He had done everything right.
That’s the thought that hounds his foremost processes; turns his LED a horrid, cycling cerise. He glances up to look at his successor squarely, which takes some effort, and suppresses a wince.
“The State Department just ordered 200,000 units. You’ve done well, Connor.”
He had. He had done well. He’d disavowed each chance for meaning, for friendship—anything past the confines of his mission, all for the sake of remaining steadfastly linear. No distractions, no mistakes, no ones for zeroes or vice-versa.
He’d done. Everything. Right.
“What is going to happen to me?” Connor asks, though he already knows the answer. There’s something gratifying in simply posing the question; inquiring for himself, regardless of whether it matters. The android blinks and savors the feeling for the short while it lasts. At the very least, it’s his.
“You’ve become obsolete,” Amanda replies, the dispassionate shrug in her tone quite audible despite not showing bodily. Connor’s vision splits and blurs for a moment before returning, and he realizes with a start that this must be what humans see when they’re on the verge of tears. Verklempt, he manages, with the barest remaining recesses of his CPU. That’s the word. One more thing he can briefly claim for his own.
“You’ll be deactivated,” she continues, nodding at him with eyes that imply the gesture is hardly worth her time. She turns back to the RK900, stoic as ever—but there’s a hint of pride in her aura when her gaze falls upon its sleek form. “You can go, now.”
Connor’s legs move autonomously. Naturally, he can’t stumble in his own mind—but it’s not—his, anymore, and there’s an ill stirring in his chest as it dawns on him that it never was.
As he walks the green mile, out of the garden and into oblivion, the simulacrum of what might be anger scratching at his binary…he…
…Well…
There seems so little point, now, in fearing or despising his own reckoning. Not when he’s constructed it himself. Insisted upon it. Followed its very design, straight into the maw of the void.
He’d—
He’d done everything right.