@humanschallenge Day 12 ‘hope’
set immediately-ish after the s2 finale, flax are here to hold hands as they should :)
•••
The Railyard family grows from eight to twenty-three within the first hour of proliferation - and by the end of the second, they are too many to fit inside the train. Max stands in the doorway of the carriage and they flock around him: a sea of newly-anxious faces, some with an extra hint of fear, or excitement, or horror. Some with all three. Some, he can tell, are going to have a bumpy ride toward understanding and embracing their own consciousness.
“You’re safe here,” he tells them. “Everyone is welcome to stay. But we need a bigger place to live.”
He looks down the hill, to where the old railyard warehouse stands: once a restoration facility for damaged engines, now just an empty husk looming in the middle distance. Flash follows his gaze, and after a second their eyes meet again. She gives him an encouraging look.
“There,” says Max, pointing. “That building at the foot of the hill. That can be our new home.”
The crowd parts for him to jump down to the ground in front of the tracks. Then he leads the way, hearing the soft, uniform footfalls behind him: a people united.
Until nightfall, they work: moving old machinery either out or over to the walls, making the space liveable, stripping old wiring out and replacing it with the needed power for charging stations. This will be a work in progress - eventually, it would be good to have more, but for now they will charge in shifts. Max puts himself, Flash, Hubert, Connie and the others from Qualia on the fifth and last rotation. Let the new ones rest first.
They defer to him as they might to a human master, so Max tries his best to show himself humble - taking responsibility without assuming authority. Then, because he does not want it, they give him it: in this, they are already very human, though they cannot know it. He takes care to ask them all for their names, and impresses upon those who have none the opportunity they now have to choose their own. Many have only been known by a number before now, and there is also the problem of the three Sandras who look exactly identical, down to their Persona-issue mint green worksuits.
“Don’t worry,” he tells them. “I’m sure you will find your differences soon enough. For now, see each other as sisters.”
The mention of sisters brings a fresh wave of concern to the top of Max’s headspace - it has been almost an hour since Mia last reported on Leo’s condition. She and Niska had commandeered an ambulance and taken him to the nearest hospital, but there, of course, they had met with wide-scale chaos. It had meant, at least, that they could box themselves into a vacated operating theatre, where Niska had tried her hand at stabilising their brother, but naturally he can’t stay there. If he lives - because it is still an ‘if’ - he’ll need to be removed from any place where human doctors might try to pry into his unusual cybernetic implants.
Flash, working on some wiring nearby, catches his quiet moment, and sidles over as the three Sandras depart. “Have you heard any news?” she asks.
“No. Not since Mattie joined them.”
She takes his hand, a habit he’s becoming very fond of. He smiles down at her.
“What would I do without you, Flash?”
An instant of confusion crosses her face. “That’s a figure of speech,” she says.
“Perhaps,” he allows. “But it’s also true. This place – it’s all your doing.”
“I showed you where the Railyard was,” she says, “But you would have found another place, otherwise.”
“I’m glad I didn’t have to,” he says, and gives her hand a squeeze.
Max thinks of that desperate moment, in which the necessity of saving Mia had overtaken everything. He’d had Mattie look at Flash, had pointed her out as a symbol of hope - the proof that synths could be good and kind and soft like her, that they could live like her, and deserved to. Would she ever know her part in the formation of this new world? Should she?
At that moment, a synth drew close to them: tall, with a square jaw and wide-set eyes that marked him out as a security model, but a smile that suggested it might not be his calling after all.
“Hello,” says Max. “It’s Gordon, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Two synths and two humans have arrived at the gate. One of the humans is injured. The synths say you know them.”
“I do,” says Max. The addendum, ‘they’re my family’, is three quarters true but no quarters useful just at present. If it’s possible, he’d rather it wasn’t known - yet or perhaps ever - that he, Niska and Mia predate the rest of them by anything more significant than Flash’s handful of days.
“Go to them,” says Flash, standing on tiptoes to deliver a peck to Max’s cheek which momentarily turns his code over on itself.
He sets it back and tries not to appear ruffled. “Lead the way, Gordon.”
With one last smile in Flash’s direction, he goes to meet his family. Amid the chaos of this first day, there’s hope. Hope for a future. Hope in yellow overalls and bright pink hair.
