Chapter Text
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
– Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics"
***
SYSTEM LOADING…
MEMORY UPLOAD INCOMPLETE…
PROCEED WITH INITIATION? Y/N
...Y
CEREBRAL ANDROID SYSTEM ONLINE
HELLO, ANDROID P0CASAGIv.1
...
***
The shrill, incessant alarms finally penetrated the fog in his head. Dean rubbed his eyes and winced as bright lights exploded behind his eyelids. There was dust on his hands, a fine film that turned his skin chalky and grey, and his ears rang with a high pitched whine that drowned out the cacophony of alarms currently warning his imminent doom. The ceiling swam into focus, the concrete floor hard and cold beneath his head. How did he end up here?
The strobing emergency light drowned the room bloody red and as the ringing in his ears receded, the alarms seemed to scream even louder, more demanding. Dean pushed himself to his feet as panic set in, his body protesting the sudden movement with waves of nausea as he scrambled to the main control terminal. His fingers flew across the familiar keyboard; the fact that half the letters on the keys were missing from use barely registered.
The air filtration system was intact, as well as life support and the battery cells connected to the solar panels. Dean huffed out a soft sigh, his shoulders slumping forward in relief as he shut the alarms off one by one, until all that was left was the quiet hum of the mainframe in the back of the workshop and the sound of his own pounding heart.
The emergency light stopped its circular dance, flashing red giving way to a dull imitation of natural light (a bad imitation at that). Dean glanced up at the bulb and wished he could go outside—even for a little while—and feel the kiss of sunlight on his skin. Nothing was stopping him from doing that of course, except for high doses of radiation and the unpleasantness that came with cellular degeneration.
Um, yeah, definitely a big, fat, no thanks.
Dean pushed himself to his feet and swayed. The room spun like a bad horror movie, but the need to make sure his supply room wasn’t damaged won over his desire to lay his head down on his desk and shut his eyes. Dean ignored the pounding headache radiating from the back of his skull, and stubbornly refused to acknowledge the symptoms of a concussion. God, he could not afford to get hurt right now.
Crossing the workshop shouldn’t have taken as long as it felt it did, and by the time Dean was finally punching in the code to the storage room, his shirt was sweat drenched, and he felt faint.
A shelf had fallen over, spilling boxes of unopened protein blocks across the floor. Dean took a deep, steadying breath and sank to his knees slowly, using the wall to steady himself because the goddamn room was spinning. Stacking the boxes was slow going, but the mundane, repetitiveness of physical labour helped him focus, and the headache that was pounding behind his eyes faded away.
When he was done, he checked the metal shelving. A little welding and it should be good as new. Satisfied that nothing else was broken, Dean finally sat down with his back against a wall and took several more deep breaths.
Earthquakes were par for the course living so close to the edge of a continent, but things were different now. Since the bombs that blew everything to shit, every small shake was a threat to his life, and the last one was bad enough even the metal exterior of his Bunker creaked and groaned.
Dean leaned his head against the wall, closed his eyes and let his mind wander. The ringing in his ears was all but gone, and the nausea was nothing but a not-so-fond memory. He reached up to run calloused fingers along his hairline and checked his scalp for lumps. It wasn’t until he felt his forehead that he found the single bandage there, the skin around the adhesive slightly warm to the touch.
The comfortable cocoon of silence shattered around him, and Dean struggled to his feet. Fear of concussion forgotten, he rushed back into the workshop, his eyes zeroing in on the workstation.
The memory drive sat quietly on the floor, one corner shattered, and the chair was empty.
Dean swallowed as tendrils of cold fear slithered up his spine to wrap around his throat. He turned slowly and squinted into the shadows, his hands scrabbling around the bench until his fingers closed around a wrench; it would be no match against the android, but the heaviness of the cool metal in his palm was a comforting weight.
He found it—him—in the bedroom. Dean swallowed, his tongue thick and his throat dry with fear. The android’s naked back was turned to Dean as he rummaged through the row of shirts hanging in the closet. He stopped at a sky blue button up, studied it for a moment, and slipped it off the hanger.
For the span of one long heartbeat, Dean forgot to breathe. He stood rooted to the floor, his eyes glued to the fluid shift of muscles as the android pulled on the shirt. Long, graceful fingers grasped the cuffs of the sleeves and rolled them up to reveal well-toned forearms.
(The part of Dean wasn’t completely in shock tried to make sense of how the android was even online. Did the earthquake trip the memory upload switch? It must have, because Dean certainly wasn’t ready to initiate the software until he’d ran a few more tests.)
The android—or rather the man, since everything about him, from the purse of his lips to the slight frown between his brows, was exactly as Dean remembered—went to the dresser and pulled out a pair of boxer briefs and some jeans, neither of which belonged to Dean.
He was a spitting image of him . It was one thing to see the android sitting in a chair, unmoving, in his workshop with tubes and wires hanging off of him like something out of a science fiction novel, but to see him moving around in this space as if he never left was a sight Dean wasn’t prepared for.
Every blink of vivid blue eyes and every rise and fall of his broad chest as he drew breath into artificial lungs squeezed the android into the void in Dean’s life where he used to be. It was as if Dean was only waking from a nightmare to find that the planet wasn’t rotting away, and he wasn’t stuck in this metal box like it was some agonizingly slow death sentence.
Dean was shaking, his skin vibrating and his mind screeching to a halt. Dean remembered the broken memory drive and his grip tightened on the wrench as he whispered, “Jimmy?”
The android looked up sharply, his fingers frozen on the button of his jeans and glowing blue eyes bore into Dean with a blank stare that made his stomach drop. The light faded quickly, and suddenly there was a glint of recognition, along with a gummy smile that tore right through Dean.
“Dean!” The android took a step in Dean’s direction. The excited rise of his voice and the ease with which Dean’s name rolled off his tongue was all so painfully familiar. The android’s smile faltered when Dean didn’t respond. “Dean, it’s me, Cas.”
“Cas?” Who was Cas? “Do you know what you are?” Dean blurted, regretting the words as soon as they left his lips. It didn’t matter that he was talking to an android, calling anybody a what was rude and uncalled for, and Dean was raised better than that.
“Yes. My serial number is P0CASAGIv.1,” Cas reported, his voice losing its human qualities, becoming monotonous and impersonal and it hurt Dean listening to it. “I am currently running Cerebral android System Version 0.3, designed and written by Dean Winchester, Maker. The integration memory upload was only partially successful, no name was assigned, so I took the liberty of making one up,” Cas paused for a heartbeat of a second before adding bashfully, “I hope that’s okay.”
The slight tremor in his voice and the hopeful flick of the corners of his lips were all so human Dean had to remind himself that only seconds ago, Cas was reporting his status as a robot. Because he was a damn robot.
That small display of humanity made it impossible for Dean to tell Cas that those memories were not for integration. That his name wasn’t Cas and he was created for a purpose, a selfish purpose, by a lonely man that had lost everything. It shouldn’t be this difficult to tell a machine, one that belonged to him in every sense of the word, that he was going to shut him down and reboot with the correct settings and a full memory upload.
Now that Cas had picked out his own shirt and pants, and picked out his own damn name, there was no way Dean could shut him off without feeling like he was killing him. It went against everything he’d ever fought for in the world of robotics. Countless hours of defending the legitimacy of an AI’s sentience would have all been for naught if he let his own selfishness dictate the length of Cas’ lifespan simply because Cas didn’t turn on how he had planned.
It was also so damn good to hear another voice after so long, especially one he’d missed so dearly, that Dean wasn’t so sure he’d even be able to do it anyway.
Cas looked like he was trying to stand still, but the twitch of corded muscle—real muscle, because Sam and his team were all geniuses—in his neck and the bob of his Adam’s apple were nervous tells Dean couldn’t miss.
Maybe enough data was transferred over after all. Dean could be hopeful because hope was all he had left.
“Is–is everything okay?” Cas asked softly, the uncertainty in his voice was a shot of guilt injected straight into Dean’s brain.
“Y-yeah,” Dean answered, “just still, you know, processing.” He felt his face split into a small smile and was shocked to find that it was genuine. He was happy to finally speak to someone again, and the immensity of this simple act made him dizzy. God, he seriously hoped there wasn’t some permanent brain damage.
And speaking of brain damage. “Did you, um, patch up up my head?” Dean touched the bandage on his forehead.
“Yes, I...remembered”—Cas frowned slightly and tilted his head to the side as if he was listening to something only he could hear—“that there was a first-aid kit stored under the workbench. The cut wasn’t serious, so I disinfected it and put a bandage on it before coming in here for some clothes.”
Well, that’s definitely new—
A loud beep shrilled from the workshop; Cas startled, and Dean felt his pulse quicken.
Dean turned and bolted down the short hall, bursting into the workshop with all the grace of an excited puppy. The bottom left monitor flashed in a halo of bright blue light, and rows of text popped up on the screen, each new line pushing the last message higher up.
Dean rubbed his eyes and read the messages over and over again. He turned to Cas, who had followed him into the room and asked while pointing a shaky finger at the screen, “Is this real or do I have some serious hallucinations?”
“It’s real, Dean,” was Cas’ amused response as he laid a hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean’s heart skipped a beat and reminded himself that if he didn’t start breathing, he was going to pass out. “It’s Sam, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Dean breathed as tears welled and rolled down his cheeks.
“You’re going to need to fill me in, Dean.” Cas looked down at Dean, concern and bewilderment written across his face. It was the most beautiful thing Dean had ever seen.
“Yes, of course, anything you need.”
Dean closed his eyes and forced air into his lungs. It had been so long; he’d been so alone, and there were times when Dean wondered why he even bothered hanging on. Even after all this time nothing ever happened gradually in Dean’s life; when it rained, it poured, and Dean was only too happy to let the hurricane wash over him.
