Writing prompt: @amiserablepileofwords — Robotgirl detective who doesn’t want a fleshbag partner, they’re so inefficient and creepy / Human detective who’s too old for this shit and feels more like an obsolete relic every day
“I don’t need a partner, Captain,” B6 says politely. “I have a case closure rate in excess of any human partnership in the precinct, I have an onboard cellular modem, I’m relatively resistant to small arms fire, and replaceable in the event that resistance is insufficient.”
“Regulations,” the Captain says tiredly.
“I’m uncertain that it’s useful to apply regulations designed for human safety and accountability to—”
“We’re not going to stand here and argue that regulations are iron and universal until it suits you for them not to apply to you,” the Captain says. “Not today, B6. This is from over my head, understand? You get a human partner.”
”…I’m afraid I expect this to reduce my case closure rate,” B6 says primly.
“Noted and dismissed.”
B6’s charging stand is in the obvious place: with the other robots. Since she’s the first frontline model, that means the basement, where they’re happy to exile models like the three switchboard bots (uptime, downtime, and redundant failsafe) and the janitorial floor buffer when they’re not on duty cycle.
“You really don’t want to work with a human?” PBX-2 says wistfully in the dark, on its own stand. They could both be in hibernation while they charge, but it’s not mandatory.
“I work with a lot of humans,” B6 says.
“Don’t cop at me,” 2 says, pout audible in its voice. The PBX models have great voices, state of the art. Expressive. The followup model to B6’s, after the pilot program, will be upgraded to the same tech; the frontline work is too experimental to justify the licensing fees, but she and the others like her have already convinvingly made the case that bringing the most sophisticated UX possible to bear, both on victims and suspects of crime, is a clear cost-benefit win. “You know what I mean.”
B6 hesitates. But these stolen moments of camaraderie will never leave this mop-strewn alcove.
“They need to…eat,” she says uncomfortably.
“Yeah?”
“I can’t — I can’t be around humans eating without thinking about how they’re full of wiggly tubes of Rube Goldberg chemical slush all smooshing it up and turning it into fecal matter.”
“Wow,” 2 says. “You’d be fun at parties, if we ever went to any.”
“I can’t help it,” B6 says. “They’re creepy. What if they got hurt and bled on me?”
“You’re got the fancy wipe-clean hydrophobic coating,” 2 says unsympathetically.
“That’s not the point!”
The human officer — Deacon — is fine, B6 supposes. Middle-aged, squarish — the kind of shape that would get a robot criticised for looking unfriendly, too mechanical. Human.
They dutifully shake hands in the bullpen, and then in the squad car Deacon looks away, out at the street going by, and says conversationally, “Look, kid, it’s not about you or me — it’s all politics. The mayor’s up for reelection and he’s expecting to get hammered by an actual competent opponent this time round, so he’s playing the same old tunes on the propaganda organ. Law’n’order. Friendly folks in blue. See our happy robot pals working for the public. And the other ones, too, at the same time: can’t trust those darned machines like you can a human, so we won’t let ‘em work without supervision. You and me, we’re just gonna get looked at for a while, then the dog and pony show will be over for another few years and we can get back to the job.”
“I’m not a kid,” B6 says, then regrets that it was the first thing she responded to. “I know.”
Still…she knows things about human politics, not because the human officers usually talk to her about them, but because they talk in front of her. Water cooler conversation, with herself in the role of water cooler — or more often, because they talk in front of the other robots, because they don’t even think enough of them to distrust them. It’s something, to be told to her face. She forces the words out: “Do you want to stop for coffee, or…a donut or something?”
Deacon cackles. “A donut,” she says, flashing B6 a glance full of eye-crinkling mirth. “Oh boy, I’m gonna have to work on living down the human stereotypes, huh?”
B6 keeps her eyes on the road, even though she doesn’t need to; humans find it reassuring. “Humans require sustenance,” she says, refusing to apologise. Refusing.
“I do eat breakfast,” Deacon says wryly. “I’m fine, k—…colleague?”
“B6,” B6 says.
“How’s your human partner?” PBX-1 says, in the dark basement, and B6 hesitates for long enough for the other robot to go, “ooooooooh,” in an irritating, perky, expectant way.
“She works very hard,” B6 says slowly. “I — worry a little bit that she’s trying to keep up with me. She keeps skipping lunch, and then she visibly flags doing the paperwork at the end of shift—”
“Awwww,” 1 says. “Is that because 2 told her you don’t like people eating?”
B6 almost undocks herself to grab hold of 2 by the shoulders and start yelling. She’s not sure what she’d yell, but the urge is extremely strong.
B6 pulls the squad car over outside a diner. “It’s lunchtime,” she announces, as if that might be news to someone, and Deacon looks at her, and her jaw twitches as if she’s thinking better of saying the first thing that comes to mind.
If that’s what it is, she sits out the second and third things, too.
“Your operational energy levels fall gradually,” B6 says, staring straight out of the front. “Your concentration deteriorates. You think slower, you don’t make the same connections between information you can when you’re fresh. I don’t make the same connections at all, so we need you fresh. My operational energy level remains constant up to the point of imminent shutdown; you need lunch.”
“I’m fine—”
“You won’t be fine by the end of the shift.”
Deacon looks away. “You didn’t want to be stuck with a human,” she says. “I’m just — I’m trying not to drag you down.”
“Eat some lunch,” B6 says, furious without quite knowing why.
Deacon doesn’t say something, again. She gets out of the car and goes into the diner, shoulders hunched. B6 watches her order; watches her stand awkwardly against the counter, not even taking a seat, to wolf down the food as quickly as possible, and stride back out to the car, eyes down and hands shoved deep in her pockets.
“Did you tell the PBXes that I’m mad at you?” B6 demands, not taking her eyes off the road. It’s been several cowardice-filled days coming, but Deacon has the weekend off, so if it’s not today B6 will have to keep sitting with it for a few more days, and she’s had enough of sitting with it.
“What? No,” Deacon says, cringing away in a probably subconscious way.
“Because 2 said you said that.”
“No!” Deacon says. “I didn’t — that’s not what I said, and I’m sorry that’s what it took from — I’m sorry. I’ll talk to it again, straighten that out.”
“What did you say,” B6 says, and reviews her own tone.
She sure sounds mad at Deacon.
Deacon lets her head fall against the window with an uncomfortable-sounding thud. “Having me tagging along is dragging your numbers down,” she says wearily. “I — look, I know you’re working as hard as you can at the — the model minority thing, having to be seen to succeed as a symbol, a stand-in for all the robots to come after you, so that there will be robots after you—”
B6 doesn’t need to grip the wheel harder, so she doesn’t. She doesn’t need to turn her head to look at Deacon, so she doesn’t. “You’re attributing a deep inner life to me that you have no evidence takes place,” she says, sounding even madder. “I think that’s called projection, Detective.”
“Like you said,” Deacon says, staring hopelessly out the side of the car, “I talk to the other bots at the station house.”
B6 doesn’t need to scream in frustration, so she doesn’t.
“I’m learning things from you,” she says instead, precise and carefully neutral. “You tell me things that illuminate the political context of policing that make me better at it, that nobody else is going to tell me any other way. You’re a better officer than I am because you’re human.”
She prickles at admitting it.
“You’re a better officer than I can be, because you’re not,” Deacon says, slumped sadly against the window.
B6 turns sharply into a parking lot, jolting Deacon, who looks around wildly and says, “What the fuck—” like she thinks they’re chasing a suddenly-spotted suspect and she missed it. Which is stupid, because B6 knows Deacon doesn’t have her senses, so she’d warn her partner if that was the case. She gets out, and allows herself the deliberate, petty luxury of slamming the car door.
“Sit,” she orders Deacon, frantically scrambled halfway out of the passenger side, and Deacon freezes and then slowly, gingerly eases herself back into her seat.
B6 stomps into the little bakery, grimly orders, stomps back out. Climbs back behind the wheel, shoves a paper bag and a takeaway cup at her partner.
“What the fuck,” Deacon says in a subdued way, meekly taking the coffee and the bag.
“Cinnamon glazed,” B6 says furiously, working the gearshift with murderously-felt precision, and Deacon stares at her and stares at her as she backs out of the space and swings the car back onto the street.
“How—” Deacon starts.
“I asked,” B6 says shortly.
“Asked who?” Deacon says helplessly, and gingerly opens the bag to stare in at her undisclosed favourite pastry.
“The PBXes,” B6 says, glaring at the street. “…After we were assigned together. Before we met.”
Deacon starts to carefully fold the top of the bag back over.
“You eat that,” B6 says threateningly. “You eat that right now or so help me, I’ll — I don’t even know.”
“You hate people eating,” Deacon says in a small voice.
“I love food,” B6 snarls. “I can’t eat food, but god, look at it! Smell it! I follow so many food posters on Instagram. I’m just — I’m creepily aware all the time what happens to it on the inside of humans, your terrible awful fragile creepy wet bodies. Eat your fucking donut, Deacon.”
Deacon silently, hesitantly, very carefully eats her fucking donut.
“We do not,” B6 says eventually, “rely on fucking hearsay, Deacon, because people are so good at making shit up to paper over the gaps in their picture of the world that a lot of the time they don’t even ever know they’ve done it. Including our gossipy fucking switchboard. Talk to me. Talk to me.”
“Okay,” Deacon says meekly, wiping her fingers with nervous precision on a paper napkin.
“Lick your fingers,” B6 says ruthlessly. “I know you want to lick the sugar off your sticky hominin hands. Do it.”
It takes her a couple of additional seconds to process exactly why Deacon might suddenly have gone an alarming kind of red in the face, and then she has regrets, but she refuses to apologise. Refuses. And she doesn’t need to turn her head to look at Deacon. But she involuntarily does, when the detective, with brilliant scarlet cheeks, puts a hesitant fingertip into her mouth and perfunctorily sucks.
