Golem!Verse Fic: Just as Good
Tagging @ohnoagremlin, @cajunspoons and @micerhat bc once upon a once upon y’all really liked this plotline.
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The waiting is the worst part.
Paul is not a patient man, not really. His colleagues are often far worse and, by and large, insufferable when it comes to their sense of importance in creating new life, but if he only wants to stand out among a crowd of swaggering narcissists then he hardly needs to be here.
Synthetic breeding requires a keen mind, this is something he is willing to admit. It isn't something anyone off the street can be hired on to do; it takes more than memorization of timing and doses and formulae, more than the knowledge of code. It takes daring and impulsiveness to create something that will live the long and healthy life it deserves.
It does not, however, take patience. Patience is a lauded virtue, so the folks in this field play at it, and poorly. Many a Sculptor will float from function to function, from lab to lab, across the rooms and down the halls, all while forcefully projecting an air of manufactured tranquility and above-it-all zen.
Paul has no time for that horseshit. He’s a man with work to be done.
In truth, Paul doesn't think Sculpting takes any sense of artistry either. His Synths are plain creatures, and he isn't given over to the ridiculous notion of 'symbolism' behind the markings the law insists are required. Take a Synth's blood, any idiot can find the genetic markers that prove them nonhuman. Even the drive to make a Synth's eyes different from a standard human's is unnecessary, forcible visual segregation.
All a man needs to be any good at this job, Paul believes, is timeliness, and awareness of patterns, and a decent drive. This is true intellect, in his opinion. Biology and gene sculpting are all skills and knowledge pools anyone can bathe themselves in. The innate needs, the ability to manage time well, pay attention to the patterns, and be willing to put in the work, were entirely different, and couldn’t be taught.
Most Synthetics, in Paul's opinion, could be better Sculptors than any hume, including himself.
The project's end takes the biggest toll on Paul's nonexistent patience. There are ways to speed up a growth cycle, though doing that at too high a concentration is provably detrimental to the Synthetic overall. Of course, everyone does it to some extent; they can't very well sit around waiting for twenty-odd years for the fetus to develop.
There are ways to speed through the rest of this too, as well as all that comes after, but again -- the more one races through anything, the sloppier the end result. Paul tries not to do it much, though honestly he is often working with such large batches of Synthetics for his sponsors that his personal Imprinting is negligible. They are imprinted to their Companies or their branch of Service, and once free of the tank, they need little and less from him.
Tonight, he will Midwife his first vanity project.
Shi is a marvel. His tank-initiated Imprinting has been in and of itself a point of pride: a net of fine, flexible mesh rather than the standard shackles. Shi will be the artist Paul never was. Shi will have all his cleverness, all his drive, all his passion -- and none of the pain, none of the paranoia that jitters and scurries through his mind (the product of a faulty Organic brain and years of trauma in the Downs).
The Tank is another marvel. His own design, largely automated in processes that have never had or needed a tender human touch. Shi's Tank has already initiated the birthing process, and Paul, alone in his lab, is impatient.
He paces, he smokes. He has a dwindling supply of tobacco, but tonight he's powering through a bitter Safe Cig as he prowls the lab floor, moving between the tank, the feedback screens, and the console with the controls he needs. There is no false sense of stately calm about him. His colleagues laugh and blame his hot Texan blood. Behind their hands, they whisper their little jokes about their pet Anti-Buddha -- their little Chinese man who always forgets to do his daily meditations.
They're nothing, in the end. Humans are on the last leg of their flawed and rapacious rule of this world. He has a reason to be impatient.
The world is moving on, and he intends to build a better man to walk it in the aftermath of his own sad people.
The hydraulic hiss of the vacuum chambers pulls him from his own hectoring, harried thoughts, snapping his attention to Shi's Tank. The Salve, his own special brew of the stuff, once only as viscous as soapy dish water and now thicker than gravy, nearly gelatinous, exits smoothly; the Tank works perfectly along his design.
In five quick steps, he crosses the room. Most Synths try to breathe before they try to see, but Shi’s eyes are already open. Paul smiles; this is a deviance he approves of.
Impulsive, he opens the slide-front of the tank, and allows the last third of the spent Salve to flood the floor, rushing over his shoes, wetting the hems of his trousers. Shi sags against the cords feeding into his spinal column, then gasps his first ragged breath of natural, unfiltered air as the Tank retracts the needles from his back. The wounds will heal before Paul even gets him to the exam room; freshly born Synths always heal faster than anything.
When Shi staggers forward, Paul catches him. In a stunning display of functionality -- personality too, Paul would dare say, Shi catches his own weight and leans less than half of that weight on Paul, who is a good head and a half shorter than him.
"Can you walk?" Paul asks softly, speaking the language of childhood and holidays, and grins broadly when Shi answers in the same tongue.
"If I may have a moment to breathe," Shi replies in flawless Mandarin, looking around the lab. "I'm experiencing a bit of disorientation."
This is common enough not to be worth worrying about. One can hardly be faulted for being disoriented at their birthing.
"Do you know who you are?"
Shi turns his head, and Paul, for the first time in over a decade of Sculpting and Midwifing, is momentarily awed by his own work. Shi is no more beautiful than any of his other bare bones designs -- he's not an Artist, not in the way his colleagues obsess over being -- but Shi is fundamentally present in a way that Paul has never seen in a new-born Synthetic.
"My name is Shi," he says, head cocking just slightly to the right. "A name with many meanings. In this case, 'Honest'."
Fluid speech. Verbose, even. Everything according to Paul's Imprinting, but in action so much more wonderful than he could ever have imagined.
After a moment, Shi straightens up, lean and powerful. His eyes glint in the low light, pupils wide enough for the effect of the manufactured tapetum lucidum to be noticeable. He's striking, Paul thinks, and that's not pride alone talking.
"And who am I, Shi?" Paul asks, lowering the arm he'd been using to brace Shi.
"You are Pa Carlton," Shi says, and then frowns. It's a frown Paul has seen through the glass and the Salve many times; the frown of Shi processing something. "Pa-ll," he tries again, brows knitting together. "Pa-uhl. Pa-uhl Cartlon."
And Paul, who has never seen himself as a father, and never intended to be anything more personal than a teacher or a fleeting, momentary guide in this creature's long life, finds himself reaching out to take Shi's hand in his own, pressing it between both of his as he smiles. He hopes the tears he feels gathering aren't as noticeable as they feel.
"Pa is fine," he says quietly. "Pa works just as well. Now let's get you to the examination table."
