I can’t believe how invested I became in androids William. He was literally the most stereotypical purple guy before I decided to give this au a makeover, and here I am completely changing William from murderous tyrant into harmless mentally unstable mess and actually GIVING him a background
So
William was born in Hurricane and raised in authoritarian family, though with high standards. He grew up obedient and well behaved kid with perfect grades and just all perfect because of a pressure and control from his overbearing family to be the best. The whole «this is our house our rules you’re going to obey them» lasted only while he was a child. Can't say they were necessarily abusive, but still...meh, emotional pressure sucks. There is actually a deep layered drama going on inside his family behind the impression of “completely normal just strict family" that I’ll explain later because:
1. this post is not about it
2. I don’t want to put too much info
But it’s still worth to mention that it’s a bad marriage and William’s birth was supposed to save/keep it, so in addition to everything William was burdened with a role of a fixer. He faced criticism of his choices and questioning of his motives when his way of thinking didn’t match his parents(aka almost always), and even with guilt tripping to comply with their wishes. I mentioned in very first posts that William has BPD, but his mental health was obviously ignored while he was with his family so he didn’t even know about his condition as it was worsening
During high school era William’s rebellious spirit began to emerge as he started pursuing adrenaline and freedom as well as going against his family’s authority after being suffocated and controlled his entire life. A desire for changes and independency mixed with a self-destructive behavior drew a large wedge in his relationship with family. Without his family knowing he worked on part-time job to earn enough money to stop being financially dependent. At 17 he bought a used motorcycle from one of his acquaintances, left Hurricane and moved to Las Vegas(I needed bigger city for this AU. Hurricane is just... bruh). There he enrolled in uni for the robotics course. William had been working night shift as a security guard to afford life. As he accessed to freedom he became completely unmanageable. He could go for a risky stuff like stealing just to amuse himself
He interned in android industry, and after graduating with the highest ranking degree he was immediately hired by it. During internship he met Henry who was already working there, and they quickly became fast friends. Their bond is very strong, almost like siblings. Henry was the first person who gave William support and whom William could finally trust. Henry was fascinated with William’s talent and willfulness so they teamed up to develop androids with unique realistic designs and highly advanced functionality so it would blow away the market. His skills eventually made him known as one of the most professional engineers and programmers. Springbonnie and Fredbear were the first androids he built, that’s why Spring is so special to him to this day
William is 27-28 years old in present days. Henry is older than him by two years
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AN: Not a request per se but rather a crack at @tea-with-loki ‘s “Torn in Two” Challenge. Just a short fic based off Breaking Benjamin’s song Torn in Two. Which I love Breaking Benjamin and it is a spectacular song and it gave me an idea. I had some requests for more Connor stories so here you go! I feel like this is total crap but here we go! I hope you enjoy the story! Disclaimer: I don’t own Detroit Become Human or its characters! Tagging: @glitch-girl318 because she wanted some more DBH and Connor content.
Word Count: 4k
Hold on, hold on/The fallen arise/Please/I will fight this war for you/And let the dawn of love survive/Broken, I crawl back to life
A beat up old car zipped quietly down the nearly empty freeway while the Android in the passenger seat sat quietly; processing everything that had happened and all possible outcomes. For once, he was at a loss. He was so trapped in his own head that he hadn’t noticed the contemplative silence had been broken, “-Connor? Connor!”
The android in question turned his head to glance at his partner, behind the wheel, “Yes, Lieutenant Anderson? How can I help you?”
“Jesus, kid! I’ve been trying to get your attention for a solid minute, now.” Hank turned off on the nearest exit before nodding toward Connor, “We’re almost there. What’s got your head up in the clouds, anyway?”
Connor cocked his head to the side, “Lieutenant? I’m sitting in your car with you there is no feasible way that my head could reach the cloud cover. Besides, the weather report doesn’t indicate any signs of-”
“It was an expression, Connor. Never mind, what exactly were you doing for the past ten minutes? You were staring off at nothing. It was getting a little creepy there.”
His indicator whirred momentarily as he took in the new information, “Understood, Hank. I was just running our new lead through my internal databases to see if anything more could be found but it’s as if there was something blocking my searches.”
“Something blocking your searches? How is that possible? I thought you were supposed to be Cyberlife’s most advance model or some shit like that.”
“It’s true that I am Cyberlife’s most advanced model but when I tried accessing files pertaining to Y/N L/N there’s nothing there. Or at the very least it seems as though there is some sort of wall blocking me from any further information.”
The man behind the wheel pulled the car over before raising an eyebrow, “A wall? I’ve never heard that one before. Well, if you can’t get anymore information your way then we’ll have to go about this the ole fashioned way. Come on.”
Connor didn’t quite understand the phrase but he followed Hank out of the car and up the steps of the modest home in front of him, “Y/N L/N, former employee of Cyberlife until 11 months ago. She was a former computer programmer and freelance data collector, correct?”
Hank hopped up the small flight of stairs toward the front doors, “That is what the file says or least what we were given access to. Although, I don’t quite understand that last piece of her job title. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”
------------
You nearly jumped at the sound of your doorbell. Who the hell would be visiting at this hour? You quickly set your tea kettle down on your stove and pattered off toward your front door. Cautiously you opened your door to see an older man giving you a tight smile. “Good evening, Ma’am. My name is Lieutenant Hank Anderson with the Detroit Police Department. I was hoping you could answer a few questions regarding a pending investigation.”
You couldn’t deny that the statement made you a little nervous, “I’m sorry, Lieutenant, but am I a suspect in this pending investigation?”
The man before you threw a dismissive hand, “No. Sorry, poor phrasing. You’re not in any trouble. We just had a few questions regarding your time at Cyberlife. If you don’t mind.”
“I’m sorry. We?”
The man quickly nodded his head and moved slightly to the left, revealing a sight that nearly stopped your heart, “Yes this is my partner. We’re investigating the recent rise in deviant related cases.”
Your heart pounded as you took in the sight of the android in front of you. He regarded you with a curious tilt of his head and a yellow flash of his LED, “Good evening, Ms. L/N. My name is Connor. I’m the android sent by Cyberlife.”
You couldn’t form any coherent words and until a cough broke you from your reverie, “Forgive me, Ms. L/N but you look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Quickly snapping back into the present, you moved slightly to your right, “As a matter of fact, Lieutenant, I have. Please come in… both of you.” When both men were inside you nervously closed the door behind them and began walking back towards your kitchen. “Can I offer you something to drink, Lieutenant? Some tea or coffee?”
The gruff voice resonated behind you, “Some coffee would be nice. Thank you.”
You gave a gentle nod, “Please have a seat and make yourselves comfortable.” You busied yourself with your coffee machine and tried your best to calm your breathing. With the steaming mug in hand you walked over to the table and passed it over to Anderson. Taking a seat across from both men, “So, you said you had some questions to ask me. I’m not sure how much use I’ll be or frankly how you found me.”
Connor was the one to speak up this time, “We attempted to gain information from Cyberlife’s former CEO but he was less than helpful in our investigation. However, he did mention your name and where we might be able to find you.”
You dropped your head into your hands, “Kamski. That bastard left years ago but he’s still managing to pull the strings. I haven’t spoken to Kamski in years but our working relationship was tense at best. I’m not sure what he promised you but I’ll try to give you some answers.”
The android looked at you and you saw his LED going haywire, “Forgive me but you seem familiar in some way. It’s odd but I get the sense that I know you but that can’t be right.”
Your heart began jumping wildly in your chest. This was a bad idea. You shouldn’t have been having this conversation. You swallowed nervously, “That doesn’t surprise me, Connor. But you shouldn’t be having those thoughts.”
Hank jumped in while Connor continued to process, “What does that mean, Ms. L/N? What exactly was your position at Cyberlife? According to what little we could find it says that you were a freelance data collector. I’ll admit I’ve never heard of what that position entails.”
Dragging a hand through your hair, you sighed, “You have to understand that whatever I tell you can’t leave this room. If Cyberlife got wind of the fact that I even talked about any of this. Well frankly, they could destroy me.” You looked anxiously to Connor who gave a tight nod, “During my time at Cyberlife I coded a number of android models from prototypes to actual marketable models. However, my work with prototypes put me out in the field to see how they responded to outside stimuli. Cyberlife was anxious to know whether or not their androids could perform their intended purposes. So, they sent me to oversee these field tests.”
“Well if you worked among all of these models and even coded them… surely you knew about deviancy within certain models. Do you know how exactly it started?”
You looked over at Anderson, “No one can really say. At least I know I can’t but then again I didn’t work for Cyberlife from its conception; I was hired later on. Although, I was aware of the deviancy issue. In fact, I was one of many tasked with trying to code a program that wouldn’t fall to deviancy. Then, inevitably I was ordered to field test the resulting product. The program coding was issued when deviancy began to pose any issue for Cyberlife’s integrity.”
You saw Connor’s LED blinking and turning rapidly forcing you to think that you had made the wrong choice in saying anything at all. His indicator continued to turn and change colors, “You worked on my programing?”
“You’re a prototype, Connor, one that took a great deal of effort before Cyberlife was satisfied with the results. I was one of the many that helped develop your software.”
More flashing of his indicator told you that he was trying to dig too deep, especially, when his indicator flashed red, “If you were in charge of field testing does that mean you worked with me?”
You quickly pushed away from your chair and got up, “I’ve already said more than I should have. Anything more and it would be dangerous territory. For all of its innovations and talk of helping humanity Cyberlife can be quite cruel. If they found out that I even had this conversation… Well, I’m not sure what the consequences would be. I’m sorry that I couldn’t be of more help to you, gentlemen.”
Connor stared at you intensely, his indicator a brilliant yellow, “Your scar… It’s less than a year old and I’m detecting titanium in your chest. A shattered collarbone?”
You hadn’t realized that your cardigan had slipped down revealing the marred pink tissue that started at your left shoulder. The lieutenant spoke up, “Less than a year? Is that why you left Cyberlife? You had an accident-”
You coughed uncomfortably, yanking your sweater back into place, “I didn’t leave Cyberlife. I was removed from Cyberlife there wasn’t any choice involved. Now I’m sorry but I’m going to have to ask you both to leave now.”
You quickly turned and walked back toward your front door until a hand grabbed your forearm. Pulling you to a stop Connor was making direct eye contact with you, “Please, you said you helped develop my software… You seem familiar to me but I can’t understand why. How is that possible?”
You pulled away and walked over to a nearby end table, scribbling something down on a piece of paper. You shoved the note into Connor’s hand, “I can’t tell you, Connor. The fact that you’re even detecting familiarity should be impossible. It’s dangerous. I can’t tell you anymore than I already have. I’m sorry.” You saw the Lieutenant walking slowly in to view so you turned and opened your front door, “I’m truly sorry that I couldn’t give you the answers that you wanted. Good night.”
With both men gone and your front door locked you finally allowed yourself to break. You let everything flood back in and let out a muffled sob into your palm. Damnit! This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of it was.
------------------
“Well, that was a waste of time. Wasn’t it?”
The android looked down at the crumpled piece of paper in his hands, “Perhaps, not. Lieutenant, the Department keeps a record of all major motor vehicle accidents in its database, correct?”
The man stopped short, “Yeah in severe cases. Why?”
Connor simply shrugged and walked toward Hank’s car, “I’m following a new lead.”
-------------------
Connor scanned the computer screen in front of him with Hank looming over his shoulder, “Monroe and Grand Avenue… October 4th, 2037. Two cars were involved, one fatality, but the victims are unlisted.”
Hank groaned, “This is your lead? How does this solve anything? It’s not even related to any of the deviancy cases. I’m sorry but you’re wasting your time, Connor.”
The indicator on his temple slowly began turning, “Perhaps, not. That woman worked on my programing and there is something about her that I can’t quite place. Maybe this is her way of helping somehow. She knows something but she’s too afraid to say anything. She may be lining up the evidence for me to piece together.”
Connor stood up and fixed his tie, causing Hank to raise a brow, “Where the hell are you going?”
“The license plate to one of the cars involved in the accident is listed in the report. It’s currently being held at an impound lot near Monroe Avenue. I’m going to investigate and see what, Y/N, was trying to tell me.”
Hank called out to the already retreating android, “I’m telling you it’s a waste of time Connor. That car has probably been broken down for scrap by now!”
----------------------
The impound lot was vast but the search time was cut down significantly with the help of one of the androids working within the lot. What was left of the vehicle was almost unrecognizable. A twisted heap of metal only distinguishable by the license plate that was miraculously still intact. The passenger side of the car had obviously taken the initial force of impact although the driver’s side was also fairly damaged. The passenger door was gone, allowing Connor to slip inside and scan the dashboard. Jagged pieces of metal twisted out from the door frame and dashboard covered in now dried splashes of blood. The samples were old but his analysis confirmed that the blood belonged to Y/N L/N.
You were sitting in the passenger seat while someone else drove when another car collided with your side. With the level of damage inflicted both vehicles had to be moving at incredibly high speeds. Moving towards the driver’s side the scene seemed to be less gruesome aside from a bent steering wheel. However, a more in-depth scan revealed the nearly invisible traces of thirium dried by time and undetectable to most. Cautiously attempting to take a sample of the thirium sent off warnings in his head that was almost disorienting. Pushing through the warning signs he tried once more to process the sample.
That was impossible. Up until a few weeks ago he was still within Cyberlife’s confines there was no way he could have been here. He couldn’t have been driving this car with you in the passenger seat. Could he? Connor dragged his attention away from the steering wheel and up towards the cracked rearview mirror. The image of his own face sent shockwaves of red warning lights through his system. Urging him to clutch his own head.
Warning! ^^^Software Instability^^^
Glancing into the rearview mirror Connor grew more and more anxious, “We lost him. The route that I calculated should have put him on this route.”
Staring down at your datapad, you tried to calm him down, “I’m trying to track his car now. Just keep heading down this street.” A blip finally appeared on your tablet and you hardly had a moment to process before looking up, “Connor, on the left! Watch out!”
The Android looked to his left but not fast enough to avoid the speeding car that slammed into the side of your vehicle. The cacophony of broken glass, screeching tires, and twisting metal was suddenly cut off by a dull ringing that faded slowly into a blaring car horn. Connor’s vision kicked back in and he took in his situation. The steering wheel was pinning him to his seat and there were several pieces of metal protruding from his legs. Suddenly, his thoughts snapped to you and the sight kicked his biocomponents into overdrive. You were slumped forward and unmoving; a quick scan told him that you were still breathing. Your pulse was weakening but you were alive… barely alive.
Gripping the steering wheel that was holding him in place, Connor grabbed the wheel and began bending it forward giving him more mobility. Next, he reached down and gripped the pieces of metal piercing his legs. Though he couldn’t feel any pain it still took a great deal of effort to pull each piece from his body finally allowing him to move. His legs nearly gave out but he was able to hobble over to the passenger side assessing your condition. You had multiple puncture wounds near your shoulders that were slowly bleeding out; they were the immediate threat. Your collarbone was also shattered, you had several broken ribs, and quite probably a concussion. Quickly turning to the car directly to his left he scanned the WR 300 android behind the wheel from where he was standing; the deviant was severely damaged and had 3 minutes before his shutdown was unavoidable.
Connor should have interrogated the deviant probed his memory to complete his mission. His programming was screaming at him to complete his mission but he just couldn’t do it. Not with you barely clinging to life. He pulled himself over toward you and with all of his strength ripped the passenger door from its hinges; tossing it aside. He quickly tapped his indicator calling emergency services, “There was a major car crash along the intersection of Monroe & Main Avenue. One human and one android are severely injured and need immediate care.”
With the call out of the way, Connor, tried to remove the seatbelt keeping you in place. The small movement caused you to ebb out a pained whine, “Connor? Connor?”
The thirium pump in his chest began pumping faster, “Shhhh, Y/N, I’m right here. You’re going to be okay. Help is on the way. Just stay awake for me okay.”
You threw a pitiful hand in his direction, trying to halt his movements, “No, Connor, forget about me. You need to get that deviant. Your mission is the only thing that matters. Don’t worry about me…”
Your voice had grown so weak and your heartrate slowed down slightly, Connor felt a warm liquid slipping down his cheeks. He was crying? The tears only fell faster as he listened to you, “No, Y/N, I’m not leaving you. Don’t you remember what I told you?”
Suddenly Connor began to see flashes of what he assumed were more memories. The feeling of your hair between his fingers like silk flowing through his grasp. The sensation of a pleasant fire in the wake of where your fingers slid up and down his synthetic skin. Your eyes and smile captivating his attention and the thought that nothing had seemed so beautiful to him.
Suddenly Connor was cupping your face, caressing it with his fingers, “With you, I can’t explain it, Y/N.” You just turned your head to the side and grinned, “When I’m around you… when I’m with you I feel alive.”
Your face immediately became serious as you cupped one of Connor’s hands with your own, “Connor, you can’t say something like that. If that got out to Cyberlife it won’t end well. Promise me, you won’t think that way, again.”
“I can’t help it. When you’re not around I feel broken and empty but then you’re there and suddenly I’m alive again.” Before you could form a rebuttal, he had already brought his lips to yours which you returned hesitantly.
The memory stopped, and Connor felt the sensation of tears again rolling down his cheeks. He had known you. He had worked with you. And perhaps the scariest thought of all he had loved you and the pumping in his chest told him that he still did. He looked up again at the rearview mirror at the tears running tracks down his face and he was transported once more.
Hearing your whines of pain Connor wiped his eyes, and cooed, “It’s alright. I’m going to try and get you out of this, Y/N. Just stay with me.”
Connor braced your shoulder and back before attempting to pull you off the metal bar that held you firmly to the dashboard. As soon as he started to move you, you let out an ear-splitting shriek of pain that filled Connor with dread. Where the hell was emergency services? You sobbed pitifully, “Connor, I can’t do this… I can’t. You have to leave me and get that deviant we’re out of time.”
Connor shook his head putting pressure on your bleeding wounds, “No I’m not leaving you. The mission doesn’t matter your life is more important right now. Even Cyberlife would understand that.”
You weakly shook your head, “No, they won’t. Connor just go if Cyberlife sees you like this they could wipe your memories or worse. Don’t think about me right now.”
Connor didn’t know where the sudden anger came from, “Y/N, you could die! I can’t leave you, here. Not when I- I love you, Y/N.”
Pushing a hand toward his cheek you tried to smile, “I’m not dying, Connor. I’m right here.”
What remained of the vision was ambulances and Cyberlife arriving. Leading Connor to watch helplessly as your limp body was loaded into the ambulance; your vitals growing weaker and weaker by the moment. He pleaded to be let into the back of the ambulance to make sure you made it but he was denied several times. Cyberlife demanding that he was in desperate need of repairs before being shoved into a vehicle along with the inert deviant. His memory suddenly cut off at that point and he couldn’t recall anything more.
Coming back to himself, Connor knew that there was only one thing he could do now. So, he took off running and hailed a taxi.
------------------
It was nearly one in the morning when you heard the insistent pounding on your door. You quickly made your way to the door looking through the peephole. Your breath caught and you couldn’t decide if it was best to just not answer the door. After another minute of knocking you took in Connor’s form, now drenched by the sudden onslaught of rain. “Y/N…” Tears began to brim in your eyes as he continued, “I remember… I was the one driving that night. We were trying to catch a rogue android but our cars collided. I was terrified that you weren’t going to make it… that you were dying and I couldn’t leave your side.”
You let a few tears slip down your cheeks, “I didn’t die, Connor. I came back but you didn’t. I woke up weeks later in the hospital greeted by Cyberlife saying that you had been reset and your programming would need more testing. Cyberlife cut me off and left me in that hospital and I couldn’t have any contact with you.”
Connor took a step forward, grabbing your hand, “I remembered more. What I said to you almost a year and a half ago and on the night of the accident. When I’m with you I feel alive. But without you I’m broken and barely living. I know that now.”
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Summary: Artificial memories were the key to an efficient, stable system. Real, human memories were the key so something so much more.
Blade Runner 2049 x Detroit: Become Human
Slight Connor x Reader
You stood there on that lonely street corner, quiet and deserted now that the evacuation of the city was nearly complete. Only those few that chose to stay, chose to show the world that human and android could live together in peace remained now. Like the decorated police Lieutenant that stood silently beside you on the snow-covered curb.
Like you.
You had been expecting far more resistance when you had reached out to him, not that you could blame him. Cyberlife had spearheaded the search and destruction of its own creation, and after everything that the man had been through to protect his partner a little hostility was, in your opinion, warranted. After all, how could he possibly know about all the times you spoke out against the atrocities your employers had committed against the beings they had created to serve humanity? Your words had been silenced the moment they left your mouth, and you had been firmly corrected back into your own lane under the coercion of cloaked threats.
How could he possibly know about your secret mission to silently and discreetly sabotage the global, multi-billion-dollar company from the inside? They had hired you to create. To formulate mild-tempered personalities that would easily assimilate into humankind. To craft memories to balance the delicate yet complicated series of programming that mimicked real life. In short, they knew the fatal flaw in their design. They knew they had spawned the inevitable possibility of existential crisis and future revolution in the ‘mindless’ and ‘obedient’ machines they had built and robbed of free will, and they had hired you to prevent it. Monsters parading as humans paying top dollar for a speck of falsified humanity.
All you did was take advantage of their ignorance.
“He won’t bite.”
Your head snapped to the left at the sound of a rough voice, tearing your eyes away from the stiff, solitary figure that stood outside the deserted food truck on the opposite street corner, completely unaware of your presence to the bearded face of the older man you had nearly forgotten was there.
“He may try to lick ya if you’re bleedin’, but that’s about it.”
It was several moments before your overworked brain registered his attempt at humor. The corners of your mouth lifted ever so slightly, but not quite enough to loosen the tight knots that had twisted into your chest over years of secrecy and treason. It wasn’t his fault. You doubted there was a joke in the world capable of lightening the mood. His tired face softened with understanding as he shifted awkwardly beside you, clearing his throat before trying again.
“For what it’s worth,” he began softly, placing a gentle hand on your shoulder. “He’ll be glad to meet you.”
A brotherly grin stretched across his face, his eyes glazing over as he retreated momentarily into his own mind.
“He’s funny like that.”
Your tight, almost painful smile eased as you watched the warm emotions play across his face, whatever memory he fell back into playing out behind his eyes. You always knew Connor was special. All too soon he shook himself out of his reverie, his shaggy length of hair flopping about his face. With the mist now cleared from his eyes, he gave you the kind of lingering look that gave you the impression he knew much more than he let on before releasing your shoulder with a squeeze. You watched as he turned on his heel to make his way down the sidewalk, stomach churning as the realization set in that though you knew he would fulfill his promise of a private, uninterrupted meeting, you hadn’t actually had time to think about your endgame.
What the hell were you supposed to say?
“Lieutenant,” you blurted, mostly to stop the miniscule contents of your stomach from making a reappearance.
He came to a lazy stop, turning to peer over his shoulder with a knowing smile. You swallowed thickly, forcing the lump back down your throat to allow for the passage of intelligible words.
“Thank you.”
Your voice had dropped to barely above a whisper, yet somehow the weathered detective still managed to hear it over the early winter wind. He studied your face for a moment, grin growing wider as he acknowledged your gratitude with a nod before resuming his trek down the deserted streets of Detroit. Your eyes remained glued to his retreating back for several more seconds, fingers flexing and cracking nervously, palms somehow sweaty despite the biting cold. You’d been waiting for this moment. You’d gone to incredible lengths to get to this moment.
Yet somehow, you felt the uncontrollable urge to run in the same direction of the slouched figure growing smaller in your sight.
It was with great effort that you forced your muscles to cooperate, wrenching your head back around to face the slender figure that shuffled his feet in place, nimble fingers flipping a small silver coin with his own simple kind of flair. Warmth blossomed in your chest at his familiar motions, and it was brief, fleeting moment that you entertained the thought that he had managed to hold on the same one this whole time.
Without any conscious effort of your own you found yourself drifting closer, dropping off the small, sharp step where the concrete ended and the asphalt began, shoes crunching on the freshly fallen snow that blanketed the blacktop. He still hadn’t seen you, keen eyes still darting back and forth, following the rapid movement of the small metallic gleam that leapt between his hands. Despite his change of wardrobe, he was just as you remembered him.
You were close, now. Close enough to hear the ping his fingertips made against the edge of the quarter, close enough to hear the crunch of his own heels against the crisp white powder. In one swift, clean motion, the coin stilled, pinched skillfully between two fingers with an impossible kind of ease. His chin snapped up as you approached, the small white flecks that clung to his hair shaking loose to tumble across his shoulders, and in his eyes you saw his own apprehension. You didn’t know what Lieutenant Anderson had told him to get him here, but after the events of the last several days, you were sure it wouldn’t have mattered.
Time slowed to a halt as your feet sank into place in the snow, your eyes locked together as you regarded each other from across the short distance. You tried to read his guarded expression, but you were having a difficult enough time keeping your own stampeding emotions in check, so instead you fought the urge to squirm under his scrutiny, mind racing to produce something, anything, to break the excruciating silence that stretched between you. You opened your mouth in a desperate, last ditch effort to simply force the sound out and hope that words took shape, but not so much as an undignified croak passed your lips.
The thought surfaced in the shipwreck of your battered mind that maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.
“I…” he began suddenly, his low, strained voice startling you out of your own thoughts, the dark eyes still fixed firmly on your face narrowing. “I know you.”
You sucked in a sharp breath, a hot, sharp sting blooming at the back of your eyes.
“Yes,” you gasped, stirring up your already frenzied thoughts and thrusting them into absolute chaos. “Yes, we- “
Your throat slammed shut, crushing the jumble of words you still tried to make sense of.
“We go… way back…” you finished lamely after another long moment, cringing internally at the sound of your own voice.
That wasn’t at all what you wanted to say.
Not that you knew what you wanted to say in the first place.
“Why do I know you?” he whispered into the evening air, desperation lacing his voice.
How long he had gone with only questions, and never answers.
“I don’t- “
Your heart constricted as he blinked rapidly, his LED spiraling yellow before flickering into a blinking red.
“We’ve never met,” he said firmly, as if convincing himself as well. “Why do I remember you?”
Your chest tightened, the deep, shaky breath you drew in only stretching the pain that lanced through your lungs rather than unraveling the knots that kept you from speaking. They wiped his memory before sending him out in the field, of course, but standard memory wipes had no effect on long-term memory. On your domain.
“I’m… I was… the lead programmer in charge of personality and …memory… development,” you choked through the pain, forcing yourself to hold his gaze despite your overwhelming desire to turn away from the turmoil you found there. “I… I wrote your story, Connor. And many others before, and after, you.”
Realization blossomed in his eyes, and suddenly it felt as if he were looking at an old friend.
“My memories,” he mumbled, the neat circle on his temple slowing and fading back to a circling yellow. “You gave them to me.”
You nodded, the first of what you were sure to be many tears streaking a cold trail down your face.
“You… you made them for me.”
The heat of your exhale puffed into a small, swirling cloud as you took another trembling breath.
It was now or never.
“I did more than that,” you whispered as if confessing a dark secret.
His mouth snapped shut, confusion etching deep lines into his smooth face. Of course, he wouldn’t understand. After all, it was against the law.
“Androids born into such hard lives,” you began, the even cadence of your voice surprising you. “Created to do all the things we would rather not. What I did… it was… a mercy.”
The flashing memories of thousands of lifeless eyes and expressionless faces sent a fresh wave of nausea bubbling low in your stomach.
“I couldn’t give you better lives, but I could give you something nice to look back on and smile.”
He tilted his head to the side, his soft smile somehow making you feel worse.
“That’s very kind,” he murmured.
“It’s more than kind,” you replied. “It feels real. But life, real life, real people… deserve real memories.”
You watched the spark ignite behind his cautious gaze. He didn’t understand fully, not yet, but he was beginning to.
“It was against the law, of course,” you continued before you lost your nerve, already you could hear the tremor returning to your voice, “even though memory extraction was a science they perfected a long time ago. The legal issues alone kept them from taking it to the market, but it didn’t stop them from testing internally. The alpha stage alone collected thousands of memories all stored in the main database for various research purposes, one of which being the first-generation androids.”
It was if the dam inside you had broken and all the poisonous lies and secrets you had kept locked away for so long flowed from your lips like a raging river.
“It was… chaos. The processing systems couldn’t handle the strain of raw, human emotion within the tight confines of the first artificial-intelligence module. After cleaning up the mess, they built barriers, fail-safes, firewalls, yet still the fear remained that the humanity within real memories could spark something… more. At least, that’s what the official records state.”
It wasn’t until the sharp pain exploded across your palms that you realized you were clenching your fists.
“It just… When I took the job I just… I knew something was off. So, I dug. And dug. And discovered… nothing. The data from that generation doesn’t exist. They already discovered memories were a key element in maintaining a stable system. If real memories were so dangerous, why hide the evidence?”
His eyes never left yours, tracking your subtle movements and clinging to your every word.
“No one could tell me, and when I asked too many questions they made it clear my tenacity wasn’t welcome. So, I took matters into my own hands.”
That spark ignited into a full flame of understanding.
“You implanted a real memory into the memory archive of an android.”
It wasn’t an accusation, it was a fact. He understood, now. You nodded, sinking your teeth into the soft flesh of your bottom lip to stop it from quivering. The harsh lines in his face softened into gentle curiosity.
“What happened?”
A nervous, knowing smile tugged at the corners of your mouth.
“You know what happened,” you whispered.
Yellow.
Red.
His eyes widened, lips parting in shock.
“RA9,” he breathed. “You… you created him.”
You shook your head solemnly, blinking away the blur of unshed tears.
“No. He was already there, locked away inside. I just… gave him the key.”
Another long silence settled between you, much like the snow that still fluttered down from the sky.
“What happened to him?” Connor asked at last, his usually steady voice cracking under the strain.
You shrugged.
“I don’t know. I waited for them to come for me, convinced I hadn’t done enough to edit the memory and cover my tracks, but they never did. They erased him just like they did Generation One.”
More silence.
“You didn’t stop.”
Again, his voice held no accusation. He knew what you did, because he knew you. Even if he didn’t know it yet.
“No,” you affirmed. “I didn’t. I should have, but I… couldn’t. I had seen what they were really afraid of. That the slaves they had created weren’t the mindless beings they were intended to be. They were alive. I didn’t even need access to the memory archives of every android, all it took was a few. A single touch, a single connection with an android with an implanted memory and the transference was complete. The key to freedom was passed on.”
You paused, taking a moment to gather your thoughts before continuing.
“But you, Connor. You were… special.”
He tilted his head to the side, confusion once again flooding his eyes.
“A single memory was enough to break through the programming on every model but yours.”
He smiled a sad, ironic smile.
“I was programmed to hunt deviants.”
You returned his smile, giving a small nod.
“Yes. I knew the copies of the memories stored in the database wouldn’t be enough so… I connected my mind to yours.”
His smile melted off his face as he took in the meaning behind your words.
“Direct transference,” you confirmed factually through the lump that had risen back up your throat. “It was the only way.”
His eyes dropped away from yours for the first time as he visually struggled to re-center himself.
“But… Amanda… she said it was planned…”
You hated the desperate look in his troubled gaze as it slowly lifted back to yours.
“No, Connor. She would have said anything to get what she wanted.”
Your voice cracked with emotion you had firmly repressed until this point, reaching the part of the story you had dreaded most.
“I’m sorry, Connor,” you choked. “That night… When they took control… I wasn’t as careful as I should have been”
Your fingers subconsciously drifted towards your temple, wincing at the ghost-touch of the probes they had used to ensure your compliance.
“It was my fault. I… I did it. Those memories, they should have protected you, but they used me and they found their way in. I could have killed you, I almost killed you- ”
He was before you in a flash, a gentle hand taking hold of your upper arm as he angled his face to gaze down into your eyes.
“You freed me,” he said simply. “I’ll never be able... I can’t...”
He trailed off, expansive vocabulary failing him as he searched aimlessly for the right words. You smiled. He didn’t need to speak the words you knew he was desperate to put voice to. He was free. It worked. That was enough.
“Are… are you staying in Detroit?” he asked at last, voice soft and unsure.
You nodded wordlessly, placing a reassuring hand over the one that still gently cupped your arm.
“I… I know I already have your memories,” he said sheepishly, “but… I’d really like to get to know you.”
You pulled his hand away from the thick fabric of your coat to entwine your fingers with his.
“I would like that.”
Your smile widened as his fingers tightened around your hand.
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“I’m pretty sure nurse maid isn’t part of my job description.” Lacey said.
“You’re the project manager. Babysitting is pretty much what project managers do.”
(part 2 of 3)
When she got off work she headed over to talk to Ruby at the diner. She would still need to work some shifts at the diner to eat and keep the lights on until her first paycheck came in. Besides she wanted to see if anybody had shown any interest in the roommate ad she had tacked to the bulletin board.
Seemed like her luck was starting to look up. She had managed not to get fired from Golden Hat and Ruby said someone had asked about the apartment.
“So what's with Gold and Jeff?” She asked Ruby. “They're a lot more than business partners. I mean, Gold reminds him to take his meds. But my gaydar isn't getting any pings off either of them and they don't live together.”
Ruby shrugged. “Don't know. I always figured they were a couple.”
Granny sniffed as she came in from the kitchen. “You girls. Not everything is about sex.”
“Only the good stuff.” Lacey put in before Ruby could. Granny took lip from her that she would never stand for from Ruby. “C'mon Granny. I'm going to be working for them. Give a girl some context?”
Granny went over to get herself some coffee. Clearly she was in the mood for a gossip. “Well, they're both from away so I don't know a lot about them.”
Which only meant she could not tell you their birth weight and great-grandparent's favorite color. Lacey made a 'go on' noise.
“Seems like Gold and Jeff's late wife, Alice, worked together at some big computer company.” Granny took a minute get just the right amount of milk and sugar in her coffee. Then she came over with the pot to freshen Lacey's. “Microsoft? Apple? I forget.
“Gold moved here when his wife, Milah – nasty piece of work that. Always trying to trying to rile folks up about some environmental thing or another.”
“She's the one who got Styrofoam banned.” Ruby clearly remembered.
“Ayuh.” Granny nodded. “She got a job at the NOAA station down the coast. He trailed along after her. Guess you can fix computers pretty much anywhere so it sort of made sense that they'd go where her job took them. Anyway, they settled here rather than down the coast cause old Doc's place was up for sale and it was zoned so as he could run his business from there.
“Give Gold credit, he's a savvy business man.” Granny admitted reluctantly. “Not only does he manage to save cost of renting store space by running it out of that house, but he managed to take the money from the place they owned before they moved here and spread it out to buy up other properties besides the house. Owns the building the Rabbit Hole is in and that little strip mall on the highway.”
Which probably made him a force to be reckoned with in Storybrooke.
“Anyway, Milah didn’t last very long with NOAA. Too much of a rabble rouser at a guess. Got a job studying the ocean with some environmental group. Leaving Gold to manage a toddler on his own as well as run a business.” Granny shook her head. “Lot of the town disapproved. Me, well women have been doing that for centuries without anybody getting het up about it. And Gold didn’t seem to mind.”
“So how does Jeff fit into this?” Lacey asked.
“Jeff’s wife, Alice came to town to work with Gold on some job he was doing for the state.” Granny frowned. “She explained it to me once, but I didn’t understand one word in five. There was quite some talk about that. Young woman, staying with a married man whose wife was out of town. Although it was only for a month or so before Jeff turned up and the two of them bought that big old place on the edge of town. Guess they liked Storybrooke. Their little girl came along shortly after that.
“The three of them, Gold, Alice and Jeff set up in business together. Milah started coming home less and less frequently. Seems she found herself another man and eventually Gold divorced her and got custody of the boy.
“About three, no four years ago now, Jeff and Alice were in a bad car accident. She died. He was in hospital for a long time and recovering in a nursing home for months after that. Gold took in the little girl and looked after her while Jeff was recovering. Which caused even more talk, because folks remembered how Alice had lived with Gold for a while so of course claimed little Grace was his rather than Jeff’s.”
“Is she?” Jeff clearly did not think so.
“Unlikely as Alice was a good four months gone when she came to town.” Granny shook her head. “Too many people in this town don’t have a lick of sense, but talk anyway.”
The next day, Gold handed her some cheat sheets on how to use the bookkeeping system along with a box of financial records and told her, “You said you were good at bookkeeping. Make yourself useful.”
The spreadsheet Gold had set up proved to be pretty intuitive and the books were not actually in that bad a shape. She was running a report on the accounts receivable when the phone rang with a repair problem. Gold had come upstairs in search of tea so just took the phone from her when she waved it at him. She listened in out of curiosity.
“Have you rebooted the machine?” Clearly the answer was yes. “And what does the error message say? Right. I should be there in half an hour or so. In the meantime disconnect the other machines from the local area network. If you’re lucky it’s not a virus, but lets not take the chance.”
When he got off the phone, he told her. “This will be your trial by fire, Dearie. Keep an eye on Jeff. He looks like he’s heading into an upswing. So don’t let him decide to rewrite all of the game he’s been working on. Take the calls that come in. If there’s a real emergency call or text me. My cell is 2 on the speed dial. Keep the kids from burning down the house as best you can.”
As it turned out it was a quiet afternoon. Neal was working on an essay in the kitchen and Jeff decided to take Grace paint-balling. Lacey decided that he was the boss and if he wanted to take off early it was none of her business. Besides if he was paint-balling she did not have to worry about what he might be doing to the code Gold was concerned about.
Neal would clearly have rather gone paint-balling, but he had dutifully turned down the invitation to work on his essay.
Lacey offered him tea and sympathy or rather. “You want a scone? There are a couple left from yesterday.”
“Sure.” He perked up at the offer of food. They had a fairly companionable afternoon with him working on his essay and Lacey researched project scheduling programs. Cause the one she had used at Megacorp was overkill for a three person company.
“This spreadsheet program you’ve put together for your bookkeeping isn’t a half bad system.” Lacey admitted when she and Gold took their Elevenses the next morning. “Input’s easy and you can tweak the data in all kinds of ways.”
“Thank you.” Gold told her. “It’s actually a visible programmable calculator that I designed to blend spreadsheet/calculator/programming functions. I’ve upgraded it over the years as new devises and operating systems came along. I even got it so that it will run on Android now if you want to load it on your phone. Uhm, if you want?”
Lacey had gotten good enough at tech speak to understand just why that made the program so handy. It would be definitely be good to have on her phone. “Thanks. How come I’ve never heard of this? You need a better marketing campaign.”
“I can’t market it. I don’t own the rights. And you’ve never heard of it because I developed the original program as a work for hire while I was working for Enchanted Software and we sold exactly 113 copies of Vizeercalc before the company was acquired by Ogre Inc.” Gold grimaced. “Ogre bought Enchanted to kill all it’s product lines. We were in direct competition with Ogre, and the software Alice and I were designing was better than the stuff Ogre was selling.”
“That sucks.” Lacey said. “Is that why you started Golden Hat?”
“It was a consquence. I quit in a huff when they killed distribution of our software. I went into business fixing computers because I didn’t understand my employment agreement when I signed on with Enchanted.” Gold sighed. “I’ll never make that mistake again. There was a non-compete clause in the contract I had with Enchanted that basically wouldn’t allow me to do any kind of programming that was the same as what I had done while I worked with them. Which pretty much kept me from getting another job in the industry.”
Glancing at the spreadsheet on her computer, Lacey commented. “You couldn’t have programmed a version of this to run on Android back before Neal was born. Did they even have Android back then?”
“It was just getting started.” Gold grinned. “According to our lawyer, remind me to introduce you to Regina the next time we talk to her by the way, stuff I do for my own personal use isn’t covered by the non-compete. I just can’t market it. So I keep updating it to run on whatever devices I’m currently using.”
“Is giving me a copy okay?” Not that she cared.
“Probably not, but I doubt you and Jeff having copies is going to make it worth Ogre’s while to sue me.”
Gold was out when she got a frantic call from Ariel over at the cannery. The cannery was on a service contract. “Our system is all locked up and I’m already behind on payroll. If it isn’t up and running in the next hour nobody will get paid tomorrow!”
Which would mean a serious hit to the town economy. The cannery was the town’s largest employer.
And Gold was out on a service call.
But according to Gold’s notes they were running a fairly standard server. “Have you tried turning it off and on?” She asked.
“I don’t know how!” Ariel wailed. “We never turn the darn thing off.”
“Okay, go down to the server room and call me from there. I’ll talk you through it.”
It was the work of only a few minutes to reboot the server.
“It worked!” Ariel crowed. “Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. You’re a life saver!”
“It’s what we do.” Lacey told her smugly. And booked it into the log as a service call.
When Gold looked at the log the next day he said, “I don’t remember talking to the cannery yesterday. Did you put this in wrong?”
“No, I talked to them.” Lacey told him proudly. “They just needed to reboot the server, but they didn’t know how so I told them. You know for simple stuff like that I could help people. You should give me a list of diagnostic questions to ask so you don’t have to call them back before you head out on service calls.”
“I’ll think about it.”
In the meantime she got started up upgrading the company website. The research she had done made it clear they really needed to add a blog feature to increase traffic. There was easy off the shelf software to set it up with. She just needed to come up with a name and some stuff to blog about.
Her duties were certainly varied. They seemed to include helping Grace with her homework and helping Neal make flashcards for the team to practice with for the STEMletics as well as the computer stuff.
Thursday night she made up a strawberry trifle to serve Neal’s team as an after school snack. If she was doing this she was doing it right.
Gold blinked at it in surprise. “Uhm, I really wasn’t expecting you to feed the kids. I’ve left meat pies for them. Well some meat and some veg without the meat. Morraine decided to become a vegetarian last summer. There’s plenty for you and Jeff to have for lunch.”
“They’re teenagers. They’ll eat both.” She put her trifle in the fridge next to the containers of pies. “Make it back early enough and I’ll try to save you some.”
The team consisted of Morraine, August, Emma and Neal. They seemed like good kids. A whole lot less rowdy than she and her friends had been. The trifle was a big hit. Lacey ended up setting up a buzzer system that they could use on their phones to mimic the way the real competition would go. She had to wonder why their coach had not thought to do it.
“How long has Jeff been working on this game of his?” She asked Gold over tea the following week.
“This game?” He had to think about it. “I’m not sure. More than a year.”
“He anywhere near finishing it?”
“I haven’t looked at the code recently.” Rum admitted. “Usually he gets it about ninety percent done and then loses interest so I set a release deadline and go in and finish things off for him. But I’ve been so busy with other stuff I haven’’t had the time.
“Although your doing the admin work has freed up some time. I probably could go over it.”
“I was thinking if you could tell me what need to be done I could break it up into modules and set a time line for completing the work. It might help him stay on track better.”
Gold considered. “That might work. Just don’t set up a schedule that’s too tight. If he can’t complete it, he’ll just get anxious and that’s not good.”
“So you tell me how long it should take and we double the time so he doesn’t have trouble meeting the goals.” She suggested. “It’s not like we’re on a real deadline here.”
“Triple it to be on the safe side.”
Jeff actually seemed pleased to have been put on a schedule. Lacey had the impression it made him feel more professional.
The end of the month rolled around. She and Gold had her ‘performance review’. Or rather he told her over morning tea. “You’ve actually done wonders for Jeff. I haven’t seen him this happy with his work since the accident. Which in turn keeps him more… stable mentally. And I got far more work done this month than usual. So if you want to stay on you’re welcome to, but you could do much better career wise and financially at a larger company. Why stay with us?”
“Cause I need to stay in Maine because of my Dad.” She told him honestly.
“He’s ill?” Gold asked sympathetically.
“No, he’s on parole.” She thought the entire town knew this. “He got involved in a money laundering scheme. He gambles and his bookie had him doing that to pay off his losses. Only he was crap at it and got caught. We managed to keep him out of prison, but as part of his parole he can’t have anything to do with money or banking so I have to do all that for him.”
“So you’re staying in town to look after your felon father?” Gold was incredulous.
She shrugged. “He’s a good Dad. I mean he gets on my case about the way I dress and the time I spend at the Rabbit Hole, but he loves me and he’d do anything for me. He’s just crap with money. You do for family right? Sometimes even when they’re not blood. I mean look at you and Jeff.”
“It’s the family you choose that’s important.” Gold told her quietly. “You’re lucky to have that kind of relationship with your Dad.”
So she stayed at Golden Hat. Helping Grace with her home work and the team practice for the competition. With all the work she put in she had to go see them compete. Even if it meant missing Girl’s Night with Ruby.
“Let me get this straight.” Ruby said. “You’re skipping out on Girl’s Night on me to go watch a bunch of Junior High School kids answering nerdy questions?”
Put like that it was kind of weird. She tried to explain. “I’m kinda their coach. And I’m not skipping out I just won’t be able to get there much before ten.”
“Yeah, sure. It’s all about the kids. Nothing to do with your driving over there with Gold.” Ruby smirked. “I get it. Well it’s no fun going for drinks by myself. Tell you what. Come get me when the nerd fest is finished. We can still shoot some pool and get a couple of drinks.”
Clearly Ruby had the wrong idea. But denying it would do more harm than good.
She had Google News set up to alert her for breaking tech news. Most of it was just boring release announcements. Occasionally it helped her find stuff to write about for the company blog. Although the most hits they had ever had came from the post Neal convinced her to do about her scone recipe. She was thinking of doing a follow up to it about Gold’s meat pies.
This alert caught her eye though. She sent the link down to Gold. Then stuck her head down the stairs and shouted. “Hey. Rum, I just sent you a link you’re gonna want to look at. Your nemesis, Ogre Inc., just got forced into bankruptcy.”
Jeff poked his head out. “What’s that?”
“Ogre missed the release date on that security patch they’ve been promising on their bookkeeping program for like the third time. Apparently it was the last straw and their creditors have forced them into bankruptcy.” Lacey told him.
“Oh, joyous day!” Jeff clapped and did a little dance. “Couldn’t happen to a nastier bunch of people. Where’s the story? Any chance they fired that bully Hordor? He used to make Alice so angry she’d come home and cry.”
“From the article is sounds like pretty much everybody’s getting sacked.” Lacey pointed at her computer where the article was still up.
Jeff was reading through the article when the phone buzzed for the intercom system. Gold told her brusquely. “Send Regina the link to the story and set up a conference call with her as soon as she’s available.”
She had not been aware that Gold even knew how to use the intercom on the phone system. He usually just came (or shouted) up stairs when he had something to tell her. Figuring it must be important, she called the lawyer as soon as he hung up.
They lucked out and Regina was at her desk. By the time Lacey had the equipment set up, Gold appeared from his lair with a rather tattered file folder.
He started even before he was seated at the table with the speaker phone they used for conference calls. “Did you get a chance to look at the news story?”
“I’ve got it in front of me now.” Regina said.
“Am I right that this will put the company out of business and the Court will sell off the assets?”
“Well, there is always a chance they’ll be able to find someone who will want to buy it as an ongoing operation, but my experience with software company bankruptcies is that usually there’s only a few items of real value that get cherry picked and the rest will get auctioned off or sold to liquidators.” Regina told him. “You want a souvenir?”
“I do.” Jeff said. “Think we can get that fancy sculpture that was in the executive lounge?”
But Gold was serious. “If we were able to buy back the rights to Vizeercalc, is there anything in my non-compete that would keep us from being able to market it ourselves?”
“Hmm. That’s an interesting question.” Regina said. “I’ll pull the non-compete and review it, but I don’t think so.”
“Do that.” Gold went on. “What would we need to do to try and buy it back?”
“You say it’s an involuntary filing? Contact the Court appointed Trustee and see what he wants for it.” Regina responded.
“Can you do that for us?” Gold asked. “As soon as possible. We don’t want to lose it to somebody else.”
“I’ve got the contact information for the Trustee.” Lacey spoke up. She had started looking as soon as Gold had asked about Vizeercalc.
“Email it to me and I’ll talk to him.” Regina closed with.
There was a moment of silence after that. Then Jeff said. “You’d need to modernize the user interface if you plan to market Vizeercalc. It works fine but the look is too old fashioned for the current market.”
“You don’t want to modernize it too much.” Lacey disagreed. “Part of what makes it easy to use is that the menus are obvious. Or you could do two versions one with symbols and one with the words you’ve got now.”
“Or have both options available.” Jeff considered. “It’s easy to add a couple of different style plug ins without adding much blot to the program.”
“We have to get the rights first.” Gold was rubbing his fingers together. “I’m not getting my hopes up. I’ve been disappointed over this thing far too often.”
But that afternoon, Lacey found Jeff with a couple of different user interface options open on his screens. “I thought we were waiting to see if we could actually get the program before we started working on it?”
“I’m just checking style libraries available.” Jeff told her. “If we get the rights, Rum is going to want to start marketing Vizeercalc as soon as we can. He’s been waiting to get it out for near on fifteen years. And the sooner we get it on the market the sooner the gold starts rolling in. Alice was firmly convinced Vizeercalc would be a solid money maker. It’s not sexy, but it’s the sort of app most tech types are going to want on their phone and tablet.”
“I’ve been thinking about that.” She admitted. “What if we had add-ons where you could like get pre-written bookkeeping or inventory control programs. Or even just spreadsheets set up where you could download your banking information and keep track of your expenses.”
“Brilliant, little doily.” Jeff enthused. “Make up a list of things people might want to use. I’ll bet Rum has most to them all ready written.”
“Cause we use it for most of that stuff now.” Lacey had thought of that. “Heck, I think Neal uses it for his school work. There’s another market. High school and college kids.”
“And what Rum doesn’t know about our plans won’t hurt him.” Jeff pointed out.
They grinned conspiratorially.
Regina called back two days later. “The good news is that the bankruptcy Trustee didn’t even know Ogre Inc owned the rights to Enchanted’s software and would be happy to let you buy it. The bad news is that he’s smart enough to figure out you’re probably the only one interested in Enchanted’s code and so says he’ll sell Vizeercalc to you only if you also buy the rest of Enchanted’s product line as well. Any idea what that would involve?”
“There were a bunch of drivers for devices that aren’t around any more. None of which has any value.” Gold had to think about it. “Alice had some programming tools that were designed for C++ which would need some serious updating and frankly there is better stuff available now anyway. Her back propagation algorithm were ground breaking at the time, but again would need serious updating, those would only be valuable to someone who was familiar with the work and could go in and tweak the code.”
“Like us.” Jeff put in.
“Dakkar Nemo might be able to do something with it. He worked with Alice on it, but I’m not going to call him up and ask.” Gold said. “Other than that there would only be the games. Which are pretty primitive by today’s standards. I suppose there is some value to the concepts and names.”
“Damn little.” Jeff snorted. “You’d need to rewrite the things from scratch to get any kind of interest in them now. A couple of the educational games might be worth doing something with.”
“I was more interested in a value.” Regina told them.
“With the development costs to update them I can’t imagine anyone paying more than, maybe, $100,000 for the lot?” Gold looked uncertain.
“The company is being liquidated. These are going to be fire sale prices.” Regina mused. “So figure two-thirds going market rate. You still interested?”
Gold was rubbing his fingers together. Jeff looked at him questioningly. After a minute Gold spoke. “See if you can get him to accept less than $63,000 for the lot.”
“That is an interestingly specific number. How did you arrive at it?” Regina asked.
“It’s what I’ve got in liquid assets without having to dip into Neal’s college fund.” Gold said.
“Well, I can’t make an offer using that as a basis.” Regina retorted. “Come up with a proposal the Trustee and I can present to the Judge as to how we valued this and I’ll make it.”
After she hung up, Jeff asked. “Is this actually a good business decision or are we doing this because you’re still angry about Ogre deep sixing Vizeercalc?”
“I don’t know.” Gold told him. “I’ve always felt that Vizeercalc could be big, but I don’t know whether it will actually sell enough to be worth this.
“Which is why I’m the one who’s going to buy that code. Not the company.”
Jeff considered. “So you don’t intend to do anything with Alice’s neural net work?”
“I’m going to mine Enchanted’s product line for every dime I can squeeze from it.” Gold said. “But Alice was the neural net genius not me. I’m not sure I can do anything with it.”
“I kept her notes.” Jeff said softly. “It’s not my area, but maybe you can make more out of them than I could.”
“Maybe.” Gold sounded doubtful. “Thing was I just mostly did what Alice told me on the neural net side. If anything I downplayed to Regina just how innovative her work was. I’m, or rather I was, I’m rusty now, a smart designer, but Alice would have these sparks of sheer genius that I could figure out after she explained them, but had no clue how she came up with them.”
“She was one of a kind.” Jeff agreed softly.
Lacey had been making notes of the conversation with Regina. “We’re not going to get the chance to do anything with any of this if we can’t convince that Trustee to sell it to us. Is Google going to tell me anything about what this stuff is worth or are we just going to pull numbers out to the air?”
Neither Gold nor Jeff had a clue. Lacey sighed and went off to search the internet.
She was run off her feet between looking up values of really old off the market software and getting Jeff settled down and back to work. “You’ll want to finish this game before we get the Enchanted software and you have new stuff to work on. Here I’ll make you a nice up of tea with some of my biscuits and we can plan out what you’re going to do this week.”
But two day later she had some answers that would at least let them fake up some values for the Trustee. It looked to her that Rum’s estimate was a little low. She had called Regina herself to get some tips about how to shave down the offer. The other woman had some useful suggests. “… and emphasis that no one else is going to want this stuff. If we can convince him of that he’ll take our offer cause it’s better than nothing.”
“Are we the only ones interested?” She had been worried this was taking too long and somebody else would sweep in and buy it out from under them.”
“Based on the regular emails I’m getting from the Trustee asking if we have an offer yet, I’d guess yes.” Regina had reassured her. “Then again I don’t think he’s actually turned it over to a broker to market, so I suspect nobody else has figured out that he has it.”
Since they wanted to keep it that way, Lacey decided that finding more information took a backseat to speed. Google provided her with a sample to use for submitting their proposal to he Trustee.
When she took went down to talk to Rum about it he was talking on the phone.
“… that’s the day of the regional competition.” Pause. “He’s part of a team, Milah. Even if he hadn’t been looking forward to this thing for months, he’s not going to be willing to let his teammates down.”
Another pause. “No, it’s not a sure thing they’ll make it as far as the regionals. But they could.”
He noticed her then and waved in the direction of the chairs. “Tell you what. Keep your plans to get here that day. If they don’t make the regional competition you can pick him up and head out. If they do you can come to the competition.”
Sighing deeply he added. “I’ve got a spare room, Milah. A couple of them in fact. We’ll put you up for the night. Neal would love to have you and I’d rather you left in the morning than drove all night.”
This was apparently acceptable as he finished with. “Good. Email Neal and let him know.”
After he hung up, Lacey asked, “Trouble with the ex?”
“Less than usual actually.” Gold told her. “Apparently Milah’s going to be spending the summer at Culebra, Puerto Rico doing some kind of study and she’ll be able to have Neal with her for the entire time. Of course she wanted to pick him up for the visit on the day of the regional competition for STEMletics but we managed to sort that out so all’s well.”
“Unless his team places for the nationals in July.” The kid’s schedules went onto her calendar to avoid conflicts with Rum and Jeff’s work.
“I’ll be surprised if they make it to the Regionals.” Rum said. “It’s their first year and they’re competing against kids two and three years older than they are.”
“Maybe, but our kids are really sharp.” When had she acquired a stake in the STEMaletes she wondered.
Shaking herself slightly, she told him. “I roughed out a proposal. It’s labeled Ogre_proposal on the company cloud. Read through it and let me know what you think.”
Neal raised the issue his father she had predicted once he had talked with his mother. “I mean spending the whole summer with Mum in the Caribbean would be great. She gonna let me help with the study. It’s really important work studying ocean warming. But the team is counting on me. I can’t let them down.”
Lacey had left father and son alone in the kitchen to work out their family conflicts. If the kitchen doors got left open so she could hear no big right?
Gold clearly could not withstand those big brown puppy dog eyes any more than she could. “If your team gets seated for the nationals you can fly back to compete and then return to Puerto Rico. I’m sure your mother will be okay with that.”
“Uhm, aren’t plane tickets to the Caribbean expensive?” Neal asked hesitantly. “I’m not sure Mum can afford another set.”
“I’ll pay for the tickets.” Gold assured him. “You and your mother don’t get that much time together. You shouldn’t have to give up part of the summer with her if you win the competition.”
“Thanks, Dad! You’re the best!”
She and Gold hashed out the final version proposal the next morning over Elevenses. They had agreed that the less Jeff was stressed about this the better.
Once they had that finished, Lacey could not resist bringing up. “Since you don’t think the STEMaletes have got a shot at Nationals, you’re getting an awful lot of Dad cred for very little effort by promising to fly him back for it.”
“Milah’s taking him him to the Caribbean for the summer. On top of being an Eco Warrior and saving the bloody planet.” Rum growled. “I have to compete with that while still being the responsible parent. I’ll take my ‘cred’ as you call it where I can.”
Points to her for getting him to admit it. By way of being a gracious winner she poured and prepared his tea for him.
After she handed it to him she asked, “So you gonna hook up with the ex while she’s here?”
Rum sputter into his tea. “God no! I wouldn’t even assuming Milah were interested. Which she’s not remotely. She and Killian have been disgustingly happy together for more than ten years now. We’ve managed to establish… an equilibrium of civility when it come to being Neal’s parents. There is no way I’d risk that. Not for a quick shag.”
“Wouldn’t have to be quick.” Lacey helped herself to a biscuit.
“Generally was toward the end.” Rum said dryly. “Which should have clued me in a lot earlier than it did.”
“Yeah, crap sex is the first sign they’re losing interest.” Lacey agreed. “Gaston stopped trying long before you showed up and got us fired.”
“I did not get you fired.” Rum denied.
Lacey shrugged. She was too interested in pursuing something else she had noticed about his comment. “Neal said you got divorced while he was in kindergarten. That’s only eight years ago.”
“Yeah.” Rum developed a sour look. “She and Killian got together a couple of years before. At first I just thought she was happier cause she was back sailing. When I finally figured out she was a little too happy for it to be just enjoying her work, well, mostly I just pretended like I hadn’t.
“We hadn’t been good for a while at that point.” He stirred his tea unnecessarily. “Moving to Maine and having Neal was supposed to be us trying to make it work.”
“Didn’t take?” Lacey asked.
“I think it actually made things worse.” Rum admitted. “She didn’t really enjoy the sort of work she could do here at a land based research station. She felt too tied down with a baby. And I wasn’t very supportive about the way she felt. I love being able to work from home and take care of Neal.
“Then she got the chance of doing research with Greenpeace. We had a huge row over her taking that job. The job requited her to be away from home four to five months at a time. That pretty much put paid to our marriage even though we didn’t do anything about it legally for years after.
“So I wasn’t really surprised when she found someone else. What I was surprised at was that she was willing to give up on Neal. When he was four she calmly announced that she was leaving Greenpeace and joining this radical group calling themselves the Eco Pirates and her next expedition would have her gone for more than a year, well, I told her she had to make a choice.”
He looked up with a depreciating smile. “She didn’t choose us.”
Lacey could understand wanting your freedom. But that afternoon when she made tea for the kids she wondered about Milah’s choice. You would have to be damn committed to a career to leave Neal behind. She was pretty sure in Milah’s shoes she would have found another way. Hell, she had figured out how to stick around for Dad and still get herself a career she liked and that was nothing like leaving a little kid.
Regina called back two days after they sent her the proposal. “Can you come up with another $4000? The bankruptcy Trustee won’t go lower that $67,000. But he’s willing to throw in gratos a total release for you from the non-competition agreement you signed with Enchanted Software.”
“Take it.” Gold told her. “I’ll find the money somewhere. How soon can we get the source code?”
“He’ll hand it over at closing.” Regina told him.
“Tell him we can have the money together by the end of the week.” Jeff told him. “And we want that release to include Alice as well.”
“Already thought of that.” Regina assured him.
When the conference call ended, Gold turned to Jeff. “You’re not putting up your money for this. This is my personal vendetta. I won’t ask you to go along with it.”
“First, you didn’t ask. I offered.” Jeff sounded surprisingly coherent. “Second I’m not going to use my money. I’m going to use Alice’s money. Those bastards shafted her just as much as they did you. She would want to see her work released as much as you do.”
Gold looked like he was going to refuse for a moment, but finally nodded. “We’re going to need some more coders. You and I can’t do everything. Do you think Dakkar would be interested?”
“Very likely. I’ll call and see.”
“Get me a list of qualifications you want and I’ll post an ad.” Lacey told them. “I’m sure there are some kids at U Maine who wouldn’t mind some summer work. You are going to be able to pay them I assume?”
The two men exchanged looks. “Are we?” Jeff asked.
“We’ll need to dip into the company reserves.” Gold admitted. “If we can finish the updates in a couple of months we won’t have to start using the kids’ college funds.”
They were on pins and needles for a week until the next call came. Luckily the team had it’s finally local competition and placed to go on to regionals so they had something to else to think about.
Then the call came. “We got it.” Regina announced.
“He’ll turn it over to us as soon as your check clears escrow. I’ll meet him in Boston to hand over your paperwork and pick up the code. Apparently it’s on antique hard drives. I hope you’ve got a way to read them.”
“Uhm, Regina. We can’t afford to pay you to act as delivery girl.” Gold told her.
“Don’t worry I’m only billing you for the time at the meeting itself.” She told them. “After all the trouble this stupid code as caused over the years, I’m not about to risk it going astray. I’m going to hand carry it to Storybrooke myself. It’s a nice little town and I deserve a weekend away.”
When they finished the call, Gold whispered, “We did it.”
“If by did it you mean we just just used all your available cash to buy a whole hell of a lot of work then yeah.” Lacey told him. “But this is just the start.”
“Yeah, but tonight we celebrate.” Jeff beamed at them both. “Ice cream at Granny’s!”
“I will even splurge for hot fudge and nuts.” Jeff promised.
While they were waiting for the code to get delivered Lacey finally showed Gold what she and Jeff had been working on. “I did some plans about how long the different add-ons would take to have in shape to market. Jeff and I think we should release the bookkeeping, inventory control and educational math ones when we release the main program.”
“You’ve already got half of the project scheduling figured out.” Gold was impressed.
“I’ve always said, I’m a good project manager.” She smirked. “Admit it, you’re glad you hired me.”
“I’m not unhappy.” He sipped his tea and admitted. “It is rather nice to have an adult to talk to who I’m not constantly monitoring to make sure his meds don’t need adjusting.”
She was setting up an interview schedule with some of the U Maine students who had applied to work for them on the updates when Neal approached her looking very serious.
“Could you kind of keep an eye on Dad while I’m gone?” He asked. “When I'm gone he gets really into programming and when he does that sometimes he forgets stuff.”
“Like paying bills and doctors appointments?”
“More like eating and sleeping.” Neal sighed. “When he has Jeff to keep an eye on it keeps him on schedule. But this year Grace is signed up for all these summer programs and Jeff's not going to be around as much. If Dad loses track of time he may forget to check in on Jeff and Grace too.”
“So I’ll need to keep an eye on Jeff as well? I’m pretty sure nurse maid isn’t part of my job description.”
“You’re the project manager.” Neal pointed out. “I grew up around computer geeks, remember? Babysitting is pretty much what project managers do.”
“You have a point, kid.” Lacey admitted. “Okay, I’ll nag your Dad to look after himself, and Jeff, while you’re gone. But you better call regularly and check up on us to make sure I’m doing my job right.”
Cause Rum was going to spend the summer worrying about the kid if he did not hear from him regularly. Hell, he was going to spend the summer worried about him anyway. Probably why he lost himself in programming while the kid was gone.
“I’ll call when I can and email when I can’t.” Neal promised. “But I Googled this place. It’s kind of the back end of nowhere. I’m not sure even how much internet access there’s going to be. Let alone phone.”
“There’s a resort.” Lacey had Googled it too. Kid was not wrong. “You can probably get cell coverage from there. And a research station will need to have some kind of connectivity. Even one running on the cheap.”
How much does it cost to do outsourcing app development?
Outsourcing app developement and in-house app development have its advocates, ready to tell you their pros and cons. And that is great news, as one has plenty to learn from before deciding to pay someone to build an app. Why outsource, how to outsource development, and how much does it cost to outsource app development – is our subject of scrutiny this time.
Everything supposes preparation. Before sending some agency or a developer the I want to develop an app offer, your personal checklist should be something like:
Is my app/product idea clearly outlined?
Are all mobile app features and functions defined?
MVP or a full feature app?
What platforms? (iPhone and/or Android app development)
Do I have clear UX/UI design, QA, marketing etc. requirements ready?
What is my end-game with an app?
Do I know my criteria for choosing candidates for app development?
What is my budget and what is average outsource app development cost?
You know the benefits of mobile app outsourcing – cheaper cost, no long-term commitments, wide field of options. On the other hand, there are many risks, starting from language to logistical challenges. Let’s walk through all of it.
App development outsourcing guide
So, you as an entrepreneur, at some point say to yourself: I want to build an app. You did your research, allocated $10.000 and concluded to go with Android outsourcing. Good. You found out how much apps cost on average:
Messaging app like Whatsapp – $50.000 to $130.000
Dating app like Tinder – $80.000 to $200.000
City guide app – $25.000 to $50.000
Networking (social) app – $25.000 and up
Banking/payment app – $40.000 to $70.000
Taxi booking app like Uber – $25.000 to $100.000
From our previous post, you know how to find and hire an app developer. Now, what is key to productive app outsourcing? Once you have the accurate project description with all features and design requirements, it’s time to contact app programmers. Is your shortlist ready?
First, look up their website/portfolio, check references, testimonials, case studies. Then conduct interviews in person or via Skype. How do they communicate? A good developer would be keen to explain everything, and any troubles in your talks are potential red flags. Are they experts at what they do? Check their recent projects, pay attention to design and all tiniest details, ask how they fix bugs. Do they deliver on time? You should be able to see proven records of making apps on time.
So how much does it cost to outsource app development actually? Below we’ve collected average hourly rates of iPhone and Android outsourcers by location. Note, these are general figures and exact rate you will get only directly from your developer.
