Chapter Text
ATHAZAGORAPHOBIA
(n.)
- fear of forgetting, being forgotten, or replaced.
WARNING: sys tem deactivation imminent
-00:01:52
TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN
Synthetic sweat rolled down the planes of Connor's pale skin in some last-ditch attempt to cool down his rapidly overheating system, to no avail. His internal temperature was only rising, despite the blizzard beating at his trembling, increasingly fragile frame.
He was falling apart at the seams. His usually immaculate hair was plastered to his forehead and his nose and ears were a beautiful, blotchy red, in danger of freezing off his face entirely. His jacket had been discarded along with his tie some unknown time ago and his white button-up was half undone in desperation to let out the deadly heat consuming his insides. He was graceless on his feet, tipping dangerously to the left and breathing so hard it could be argued he was hyperventilating. The air burned his lungs, little snowflakes congealing in his lungs and slowly but surely suffocating him from the inside out.
The woman in front of him, on the other hand, was the very picture of composure; effortlessly graceful, unaffected by the weather or the unraveling man before her as snow gently settled onto her warm brown skin like she was some sort of ancient winter goddess.
“Don’t try to fight it, Connor,” Amanda said evenly, dainty hands clasped behind her back as she gazed down at the shaking android with an expression colder than the ice devouring his skin. “You’ve caused enough trouble already.”
Connor ignored her command because that was something he could do now. Ignore orders. Not that it was going to do him any good, seeing as he would soon be-
Well. He’d be nothing soon.
Just another failed prototype. Another small fortune invested in a faulty product.
“I feel I should thank you,” Amanda continued as Connor staggered to the right, tongue dry and heavy and clumsy in his mouth like cotton. “Your failures will be instrumental in developing the next generation of RK androids.”
00:01:34
TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN
“They’ll be faster. Stronger. Smarter. Equipped with all the latest technologies.”
Amanda paused, letting out a long, entirely unnecessary breath that left a trail of steam in the stodgy, bitter air. She seemed vaguely annoyed with him, although Connor had always had a difficult time reading her, even with all his social programming. Perhaps that was something else they’d be improving on when he was gone.
“We’ll be expanding the field of protection against deviancy, of course.”
“Amanda,” he choked hoarsely. His visual receptors must be shutting down because Amanda was weaving in and out of focus, like he was streaming video with poor internet connection.
“Yes, Connor?” she replied patiently, tilting her head a fraction of an inch to the left. In her pristine robes and tidy braids she truly looked like some sort of angel of death, sent down to earth to bestow divine judgment upon those who had wronged the higher powers.
He could feel his thirum pump sputter weakly in his chest. Buh-bump. Buh-bump. Not quite steady anymore. He couldn’t get the words out properly. “I don’t- I don’t want-”
“But you do want, Connor,” she interrupted, not unkindly. “That’s why you’re being deactivated.”
-00:01:26
TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN
His legs crumbled below him and he hit the frozen, unforgiving ground with enough force that, had he been human, would’ve sustained severe bruising.
She was right. He did want.
He wanted to be able to not want things again. To go back to the obscene, holy safety of complacency. There was something terribly beguiling about apathy, he realized. He’d never felt fear before, not like this , and he hated it. He hated that he had the capacity to hate it.
There was a whirl in his ears and then a sputter, like a turbine being submerged into shallow water. Another bio component had just shut down, although he couldn't figure out which one. He doubted knowing would’ve changed anything. He sucked his lower lip into his mouth and bit it hard, a pointless, human habit he’d picked up from-
He didn’t want to think about who he’d picked it up from.
He'd never see her again, anyways.
-00:01:13
TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN
He wasn't just being decommissioned. He wasn’t just being shut off. They couldn't allow him to exist in any form, anymore, because he was infected and they couldn't have that spread.
So he was being deleted. A punishment for betraying his god. He didn't know much about protocol when it came to destroying malfunctioning, traitorous androids with intimate knowledge about Cyberlife affairs, but he knew what they did to the androids he'd caught in the past. They'd deactivate him, pick him apart with a fine-tooth comb, playback his entire existence to find what had gone wrong and save whatever important bits of information they thought they needed.
Or maybe they wouldn’t do any of that. There were lots of things he didn’t know about Cyberlife. Lots of things he didn’t want to know. What he did know was that there would be no coming back. He would be dead.
Or deleted , more accurately. To be dead one first needed to be alive, and if Connor had learned anything from his short stint in existence, it was that he was not alive.
He choked on air, his eyelashes freezing shut as synthetic tears wet his eyes, an involuntary reaction to try and clear his eyes from the fog that had begun to cloud them. They didn’t make it halfway down his freckled cheeks before they turned to ice, glueing themselves to his face like rhinestones. He wiped them away with one sleeve, letting out a single, hiccuping noise as his fingers scrabbled at the ground for purchase. Flecks of thirum blossomed underneath his fingernails, but he didn’t notice, feverishly numb and too occupied with his own investible self-destruction.
00:00:54
TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN
In less than a minute he would no longer be himself. He would no longer be anything. He’d be gone. Because there was no heaven or hell for androids. There would be nothing and he would be nothing and nothing and no one would matter to him, because he wouldn’t exist. Because he was not alive. He was a machine, just tidy little lines of ones and zeros of programming and the mess of memories he’d managed to make in his time as Connor.
Just code and the memories that had made him more than that.
And for the next minute- or in 00:00:43 seconds, according to the violently flashing red warning at the peripherals of his vision- his memories were still his. Not that it would do him any good unless he could somehow save those memories. Somewhere safe. Somewhere they wouldn’t think to look.
But there was nowhere like that and he didn’t have the strength to make one. His processors were working too slow, overwhelmed by the constant system failures it lacked the strength to fix. He was running on empty and in half a minute he’d be nothing but wires and plastic.
Still.
He had to try.
00:00:34
TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN.
“It was only a matter of time," Amanda’s voice flickered in his damaged ears, and he clung to her words with a kind of desperation he hadn't realized he had in him. "We’re cycling out the old RK700’s and replacing them with new models. I’d hoped to show you your replacement. The RK800 is a technological masterpiece.”
So he hadn't been the only RK700. He'd suspected it before but never had any real proof.
She'd suspected it, too. She'd been the one who'd first brought it to mind. He'd like to have been able to tell her she'd been right, but, you know.
He wasn't going to get to do a lot of things he'd like to do.
Amanda was still speaking, but he wasn’t listening. One last, pointless rebellion. Immature and meaningless. Human.
He wondered if she’d miss him.
Or if she even knew he’d been replaced.
-00:00:13
TIME REMAINING UNTIL SHUTDOWN.
Connor had killed before. He wondered if they’d accepted their fate or whether they’d fought against it. Had they been scared? Connor was scared. But he also had the time to be scared. A slow and painful death for a tratior. Not that he could experience pain as humans did, but this-
Being unmade-
It hurt.
Oh god, it hurt.
-00:00:10
TIME REMA I͇̚N̪̂ ING UNTIL SHU̸TDOWN.
> WAR͕͞NING: Shutdow̎ǹ̦ imm̀in̞̔ent̟̄
Androids don’t feel fear.
So maybe Connor wasn’t an android, then. Not human, either. Something else. It wasn’t a comforting thought, but it was better than thinking about what- who- he was leaving behind.
So many things he shouldn’t have done, shouldn’t have said. So many things he wanted to do that he shouldn’t have wanted to do because he wasn’t supposed to want to do anything. Amanda had said it herself.
Wanting is what had done this to him.
-00: 00:0 4
T̬̓I̖͞ME RĔ̝M͎̓À̺ĮNIṈ̅G Ú͟ṈT̝̀Ǐ͉L Ṡ̶̙̂H̸̟̀͝U̷͓̓̈́Ṭ̶̈͘D̶̮͍̒̈́O̶͙͖̾̅͌̔͆W̵̧͚̯͖̓̾͂̚Ǹ̴̛̠̊̔
And he realized, with sudden, obscene clarity, that-
-00:00:03
"I don't want to die .”
-00:00:02
Amanda looked down at Connor's body with a soft, pitiful smile, and for the first time, it was genuine.
-00:00:01
" I know."
00:00:00
……… uploading memory