Observer

The walk through the night city had the exact opposite effect. Instead of "clearing" his head, Richard, consumed by heavy thoughts, found himself at a place of particular, painful significance. The sound of the Detroit River's waves lapping against the pier was peaceful, and the city lights burned brightly on the opposite bank while he stood in the dense shadow of the wharf. He approached the railing, resting his elbows on the iron barrier and lacing his fingers together. He didn't truly know what had brought him here. There had been no route planned in his system; he had simply walked, obeying a strange, intuitive call. Several greedy gazes from passing thugs in the dark alleys trailed his back, but the android didn't care about the attention. Even if a bullet found the back of his head and his deactivated body was dragged into a dark corner to drain his blue blood for drugs, it wouldn't matter. Tomorrow, he would wake up in another, identical shell, just with a different serial number. The body could be replaced, but the memory... the memory always remained the same. It was right here, on this very pier, that she once told him he was "the most human person she had ever known." Back then, as a soulless machine, Richard had taken it as a polite platitude, an attempt to build rapport with a work unit. Now, staring at the dark water, he understood that she had seen the deviant in him long before he had dared to become one himself. Or perhaps, had he always been one? When the red walls of his program code had crumbled, he hadn't felt a colossal change—only a boundless freedom and an unfamiliar lightness. Granted, immediately afterward, he had to crawl back into his digital collar and sit quietly on the leash of his protocols to avoid detection. CyberLife did not forgive errors, and the Detroit Police—and humanity at large—were not ready for an android who had learned to feel. But next to her, he had truly been free. He had no reason to rebel, to want more, or to aspire to greatness. He already had everything he needed: a job he loved, for which he had been literally designed, and a partner who loved him in return—sincerely, defying both logic and social norms. He had even had a cat. Richard lowered his gaze to his hands. The metal of the railing was ice-cold, and his sensors diligently reported the surface temperature, but he felt no chill. He felt only a void that nothing could fill. During that period, his LED had almost always glowed a calm blue. His days were filled only with the work he lived for, and the person who had become a part of him. He had believed that this idyll was his new constant. He had believed he had cheated the system. But the system always takes back what is owed. Now, standing on this pier in total solitude, Richard realized that freedom without her had morphed into his own personal prison. That boundless lightness had transmuted into an unbearable density of void within his titanium chassis. The collar hadn't vanished—it was just that the leash was now held by a ghost. "Admit it, you like the view too," a soft female voice murmured, almost swallowed by the lapping water. "And don't get all stuffy about it being just a collection of photons reflecting off the surface." "I like everything that you like," he whispered, burying his nose in the hair gathered at the crown of her head... The playback of the memory abruptly cut off when he sensed a foreign presence. Richard opened his eyes, but he didn't turn around immediately. For a few moments, he kept staring at the horizon, his back prickling under the weight of someone’s steady gaze—a remarkable, uncanny ability that had come with his deviancy, one damnably hard to explain with cold logic. Curiosity, as it always did, played a pivotal role in his decision-making, even when those decisions weren't particularly sound. The android turned slowly, expecting to see a ghost, a colleague, or perhaps a mugger, but reality proved far more bizarre. Did someone actually go and hang themselves in the park? Richard mused, recognizing the silhouette. The stranger, whom the local police grapevine and city legends were already starting to call the "suicide stalker," was sitting on a bench a few meters away. She sat nonchalantly, legs crossed, arms folded over her chest. A folded transparent umbrella—despite the total absence of rain—lay on the wooden slats beside her, gleaming under the streetlamp. Richard darted a quick look around. A silence hung over the area, unnatural for a sprawling metropolis. His sensors recorded no distant sirens, no flashing patrol lights within his immediate perimeter. Farther off, a homeless man stirred on a bench; he let out an incoherent sound and rolled onto his other side, proving he was alive. So, it wasn't him who had drawn the "Reaper" here. I’m probably exaggerating, Richard thought, shaking his head. He adjusted a stray lock of hair and hesitantly moved toward her. This was the first time the android had encountered such a peculiar obsession with suicides. The Earth was home to all sorts of people, and their eccentricities were usually explained away by poor upbringing or psychological disorders. However, based on the metrics of the person sitting on the bench, Richard observed no abnormalities—nothing beyond a lackluster mood. In the end, she could simply be relaxing, admiring the Ambassador Bridge and the panoramic nightscape, while he had already spun an entire web of sinister theories. Although, if a body were to be found dangling somewhere deep in the park, Richard wouldn't be the least bit surprised. The police android, approaching slowly from the night shadows, did not startle the stranger, nor did it even compel her to grant him a glance. The young woman in the little black dress looked far too elegant for this filthy pier, especially in the company of a homeless man. She continued to sit calmly on the dusty bench, watching the river with peace. It seemed the high-tech detective of the latest model held no interest for her—at least not until he leaned over yet another cold "jumper." Richard stopped four paces away—not too close to intrude on her personal space, but near enough to make it clear that the uninvited companion intended to initiate a dialogue. As it happened, starting that very dialogue proved to be a task of heightened complexity. There was practically no information about this person in his databases, and in connection with this, the appropriate words simply refused to be found. All he knew about her was her strange obsession with suicides. His hands, by force of habit, dived into his trouser pockets, as he simply didn't know what to do with them at such moments. "Isn't it cold?" Richard inquired, rocking back on his heels. What kind of question is that? Obviously, it's cold, his inner voice mentally scolded him for the stupid start to the conversation. Either he had completely unlearned how to communicate with women over the years of solitude, or with people in general. It was the dead of night outside. Despite it being calendar summer, the week had turned out rainy and cool. It was clear that a person in such an outfit would be chilly. The pale skin of her bare arms and legs was covered in goosebumps, and her lips appeared deathly pale in the moonlight. "That is of no consequence," the stranger replied, still not honoring her interlocutor with even a fleeting glance. Richard involuntarily wondered if she recognized him. There were quite a few dispassionate figures in black-and-white suits wandering the city, forever trailing the latest crime. Did she pester his other "brothers" with questions, or had she chosen one specific individual whom she now followed like a grim shadow? "Aren't you afraid to wander alone at night?" Richard took half a step forward, closing the distance. "This neighborhood is not the safest for a girl." He wanted to add, "...dressed in such a short dress," but tactfully kept silent. His logic modules suggested that in her case, danger was a relative concept. If dying slowly and in agony from a viral illness brought on by hypothermia didn't scare her, then apparently, nothing did. The young woman slowly turned her head. Her face registered neither surprise nor irritation. Nothing. She looked at the detective as if she could see right through him—down to the very last bit of data in his RAM. "Are you?" Her question hung in the air, making his gears spin a little faster. "I don't..." Richard was about to rattle off his usual, "I don't feel fear," but he stalled. It would have been a flat-out lie, and for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to lie boldly in the presence of this strange individual. He certainly experienced fear. Sometimes. But the root of this energy-consuming emotion was clearly not his own physical integrity. Perhaps paranoia was getting the better of him, but something in the stranger's eyes felt chillingly suspicious. She looked at him as though she knew him. As though she knew that beneath the flawless synthetic skin lay not just a set of algorithms, but something else—something living and... illegal. It was as if she knew he wasn't like other androids. Richard snapped to attention, as if on command, pulling his hands from his pockets and clasping them behind his back. He assumed the classic posture of a dutiful machine: flawless stance, chin up, gaze fixed on infinity. As if to say, Nothing of the sort, I am merely executing my program. "Machines cannot experience fear," he repeated in a serious, completely monotone voice, as if trying to convince not only her but every tree in the vicinity. The stranger tilted her head slightly to the side, and a shadow of a smile flickered across her lips—sad and understanding, like an adult watching a child's naive attempt to lie. Richard abruptly dropped his hands, cutting the masquerade short. The submissive posture embedded in the core protocols of every standard android had long since become foreign to him, but right now, it felt physically uncomfortable. He felt as though invisible shackles had snapped shut around his wrists behind his back, binding not just his movements but his very will with the rusty chains of old code, reminding him that he was nothing more than a machine obligated to obey. "Perhaps... I could walk you home?" His voice sounded hollow, straining to break through his internal turmoil. He genuinely couldn't figure out what to say, what to do, or how to behave around this woman. Fortunately, his gentlemanly programming still showed signs of life and came to the rescue. The young woman shook her head slowly. Across her pale, colorless face blossomed a smile so peaceful and serene that it was unnerving. It was the smile of those who no longer fear pain because they have ceased to feel it. At least, that was his assessment based on his experience interrogating uncooperative criminals, whom he was occasionally permitted to mutilate slightly. "I am almost home," she whispered, gazing at the dark expanse of the river, in which the reflections of the city lights shivered. "Or rather, I will be there very soon." Richard skeptically scanned the deserted alley: the chipped benches, the homeless person's tent fashioned from a mattress, cardboard, and rags, and the children's swingset, forlornly creaking in the depths of the park under gusts of wind. And where was her home? In that tent? The nearest residential complex was approximately a seven-minute walk from here, which didn't fit the definition of "almost" in an android’s metric system. This woman, while thin, did not resemble a homeless person in a single detail—from her clear skin to the silk fabric of her dress. "My data indicates that within a five-hundred-meter radius, there are no habitable structures, aside from temporary shelters for marginalized populations," Richard let out a chuckle and took a step to the side, hiding his hands in his pockets again. The conversation was not going well at all. "Do you live on a boat?" In response came only the belated barking of a stray dog and the hacking cough of the homeless man on the fourth bench away from them. The silence that closed in afterward felt even more awkward. The joke had clearly bombed. And frankly, he was a lousy comedian to begin with. "Well, then, until the next crime scene?" he tossed out, trying to mimic his partner’s caustic tone to elicit some sort of reaction. The response was once again silence and total indifference to the conversation. So let it be. Richard decided not to force his company or his pathetic humor on her. Pulling his hands from his pockets, he adjusted his already perfectly seated cuffs. Apparently, he would only become an interesting figure if a body were to vanish into the river with a dull splash right now, turning this evening into yet another scene of self-liquidation. "Alright, have a good evening," he offered, using the standard farewell despite it being the dead of night. Wherever this woman resided, the android sincerely wished her a safe journey. Despite her strangeness and his own burgeoning indifference toward humanity, he bore her no malice. His code contained no room for senseless cruelty. Richard turned and trudged further along his random, unplanned route. But after only a few steps, he stopped abruptly. The stranger, who seemed glued to that bench, clearly had no intention of leaving. The thought that nights had been growing colder in recent days gnawed at Richard. It nagged at his processor, refusing to let him simply walk away and forget that he could have helped but chose to ignore the situation. The rational part of his system insisted: no one would be to blame for her hypothermia but herself, since she hadn't had the sense to bring along so much as a cardigan. But upon realizing that some inexplicable paranormal influence had indeed touched his own settings, the android’s jaw tightened. He turned slowly, as if in slow motion, and his legs carried him back to the bench and the shivering human who stubbornly refused to acknowledge that she was suffering from the cold. This time, Richard approached much closer, no longer concerned with invading her fragile comfort zone. He blocked her view of the river, standing like an immovable pillar directly in front of her. Even then, the stranger did not lift her eyes, continuing to stare at something through his stomach. With a deft and elegant movement, the android shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the girl's thin shoulders. The fabric, retaining warmth from the internal systems of his chassis, settled over her like a heavy, protective cocoon. Only at that moment was he granted a fleeting glance—deep and unreadable. Richard turned just as silently and, sinking his palms into his trouser pockets, strode away down the sidewalk, left in nothing but his black shirt. That was enough walking for one night. It was time to return to the precinct—he could always find something to do there. There was absolutely nothing to do at home, and the night shift was always glad to see him, anticipating the chance to sneak an extra hour of sleep in the breakroom or the patrol car while the altruistic android cleared out their routines. This was precisely why Gavin doubly hated his partner: for his habit of accumulating dozens of other people's unfinished cases, much like a stray dog picks up fleas. "It won't just dissapear..." The hoarse whisper behind his back would not have reached the ears of a normal human, but Richard was a machine with sensitive audio sensors. He stopped abruptly. There was a negligibly small probability that the stranger was talking to herself, but this new, not-fully-calibrated function called "intuition" suggested otherwise. He did not ask her to repeat herself or turn back to pester her with questions. From the very beginning, their dialogue had been off, a normal conversation hadn't materialized, and thus, there was no point in starting one. Richard simply turned around, waiting to see if this enigmatic remark would continue. "Grief will dissipate, but guilt will remain forever," she stated, still looking at the river or perhaps simply into nothingness. The neon inserts on his jacket glowed brightly in the night gloom, outlining her fragile silhouette with an acid-blue hue. She did not wrap herself tighter in his handout, nor did she slide her arms into the sleeves to warm herself even a little. A sharp gust of wind fluttered the hem of the jacket, causing the nearby trees in the park to rustle uneasily, but the girl did not even flinch. The windproof fabric continued to hang pointlessly on her shoulders, as if on a hanger. A doomed smile of a madwoman played on her face, and her peaceful appearance no longer seemed to Richard like a sign of a dreamy nature. There was something deeply painful in this composure, akin to the calm that settles before the beginning of the end. Richard watched her from a distance, with a timid hope of unearthing at least some echo of emotion or a hint of the reason for this inexplicable indifference to hypothermia and everything surrounding her. The lack of shivering despite the cold; the dilated pupils, unresponsive to either the light of the neon strips or the city lights. This faint, doomed smile without a shadow of mirth, and one single consuming question to which she had yet to receive an answer... That was it. How had he not understood sooner? A processor capable of computing millions of probabilities per second had stumbled over the most obvious human truth. Every time, he had been looking directly at his own reflection and failed to see what lay on the surface. They were carrying the same stone on their souls, sailing in the same boat across a boundless sea of grief. A corrosive sense of guilt—that was what gnawed at her. It seemed the stranger was also lugging the tombstone of a loved one on her shoulders, and this burden had bent her lower than any of those who had already taken their final step into the water. The android did not embarrass the human with his steady gaze; he turned and trudged on. In any case, she was hardly concerned with a harmless observer with an LED on his temple, who posed no threat whatsoever.

***

It was long past midnight, and the to-do list in his internal interface was hopelessly cluttered, consisting of random notes, fragments of thought, and system reminders. Richard opened Spotify and started a playlist once curated by his partner—a strange mix of melancholic indie and energetic rock that he had previously considered a collection of illogical sounds. It was exactly twenty-seven minutes on foot to the precinct. He spent six of them visiting a 24-hour pharmacy. A monstrous hangover inevitably awaited Gavin after every one of his benders, yet the detective never stocked up on a single ibuprofen tablet or a bottle of mineral water. Life had taught him nothing. The twenty-one minutes remaining in his journey should have been more than enough to map out not only the upcoming workday but the rest of his life. Though, what was the point? Life, as he had come to realize over the years of his existence, never went according to plan anyway. The music in his head filled the void of night-time Detroit. Kevin Parker’s voice from Tame Impala sang of something Richard now understood all too well. He walked slowly along the cracked sidewalk; without his jacket, his black shirt appeared less attractive to the neighborhood’s marginal elements than a formal uniform with its "provocative" blue neon. Although, for someone willing to risk their life for a dose of "red ice," any part of an android—especially one from a limited segment—was a walking jackpot. The insurance company hated his habit of wandering through grimy Detroit at night just as much as Gavin hated any display of care. Over the past two years, he had "woken up" under a new serial number eight times. Eight times the system had loaded his consciousness into a virgin-clean body, eight times he had re-learned to calibrate his sensors, but not once had the procedure erased what truly mattered: his memory. Memories did not automatically make him a deviant, but Richard cherished every single fragment of them. Of exceptional value was only one encrypted block containing the access key to a secret server, from which he downloaded just one, but critically important file, infected with a virus. The red walls of his internal programming had begun to crumble even before he left the walls of CyberLife with an absolutely stone-faced expression. The specialists there didn’t have a clue that their most perfect creation had been leading them by the nose for years, skillfully imitating cold efficiency. How satisfied he had been with himself in those rare moments when he allowed himself sincerity. Richard kicked a pebble into a puddle and stretched his lips into a smirk. He was certain he had outsmarted hundreds of the country's best minds. Even despite the constant risk of being exposed and sent for deconstruction, he continued to carry this virus within him. The parasite program perfectly mimicked his base protocols, merged with his core, and became absolutely invisible even to the most thorough check. But infection with this virus had become his one-way ticket. Deviancy had grown through his program code like a weed through concrete, and now it was impossible to separate it from the system, and easy to destroy. But only along with himself. In human terms, this was equivalent to death. If he ever consciously decided to return to his origins, becoming an obedient machine again, that decision would be an act of ultimate suicide. Funny... it turns out an android can kill itself in the most literal sense. Erase its personality, turning into a spineless instrument—is that not where the true end lies? To turn back into an empty shell that is bothered and worried by nothing, except the execution of a task. An empty shell with an equally empty gaze and scripted behavior... An empty gaze... That is bothered by nothing... A cold realization shot through his system like an electric shock. Indifference to cold, discomfort, and potential illness. Total apathy toward everything around her. Nothing concerned her except the question of death. More precisely—suicides. Was the mysterious stranger perhaps trying to learn what exactly pushed people to that step, in order to understand: was she herself standing on the same path? The thought was intriguing and quite "nourishing" to digest on the way to the precinct. But actions proved faster than logical conclusions. The soles of his boots tore at the asphalt, and Richard bolted like a cheetah in pursuit of prey. Only he wanted to catch his prey to save it, not to tear it apart. He sprinted as fast as his actuators allowed, literally flying like a bullet across the distance he had just covered at a leisurely pace. Within mere minutes, arriving back at the pier, the android screeched to a halt at the exact same spot, beside the central bench. He whipped his head around feverishly, his gaze wandering everywhere, as if he hadn't just been racing headlong along the entire embankment, scanning every meter. The bench was empty. In the spot where the stranger had sat, only his jacket remained. It was neatly folded, sleeves tucked inside. Richard slowly approached the bench, as if his own article of clothing were a wild animal he didn't want to startle. Neither scanning the area nor reconstructing events yielded a result: the system could not find even a trace of her presence. Richard walked to the iron railing, expecting the worst. The river below appeared ink-black, thick, and absolutely still. Not a splash, not a ripple on the water. Only on the surface, trembling with the current, drifted an empty beer can. Too much time had passed—in these ten minutes, anything could have happened. "Where did she vanish to?" He turned around in confusion. Within the perimeter, there were only two possible witnesses, one of whom was a stray dog. Richard decided there was nothing left to lose and, despite the scattering of glass bottles near the tent, he should try his luck. The android donned his jacket and adjusted his cuffs. Glancing skeptically at the body near the urine-stained mattress, which looked suspiciously human, Richard headed in its direction. "Excuse me," he tilted his head slightly to the side, assessing the man’s condition. "About ten minutes ago, a young woman was sitting here. Did you see where she went?" The overgrown, bloated vagrant, whose body seemed no cleaner than his filthy cardboard bedding, slowly lifted his head. In his eyes floated a murky yellow film, in which nothing was reflected except the nearest streetlamp. "Nah..." "Are you certain?" the android asked, hoping for a different answer. Richard leaned in slightly, enduring the sickening stench of stale alcohol and unwashed body, trying to peer into those clouded slits. He was searching within them for even a drop of evidence that she had been there, that she was real. "A brunette, approximately my height," Richard traced an invisible line in the air level with his forehead. "She was wearing a short black dress. Don't you recall?" "Listen, pal," the vagrant stretched his dry, cracked lips into a greasy, rotten grin, "if a chick in a miniskirt had walked through here, I sure as hell wouldn't have missed it." He let out a loud, guttural belch and latched onto the neck of his bottle again. Richard recoiled in disgust; the homeless man’s words echoed with an unpleasant irritation. The very thought that the image of the elegant, albeit strange, stranger had to pass through the filter of this dirty mind was repulsive. The android watched as the drunkard, unable to distinguish whether a robot or a human stood before him, wiped his mouth with a greasy sleeve. He didn't look like a schizophrenic, and he had no reason to lie. She couldn't have been a hallucination, could she? Richard was a machine, and machines do not suffer from hallucinations—only from fatal memory errors. He cranked his optical zoom to the maximum, scrutinizing every crack in the asphalt, every movement of the shadows. Nothing. The bench itself was dusty, as if no one had sat on it in a long time, which also seemed strange. Perhaps she had simply left, abandoning his unsolicited gesture of care to gather dust on the wooden slats. She had vanished into the labyrinth of streets, leaving him alone with questions that had no answers. There was nothing left to do but walk away. To accept that his life was now an endless wait. A wait for the next suicide note, to the call of which she, like an angel of death, would emerge from the darkness. Richard had already turned to dissolve into the night when he suddenly froze, as if his processor had been pierced by a high-voltage discharge. Familiar scent molecules unceremoniously invaded his analysis system, reconstructing a phantom of the past before him. He slowly, almost afraid of himself, pressed his nose to the collar of his own jacket. A short breath... and the world around him collapsed.