jmtorres | procrastinator (nick of time)

Dru's request: GRhade/Dylan, set during TUM. Also archived on AO3.

Harper had, Gaheris supposed, made the hologram as perfect as artifice allowed. This showed: Dylan was entirely artificial. Its words were flat. Its question, "Up for a game today," completely lacked any curiosity, or even the simple verbal convention of rising intonation.

Disgusted, Gaheris glared at Harper rather than confirm his self-congratulation and, once he had driven the engineer off, shut down the hologram.

Mind, no sooner had he gotten rid of one than another popped up. "For a man who killed his captain and best friend, you certainly seem reluctant to let him go."

Andromeda specialized in twisting the knife lately. Though he had tried to figure out a way around the need, Gaheris still relied too heavily on her cooperation to deny her what pleasure she derived from needling him, so he answered her instead of telling her to shut up or be erased. Threat of erasure had gotten him through the first critical minutes, but when she'd declared she'd rather die than serve a Nietzschean empire, Gaheris had known he'd have to find some more diplomatic way of dealing with her.

Did AIs have instinctive understanding and fear of erasure? This newborn hologram Harper had presented Gaheris with obviously did not understand death, or the memory of murder at Gaheris's own hands (surely Harper had not neglected that? it was on record) would have precipitated a much angrier greeting. Gaheris had been braced for that; it was one of the reasons the hologram's actual reaction had been such a disappointment. He would have to teach Dylan about death. He wondered whether erasure would provide a suitable metaphor for organic death.

Over the next few days, Gaheris discovered several disturbing features of the hologram. Firstly, this Dylan was far more calculating than the original had been, probably as a result of its programming being more game theory than personal history. It had a poker face entirely inappropriate to a game of go, utterly unreadable--as inflectionless as its voice had first been. Secondly, it was wired into external systems: it had access to anything Andromeda chose to give him. She would undoubtedly poison it against Gaheris if she could. Thirdly, it was wearing jackboots.

Not the messily buckled kind Dylan had worn with his uniform in real life--these were simpler, in that they lacked fastenings, yet in a way more threatening. There had been something simultaneously annoying and endearing in the way Dylan wrapped his bootstraps around his legs three times before threading them through the buckles. There was nothing remotely endearing in the hologram's boots. And Beka had made a stray comment about life under Nietzschean jackboots which led Gaheris wonder what Harper had based the image on, and whether he thought Gaheris had wanted the hologram to espouse a philosophy closer to his own than to the real Dylan's.

Gaheris set about attempting to fill in the blanks, to teach this hologram of Dylan how to be Dylan. He told it about his first mission with Dylan: about Dylan's insufferable optimism, willful misinterpretation of assassination orders, and receipt of important missions solely through sleeping with the admiral's niece. He told the hologram about Sara, as objectively as he could, with multiple mentions of Dylan's disgusting sappiness towards her. He hadn't gotten very far, however, when the hologram interrupted:

"You didn't like her much, did you?"

Gaheris leaned back in his chair, contemplating a go stone. "No," he admitted. "I was jealous of her, but I felt it was inappropriate to suggest that Dylan set aside a potentially reproductive relationship for my sake."

"So you said nothing," it concluded.

Gaheris bowed his head once, half a nod, smiling ironically over the fact that he could confess to the hologram pieces of his relationship with Dylan that he had never mentioned to Dylan himself.

"Things are different now," the hologram said thoughtfully. "Since I can't very well reproduce."

"I had noticed," Gaheris said wryly.

"Do you wish to pursue a sexual relationship now?" the hologram asked. He was not looking directly at Gaheris and sounded somewhat bored by the idea.

"You're somewhat ill-equipped," Gaheris pointed out, "lacking matter."

"I'm the image of the man you--what? Loved? Lusted after? You tell me," the hologram suggested. "At the very least, I could be jerk-off material. Harper actually equipped me pretty well, if only visually, under these leather pants." It slapped its thigh.

"I will consider it," Gaheris lied, and shut the hologram down for a week. He didn't turn it back on until he had convinced Andromeda to give it a few minutes worth of retrograde amnesia, which was relatively easy, as she found its come-ons as distasteful as Gaheris himself did. It seemed disloyal to treat the hologram as if it were Dylan himself, and cheap to consider the one-sided sex it had offered. (Andromeda, apparently, disapproved on the grounds that she herself had either lusted after or loved Dylan; Gaheris failed to determine which, and he knew the two were not mutually exclusive.)

After that, Gaheris gave up trying to teach the hologram about who Dylan had been, and stuck to board games and occasionally allowing it to branch out and apply the strategies in which it was so well-versed to the political situation. It was a relief. It was easier to see the hologram acting so obviously unlike Dylan than to try to make it become Dylan.

And yet, Gaheris also had sense of loss, as if in giving up he had killed Dylan all over again. He had had such hopes, such dreams.

If only the hologram had been a bit more embarrassed about offering to strip for Gaheris's pleasure--embarrassed the way Dylan would have been, blushing, trying to make a joke of it, saying never mind, it was a stupid idea anyway--if only it could have been a bit more human about the idea, Gaheris might have said yes.

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