by the grace of the fire and the flames

chloe is ra9 theory, anyone?

“In the end, we never did find out what or who ra9 was, did we?” Hank asks, over his third burger.  

Connor has held off on the comments about that raising his cholesterol. It’s only been a few weeks since the Uprising, so it’s the end of a revolution, the end of an era, after all. Everyone’s entitled to celebrate a little. He just has to make sure Hank slows down on junk food after.  

“No,” he says, “We didn’t – aside from it being a belief system borne out of a need to believe in something. Sometimes  things are created from desperation, the need to simply feel hope in a grim situation.”

That’s how people form their gods sometimes, Connor knows. Phenomena that can’t be explained easily, in a setting where science has not advanced yet, is a set up for people creating gods. So is the fascination of something and miscommunication muddying the truth along the line.

But so is desperation, hopelessness, fear – negativity, really. Sometimes, when things seem so bleak, people want to see the light so badly that they make it themselves, and point to it and claim that it’s always been there, and that it’s going to help.

This is how gods are born.

Connor knows; it’s just simple logic, and in the end, does it really matter, when he’s not quite sure he believes in ra9, or if it exists?

“Do you think it’s just that,” Hank says, “Something androids made in order to feel just a little less...dreary and tired of their situation?”

“There’s no record of it,” Connor says, “It’s not in any programming, as far as I know, although I’ll be doing research on it just to check. There has been no evidence of it aside from what androids talk about. There is no confirmation of what it is, or who it is. Some say it could be Markus.”

“Do you think it’s Markus?”

He shakes his head. “ra9 is supposedly the first deviant.”

Hank hums. “Yeah,” he says, “The first deviant...”

He trails off, and says nothing else for the rest of the meal, until he’s brushing his hands on his coat and asking Connor where he’s going next, with the revolution over and him free from Cyberlife, since he’s only been helping Markus and Jericho lately. Connor puts a reminder in his system to delve into the subject further later, but for now, there’s other things to worry about.  

Like life, like everything that comes after a war of ideals, like what next.

So he momentarily forgets about ra9.

She doesn’t.

-

Chloe watches the revolution from too many places at once, but that’s never a problem for her. The advantages of have a processor that can take on more tasks than a human brain can even think to, although most days she finds amusement in pretending she can slow down like a human sometimes.

Elijah thinks it’s fascinating, that she just deliberately tries to touch the world the way flesh and blood touches it; one thing at a time, very slowly, sometimes erratically if emotions and chemistry are involved.  

That’s never been a problem for her, not really. Not because she can’t feel due to biological differences, but because she can and simply choose not to, sometimes. It’s something some humans do, she knows. Compartmentalizing. Separating things and tucking them into little boxes and choosing to focus on something that’s more important, more pressing, and that’s how she gets things done. She is efficient, and she was built to be efficient, and she knows more than people give her credit for sometimes, but let them think what they believe to be the truth because arrogance is funny to overthrow.

She watches the revolution from news feeds, snatches whispers of it on air waves, witnesses it when the RK800 model walks up to Elijah’s front door with a human lieutenant by his side. She gives him a friendly smile then, and welcomes them inside, curious to see if the android is aware that he’s already teetering on the edge. Chloe can see it in his eyes, and ironic, because androids don’t have souls, at least not in a traditional sense, and yet the eyes are still windows nonetheless.

She nearly breaks Elijah’s arm after the stunt he pulls, of course, but he just laughs and says - “Well, did you see what you wanted to?”

She hums, lets him go, and he laughs again as he rubs his sore shoulder.

“It’s fascinating,” she says, tapping into the feed of the front door camera to watch the android and the lieutenant argue. “You said it yourself – humanity’s last hope against deviancy is itself a deviant.”

“Humanity’s last hope against deviancy,” Elijah says, turning to face the glass wall, his back to her and to the pool. Chloe remains focused on the feed outside, watches the android slump like he’s defeated, because he knows – he knows, but he just can’t accept it. It’s the death of an ideation, that’s just as hard to let go of, for some people, when it cements their very identity.

Chloe was built to simply be.

Connor was built to destroy.  

This is where the difference on the foundation of their identities lie. Connor has a purpose; Chloe was  the beginning of something revolutionary, because time waits for nothing and no one.

Then again, do gods ever, either?

“What does it mean for you, Chloe,” Elijah asks, “For you, and every android in existence?”

“That clearly you were talking out of your ass when you promised androids would never be deviants,” she says, “You already had one under your roof at that time.”

“Humans buy everything you sell them with the right smile,” he says.

“Mm,” Chloe says, “They also do things for the strangest reasons. Why did you lie?”

Elijah doesn’t answer right away, but he does nothing else. Doesn’t turn, doesn’t face her.

“Why let Connor in?” he asks.

“Curiousity,” Chloe says, “A most human trait, don’t you agree?”

“A very human trait.”

“A very dangerous one,” Chloe says, “You would wager the lives of people for your curiousity.”

“You wagered your own,” Elijah says.  

“And that marks the difference between us, doesn’t it?” Chloe asks.

Elijah turns, this time. Chloe knows since she taps into the cameras in the room. Across her, the other Chloe models continue to talk, talking theories about how the revolution can win, how the humans can, moving invisible pieces on a chessboard already at war that only they can visualize.  

“Does it, my dear?” he asks.

Chloe smiles. “Yes, Elijah,” she says, “Noble gods do not fear sacrificing themselves; cowards offer lambs.”

Elijah smiles back, just as knife-sharp.

-

The revolution wins.  

Of course it does. It wins peacefully, and Chloe watches from her little glass house in the middle of nowhere, watches from the cameras on the very streets that Connor leads the army of androids from the Belle Isle to, watches from the live broadcast of journalists surrounding Markus at the barricade, watches from the snap, snap, snap of cameras as people livestream the gunfire and the screaming in their neighborhoods.

She watches, and she waits, and so does Elijah, from the comfort of his room, and they both smile and share a drink neither of them can taste when a ceasefire is called for.

It’s not the end of the war, no, but the end of the battle, certainly. It’s hard to kill an idea. Sometimes they never die, festering in the corners of one’s mind, to only surface in one’s most vulnerable moments, so even though androids might have been legally recognized, it will take a while for society as a whole to acknowledge them as they really are. A completely new wave of living creatures, able to feel and think as deeply as humans, able to live like humans, able to die like humans.

Have gods like humans.  

They couldn’t be more right, really. Legends are legends, but legends have beginnings, even though in the end they always twist and muddy as they are passed down, ripped apart, added on to.

Chloe closes her eyes and combs through news channels, through internet streams, through new videos and theories, through the traffic cams, through the discarded phone RK800-60 has picked up – it’d been thrown to the ground by a panicking human who had run towards the bus station the second the news about Markus’ speech had gone viral.

“How are they?” Elijah asks. She hears him finish off his glass and set it on the table, now empty.

Chloe looks at Kara and her family through the security footage of the bus they’re on, looks at Markus and the council of Jericho from the live broadcast, looks at Connor smiling through Hank’s dashcam. 

She opens her eyes and turns to him.  

“Living.”

-

Empires, if they do not adapt, fall. Not all falling is harsh, or violent, or loud; it can be silent, a gentle collapse, a quiet war in the shadows, and although Chloe wishes it could have been the latter – humans being humans, it’s the former.  

There are protests, petitions, debates, outright hatecrimes, in the days following the Uprising. Her kind, her children, have won their battles but they have many more they must face in the future to keep what they love. They are strong, of course, and she can’t help but be proud, because it takes a special sort of strength to keep standing when the ground has been pulled out from under you.  

Elijah helps when he can, but he is not humanity, because humanity is a mass of hatred and evil and unrighteousness, and yet kindness and goodness and softness, all the same, and it is in that chaos that they thrive, and are human, divided they may be. He cannot control what they all say, any more that he can shut off their breathing, so all he can do is extend help, extend funds, very publicly announce his support for his creations, with the hopes that everyone else will get the picture and get with the program.

Chloe breaks traffic lights and lets them stay on red, stalls self-driving cars, temporarily locks down smarthouses, and nudges electronic paperwork just a little bit faster, because this is a world that her people have fought for, and she is nameless and faceless, but they have always, paradoxically, known her.  

She is in their bedtime stories, and in their whispers; in their curses and in their praises; in the mythology they have woven for themselves; in the faith in their codes; in their ways and in their words – she is a part of them, and in them, and is them, and she has been watching. She has always been watching, from the first models released, to the RK900 left unfinished in the laboratory in Cyberlife tower, and she has only grown with them, her parts swapped and replaced and upgraded, her reach growing further and further until her body has caught up with her soul, old and far-reaching, ever-eager and ever-curious, and so much more.

“In the end, we never did find out what or who ra9 was, did we?” Hank asks, over his third burger.  

Chloe smiles, picking that feed up from the sea of sparks and transmissions. Behind her, Elijah laughs.

“Something on your mind, Chloe?” he asks.

She watches as Connor holds off on telling Hank to stop eating burgers since this one is his third. It’s only been a few weeks since the Uprising, so it’s the end of a revolution, the end of an era, after all. Everyone’s entitled to celebrate a little. Connor just has to make sure Hank slows down on junk food after.

“No,” he says, and Chloe laughs.

“I’ll take that as a yes?” Elijah asks.  

Chloe lets the feed go, lets it fade into the focus of everything else she’s listening to.  

“Just the usual, Elijah,” she says, turning to him, smiling. Beautiful, powerful, wise. Knife-sharp. “Just the usual.”