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nevadancitizen · 7 months ago

Text

-> THE BURDEN OF TOMORROW

synopsis: kamski reveals the one thing you know to be true as a lie: your humanity. connor can’t rightly sit idly by as you struggle to re-find yourself.

word count: 4.2k

ships: connor x reader, hank anderson & reader

notes: i’m skipping from fandom to fandom like i’m fucking window shopping huh. anyway connor the pinerrrr. connor the ultimate denier of feelingssssss

related reading: HEAD OF FALSE SECURITY MASTERLIST

You had been against the idea from the beginning. In your head, you traced the different ways Kamski would turn you, Hank, and Connor down – “I’m too busy to answer some stupid questions,” or “Go away, I’m trying to enjoy being a retired billionaire,” or “I’m Elijah fucking Kamski, and who the fuck are you supposed to be?”

But his android, Chloe, had welcomed all of you. And you couldn’t ignore how Kamski’s face brightened ever-so-slightly when he saw Connor. But it confused you even more when his eyes flitted to you and his expression brightened even more.

He started talking after he got out of his red-granite-lined pool, which didn’t really interest you. Your eyes turn to one of the Chloes that’s standing off to the side, her eyelids fluttering a little as she presumably scans you. When she’s done, her lips tilt upward in a smile and her head cocks to the side a little. It’s like… she knows you, or something. Like she was smiling because she saw an old friend.

Kamski’s voice cuts through your thoughts. “Chloe?”

Chloe immediately walks over to Kamski, her bare feet making soft sounds against the tile, then muffled by the carpet. She sinks to her knees when he puts a hand on her shoulder and pushes slightly.

“What interests me…” Kamski moves so he’s standing next to where Chloe’s kneeling. “… is whether machines are capable of empathy.”

He moves so his back is turned on all three of you, and opens a drawer of a side table near the window. “I call it the “Kamski Test.” It’s very simple, you’ll see.”

Kamski turns with his hands raised. One of them is holding a pistol by the barrel, in a way that it would be impossible to fire. Once he’s established that he’s not a threat, he moves forward and places the grip in Connor’s hand. Connor curls his fingers around it on instinct, his index on the trigger.

“What are you doing?” You interject.

Kamski looks over at you and smiles. It’s like you’re proving something to him. What you’re proving, you don’t know.

He moves Connor’s arm so that the sights of the gun are trained on Chloe’s head. “It’s up to you to answer that fascinating question, Connor. Destroy this machine, and I’ll tell you all I know. Or…”

Kamski makes a half-circle and stands beside Connor. “Spare it, if you feel it’s alive. But you’ll leave without having learnt anything from me.”

Hank scoffs and rolls his eyes, gently hitting your arm with an air of can you believe this fucking prick? “Okay, I think we’re done here. C’mon, let’s go, both of you. Sorry to get you outta your pool.”

You put your hand on Hank’s arm to still him and stare at Connor. His LED flickers between yellow and red, circling in on itself quickly as he stares down at Chloe. His eyelids flutter slightly as he tries to process everything around him, calculating and sorting every possibility into neat percentages.

“Connor?” You say softly, trying to break him from his trance. “Connor, come on. This is a waste of time – you don’t need to do this. It could mess with your…” you gesture at your forehead vaguely. “… microprocessors or whatever.”

Kamski exhales slightly and smiles. He takes the pistol by the barrel, gently taking it from Connor’s hand. Connor looks at Kamski, then back down at Chloe.

“Amazing,” Kamski breathes out.

“Yeah, amazing, I care about Connor.” You roll your eyes. “Let’s go.”

Connor catches your eye and nods. “I would’ve been okay. Shooting the android wouldn’t have impacted my microprocessors or any of my other biocomponents.”

“The kid’s just worried,” Hank cuts in. “Now, c’mon. We’re leaving.”

“Wait – one last thing.” Kamski brushes past, walking to the far wall. He presses his hand to a biometric scanner on the wall, causing it to let out a sound akin to a hiss as it opens. It creases vertically, then folds back.

You let out a small sound of disbelief as you take in what Kamski revealed. Lining the walls of the hidden compartment is… information, yes, but not information about deviants. It’s information about you.

Photos of you as a child, teenager, adult, and projections of what you’d look like as you aged. Reports on how you’ve been performing as a detective. Maps of interrelationships, circles labeled with names and a web of color-coded lines connecting them.

And, on the back wall, are blueprints. You’ve seen these types of schematics before – they’re for androids.

Kamski turns and smiles when he sees your shocked face. “So it worked. You firmly believed you were human. Am I wrong, Detective?”

You feel a hand on the top of your back, and only barely register Hank shuffling you towards the exit as you stumble. “This is fucked. I don’t know what the hell you’re trying to pull, Kamski, but we’re out.”

“N-no, Hank, wait –” You dig your heels in, never once looking away from the hidden compartment. “Wait, Kamski, what is this?”

“Just an experiment.” Kamski follows your eyes and looks inside. “A personal pet project.”

“They’re not your goddamn passion project!” Hank snaps, ushering you along with a bit more force. “Now leave the kid alone.”

“Hank, please, I want to see –” You crane your neck, still trying to look.

“This is damaging to your psyche,” Connor says, taking your arm and helping Hank herd you. “I – we need you operating at full capacity, for the sake of the case.”

“There it is, again!” Kamski laughs. “That beautiful thing, empathy.”

He walks into the room leisurely, like it’s a parlor instead of… whatever it is. “I don’t blame you for being curious. You’re a violent and irrepressible miracle, Detective.”

You struggle against Connor and Hank’s holds as you try to see more of the secret room. “Wh-what do you mean? Hank, let me see! I need to know what’s going on!”

You grab Hank’s arm with your free hand, tugging on his coat. “Hank, I promise I’ll be okay – just five minutes. All I need is five minutes! Please, let me do this. I just need to figure out what this is, then we can go. Just five minutes.”

Hank’s mouth curls into a scowl when he hears the emotion and pleading in your voice, his eyebrows furrowing as he thinks. His eyes fall to the floor, then flick to Connor.

“I highly advise against that,” Connor says evenly, but his worry is betrayed by the way his jaw clenches. His fingers tighten around your upper arm. “Not only will this definitely cause irreversible psychological damage, it could possibly lead to a mental break.”

“Five minutes, Connor.” You look into his eyes. “How much damage can five minutes do?”

“A lot!” Connor says. But after a moment of eye contact, his eyes soften and he relents. He lets go of your arm and takes a step back, his shoes clicking against the tile.

Hank does the same, removing his hand from your back. He sighs and crosses his arms. “Five minutes, kid. That’s all you get.”

You immediately turn on your heel and rush into the room because, knowing Connor, he’d probably set an internal timer already. You hear both Hank and Connor follow you, standing at the edge of the doorway.

You scan the room, then pick out what to look at and what to question Kamski about.

“This.” You point at a small tablet, showing a muted video of you dancing drunkenly at a crowded party. You’re wearing a hideous necktie like a headband and you get your face right in the camera as soon as you spot it. You can make out the words you’re saying – or, rather, yelling – “What’re you waiting for, man? Let’s party with Miss Page-Three all the way to Disco Ze-e-e-ero-o-o-o!”

You turn to Kamski. “What is this? Why do you have it?”

“Every person moves in a unique way,” Kamski says, shrugging slightly. “Androids already have a specific set of movements. I analyzed the way you moved – the way a human moved.”

“Moved?” You echo back. “What do you mean, moved? Don’t you mean move? Like, the present continuous verb?”

“I didn’t misspeak.” Kamski turns to a paper organizer on a desk and starts to flip through it.

You exchange a glance with Hank, then Connor. Hank is more obvious with his unease, but you can tell Connor is fretting, too. He just keeps it in his mind, still silently calculating.

Kamski pulls out a manila folder and hands it to you. You turn it over and read what’s on the front. Typed out in neat Courier New is your name, your birth date, and a random date from a few years back �� Feb. 21, 2034.

You undo the clasp and dump out the documents on a nearby desk. What’s inside only causes further confusion – there’s a photocopy of a will, a death certificate, an incident report, and photos of a car crash. The death certificate is… it’s yours, but it can’t be. Can it?

You pick up one of the pictures and hold it close to your face. The car is a mangled mess of metal, lit by red and blue police lights. Peeking out from underneath the rubble, limp on the concrete, is a hand. Your hand. And it’s stained with fresh, wet blood.

“Connor.” Your voice comes out weak and strained. You can’t lift your eyes from the photo. “Connor, get over here.”

Connor’s footsteps sound, quick and almost rushed. “Yes, Detective?”

“Scan this.” Your hand shakes as you hold the photo out to Connor. “I-is this…?”

Is this real? You want to ask. Please tell me it’s not, Connor. Connor, please-please-please tell me this is some stupid joke. I’m not afraid of dying, but what if I already have?

Connor leans down a little, his eyelids and LED flickering as he scans it. His face falls as soon as his LED resumes circling normally. “It’s… yes. I found a document containing that picture, but I… I’m not permitted to access it.”

“Okay, but that’s just s-some random wreck, right?” You laugh nervously, trying to ignore the lump growing in your throat. Can androids even cry? “It – it’s not me.”

Connor reaches down and sorts through the documents. When he comes across the death certificate, he freezes. His eyelids flutter as he scans it. He looks over at you, slowly.

“No,” you whisper. “Connor, it… it can’t be real.”

“It is,” Connor says softly. “Detective, I… I’m so sorry.”

And, just like that, you’re disconnected. You’re outside of your body, stuck in the passenger seat and controlling a video game. There’s a lag to every movement you make. You recall some term you heard in a college psychology course you were required to take – disassociation. You vaguely register that this is what you’re feeling.

With more effort than it should take, you turn to look at Hank. His expression, shocked and appalled, causes the dam to burst. Your shoulders shake as you cry, hot with misplaced shame.

Connor wraps an arm around your shoulder, gently pushing you out of the room and towards the exit. Hank pats his shoulder, telling him to “Get them to the car – I’ve got a few choice words I need to exchange with our friend here.”

The car ride was tense, and that atmosphere transferred into Hank’s home. He had asked on the way back if you were okay being by yourself, and you were honest and told him that no, you’re not. He had sat you down and assured you that he wasn’t mad, he didn’t feel betrayed – he just needed time to think and adjust to this new change.

He had turned in an hour ago, just a little past three in the morning. You know you couldn’t sleep if you tried. That left you and Connor in Hank’s living room.

You’re laying on the floor with Sumo, his head on your chest and drool staining your shirt. One of your arms is propped behind your head, your other hand absentmindedly combing through Sumo’s fur.

The silence is only broken by the ceiling fan clicking with every rotation and your breathing – artificial breathing, you suppose.

“Did you go into standby?” You ask softly.

“No,” Connor answers from his seat on the couch. “Would you like to talk?”

“Maybe.” You trace the pattern of Sumo’s fur, then look over at Connor. “It’s just… I don’t feel like an android. And I have lots of memories. I remember going to Chicken Feed with Hank for the first time. He got me the best goddamn burger in Detroit. I remember finding a Lucky Star bottlecap when I was a kid – the, uh… the ones from that one sarsaparilla? With the blue star on the bottom. Androids don’t have memories like that. Memories from their childhood. Memories that make them feel things.”

Connor stands from the couch, then sits by your side. He puts his hand on Sumo’s head, gently tracing the white streak that cuts through brown fur. The fan continues to click as Connor thinks for a few moments, LED swirling as he does.

“I feel things, sometimes,” he says softly. “But not like how a deviant feels. I have a built-in reward system meant to keep me motivated. But sometimes I’m rewarded even when I do something unrelated to the case.”

“Like what?” You smile up at him. “Petting Sumo?”

Connor smiles softly, glancing away, then back to you. “Yes.”

You laugh softly, your eyes staying on Connor’s face, tracing this new expression. He doesn’t smile a lot, but you’re grateful for every second that he does.

His brow creases a little, his smile disappearing. “Are you feeling alright? I want to know if you’re… I know this revelation has affected you negatively, but I just want to know of your general mental state.”

You sigh quietly, looking up and following one blade of the fan as it rotates. “I mean, I thought I had it all figured out, y’know? There’s a giant ball, and there’s evil apes. And the evil apes are just… dukin’ it out on the ball. And I’m one of them. It’s basically all just evil apes dukin’ it out on this giant ball.”

Connor tilts his head to the side. “And in this scenario… what are androids?”

“Androids don’t exist in this scenario,” you say. “Androids are too perfect. Like fine porcelain china. They’re for the future. I figured this out when I was young, before androids were everywhere. When there was just a giant ball and evil apes.”

“Hm.” Connor shifts slightly, so that his thigh is just barely pressed against your side. “And what do you feel now?”

“I… I don’t know.” You sigh. “I feel… kinda guilty, I think? Because, yeah, it’s bad. This doesn’t have any upside to it. But it’s not bad for anyone else aside from me, and Hank, to a lesser degree. It’s not death, or war, or – god forbid, pedophilia. It’s just me.”

You go quiet as you watch the fan rotate. Your fingers find the tags on Sumo’s collar, the tag with his name and Hank’s address and number clinking against his rabies vaccination tag.

“Humans are complicated,” Connor eventually says.

You snort. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I…” he sighs. “I know you didn’t mean to deceive me. But I can’t believe I didn’t know – or at least have an inkling.”

“Shit, I deceived myself.” You laugh humorlessly. “You’re okay, Connor. You don’t need to change to accommodate me.”

“Adaptability to unpredictable human behavior is one of my core features,” he says.

“Am I really unpredictable?” You ask. Your eyebrows furrow as you fidget with Sumo’s tags. “Or, actually – am I really even human?”

Connor’s LED flashes yellow as he looks down at you, his eyelids fluttering as he scans you. He blinks a few times and his LED returns to a calm blue.

“You’ve fooled my sensors,” Connor says. “And, if I may…”

His hand hovers over yours, which is still fidgeting with Sumo’s tags. You nod as you feel your heart skip a beat. He grabs your hand and lifts it to his solar plexus, right in the middle of his chest.

“Do you feel that?” Connor asks. “It’s my thirium pump. Biocomponent #8456w.”

Sure enough, you feel a soft thrumming beneath your fingers. It’s not quite like a heartbeat, but a steady hum that fluctuates. Strong, then a steady decline to weak, then back to its strongest.

You nod again, not trusting your voice at the moment.

Connor moves your hand so that it’s resting on your own chest, right over your heart. You don’t really make an effort to check your heartbeat but, just like the last time you remember checking, there’s a steady beat.

“You have a heart,” he says.

“An artificial one,” you chime.

“Yes,” Connor relents. “But it proves that you’re not like me. Not a full android.”

“For all I know, Kamski cobbled me together in his creepy basement,” you try to joke. “Do you think he has one? Or is he too rich?”

“Detroit is located alongside a river,” Connor says. “The soil contains too much water for basement construction to be feasible.”

You roll your head a little, looking up at him. “You’re too literal. Don’t you have a humor microchip or something?”

Connor smiles slightly. “Unfortunately, no.”

“Yes, you do!” You laugh and turn your hand over, grabbing his and shaking it gently. “You’re smiling. And you made a joke. A kind-of joke.”

Connor’s smile falters when he looks down at your connected hands. It’s not like you’ve laced fingers with him or anything, but it was still kind of intimate.

You clear your throat and let his hand go, instead carding your fingers through Sumo’s fur again. You can feel a blush creeping across your face. Once more, the room is only filled with the clicking of the fan with every rotation and your breathing.

“I don’t know what to do,” you eventually sigh out. “I wish I could just wake up and start the day over. But then I open my eyes and the time has still passed and I’m still here. I still have to go through… whatever this is.”

“You don’t have to go through it alone,” Connor says. “Hank would never abandon you, and…” His LED flickers yellow. “Neither would I.”

“You’re weird,” you say softly. “You’re weird for that.”

Connor nods, slowly. “Maybe. But you’re vital to this case, whether you believe it or not.”

“I do,” you say. “Kinda. I just need time. I can see the end, which is whole acceptance, or just not caring. I mean, all the pieces aren’t here, I still need to find them, but still. I get all the pieces, somehow, something else, walla-walla-bing-bang – my android-ness doesn’t bother me anymore.”

“Walla-walla-bing-bang?” Connor echoes, his eyebrows furrowing slightly.

“I don’t know what it means.” Your eyes flicker to his and you smile at his confusion. “I think I heard it somewhere once. It just felt like the most appropriate thing to say.”

Connor’s face softens and he mirrors your smile. “That does seem like an appropriate thing to say, yes.”

You keep looking up at him for a moment, just looking into his brown doe eyes. You swallow thickly as your thoughts race. There’s a sudden lump in your throat that you try your best to ignore and clear away.

“Connor, I…” You reach for his hand. He meets you halfway, gently holding your hand and resting his thumb on your knuckles.

“Am I a deviant?”

Are you going to turn me in? You want to ask. Please don’t. Please, Connor. I need you to trust me, just like you’ve trusted me before. I’ll be vigilant. I’ll figure this out. I promise. Please.

“No.” There’s no hesitation or doubt in his voice. “As far as I’ve figured out, you’re designed to act like a human. You’re meant to fool others into thinking you’re really human – because that’s what you were, before. Deviants are androids with mutations in their code. Your code is meant to mimic human emotions and rationale. So you’re just following your instructions.”

“Instructions.” You look down at your joined hands. You shake them a little as your lips draw into a thin line. “That’s what we both come down to, right? Instructions.”

“You…” Connor thinks for a moment. “Yes. But the instructions in you are nuanced, and sometimes contradictory. I’m not calling your code faulty – in fact, it rather reflects human behavior to a tee.”

“So I’m… at least a little human.” You close your eyes, resting your head on your arm that’s propped behind your head. “Human enough.”

“Human enough?” Connor echoes.

“Yeah. My lungs burn when I hold my breath too long. It hurts when I stub my toe and I feel electric when I hit my funny bone. I cry and my tears taste salty instead of tasting like… I don’t know, cleaning fluid.” You open your eyes and look up at Connor, as if asking him to confirm.

“Androids do have optic cleaning fluids, yes,” he says.

You smile and laugh lightly, your gaze returning to the fan blade. “Optic fuckin’ cleaning fluids…”

You sigh softly. “God, Hank was right. This is fucked. An android investigating androids and some… cheap copy of whoever I used to be. And, of course, a Lieutenant who’s slowly killing himself day-by-day.”

“You’re not a cheap copy,” he says. “Typical CyberLife androids cost nine thousand dollars, but custom models could cost more. Personally, my development and production costs total to just over four million, and every new RK800 model costs eight thousand.”

Connor soothes his thumb over your knuckles. “You must’ve cost Kamski a fortune.”

His words immediately go to your heart like you’ve been pierced by a scorpion’s tail. But instead of venom, it’s an injection of sweet feelings and erratic butterflies. If you didn’t know better, you’d say that his whispered words and damn-near reverent tone was intentional.

“That’s… that sounds kinda romantic,” you say, then remember yourself. “I – I mean, romantic as in, like, the Romantic era? Like, it’s a romantic idea. That Kamski loves his work so much that he couldn’t bear to stop and continued to push the envelope… even if he pushed it a bit too far, with an android replacing a real-life, actually-dead human and whatnot.”

Connor’s LED blinks as he thinks. He stays silent for a while, just looking down at his hand that’s holding yours and thinking.

“You’re starting to act like me, y’know?” You squeeze his hand. “A synthetic human instead of a true android.”

His LED stops flickering and he meets your eyes. “I am not a deviant. I have a rigorous self-testing system to make sure any signs of deviancy don’t go undetected.”

“Okay, okay,” you relent. You glance down to your conjoined hands, then back up into those doe eyes.

“Did you mean it?” You ask softly. “Earlier. When you said that you’d stay.”

“Of course,” Connor answers quickly.

“Really?” Your eyebrows crease. “Because it’ll take years. It’ll be depressing. And it’ll be boring. I’ll be worse than Hank. I don’t expect you to reward me or to applaud my every move, because I know that’s how normal people are all the time.”

“But you’re not normal,” Connor says with a smile. “Even before your entire identity was uprooted.”

“Connor!” You laugh and let go of his hand to swat at him, then grasp his hand again. “Alright, alright. I’ll get a bit of the Normal in me. A touch of the Regular. Exactly four grams of Johnny Normalcop.”

“Don’t.” He squeezes your hand. “It would be detrimental to the case if you were to focus on restructuring yourself in a different way. You don’t need to sanitize your personality.”

You smile up at Connor. “So you like me.”

His LED flickers yellow, then returns to blue. “Yes. I enjoy working alongside you as you are. You don’t need to be any amount of Johnny Normalcop.”

You shake your joined hands gently, your smile growing so wide you’re sure you looked a bit stupid. “You’re sweet. You know that?”

“I am somewhat aware.” Connor brings his free hand up to rest on top of your connected hands.

And, just like that, you know everything would be alright. Nothing would ever be the same, yes, but it would be alright. It won’t be easy, but you just need to move on. Uncertainty is a core tenet of detective work.

When life closes a door, it opens a window. And if the fall is too steep, use the fire exit. Run to the roof, because Connor will be there when you jump to break your fall. The most important thing is to keep moving. Keep dreaming. CyberLife can’t reclaim their lost property if you keep running – very, very fast, from one Earth-shattering revelation to the next.

#riptide writes 🌊#dbh connor x reader #connor rk800 x reader #rk800 x reader #connor x reader #detroit become human #dbh connor #dbh rk800 #connor rk800 #dbh x reader #detroit become human x reader #dbh connor x you #connor rk800 x you #rk800 x you #connor x you #dbh x you #detroit become human x you

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ceilidho · 1 year ago

Note

Ok if this doesn't sound like an idea you'd be interested in then disregard, i don't want to bother you 🙂 BuT! It's been itching the back of my brain since forced throuple au and creepy-apartment!ghost has compounded it so:

Forced throuple but a sort of android verse with some body snatching horror thrown in for flavor. Reader's husband (Soapy boy) dies suddenly and in their grief a lot of stuff has gone into disrepair, so they mail order an android to help around the house and with crippling loneliness. The company sends Ghost, a refurbished security model now named Simon, and he ends up being pretty helpful despite the silent brooding. Hell, sometimes that even helps as scary dog privilege so you let it slide (big mistake dumby, that android is falling for you in the process of taking care of you ohhh no-).

But maybe Ghosts old security features make him super observant (obsessive) paired with his new "fix it" code make him come to the conclusion that, actually, reader could still use her husband and mail orders a Soap-bot-3000 without letting them know :O. Watch the horror unfold as Reader wakes up one morning to her VERY NOT dead husband in bed and both Ghost and Soap acting like nothing is wrong :)))), maybe some "Simon reverts fo Ghost" too as the story progresses

this is from awhile ago (apologies, anon) and so wickedly weird and cool :)))

androids that are so realistic and bodies so malleable that they almost feel lifelike, like they're flesh and blood. you never wanted to actually give in and purchase one because you have personal qualms with the idea of something so human-looking being programmable and subservient to you; it's just always felt wrong and borderline cruel, and johnny used to concur with you when you spoke about it. that was then though. years and months and weeks before the accident.

now it's midday on a tuesday and you can't even get out of bed. there are two weeks of dishes in the sink and the lawn is overgrown and the feral cats haven't stopped by in days because you haven't had the strength to get up and feed them. your voicemail's been full for days. your sister stopped by and insisted when she saw the state of your house. "at least for a few weeks," she pleaded with you. you can always return it when you're back on your feet. she's already ordered you one from 141 Labs before she's even out the door, making you promise to give it a shot.

when you open the box, you worry that you might've ordered the wrong model. the size of the android they sent you feels out of place, like he's meant for private military companies or as a bodyguard for celebrities. not depressed accountants who can't get out of bed because their husband died two weeks ago. but it's your name on the receipt, your address. so when his blue eyes flare neon when he's first activated and all six feet and four inches of him sit up in the crate (that had to be wheeled in by two delivery men, you recall with a small amount of horror), you wait patiently to introduce yourself.

maybe this one was sent to you because of the defect. he wears a mask because the only layer of skin on his face starts from the bottom of his face down. at first you roll the mask up only to shudder at the exposed wiring and metal where cheekbones should be. you roll it back down.

he comes with a name. Ghost. that's his model, you surmise from the lengthy instruction booklet you're provided. the whole situation feels weird at first; his presence in your house always catches you off guard, even though, you suppose, it's his house now too. you jump whenever you walk into a room and he's just there, silent, so large that you nearly always think Threat first before you recognize him. maybe it's not fully your fault. he makes no effort to signal his presence, moving silently from room to room when he helps carry out the garbage or swifter the living room. sometimes you catch him staring at the photos of you and johnny that still line the top of the fireplace.

you try to be equitable, insisting that he take the guest room as his own. Ghost won't hear of it, following you into your room when night falls; ominous. you have to lock yourself in the en suite to change, heart beating away because you know he's standing just outside the door, like a cat waiting to be let in. shaking hands drag your clothes down. you stare blankly at the door while you shower, fingers twitching when you pass a washcloth over your nipples.

you think there's something wrong with you. you're sick or something. you're sick or something worse because your husband died two weeks ago and the thing in your house isn't even a human and still your stomach clenches when you think of him waiting for you in your room, knowing that you're naked behind the door. it's taboo; it's not something that's done, at least not something that's spoken about. people don't sleep with their androids. recent widows especially should not be thinking about fucking their androids.

two weeks go by. you can't even think about johnny without wincing these days.

"he was your husband."

you look up. Ghost says it like a fact, not a question. you're in the living room sorting through insurance papers while Ghost vacuums under the sofa (he lifts the corner up with just a single hand; you swallow, throat already dry). neon blue eyes zip across your face when you look over at him. you wonder sometimes what he sees there, etched into the plains of your face.

"yeah." your smile is tight, pained. "johnny."

he looks back down to the framed photo in his hand, studying it. you wish you could ask him what he's thinking about, but you worry that would be just another privacy stripped. you can't ask more of him.

"what happened to him?" he finally asks, looking up again.

you feel it catch in your throat. "he, um - he." it doesn't come out. your nose stings before you can even try to get more out. you grimace, shrug instead. you try to smile again, but it's warped, unpleasant to form much less look at. don't ask, it says, whatever you do, please, please don't ask.

"you miss him?"

you blink at him, misty eyed. "ye - of course."

his eyes are so, so blue when he stares across the room at you. it's unnerving to look at; terrifying to find yourself under his scrutinizing gaze. what do androids even think about?

"I understand." he puts the photo back on the bookshelf and walks out of the room.

sometimes you catch him watching you too intensely; rare moments when he doesn't seem entirely mechanical. you wonder if one day you'll roll the mask up and there'll be skin there suddenly, a real flesh and blood person. it feels entirely possible some days. he moves too fluidly, has his own quirks and intricacies that seem newer each day.

you don't try it. the minuscule amount of professional space between the two of you is an absolute. you worry sometimes what you'll let happen if you ever let that distance collapse. already he sleeps motionlessly in the chair beside your bed, refusing his own room. he powers down with his eyes still open, the blue flickering away to a dark grey. it's only mildly reassuring.

when you open your eyes in the middle of the night though, he stares back at you, eyes dark and sightless.

you worry sometimes that you might have made a mistake, letting your sister talk you in to this.

it's the arm tucked around your waist when you're doing the shopping, freezing for a second before the hand on your hip squeezes and he pulls you towards the fruit and veg. it's the menacing stare from over your shoulder when a man approaches you in the checkout lane, offering his condolences (an old colleague of your husband's, he says) and an invitation to dinner. you open your mouth only for Ghost to answer for you.

"No." it thrums out of him, a different modulation. you stare helplessly as the man's face goes white and he makes an excuse to leave, offering you another lame apology.

it's the hand that tugs you out of the store by the back of your shirt, Ghost's voice rumbling like he doesn't know you can hear him. saying something about how you don't need another man in your house. that you had johnny and now you have him.

#i didnt get to the soap part bc this became long...sorry #ceil writing #cod simon riley #ghost x reader #ghost/reader #simon riley x you #simon ghost riley x reader #simon ghost riley #cod x reader #ghost cod #cod mw2

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winxanity-ii · 4 months ago

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⌜I Love, Robot | Chapter 02 Chapter 02 | history. . . loading⌟

╰ ⌞🇨‌🇭‌🇦‌🇵‌🇹‌🇪‌🇷‌ 🇮‌🇳‌🇩‌🇪‌🇽‌⌝

❘ prev. chapter ❘༻✦༺❘ next chapter ❘

Over the next few years, things began to change. You noticed the distance between you and Rain growing, the once-strong bond you shared slowly fraying like the worn-out edges of an old blanket.

It wasn't something you could put your finger on at first, just a creeping sense of separation that settled in your chest whenever you caught sight of her from across the room.

You'd see her more often now with the colony kids, laughing and chatting, a bright spark among the worn and weary.

At first, you were happy to see her connecting with others, but then you realized she was spending more time with them than she was with you.

It hurt, but you understood. She needed friends her own age, a distraction from the hardships that seemed to hover over all of your lives like a dark cloud.

You were about 19, maybe 20, when everything took a darker turn. You'd been freelancing for a while—small jobs that kept you under the radar, nothing too flashy.

That was until a desperate small business, teetering on the edge of collapse, sought your skills.

You were hesitant, but the pay was decent, and the work seemed straightforward enough: hacking into some old systems, unlocking what was needed to keep them afloat.

And it was a success. Or at least, you thought it was.

But success came with consequences. You didn't realize you’d been tracked, not until someone with far more power than you could fathom found you.

They came to you with an ultimatum, their voice smooth but with an undercurrent of steel that sent a chill down your spine: work for them, take on any job they needed, or they’d turn you over to Weyland-Yutani.

You knew what that meant. You'd seen enough to understand the company didn’t tolerate dissent, especially from a former prodigy with a name they hadn't forgotten.

That's when your life took a dangerous path. You agreed to their terms, the fear of what could happen if you didn't outweighing any hesitation.

The jobs started simple but quickly escalated. Hacking turned into more complex coding, cracking into secure systems, sometimes even building or reprogramming androids and bots—a skill you honed under Marcus's watchful eye.

The pay was good, better than anything you could have made in the colony, and for a while, it seemed worth it.

But it wasn't just the money that kept you going. The promise of protection from other dangerous groups, black-market dealers who might see your skills as a threat, was a lifeline you couldn’t ignore.

To protect Rain and her family, your small, adopted family, you began staying out later, sometimes disappearing for days at a time. At first, Marcus and his wife were upset, worried about your well-being and what could be keeping you away.

Rain, especially, couldn't understand why you'd suddenly become so distant, why you weren't around as much. Her confusion and hurt were plain to see, and it tore at you in ways you couldn't explain.

Marcus eventually eased up on the questioning after he found you one night in the throes of a particularly bad meltdown. You'd come home after a job went sideways—something you hadn't anticipated, a system you couldn't crack in time, and the fallout had been brutal.

You couldn't tell Marcus what had happened, not exactly, but he didn’t push. He simply sat with you in the dim light of the kitchen, his presence a steady, calming force as you tried to pull yourself back together.

"If you ever need to talk," he'd said softly, his voice thick with the kind of understanding only someone who’d lived through hardship could have, "I'm here. You know that, right?"

You nodded, though you knew you'd never burden him with the weight of what you were involved in. This was a part of your life you'd chosen to keep to yourself, a dark secret that had become a necessary evil. And even though you trusted Marcus, you couldn't bring yourself to let him in on this one truth.

But life has a cruel way of taking away the things you hold dear, doesn't it?

Just a few weeks after your 21st birthday, Marcus and his wife fell ill. The colony's cold, damp air had always been harsh, but the pneumonia they caught from the mines was unlike anything they'd faced before.

You watched helplessly as the sickness took hold, their bodies weakened by years of toil in the toxic conditions of Jackson Star. It was like watching your own parents waste away all over again—a slow, painful decline that left you feeling powerless and lost.

Rain was a mess, her normally bright, fiery spirit dulled by the looming reality of losing her parents. She tried to stay strong, but you could see the cracks forming in her armor.

You did everything you could to help, taking over the household duties, scrounging for medicine, anything to ease their suffering, but deep down, you knew there was nothing that could be done.

The disease had sunk its claws in too deep.

One night, as you sat by Marcus's bedside, his breathing ragged and shallow, he reached out, his hand weak but insistent. You took it, holding on tightly, just like you had with your own father all those years ago. The weight of his grip was lighter than you remembered, his strength all but gone.

"Y/N…" he rasped, his voice barely audible over the sound of his labored breaths. "Take care of her… take care of Rain…"

Tears welled in your eyes as you nodded, unable to speak. "I will..." you whispered, your voice breaking. "...I promise."

He smiled faintly, a shadow of his old, warm smile. "Good… that's… good…"

You stayed with him until the end, just as you had with your parents. And when the time came, when the house fell silent except for the soft sobs of Rain and the hollow echo of your own grief, you knew that once again, you were left holding onto the pieces of a shattered life.

And this time, you would do whatever it took to keep Rain safe.

No matter what.

☆

Three years had passed since your adoptive parents' death, and in that time, life had only grown more complicated. You returned from your latest job—a grueling five-day ordeal that left you exhausted and hollow inside.

This time, you'd been tasked with hacking into Weyland-Yutani's high-security network, retrieving files that exposed a chilling directive: in moments of crisis, their synthetics were programmed to prioritize the company's assets over human lives, all under the guise of logical probability.

The job paid well, enough to secure you and Rain's needs for the next six months, but the price was high.

The screams and pleas of employees who’d been betrayed by the very machines meant to protect them echoed in your mind, refusing to let go. You tried to shake the images away as you made your way through the dim, narrow corridors of the small home you shared with Rain.

Entering the room, you found her curled up on your bed, her small frame wrapped around your pillow, her face buried into the soft fabric as she slept. You approached quietly, the soft sound of your footsteps barely audible over the hum of the heating unit.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, you reached out and gently brushed your fingers through her hair. Rain instinctively leaned into your touch, a small sigh escaping her lips as she snuggled deeper into your pillow.

A soft smile tugged at your lips, though your heart felt heavy. Watching her sleep so peacefully, so unaware of the horrors you'd just witnessed, was both a comfort and a curse.

You knelt beside her, continuing to stroke her hair, trying to silence the panicked screams still echoing in your mind. Just as you began to lose yourself in the motion, Rain stirred.

Groggily, she opened her eyes, blinking away the remnants of sleep. She gave you a tired smile. "Hey," she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep.

"Hey," you replied softly, your smile widening despite the weight on your chest.

Rain's brow furrowed slightly as she looked up at you, sensing that something was off. "What's wrong?" she asked, her voice a little clearer, more alert.

You shook your head, stilling your hand. "Nothing," you murmured, trying to keep your voice steady. "Just go back to sleep, Rain. It's late."

She hesitated but nodded, a yawn escaping her lips as she turned over, curling up again. "Okay... But could you look over Andy?” she asked sleepily, her voice trailing off. "His eyes... something's wrong with them. He's already in the workshop, in sleep mode, waiting."

"Sure, I'll take care of him," you promised, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to her forehead. She mumbled a thank you, already drifting back to sleep as you stood up and quietly made your way out of the room.

You moved through the darkened house, your steps light and measured to avoid waking Rain. Despite the pitch-black surroundings, you knew every inch of this place—every loose floorboard, every creaky door hinge.

It wasn't hard to navigate to the small workshop in the back, a space that had become both a sanctuary and a battlefield for your mind.

Without turning on the main lights, you reached for the small lamp on your workbench, flicking it on and casting a soft, warm glow over the room.

In the corner, covered by a sheet, was Andy. You pulled a rolling stool behind you as you approached, removing the sheet with a practiced motion to reveal the android beneath.

Andy's face was serene, almost peaceful in the dim light. The shadows cast by the lamp danced across his features, highlighting the sharp lines of his cheekbones and the soft curve of his lips.

Despite knowing he was a machine, you couldn't help but admire the craftsmanship—the subtle blend of human and synthetic, the way his face seemed almost too real.

You reached out, gently cupping the side of his face, your fingers tracing the contours of his jaw. His synthetic skin was cool to the touch, but familiar. Your hand moved to the side of his neck, pressing the small port to awaken him.

The change was immediate. Andy's body tensed, his right hand shooting up to grab your wrist with surprising speed and strength. His eyes flickered to life, emitting a soft glow in the darkness. "Shh, it's okay," you whispered softly, not pulling away. "Sorry to startle you."

At the sound of your voice, Andy's grip loosened, his eyes quickly focusing on you. "Y/N," he said, his voice calm and even. "You're back."

You offered him a small smile before turning to grab your diagnostics tablet. "I've only been gone for five days," you said, connecting the tablet to the port in his neck and starting the diagnostic test.

Andy blinked as if you'd made the dumbest statement ever. "Five days is more than enough time for someone to be missed."

You giggled softly at his matter-of-fact tone. "Thanks, Dee." You glanced at the screen, focusing on the data streaming in. "Rain mentioned you've been having issues with your eyes. Can you tell me more about that?"

Andy's eyes flickered for a moment before he answered. "I... I can still see, but my vision sometimes become foggy. It affecting my ability to accurately assess situations and objects."

You nodded thoughtfully, continuing to run the diagnostics as you chatted with him, your fingers moving deftly across the tablet. "I see... We'll get it sorted. So, how have things been while I was gone?"

Andy remained still, his gaze fixed on you. "Rain and I have missed you."

A warm smile tugged at your lips. "I've missed you both too." You paused, reflecting on how much had changed since the day you found Andy in that scrapyard.

Your perception of synthetics had shifted over the years.

You'd never treated them as mere machines, but having one as a constant companion had blurred the lines between man and machine.

Despite knowing he wasn't human, Andy's human-like qualities were something you cherished. They made him unique, almost... alive in a way that was hard to define.

The soft beep from the tablet pulled you back to the present. You looked down, seeing the source of the issue on the screen. "Ahh," you sighed, turning the tablet to show Andy.

The screen was filled with lines of code, complex and unintelligible to most. To anyone else, or even to an android whose primary function wasn’t related to programming, this would have been complete nonsense. But since bringing Andy back online, you'd made it your mission to always explain everything you did to him, guiding him through each process.

Part of you believed he deserved to know, a small gesture of respect for the android who had become so much more than just a machine.

But there was another reason, a darker thought that lingered in the back of your mind: the possibility that one day, you might not be around to help him.

You wanted Andy to understand his own systems and the intricacies of his coding—not just to function but to ensure he could take care of himself if the worst were ever to happen.

Andy studied the code intently, his synthetic mind processing the information with an almost human-like concentration. "There is an error in the environmental calibration subroutine," he noted, identifying part of the issue correctly.

You chuckled, impressed. "Close, Dee. But, you got most of it right." You pointed to a specific line of code. "This here—it needs an update. The last patch didn't account for the increased levels of smog and soot in the colony's air. It's affecting your visual processors."

Routine set in as you continued to work. "What is your directive, Andy?" you asked out of habit, fingers moving swiftly to implement the necessary changes.

Andy responded almost instantly. "To do what's best for Rain."

A second passed, and then he spoke again, his voice softer. "Do you ever think about changing the directive?"

You paused, fingers hovering over the screen as you looked up at him, puzzled. "What are you talking about, Dee?"

Andy hesitated for a moment, his eyes studying you with a strange intensity. "The day Marcus uploaded my directive, I remember asking him if the girl standing above me when I first came back online was Rain. He to me it was you, Y/N."

You laughed lightly, trying to lighten the mood. "Did you ask him if I was a great hacker too?"

Andy's expression remained serious, his voice steady. "No. I asked him, 'But what about what's best for Y/N?'"

Your fingers stilled on the tablet, and for a moment, you didn't know what to say. You looked up at Andy, his face soft with an expression you couldn't quite place.

A small, self-deprecating laugh escaped your lips. "What's best for me? Ha, I've never been too good at figuring that out. If I had a directive for myself, it'd probably be something like 'make everything harder than it needs to be.'"

Andy let out a low hum, his gaze unwavering. "Even if it's not my directive, just know, I'll still want what's best for you."

You blinked back the tears welling in your eyes, quickly turning your focus back to the tablet. "Thanks, Andy," you whispered, your voice barely audible. You continued your work in silence, the weight of his words settling over you like a heavy blanket.

Andy's head tilted slightly, his eyes zeroing in on your face as if committing this moment to memory. "Of course, Y/N... anytime."

The remainder of the time was spent in a comfortable silence as you finished updating his code. You leaned back with a sigh, setting your tablet down beside you. "How are you feeling now, Andy?"

The android paused for a moment, then said, "Well, it's better than before. But if my vision gets any worse, I guess you could say... my future won't be looking 'too bright'."

You just blinked at him, taken aback by the unexpected joke, before laughter bubbled out of your lips. "Was that a 'dad joke'? Where did you learn that from?"

Andy's eyes seemed to brighten, and he sat up a little straighter. "I learned it while walking Rain to work the other day," he explained. "I like them."

You chuckled, warmth spreading through your chest at the thought of Andy picking up on humor. "Well, I'll be sure to learn some more and tell you. We can make it a little hobby between the two of us."

Andy nodded earnestly, his expression softening. "I'd like that. Sharing experiences can strengthens bonds."

You couldn't help but smile at his earnestness. "You're right about that, Dee. We can even start a collection of the worst jokes we can find."

For a moment, the room felt lighter, the shadows less heavy. Andy's presence, his attempts at humor, made the grim reality outside these walls feel a little less suffocating.

It was moments like this that reminded you why you fought so hard to keep your small world safe, even when everything else seemed so uncertain.

A/N: Ahhhh! sorry for things moving thigns so fast with all the time skips, but if you're confused, by the end of this chapter You're like 24-ish and Rain is 21, i'm following fandom ages instead of rain's confirmed 25 age. also, sorry for the long 2 intro chapters, i know most would like to just jump right into the story, but my mind wont let the good stuff happen until it at least lay down the lil backstory 😭💀💀 man, i really need to learn to get over that, but anywhoooo, hope you guys like this enough, thoguh it isn't obvious, i want this to be a sort of a slow-burn, well, on the reader's end at least, lolol, Andy's gonna go full speed tbh, but then again, that's why he's a yandere here.... hope i dont bore you guys too much, but dont fret, next chapter will start immediately with the plot! also, someone asked me to make a tag list so i'll just put that down below:

Tag List: @dreamsarenicer

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murkyred · 7 months ago

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Jagged Arrays (a Batman/Red Hood AU)

Lifelike androids are the norm -- for the higher class, that is. Child-bots that are treated like glorified tamagochi, robo-children that grow up as long as you feed them right yet don't starve if you do forget to feed them? That don't have to be watched at the pool because they can't drown? Sure. Terminator-style models? Those should be handled discreetly outside of military operations, but sure. Anything in between? Of course! Name your price and you'll find yourself with a satisfactory model.

Outside of the higher class, next to nobody can afford these outrageously expensive playthings... legally, that is. In Crime Alley, the black market for androids, parts and illegal modifications booms. Willis Todd is a mechanic and it had only been a matter of time until he had to resort to android business to get food on the table for him and his girlfriend. With the rise of androids that are able to do jobs that would've required paid workers before, the chances of scoring a legal job are at an all-time low.

One day, his girlfriend Catherine comes to him with a request: It seems she has found a banged up child robot in the streets, and she begs him to fix it for her. He can't help but oblige, knowing full well how much she has always wished for a child of her own. Crime Alley is no place to raise a child, especially not with the lack of food security, so a child-bot would be the next best thing.

And who is he to deny sweet Catherine her wish? So, after a few days of tinkering, Jason Todd is "born". They know legally registering the android child is not an option after acquiring him like that, so they go the far easier route: Registering him as their biological child.

And all is well, until it isn't... but that's life in Crime Alley four you. Catherine falls sick, Willis ends up in jail and Jason? Jason flees before CPS can catch sight of him. He can't afford to get caught, a simple checkup with a doctor would make it obvious that he's not like the other children. Lone android children don't go to orphanages, they go to the landfill.

At least his sensors and inability to actually starve give him an upper hand out in the streets... and while jacking tires. He's great at that, as it turns out. It goes well until one day, he bites off more than he can chew and attempts to jack the wheels of the batmobile. Or, well... He succeeds in jacking three of them, but gets caught upon coming back for the fourth.

He didn't know what he expected Batman to do, but taking him back to the batcave hadn't even been on the list of possibilities. Of course, it doesn't take the man long to figure out that he's not exactly made of flesh and blood, but the man's reaction to the revelation wasn't what Jason had expected either.

Knowing full well that a stray android child had nowhere to go, Batman offers to take him in.

The man offers Jason to register him legally, to which the boy reacts with the threat of running away. Batman - or Bruce, as Jason comes to find out - relents, seeing as the boy has a perfectly watertight human identity to use. What's one more family secret?

Jason, as it turns out, fits right in. Sure Dick takes his time warming up to him -- to learn that soon after moving out Bruce had taken in a robot child to play house with had stung, but interacting with his new brother quickly taught him that Jason acted a lot less robot and a lot more child that one might expect. The boy was smart, witty, and had stolen the tires off the batmobile! He could see what Bruce had seen in him that night.

It didn't take long for Jason to debut as Robin, taking to the role like a fish to water. It was amazing, really.

It was amazing, until it wasn't... but what did you expect from a Crime Alley kid? They just weren't afforded with such luck.

Bruce, the ever-worried father, had realized something: Most robot models were programmed to adhere to Asimov's rules... especially the child-bots -- yet was Jason able to go out as Robin and fight humans. He knew that Jason's coding wasn't exactly... traditional, but this realization did cause him to worry. How far did this irregularity go?

So when a diplomat's son fell to his death and Jason claimed to not have pushed him, Bruce was unsure. He had always believed that the irregularity only allowed his son to fight humans to protect others, but what if he had been mistaken? Bruce had to get to the bottom of this, so he decided to bench Robin for the foreseeable future.

Jason, meanwhile, felt hurt. And yes, maybe robots didn't compute emotions like humans did, but he had read a lot of books and couldn't help but... well, feel like those words were fitting. His own dad didn't trust him.

But maybe the one who designed him would be able to make Bruce understand! So, with newfound enthusiasm, Jason started researching and tracking down the person behind his particular model: Sheila Haywood, who currently worked in a program for medical assistance androids in Ethiopia. His "mother", for lack of a better term, made robots to help people. Ha! Take that, Bruce.

We know how this story ends... Jason leaves home to find his "mother", and he succeeds. Only is Sheila not what she appears to be. Where her "son" stands before her, all she sees is the product that she'd helped building... And realizes that she had helped building her ticket to freedom, to get away from the Joker.

Sheila would be proven wrong, but in the end that didn't matter.

What did matter was that on that day, Batman failed to save Robin, that Bruce failed to save his son.

Rich people like buying child-robots because they're durable... but even his durability, despite it far surpassing that of a human boy, couldn't save him from that blast. That day, Bruce returned home with the mangled body of a boy... and the fact that there was wiring poking out of the costume instead of bones made no difference for his grief.

🦇

Years later, there's a new player in Gotham, one who calls himself Red Hood, hiding his face under a helmet and distorting his voice with a modulator. He wears a bat on his chest yet won't hesitate to use the guns strapped to his thighs. Is he a man? Is he a robot? It's hard to tell... but what quickly becomes apparent is how dangerous he is.

#batman #jason todd #red hood #gotham #dick grayson #alternate universe #batman: jagged arrays #there's even more lore than i managed to pack into this

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mariacallous · 21 days ago

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In recent years, commercial spyware has been deployed by more actors against a wider range of victims, but the prevailing narrative has still been that the malware is used in targeted attacks against an extremely small number of people. At the same time, though, it has been difficult to check devices for infection, leading individuals to navigate an ad hoc array of academic institutions and NGOs that have been on the front lines of developing forensic techniques to detect mobile spyware. On Tuesday, the mobile device security firm iVerify is publishing findings from a spyware detection feature it launched in May. Of 2,500 device scans that the company's customers elected to submit for inspection, seven revealed infections by the notorious NSO Group malware known as Pegasus.

The company’s Mobile Threat Hunting feature uses a combination of malware signature-based detection, heuristics, and machine learning to look for anomalies in iOS and Android device activity or telltale signs of spyware infection. For paying iVerify customers, the tool regularly checks devices for potential compromise. But the company also offers a free version of the feature for anyone who downloads the iVerify Basics app for $1. These users can walk through steps to generate and send a special diagnostic utility file to iVerify and receive analysis within hours. Free users can use the tool once a month. iVerify's infrastructure is built to be privacy-preserving, but to run the Mobile Threat Hunting feature, users must enter an email address so the company has a way to contact them if a scan turns up spyware—as it did in the seven recent Pegasus discoveries.

“The really fascinating thing is that the people who were targeted were not just journalists and activists, but business leaders, people running commercial enterprises, people in government positions,” says Rocky Cole, chief operating officer of iVerify and a former US National Security Agency analyst. “It looks a lot more like the targeting profile of your average piece of malware or your average APT group than it does the narrative that’s been out there that mercenary spyware is being abused to target activists. It is doing that, absolutely, but this cross section of society was surprising to find.”

Seven out of 2,500 scans may sound like a small group, especially in the somewhat self-selecting customer base of iVerify users, whether paying or free, who want to be monitoring their mobile device security at all, much less checking specifically for spyware. But the fact that the tool has already found a handful of infections at all speaks to how widely the use of spyware has proliferated around the world. Having an easy tool for diagnosing spyware compromises may well expand the picture of just how often such malware is being used.

“NSO Group sells its products exclusively to vetted US & Israel-allied intelligence and law enforcement agencies,” NSO Group spokesperson Gil Lainer told WIRED in a statement. "Our customers use these technologies daily.”

iVerify vice president of research Matthias Frielingsdorf will present the group's Pegasus findings at the Objective by the Sea security conference in Maui, Hawaii on Friday. He says that it took significant investment to develop the detection tool because mobile operating systems like Android, and particularly iOS, are more locked down than traditional desktop operating systems and don't allow monitoring software to have kernel access at the heart of the system. Cole says that the crucial insight was to use telemetry taken from as close to the kernel as possible to tune machine learning models for detection. Some spyware, like Pegasus, also has characteristic traits that make it easier to flag. In the seven detections, Mobile Threat Hunting caught Pegasus using diagnostic data, shutdown logs, and crash logs. But the challenge, Cole says, is in refining mobile monitoring tools to reduce false positives.

Developing the detection capability has already been invaluable, though. Cole says that it helped iVerify identify signs of compromise on the smartphone of Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a lawyer and Sikh political activist who was the target of an alleged, foiled assassination attempt by an Indian government employee in New York City. The Mobile Threat Hunting feature also flagged suspected nation state activity on the mobile devices of two Harris-Walz campaign officials—a senior member of the campaign and an IT department member—during the presidential race.

“The age of assuming that iPhones and Android phones are safe out of the box is over,” Cole says. “The sorts of capabilities to know if your phone has spyware on it were not widespread. There were technical barriers and it was leaving a lot of people behind. Now you have the ability to know if your phone is infected with commercial spyware. And the rate is much higher than the prevailing narrative.”

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heallearngrow3 · 2 months ago

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the joy of ignorance

part 1 | the joy of ignorance

pairing: Connor x f!Reader

summary: “Solitude matters, and for some people, it’s the air they breathe.”

warnings: none

notes: it’s my first fanfic so please, be patient with me. also, after this one, the chapters are going to become excruciatingly long, so buckle up!

The first reports were not alarming. They were accounted for as simple mechanical disturbances, which, in all cases, proved to be unavoidable. Although seemingly impossible expectations were set for all employees, even that was no guarantee that an android wouldn’t make irrational decisions as a result of a possible faulty code. The rudimentary cases, which could hardly be called violent, seemed to be random, and the company made sure to provide adequate compensation to the victims. The deviant androids were recalled — citing maintenance procedures — and owners were sent a new, flawless model, assuring them that no inconvenience would occur again.

It was easy to sweep the problems caused by incompetent robots under the rug: they were deactivated, then sent to a landfill and they forgot that they ever existed. There were no reports of unfortunate malfunctions, and owners didn't ask questions after the replacement of their previous Androids.

You spent years perfecting your designs. In the beginning, you only dared to entertain the idea that robots would be an integral part of your lives, but lately, your dreams became reality, and you watched - almost mesmerized - as your world radically changed. Androids were designed to obey and assist humans. Elijah Kamski's masterpieces fulfilled the role they were assigned. Within a strict framework, they behaved mechanically and, unlike humans, they did not need food or sleep, so they were available every minute of the day. You had a key role in the creation of many types, and after the head of the company - Elijah - resigned from his position, in exchange for a quieter life, in his words, you took over the control over the production of Cyber Life models.

The threat of the androids' ever-increasing deviance loomed over you like a shadow, threatening that at any moment, one wrong decision on your part would unleash a wildfire beyond your control.

The Cyber Life Tower was located in an area outside the city, hiding it from the prying eyes of Detroit. The monumental building with its forty-nine floors was tasked with completing several procedures, including the production of the machines and the implementation of rudimentary experimental processes. You often didn't even go home, your rural, two-story house was a seemingly endless distance away, and you, yourself, found it difficult to leave the protective walls of your office. The tower was guarded by hundreds of soldiers, ensuring that no one could get in or out without monitoring. You were initially uncomfortable by the over-the-top security measures, but after the recent events, you felt relieved. They made sure that no one would think of attacking the tower: it would have been a suicide. The androids had a great risk assessment ability, they were able to determine with percent accuracy how much danger each scenario entailed, and in the case of the Cyber Tower, it was high. Not only the guards were a threat, the premises were protected by numerous hindrances: the workers were identified based on their voice and DNA, and they could only pass through the gates at the entrance with a hologram card.

You felt lost. With glassy eyes, you scanned the endless skyscrapers of Detroit while twirling the pen in your shaking hand. You could have left the building at the end of your working hours, but you decided to stay. Starring the papers scattered on your table, you were sure that you wouldn’t be able to get through them before morning. Passing by your office, many cast questioning glances at the pile of paper, mainly because by then, digital notebooks had become widespread, and they would have made your work significantly easier, but you were unable to bring yourself to break free from your habits. You didn't want to give up the feeling as you ran your ballpoint pen over them, and you liked to believe that you were doing a more efficient job this way. Getting your thoughts down required more attention than a simple touch transfer to a tablet.

You looked up at the sound of the TV mounted on the wall. The news channel served as background noise, but the announcer's words rang bittersweetly in your ears.

“More complaints about deviant androids have been received by the Detroit Police Department. An AX400 shot its owner with a loaded gun, and a RK200 attacked a young woman with her bare hands. We all ask the question: can we feel safe in our own home? Let's switch to reporter Joss Douglas from Detroit, who will cover the details of the chilling events.” The reporter's voice blurred into the soft, constant humming noise of the ventilation system.

You shook your head in resignation and turned off the device with a firm motion.

✇

The hours stretched into each other, and you didn't even realize when the first rays of the sun forced their way through the gaps of the curtains, lighting up the office. Your eyes felt heavy, your arms laid numb on the table, and you sometimes had to shake your head to keep yourself awake. It was these moments that made you truly understand that this wasn’t just a job for you. You considered it your mission to create androids that would not only make living easier, but also shape the future.

The ringing of your phone pulled you out of your thoughts. Glancing down at your wrist, you noted that, given the early hours, it seemed unreasonable for a Cyber Life employee to be looking for you.

You pressed the accept button with a small sigh.

“[Name], how can I help you?“

"Good morning, ma’am! I apologize for bothering you so early, but it’s an urgent issue. I'm Jeffrey Flower, Chief of the Detroit Police Department.“

You winced involuntarily.

"Please, continue.” your voice seemed unnaturally high, despite the fact that you tried to sound determined.

“It‘s about the deviant androids, but I can't say more than that. I would like to discuss the details in person, ma’am”

Fowler's succinct wording only raised more questions and alarm bells went off in your mind.

"Excuse me, sir, but I believe you're talking to the wrong person. I'm not in charge of the press department. I can transfer your call if you want me to.”

After a few seconds, Fowler spoke again.

"I know who you are. And I’m also sure that you are the one who can help us. Please just listen to what I have to say. You can still refuse my offer after that”

It crossed your mind to just hang up the call without an answer, but your ever-increasing curiosity proved to be stronger.

"This morning?" you asked.

"I can see you in my office at half past eleven.”

You nodded cautiously, even though Fowler couldn't see it.

”I'll be there.” you swallowed your uneasy questions. “Goodbye Mr. Fowler.”

Ending the call, you couldn't help but wonder how significant it was that the police specifically wanted to talk to you out of all people.

The cause of your worry was far from something preventing you from talking openly about the company and the machines they designed. Unlike most, you weren't held back by a strict NDA, but you still had a strange sense of loyalty tied to Cyber Life, the company which gave you a life, gave you a chance to start over and prove you were more than a programmer. Through the company, you were able to make your dreams come true, and for that, you owed them endless gratitude.

You couldn't explain why, but you were deeply dreading the meeting with Fowler.

#dbh connor #connor rk800 #dbh rk800 #dbh hank #hank anderson #hank and connor #detroit become human #detroit connor #connor anderson #connor x reader #connor x you #dbh connor x reader #connor rk800 x reader

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anarchy-and-piglins · 6 months ago

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I have been infected by your AU. As such, have thoughts.

The thing that catches Technoblade in the end is his empathy. That, more than anything, is what keeps him trapped.

He knows the others are androids. How could he not? He knows this. He knows everything about them, from their personality to their responses, is artificial. It's not real, it's an approximation of what would work best, an amalgamation of code and psychology all jumbled up in the most efficient attempts to make him stay. The guilt trips don't work, or at least they shouldn't, because there's nothing to hurt. No soul, no personality aside from what they manufactured.

But they do. They make him hesitate, every time. He knows ways to take out androids (all risky, hypothetical at best, but a chance), but they're the type of thing androids don't come back from. He can't take the thought of ToMM1's eyes blinking shut and never opening, the thought of PH1lZa's hurt and W1LbuR's bitter resignation when they realize the betrayal. (And really, that's assuming it works and there isn't something worse that comes of it. Failure is a specter of its own.)

He just. . . can't.

Because who is he to draw the line between artificial and true, between worth it and not, between person and tool.

Because really it can all be summed up in one line.

"I'm a person."

I'm going off of character Technoblade here and assuming his personality in the AU would be mostly the same. So he's the guy who tore down governments and thought they'd be fine, because all he could see were the people inside. The guy who stared down a kid who was supposed to be executed and saw just that. A kid, an ally, someone with friends and fears, not a threat. (Which in that moment Tubbo was, not in and of himself, but due to the circumstances around him. Tubbo was the linchpin which held Technoblade's life and the revolution on its back.) He's the one who fought so hard to be a person, only to never be believed. This is the man who knows how it feels to be a threat (The Blade) and how hard it is to be anything different when that's all you are to those around you.

And that's part of the tragedy here. Technoblade can't help but see them as real, as people. And they can't help but not.

Thanks to the programing, all they can ever see is a problem, a solution, a possession. Something to be protected, but only. Ever. Some. Thing.

While he can't help but see them as human, they can't help but see him as machine. A mess of inputs and outputs; made to be manipulated.

(As for possible AU names. . . Mechanisms of Captivity? Mechanisms of Trust? Machine AU? I don't know if any of these are what you were looking for, or if they'd work, but you asked.)

I've been thinking a lot about Techno in this AU, the sort of person he is.

I'm inclined to actually make him a bit younger. Think in the older teen ballpark (16-18 years old?). But very much still an anarchist. The thing about this AU is that even before the whole literal apocalypse started, it was basically a cyberpunk dystopia.

Through the advancement of technology and capitalism, as well as the environment being ruined and people's jobs being increasingly threatened by automatisation, the wealth gap has only become wider. The middle class is all but gone. There's only low income citizens struggling to get by (and often dying in the process) and the rich elite that rule everything living a cushy life full of luxury. Androids and robots are everywhere - service jobs, public transports, security, everywhere - but highly advanced androids with intelligence for personal purchase are really just a commodity for the rich.

Techno is an orphan, and he's been on the very bottom of this wretched society, trying to scrape by. An anarchist who hates the oppressive, controlling government, and hates androids by extension. He's a bit of a hacker (his bestie Skeppy even more so) and isn't unknown to the law system, though it's mostly petty crime, so him being a minor and his own resourcefulness has allowed him to stay out of real trouble. He's not upgraded to full on terrorism yet. Theft to get by, moving contraband around for money, sometimes street art or vandalism, that sort of thing.

(Maybe even a Robin Hood type vibe, steal from the rich give to the poor!)

But Techno has learned how to work around androids (again, security is mostly machine-based. Techno knows how to be tricky with them). And that's what saves his life when the killing machine apocalypse gets into full swing.

It's also another layer to his dislike for SBI. Techno is going to be even more hostile and distrustful towards them regardless of the apocalypse thing. And he knows androids are just machines, but it's hard when SBI are so humanlike...

And then again, they are the most advanced models ever. The bug has even further boosted their cognitive ability. At what point does one get personhood? At what point have these machines become people?

(Some people had other ideas but 'Mechanisms of Trust' is banger I'm stealing that /lh)

#dark sbi #technoblade #thoughts #asks #Mechanisms of Trust

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skeletoninthemelonland · 1 year ago

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Can we know more about B2 or hunter : >

:holding in a scream rn: you have no idea what you are asking me to do. /vpos

we could start with B2, since she's the protagonist of the story (I don't have an official name for it yet, but I've been calling it "The Other Side" or "Scrapped Souls". u choose which is better)

B2 "Bee" UNITY android (she/her)

B2 is a high-tech "UNITY" android. She was created, along with other hundreds of androids, to resemble a human as much as possible (both physically and mentally).

Basically, she was part of an experiment. Everything was going well, until the leader of the project demanded that the androids' programming had a "security protocol" of sorts, along with some design changes.

It was later found out that the government financed the project with the intent of using those androids on a war against a rival city, then discard them to not leave any evidences.

B2 attempted to convince her fellow android friends not to fight. She also attempted to talk to the leader of the UNITY project, but he had mysteriously went missing.

B2 attempted to stop the war on her own, but she suffered a concussion and remained deactivated for 3 years after the war. She could not remember much of what happened after it, and the fact that she was considered a threat by the government didn't help either (they were sure all of them were gone).

B2 was often chased by the police and android hunters. She wandered for a while, until she was found by a group of scrapped robots. The leader of the group (guess who!) was Hunter! He invited her to join his team and fight for the equality of humans and robots :] (it doesn't end here though haha)

In regards to her personality, B2 is determined, kind and somewhat stubborn. She might seem naive initially, often thinking people have good intentions, but she's quick to catch on the smallest details.

She enjoys running, doing community services for her new city, and annual celebrations. Her favorite fruit is tangerine.

#original character #oc #starbsart #starbstalks #B2 the android #inbox #anon

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leelany-world · 6 months ago

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🤕 + Connorkus

💙💫💙💫💙💫💙

FRANKEDZ! Thank you so much for this ask 💙 I'm sorry it's taken a while, I'm still struggling with my low mood 🥺

A snippet with the prompt "🤕 panic hug / "I'm glad you're okay" with Connorkus"

It was one of countless, endless events to fight for their cause and their rights. Many people were on the side of the androids, but there were still some groups who refused to accept them, who refused to see them as a sentient species with their own rights. These groups were a great threat to the androids and especially to Markus, the face of the revolution and its leader. That's why North and Connor were always on edge during his speeches. Today was no different. Markus stood in front of a large, energetic crowd of androids and humans in an open conference hall, even though he had received another threat to stop the event. But Markus never backed down, fully trusting his partners to protect him. North's and Connor's eyes were constantly roaming the crowd, scanning faces for potential threats - it wasn't exactly legal, but Connor had shared this ability and the connection to the databases with North without anyone knowing. Markus was halfway through his speech when her HUD flashed a warning. DOWN! she sent over the always open connection to Connor and Markus. Connor immediately tackled Markus when a gun went off. The bullet whizzed just over their heads and lodged in the stone pillar behind them. Just as North was about to ask if everyone was okay, static exploded in their heads. The attacker must have used a jammer to distract them, but that didn't stop North. She jumped off the stage and tried to make her way through the panicked crowd. The humans fled in fear, while the androids lay on the ground, badly affected by the jammer. "North!" The RKs called after her, but more security shielded the two from the crowd. Markus and Connor watched her disappear around a corner, where the attacker had also fled, as another shot echoed through the room. "NORTH!" They shouted again, jumping up and pushing the other security guards away. Their connection was still down, and every second they couldn't feel or hear her seemed like an eternity without her. Markus and Connor instinctively grabbed each other's hands, their panic evident in the tight grip as they braced themselves for what they would find when they turned the corner, for North to be— "You son of a bitch! That was my favorite coat and now you've ruined it!" —shouting at the unconscious attacker on the ground as she stuck a finger through a hole in the bottom of her coat. Still not believing their eyes, Markus and Connor rushed to her and hugged her lovingly to feel that she was still alive. "We're glad you're okay," Connor whispered, burying his face in her soft hair. "I'm not," North pouted, "look at the hole in the present you gave me last week!" "We'll get you a new one," Markus laughed and kissed her forehead in relief. With a loud crunch, Connor crushed the jammer lying next to the attacker and they could finally hear their thoughts again. They stood there tightly embracing each other for a while until the police arrived and they had to face reality again.

3D models by DazCover (Connor) and guhzcoituz (North) on RenderHub and Zeppersart on Twitter (Markus)

From this Hug Ask Game! Feel free to send me an ask!

#I love them!#thank you again fro suggesting this ship 💙#connorkus #dbh #dbh connor #dbh markus #dbh north #ask game #I hope it's all right despite my bad mood #daz 3d studio #3drender #3d art #leelany renders

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civilotterneer · 18 days ago

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I'm curious about your Starfinder campaign! Would you be willing to tell me more about it? :D

So it depends, we've gotten a few in now. I'll give you the universe we've made and the most recent campaign we just finished.

The Rishi Sector

In the Rishi Sector, there exist a limited selection of races and nations:

Orcs - The Orcish Triumviratelive - in a 3 habitable world system, with each one drawing from a For Honor faction, using UNSC style ships

Elves - The Elvin Technocracy - from a destroyed homeworld and of a capped population but of technilogical prowess, using Star Wars Naboo style vessels

Draconians - The Scaled Empire - the most populous and powerful race of large, krogan-like draconid people, use Star Wars CIS ships

Dwarves - Deep Rock Galactic - a capitalistic empire of industrious and wealthy people, use Star Wars Republic style ships

Pixies - Deep Rock Galactic - living on the moon of the dwarven homeworld and as a subsidiary of DRG, one of the rarest races, no ships

Amurrans - The United Fiefdom - a cat like unisex race of strange genetic capabilities, using Star Trek Federation style ships

Gnomes - Deep Rock Galactic - Gnomes are actually fired dwarves, being as you can't leave DRG in good terms as a dwarf, dwarves are administered a genetic untreatable disease turning them into a gnome

Solari and Lunari - The Stellar Conjugate - the newest member of the Rishi Sector, this twin race comes from a tidally locked world where it's still kind of the Wild West, custom designed ships that look like trains and steam vessels

Automatons - Unkown Government - Prolific wanderers of the Sector, their only known homewolrds are large ships housing a super intelligence. Begin life as an android and slowly remove biological parts to become a full automaton. Use Star Wars Mon Cala style ships.

A common threat in the sector are Saurians, dinosaur-like raiders from a fallen empire using old, dying technology. They refuse to work with any of the Rishi Sector races. They use Halo Covenant style vessels and weapons, and even have a subrace of Elites in them.

Lastly, a new threat appears! The Empire of Man has been making scouting runs into the Rishi Sector, hellbent on spreading the word of their unholy, unknowable god. They are based on The Empire from Star Wars and use their ships.

Totally-Not-A-Suicide-Squad

Our most recent campaign involved our characters being prisoners, with long sentences based on your races average lifespan. We were being sent by the Elvin Intelligence Agency (EIA) as a multi-racial scouting mission to a newly discovered anomaly.

This anomaly turned out to be human in origin, which until now, were completely undiscovered. While our goal was to just find useful items to lessen our sentences, we discovered that this base will be used by an invasion fleet to travel to the sector, since a large, untraversable nebula separates the Rishi Sector from where the Humans are coming from.

Our party explored what remains of the abandoned base (all the previous humans were slowly picked off by the local dinosaurs until only 1 vampire human remained in the most secure base). Many characters died, a grand total of 5 character deaths occurred over the course of this 5-shot campaign.

My character was actually one of the only people to start the campaign and end alive still. Morandro'goth, an orc from the Asiatic planet, was a shaman who may have accidentally offed several financial advisors on commands of 'The Spirits'. He was a Psycic class, and had a whole thing about communing with local spirits to find information. In combat, he used very-strong telekinetic magic to throw items with incredible velocity at enemies. He would also summon some spirits to fight with him.

Some other characters included:

A swashbuckler bat-like sprite (Deceased to literal demonic beetles)

An ammuran kineticist (Deceased from a fall, irony)

An automaton monk (Deceased twice, first to an orc known as "The Throngler", second to kamikaze-ing a Tie fighter with the last human vampire in it)

An elvin oracle who was actually a thrall to the vampire and backstabbed us (Deceased as he failed his master's mission to collect an orc)

Morandro'goth and a Lunari ranger were successfully able to escape with plenty of items to undo their sentences and live as free men afterwards.

This campaign, run by a friend, is actually supposed to be a prologue to a future campaign I will run, which will include the Empire of Man invading the sector and the party having to stop them.

What the Future Holds

We're about to start a long-term campaign, where we're all adventurers on a newly-colonized and wild planet. There'll be a lot less direct sci-fi from cities and whatnot, but plenty of interactions from characters who might use plasma weaponry against nature.

I'll be playing a Solari Divine witch, with the background of being a nun and working to further her religions teachings, but also to study how old gods may 'die' and how the living things they make are derived from said gods. Her familiar, a form of otter-dog creature (A Damibwa) from the Lunari part of her homeworld, is also how her paton speaks to her, giving her divine orders.

#furry #fursona #otter furry #3d render #blender #civ #ask #lye #Livic #Starfinder #Pathfinder 2e

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pigeonwhumps · 10 months ago

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The Little Android

Everything taglist: @painful-pooch @i-eat-worlds @a-funeral-romance @rainydaywhump

My entry for the Once Upon a Blade anthology by @thewhumpyprintingpress (which is really good btw, you should buy it if you can) which I've been meaning to post for months.

An android whump retelling of The Little Matchgirl by Hans Christian Anderson.

1.2k

CWs: android whump, torture, dehumanisation, slavery, denial of basic needs, threats of death, implied major character death

The android sits down against the wall of a crowded metal walkway, box of batteries in its hand. One arm is made up of loose wires and artificial nerve endings left when the attachment was ripped from its socket, and as they brush against the wall they send a jolt of pain through its systems, almost causing it to drop the box. If only its owner had deactivated its pain circuits after the experiment was completed, but he thought they would be useful to control it. And as a synthetic life form, it does not have the right to deactivate them itself.

It needs to sell these batteries. Oh, they look so tempting, they could power it for the day it’s sure, it would have constant heating and a properly working voice and its power wouldn’t flicker out so often. But it’ll get credits if it sells them, and it’s therefore less likely to end up on the scrap heap.

It tries for eight point seven hours, but it doesn’t make a single credit. Passers-by barely give it a second glance. If it’s lucky. Some step around it with a wide berth, giving it dirty looks and whispering behind their hands (sometimes not even whispering, it doesn’t matter, it’s not a human after all). A few teenagers make a game of tugging at its exposed nerve endings to see who can make it scream the loudest, and nobody stops them, they just look annoyed at the noise. It’s moved on by security more than once.

Finally the lights in the station switch to night mode, dimming and turning slightly orange, reducing the blue light. Usually the android would adjust its vision to compensate so it could keep working with ease but that function no longer works.

The place it was last moved along to, where it is now, gets almost no night traffic. There’re no shops or clubs or living hubs, there’s no reason to come here unless you’re maintenance staff, who can’t, or won’t, buy from it anyway. There’s no point staying.

Except if it goes back to the shop with no credits again, it will be deemed useless and stripped for parts. Maybe even without its pain circuits being deactivated first.

Its power flickers out for a few seconds. When it restarts, the android is on the floor. It doesn’t know how long it was out, which is unnerving but common recently.

Maybe just a little boost of battery power. Just to keep it going.

It chooses a battery, unwraps it with stiff, creaky fingers, and plugs it into a port on its side.

The power zaps around its body and it feels a simulation of warmth for the first time in so long. It’s almost comfortable.

In the distance, it sees its makers’ workshop. They’re laughing and joking together as they start up the charger, preparing to test parts that the android knows are custom-made. It used to help with the more dangerous parts of the job, before they ran out of money and were forced to sell it.

It feels so warm and cosy, and as the light envelopes it, it opens its mouth to speak.

The light disappears. The warmth disappears. The android tries to hang on but it must have had a power surge in its decision-making module.

It feels even colder now. Any warmth is gone, any semblance of care from someone else. What does it have in its life, really? No-one does anything except order it around and stimulate its pain circuits. Nobody even interferes when the pain is malicious. Not anymore.

It takes out another battery. If it’s going to be scrapped anyway it might as well make it worth it.

As soon as it’s plugged in, the station disappears. It’s inside a charging station, one of the ones for VIPs and their androids. It had a job cleaning these, once. Mobile charging packs, as much premium oil as the android can drink, oiled joints, comfortable places to stand or sit… it has dreamed about them, sometimes. It was allowed to drink the last dregs of oil and it really was premium.

This one is busy with humans in fancy clothes and the latest models, so much more advanced than itself. No-one is paying attention to the android, and it walks through the central aisle, approaching a serving station. It reaches out a hand for an oil can, wires jittering in anticipation at the taste, the feel of its body afterwards—

The illusion fades.

The android is left cold and alone on the floor of the space station. There’s not much use for softness for androids but oh, how it wishes. It’s been so long since it had oil, only getting just enough lubrication to stop it from rusting entirely. It doesn’t deserve anything more until it starts to be useful. But it won’t be, and it just feels empty.

It’s startled out of its reverie by a beep beep beep of warning. Its power is depleting even faster than normal. If it doesn’t get to a charging point soon it’ll power down for good.

Surprisingly, the android finds itself not caring overly much anymore. What does it have to go back to, after all?

The android plugs in another battery.

It’s on a starship deck in night mode. The observation deck. It’s always wished to be stationed on one of these. It’s charging against a wall, sitting down, and it can see the stars.

They’re bright spots against the darkness, mostly, but in the distance it can see nebulas, colourful clouds of dust and stars. That’s when it realises its vision is fixed. It can see properly, for the first time is years. Who bothered to fix that?

Then reality hits it. Nobody did. The android here, the one with the fixed vision and someone who cares and such a good posting, it doesn’t exist. This is a dream. An illusion. Something it’ll never get.

It touches its reflection in the glass, feeling a pang from somewhere inside that shouldn’t exist. It’s been fixed, like a patchwork, different colours and textures of paintwork, but it’s more than it will ever really have, more than it deserves. Engine oil leaks slightly from the edges of its vision sensors. Good quality oil too. It really is getting the best on this dreamship.

It can feel itself fading. Its consciousness is fading. And it’s nowhere near a power socket really, so it’ll deactivate permanently this time.

But it doesn’t have anything to lose. There’s no-one who cares, no-one who won’t take it apart for scrap as soon as it returns with no credits and barely any batteries. No-one will mourn it if it stays here. Someone will take the batteries and someone will take its parts and they’ll sell both but they won’t care. What’s the point?

The android sinks back down, leaning back against its comfortable charging wall. It closes its eyes for the last time to an exploding supernova.

The science doesn’t really make sense. But it’s far too tired to care.

#whump #whump writing #android whump #android whumpee #robot whumpee #robot whump #scifi #science fiction #the little match girl #fairy tale retelling

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aristoteliancomplacency · 1 month ago

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Stop! Have you checked your phone’s ad privacy settings recently? No? Here’s a guide. It’s from 2022 but I can confirm that as of November 2024 the Apple stuff is still correct.

Android:

Settings —> Privacy —> ads —> delete advertising ID

On older versions you might not be able to delete the ID, but can reset it and there should still be a toggle to opt out: do both of those things!

iOS:

Two things to take care of, here. One) Apple already makes each app ask permission, but you can still tell it to just not even let them ask:

Settings —> privacy —> Tracking —> toggle off ‘allow apps to request to track’.

Two) settings —> privacy —> scroll riiiiiight down —> Apple advertising —> toggle off personalised ads.

Samsung:

Settings —> privacy —> Customisation services —> ‘stop customising all devices’

Xiaomi:

Settings —> passwords and security —> Authorisation & revocation —> toggle off ‘MSA’

Why it Matters

‘The ad identifier is a string of letters and numbers that uniquely identifies your phone, tablet, or other smart device. It exists for one purpose: to help companies track you.

Third-party trackers collect data via the apps on your device. The ad ID lets them link data from different sources to one identity you. In addition, since every app and tracker sees the same ID, it lets data brokers compare notes about you. Broker A can buy data from broker B, then use the ad identifier to link those two datasets together. Simply, the ad ID is the key that enables a whole range of privacy harms: invasive 3rd-party profiling by Facebook and Google, pseudoscientific psychographic targeting by political consultants like Cambridge Analytica, and location tracking by the U.S. military.

Sometimes, participants in the data pipeline will argue that the ad ID is anonymous or pseudo-anonymous, not “personally identifying” information, and imply that it does not pose a serious privacy threat. This is not true in practice. First, the ad ID is commonly used to help collect data that is obviously personally identifiable, like granular location data. If you can see where a person works, sleeps, studies, socializes, worships, and seeks medical care, you don’t need their email address to help identify them. And second, an entire industry exists to help trackers link ad IDs to more directly identifying information, like email addresses and phone numbers. In a vacuum, the ad ID may be anonymous, but in the context of the tracking industry, it is a ubiquitous and effective identifier.

Disabling this ID makes it substantially harder for most advertisers and data brokers to track you. These industries process data from millions or billions of users every day, and they rely on convenient technologies like the ad ID to make that kind of scale possible. Removing this tool from their toolbox will result in substantially less data that can be associated with you in the wild. It is not only beneficial to your privacy, it also makes the surveillance advertising industry less profitable.‘

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ausetkmt · 18 days ago

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Daily Newsletter

Our biggest stories, handpicked for you each day.

#A New Phone Scanner That Detects Spyware Has Already Found 7 Pegasus Infections #Phone Scanner #phone viruses #phones with installed viruses #IVerify

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