Tick Tock Part Three - Dock

A Healthy Exchange

"Have you visited her yet?" Dr Marr asked as Gavin languished on the sofa in her office. He'd been having regular sessions every few days since returning to work just over a week ago. He shivered a little in the cool air of the small room, wishing he'd thought to grab his jacket. Marr's office was always cold. He didn't know what temperature she chose for her AC, but it was too low for his body to handle. Outside was like a furnace, so coming inside made the small room feel like an icebox. He wrapped his bare arms around himself and turned on his side, frowning a little at the question. It made him feel like an asshole, even though he knew she wasn't judging him for it.

"No." The simple reply was all she'd asked for. She hadn't asked him to explain himself. She was looking at him knowingly over the top of her rectangular glasses, dark eyes waiting for something more. Gavin sighed as he shuffled onto his back and looked up at the faded ceiling. It had been white once, but time had left it washed out and slightly grey. "It'd be weird," he excused quietly as he hunkered lower on the leather material. If he stayed still too long, it would start to feel sticky against his neck and bare arms. Marr scribbled something down as she came to her next question.

"What would be weird about it? You've already been through something similar with Colin." That was a pretty good argument. His relationship with Chloe was different though. Closer. He didn't see Colin every day. He didn't interact with him on a regular basis, and he hadn't before the incident either. They knew each other, and he liked him well enough, but they weren't friends in the same way as he and Chloe. Had been with Chloe..."Or do you still see Colin as a copy?" Marr watched a flicker of guilt creep across Gavin's features. Bingo.

"I can't help it! They literally had to change his head!" He didn't know where they'd gotten that head from, but it wasn't Colin's. From what he understood, they'd kept most of his old body intact, replacing only the most damaged parts. That still didn't mean he was the same person. They'd literally had to download a backup copy of his brain. A backup copy that didn't remember a fucking thing because it had been stored the night before. "I can't just...change my mindset! Doesn't it feel like copying to you? If you can have two of them existing at the same time, then they're not the same person, right?" he asked as he looked at Marr for some sort of agreement. She hummed thoughtfully. It was certainly a conundrum. Androids were a relatively new species, with different biology and abilities. What humans saw as a copy wasn't a copy to an android. It was all data, so it was all the same.

"I understand it feels that way to us, as humans. We can't store ourselves the way they can. The idea of being able to exist in multiple bodies at the same time is outlandish for us, but androids are different. Their minds are just data to begin with...From their point of view, the same data is the same individual. It's something that humanity is going to have to accept and come to terms with. Death isn't death to an android unless all copies of their system are erased. Chloe, Colin, Connor, and Nines all backup their data on a daily basis in the event that something like this happening." He understood why they did it. From their point of view, it made sense. Three of them had dangerous jobs. Their bodies were likely to be damaged from time to time. Chloe was Elijah's most trusted assistant, his lover, and the Cyberlife mainframe. She needed to be backed up regularly, and there were even multiple versions of her active at the same time. What he couldn't handle was knowing that, in these two cases, Colin and Chloe had both been killed. Their consciousnesses had been lost. That meant that it was a new copy of their personality. A clone that had been downloaded to pick up where they'd left off.

"I get that's what they believe, but I just can't..." Gavin trailed off with a sigh. He didn't need to finish the thought. Marr understood he was having trouble coming to terms with the fact that he'd watched two people die and then come back as if nothing had happened. He wasn't sure which part got to him more. That they were clones, or that he'd been left alone to carry the memories by himself. No one else remembered what he'd been through, or how they'd died. Colin had seemed pretty nervous about not knowing what had happened. It was probably like having partial amnesia. A whole day of his existence was just gone. But from my point of view, that day isn't gone. Colin died, and then this new guy came and took his place!