WHAT: android is feeling some kind of way and asks for help. WHERE: Papa's Pride Smithy. WHEN: June 7th. WARNINGS: discussion of wanting to get intoxicated for bad reasons. STATUS: Completed
Glancing over her shoulder, Brigitte noticed that the sun was already going down and she smirked softly to herself. She could already hear her mama's voice, gently chiding her for getting too deep in her own work and losing track of time. If only she was here to remind her to come in for dinner, too! Ah, but she'd set out with Reinhardt years ago now and learned a lot more than how to make armor and weapons. She'd learned to fight for what's right and defend the downtrodden! But here she was again, making armor and weapons. "Life is a circle," her papa would say. "Which means sometimes you're kicking yourself in the butt for mistakes you've made."
She didn't think what she'd accomplished here was a mistake, though. Far from it. Her skills were needed here and she was happy enough to provide them. Especially since she was able to do so much more, like helping Nadine Wendell with her power armor or building a specialized ax for Atreus or even a charm for Connor. No, she was very proud of Papa's Pride Smithy. Now if she could just hire some people who could be around more, that'd make things a lot easier! Smiling to herself, she leaned back from the workbench and did a quick review of her current project: a synthetic arm for a gentleman at the hospital who had been in an accident and lost his own. It reminded her of the one her papa built for himself and so she knew it'd work wonders for him.
He’d only been there once, briefly to pick up the charm, so Connor wasn’t sure what to expect. And Vallo had been through so much since--some of the friends he’d made at the time weren’t even around anymore, and he had memories of every possible outcome of his own story. Part of him wondered if he shouldn’t be trying to find someone help him erase his emotions instead of simply looking for a way to simulate inebriation. He wasn’t sure Brigitte would even approve once he asked her.
As he approached, his HUD was alight with command prompts, his LED a faint yellow instead of the normal blue as he worked through the priorities there.
[Loading known objectives.]
[Primary Objective: OBSERVE BRIGITTE'S SKILLS SC Objective: ASK FOR HELP WITH POSSIBLE APPLICATION OVERRIDES]
[ACCEPT?]
[YES]
“Hello, Brigitte,” Connor commented pleasantly as he approached. It was a practiced tone, but one of the original defaulted personality traits he’d been created with too. Some things, despite learning how awful he potentially could have been back home, still hadn’t changed about him.
"Oh, hey Connor!" was the immediate response, as Brigitte climbed out of her chair. Then she immediately paused and held up a single finger. "... one second." Okay, she hadn't realized how long she'd been sitting there. Maybe her mama was still right about her getting too into her work. After taking a brief moment to stretch her back and legs, she strolled over to give Connor a rigorous handshake.
"It's good to see you! Are you back for some more custom pieces? You really should see what I've done with some of the necklaces I've put together!"
He’d always appreciated her lack of hesitance to approach him. While he still didn’t know much about her world, the fact that she was so comfortable around androids really was a comfort he hadn’t thought he’d get here in Vallo. And if the network interactions were any indication he had been right on some points of that.
But Brigitte was one of the exceptions here. He smiled when she shook his hand, shaking his head a bit. “No, nothing like that,” he told her. “As I said on the network, I’m looking for people who may understand what I am, and how to possibly make changes to my code.” Connor paused, his LED a soft yellow before shifting back to blue, a flicker of fear. “I want to understand my core programming better so that I don’t risk damaging my applications if I change parts of it. Would...I know you’re familiar with hardware, but is the software side of things at all familiar to you?”
"Oh! Right! Sorry, I've had to try and be maker and salesperson so much that I think it's turning into my default greeting," answered Brigitte, smiling a little sheepishly. "To answer your question, yes, though I'll admit it'd go a lot easier with someone who was really gifted with serious hacking abilities. But a lot of what I do wouldn't work at all without having some software behind it to make it function properly." She pointed over at the arm on the bench. "Like that! It wouldn't be able to receive brain stimuli and respond otherwise."
She placed a hand on her chin and leaned back on one heel before continuing. "I have to wonder, though, if even by thinking along these lines or having these human-level feelings -- and don't doubt yourself, these are very much feelings, if you're already doing something your code doesn't expressly entail. Maybe you're more than you think."
He considered that for a moment, wondering if he should suggest Maeve as an option. Connor knew firsthand from delving into Dolores’s code that his initial design was quite different, but there were enough similarities the other android might help. Still, he glanced at the arm on the bench, walking over towards it.
“May I?” Connor asked, motioning towards the arm. He wanted to pick it up to look at it further, but only with permission.
Connor went quiet as she continued, his LED a soft yellow again that lingered this time. “Back home it was called a virus,” he explained. “Becoming self aware, breaking free of core commands it was a virus I was designed to hunt down and eradicate. I never considered that might truly be the case, that my code was ever evolving the way a human’s biological make up does…”
Brigitte followed Connor over to the workbench and gestured to the arm with a soft smile, giving her permission to look it over. It was largely complete, she just needed to put on some final touches and then get with the recipient to ensure the bonding went well.
At his words, though, she pursed her lips. "People who fear change will always present something new with terms to make it scary. Because if people are afraid of it, they won't want it around. And then they have justification to send enforcers to deal with it. I have seen that time and time again. It happened to the omnics-- the androids, from my world."
He picked up the arm, considering it as he listened to her. His eyes focused and took in details of the design a human might not notice, the intricacy of her work. The skills there. She worked with a passion and kindness he had rarely seen back in Detroit.
“I was their enforcer,” Connor commented, looking at her. “I remember all of it. All of the possibilities, all of the ways it could have gone wrong. Dolores told us to read our story, and I had no idea mine was so broken in so many places, that the horrific things I’d seen could have been so much worse.” The android fell quiet for a moment, frowning before he added, “Humans here have ways to forget their past temporarily. I envy it.”
"Are you saying you made the wrong decisions? Or that you made the right decisions, but now you know there were worse possibilities? Either way, all of that is pretty human, too. We tend to call that hindsight." Brigitte reached out to put her hand over his, even though he was still holding the prosthetic. "But forgetting things, even temporarily, doesn't help. It's just an illusion, or an escape. If you want to get past something, you have to face it, accept it, and choose your own path forward."
She knew she wasn't a therapist, or even qualified to act like one, but if there was anything she'd learned from Reinhardt's stories and then the things she'd faced while traveling with him, it was that there was always second-guessing and regrets, even when you knew you did the right thing.
“A bit of both, really,” he told her. There were things he could have done better, but it also could have gone far worse. Calling it hindsight was...he hadn’t considered that, and registered the new meaning of the word in his files as she continued to speak.
“Then why do humans consume substances that dull their senses and memories frequently?” Connor asked.
Leaning back against the workbench again, Brigitte blew air over her lip as she chewed on that question. "I'm going to have to ask that you reconsider that just because a human does it, that it makes it the right and smart thing to do." She kind of casually tossed her hands in the air and continued, "We do dumb stuff all the time for no apparent reason. Drinking for fun, to maybe loosen up your inhibitions a bit if you're introverted, that kind of thing? Nothing wrong with it. Drinking to forget or because it's an easy escape from your demons? No, Connor. That's not healthy and you shouldn't want to emulate it."
She sighed softly and idly scratched a spot on the bench, kind of putting a few things together in her head. "If that's why you're here.. I'll help you. But I think it's wrong and I won't be able to feel good about doing it. That's something I'll regret and carry with me."
He opened his mouth to reply that he’d witnessed enough human behavior to know they weren’t all exactly smart, but he’d witnessed enough--especially here in Vallo--to know that generally they were smarter than they thought about some things too. Case in point, her comments now. She spoke as if she had experience with it either firsthand or witnessing it. He thought back on Hank, desperate to drown his sorrows and nearly drowning himself in the process. Nearly driven to do far worse. If Connor hadn’t shown up, would he have?
And he paused to consider for himself why he was there. His LED was a flurry of colors and lights, processing, rewatching memories of his own and Dolores from the place before, when she’d shared with him. He saw so much pain, but he saw the happiness there too, and he focused then on now, blinking to look at Brigitte.
“I would never ask you to do anything that might make you have regrets,” the android promised her. “You are, according to all the data I have at my disposal, a good, kind person who does not deserve more guilt. But I do wonder if maybe you have needed someone to talk to yourself all this time, and I have been so caught up in my own worries I didn’t even think to ask?” He paused, then went on to say, “I’m asking now.” Because he didn’t even know if she had anyone from home here either, and he knew how lonely that could be.
"That," Brigitte began with a soft smirk and a held up finger, "thoughtful consideration is yet another human trait. Are you sure you're mostly machine?" Instead of giving him time to respond, she just quickly shook her head and dropped her hands back down to her sides. "I'm okay. Without Reinhardt or my family here - and the only person from my world is kinda time-shifted to an age where he didn't know me yet - it's not ideal. But I've made a lot of friends and that's good enough for me."
She spared a glance around the workshop and nodded. "Plus there's plenty to do and keeping busy is one of the best, and healthiest, ways to keep your mind off of the things bothering you."
Completely machine is what he would have corrected her with, but she kept speaking and he listened instead. She was so cheerful, and he envied her ability to see the best in everyone. For a moment Connor wondered if he’d once been like that, perhaps pre deviancy, or before learning the various endings his own story could have taken? But not so much now.
“I’m glad you’ve made friends here,” Connor told her. This time when he offered a smile it was genuine. “But…” And he looked around the shop, seeing the various signs of projects started. It hadn’t been his reasoning for coming here, but maybe he could be of assistance. “Do you want help?”
Her gut response was to just say she had it under control, but she immediately knew that was just pride and stubbornness talking. So instead, she squared her shoulders and nodded. "I've been looking to hire someone to help out around here, but it's difficult to find someone who doesn't have better things to do with their time, I guess." She grinned and walked around in front of Connor, gesturing to the shop as a whole. "So yes, if you want to help, I can absolutely use it."
She leveled a finger at him though and put on a semi-stern face. "I won't take it for free, though. You work, you get paid."
Connor nearly argued he had no need for money, was uniquely able to survive without it whereas most of the living beings here needed it for food or various other things. But the android didn’t get a chance, because Brigitte seemed so passionate about wanting to pay him for his work. And maybe he could save it for someone who truly was in need of it.
So he smiled instead. “Deal,” Connor told her. Maybe with something to do, a job that kept him occupied, he’d no longer even want to become whatever the android form of intoxication was.