you descended. An anxious chill had you shivering, your stomach muscles clenching. You tried not to shake. Each tremor made it harder. This wasn't the plan. It never was, and it never should have been. Giving an appliance human form was supposed to be for convenience. There wasn't a need to redesign the wheel. Humans had all the limbs and peripherals needed to accomplish basic tasks. These robots were supposed to be no different, aside from having conscious thought.

They were supposed to do chores – clean, cook, maybe teach a lesson to a kid or two. They were never meant to think, to feel, to want, to have personalities, to know what it's like to crave freedom and only watch it in the act – never to  experience it themselves.

They were never meant to have a soul.

"You must've hired quite the team to rewrite the code..." You whispered in a daze.

How many nights had he not come home? How many days had he spent asleep while you ran the company alone in the skyscraper's top floor? How many excuses had he made?

"I didn't hire a team." He sneered as the elevator began to slow down, "I wrote it myself."

When it hit the bottom, so did your stomach.

"That's the problem with you." His eyes trained on you for the first time since you'd left your respective offices and converged in the hall upstairs, "Always assuming. Just like you assume these machines are going to develop feelings. Emotions. Abstract thoughts. Desires. Personalities. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?" Elijah scorned you for stepping out of line...again, "Do you not have enough faith in me to know my own creation?"

"Your creation?" You huffed, a smirk taking over your angry, hard-lined lips, "You did this all by yourself, right?" You raised your arms before dropping your hands to your sides, "I had absolutely no part in any of this. You're right. You could've done this entirely on your own."

He hit the emergency stop on the elevator. Grabbed your blazer by the handful and pushed you against the wall. It didn't affect you at that point. There had been so many times where he threatened you one way or another, and honestly, his dramatics were getting old. There was a time it would've rattled you, kept you up at night, hit you with layers of fear that took weeks to sort through. But for any of that to take effect now would require you to care.