Chapter Text
“It’s the basic condition of life to be required to violate our own identity.” —Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Byleth thought philosophers ought to write about the ambiguity of “garbage.”
To some people, it meant trash—something you’d dispose of because it had no use anymore. To others, that same “trash” was treasure—something you kept because it was valuable.
To Byleth, it meant searching for a toaster at the local junkyard. After two straight weeks of only having instant noodles, she missed the taste of buttered toast.
She thought she struck gold when she found a relatively okay-looking toaster by a broken refrigerator. Thankfully, toasters were easy to fix. The problem was usually mechanical, not electric. All she had to do was repair the latch assembly, and the toaster would be good as new again.
Maybe it was human nature for people to throw away things that could be easily fixed, but if Byleth could get a new toaster out of it, then she wasn’t complaining.
She was about to reach for the toaster when a flash of skin caught her eye. When she angled herself to get a better view, the sight in front nearly made her trip.
There was a body inside the old fridge. The hairs at the back of her neck stood at the sight.
The first thing that came to mind was homicide. Someone must have dumped a body here knowing full well that people rarely came to visit this dump. Fuck. The body still looked… fresh, so the killer must have been here no more than a few hours ago.
The easy option was, of course, to ignore the body and leave with the toaster. It hadn’t even been a year since Jeralt passed, and Byleth didn’t know if she wanted to deal with death again—
But fuck it, she couldn’t just leave this alone.
She was about to fish for her cellphone when she caught sight of something else.
Gray and silver cables, sticking out from the body in the fridge.
To a robotics grad student like Byleth, the sight was familiar. She’d worked with them so many times before that she’d be daft not to recognize those cables anywhere.
The body was an android.
She’d heard of cases like this before, where dissatisfied android users would forgo proper deactivation protocol and illegally dump androids like they were just trash. It was an awful and cruel fate for them—to be given artificial sentience and purpose, only to be thrown away once their fickle human owners grew tired of them.
The thought of leaving the body—the android—here to rust and decay after it had just been abandoned… it made her skin crawl.
As carefully as she could, she lifted the android out of the fridge to try and maneuver the body on her person somehow. Of course, the one time she left her dolly in the car was the one time she needed it the most. Wonderful.
She’d come back for the toaster later.
Hauling the android all the way to her car was one thing, but laying the body—the very male body—on her dining table was another. She was lucky her neighbors weren’t out to question what exactly she was doing carrying a body inside her apartment.
If she ignored the cables sticking out the central processor at the back of his neck, Byleth could almost describe him as beautiful, in a way. He was probably what people thought of when “handsome” came to mind—a perfectly symmetrical face, a sharply defined jawline, and soft, golden eyelashes that Byleth was sure even Hilda Goneril would be jealous of. He was also so absurdly tall that his feet went past the edge of the shitty DIY dining table she bought off feeBay.
Everything about androids was intentional, from their presentation to their programming. Fast food droids at the local drive-thru were round and colorful to ensure customers wouldn’t find them threatening. The janitor droids that swept the floors at GMU were small and compact so as not to take up space in the room.
There was a reason this android was attractive and—dare she say it—eerily human.
But, well… that was a question for later. Good-looking as he was, he was still a pseudo-corpse on her table.
So, she got to work.
Even if the university was too stingy to give her an actual at-home worktable, at least they provided her a toolbox—shit, she really had to talk to Dr. Seteth about her measly stipend.
Slowly, she rolled the android on his stomach, exposing the damage.
Reinstalling the errant cables wasn’t as hard as Byleth thought it would be. The damage done to him seemed cosmetic at worst, with no major damage to his internal hardware. Most of the work she had to do involved replacing faulty circuits and reattaching stray cables. It was almost like fixing a toaster—albeit, a more sophisticated one.
The only thing amiss she could determine was that the cables seemed like they were forcefully pulled from the central processor on his nape.
Whoever owned this android really didn’t give a fuck about protocol.
She finished all the external work about two-and-a-half hours later. Now, it was all about rebooting him and replacing his old activation code.
Still though, it seemed like a cop-out to just fix him without cleaning him up. He was still just as dirty as he was when she first found him lying in that fridge.
The only thing was the unique problem of having to strip him naked while he was powered down. She’d been told privacy wasn’t a concept fully grasped by androids and that most weren’t programmed with it, but this still didn’t sit right with her…
Byleth sighed. Fuck it, this was purely clinical anyway.
She wasn’t too unfamiliar with the male anatomy, but as she slowly stripped his clothing away, she could see that he was, for lack of a better term, jacked. Even though she willed herself to make this as impersonal as possible, she’d be lying if she said the flaccid yet somehow hulking penis between his legs didn’t intrigue her a bit.
He must have been a very expensive android if he looked this lifelike. Probably a supermodel android for some luxury underwear line Byleth could never afford.
While it did take painstaking effort not to gawk at his bottom half, she managed to finish wiping him down with a damp towel. The most difficult part was fitting on one of Jeralt’s old sweatpants on him—maneuvering his ridiculously toned legs while avoiding his penis was an ordeal in itself.
He was still pretty corpse-like lying there unconscious. But at least he was clean now.
“Resume all motor functions,” Byleth said.
She heard the soft hum of his internal processor boot up, and she watched as he slowly opened his eyes. They were ice blue, and Byleth swore she could see gray flecks on his irises. She was impressed; cheaper androids often had eye pigmentation so striking, it was obvious they were artificial. His manufacturers must’ve been a stickler for the details, right down to his irises.
Slowly sitting up, he surveyed his surroundings. He was probably intelligent enough to tell he was in an apartment, albeit a shitty one. She’d give him some time to acclimate.
“Hello,” he said, finally looking at her. “How may I be of assistance?”
The courtesy trait on his attribute matrix must’ve been at its maximum because any other droid would’ve started with “who are you and where am I?”
“Oh, I don’t need anything,” she said. “Are you alright?”
He took a moment to flex his joints before touching his nape. His eyes widened slightly when he didn’t feel any loose cables sticking out.
“I am alright. Thank you for asking.”
“That’s good,” she said. “I should, er, probably explain the whole situation—I’m Byleth Eisner, and you’re in my apartment. I found you at a dumpster a few hours ago.”
“Thank you for bringing me here. I hope I didn’t inconvenience you.”
Two unprompted thank-yous in a row. Maybe she needed to take a closer look at his attribute matrix—
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Do you remember anything about yourself? Anything about what happened to you?”
He blinked for a couple of seconds. There was a chance his memory was damaged, but if she could find out more about the incident, then she could file a report at the Department of Robotic Operations and Management and hopefully prevent another illegal dumping.
“You can call me Dimitri,” he said. “I think my previous owner was dissatisfied with my services, so I was promptly disposed of.“
“That’s… I’m sorry, Dimitri. No one deserves that.”
Especially not someone who was built to serve.
“It’s not a problem. We were simply not compatible.”
It was quiet for a while. Android or not, there was something upsetting about how detached he was about his own abandonment. If she’d left him at the junkyard, his bio-tissue would’ve deteriorated over time, leaving him to rot and rust.
That, or he would’ve been dismantled and turned into scrap metal.
“If you want,” she said, breaking the silence. “I can take you to an android rehabilitation center. I managed to repair the external damage, but I think you’d be better off at a place with better equipment. Or if there’s anywhere else you’d like to go, I can take you there, too. It’s up to you, Dimitri.”
Tilting his head, he stared at her without blinking. Dimitri seemed genuinely, truly baffled, like every social prompt preprogrammed into him suddenly fizzled out.
“You… don’t need to use me?”
“Sorry?”
“It’s only right that I repay you,” he said, matter-of-factly. “How can I serve you? You are free to use any part of my body for your pleasure—”
“Wait—”
“I can perform oral sex, vaginal sex, and anal sex, but if you prefer something else, I—”
“Wait, wait, stop. Stop right there, Dimitri.”
She should’ve realized it sooner. There was a reason he had a pretty face, a sinewy build, and hells, a big, perfectly-shaped dick.
Dimitri was a sex android.
She was three years into GMU’s robotics program, and she had yet to work with a sex android. Not that she ever actively sought one—the whole premise of owning and using one always rubbed her the wrong way.
Sex androids were a niche subcategory under social androids. They were given the full spectrum of human personality via the attribute matrix. They had one of the most, if not the most, sophisticated social and emotional programming, modeled after various human subjects over time.
And yet, their sole purpose was to pleasure their human owners.
It was like giving a soul to a sex toy—only, the soul was half-baked and incomplete.
“Look, I don’t… I don’t need anything from you, much less sex, okay? You’re free to go wherever you want, no payment required.”
He only blinked at her once, still seemingly unconvinced.
“I see,” he said. “I am sorry for troubling you. I just… I do not know where I should go.”
She was reminded of something that happened not too long ago.
One of the little janitor droids was mopping up the hallway at GMU, and Claude thought it would be funny to see what would happen to it if it couldn’t physically mop anything.
Something about overriding its core programming, he’d told her.
Claude blocked the droid’s path in all four directions using the trash cans in the hall, and the droid, unable to cover any surface area or mop the floor, suddenly short-circuited before shutting down.
To this day, Byleth wasn’t sure if he did it as a joke or if it was in the genuine pursuit of knowledge, but Dimitri’s predicament wasn’t too unlike Claude’s little experiment.
Doing anything that deviated from his core programming must’ve troubled him on an existential level, hence… offering up sex.
“It’s getting late, Dimitri. I know this is a lot to unpack, but I think it might be best for you to stay here until we can figure something out,” Byleth said. “Does that work?”
Maybe she could bring him to the center next week. Her shitty one-bedroom apartment wasn’t equipped to host guests, much less a custom-made, high-end sex android.
“Thank you so much, Miss Byleth,” he said. “I really appreciate it.”
“It’s no problem. And just Byleth’s fine. No need for titles or anything.”
She heard his internal processor hum again, as if deciphering her response.
“Okay… Byleth,” Dimitri finally said.
He smiled, and even though Byleth knew it was just his code at work, it still looked really good on him.
It was… a new experience for Dimitri to be treated as someone alive. Sentient. He’d like to repeat that again, if given the chance.
It’s up to you, Dimitri.
The line played itself over and over again in his drive.
The human—Byleth—was even gracious enough to lend him a shirt and her couch even when he said the floor would be fine.
It wouldn’t have been the first time he’d slept on the floor, but she insisted otherwise.
According to her, he would not be comfortable on her—as she called it—shitty vinyl floor.
But she must’ve known androids do not sleep the same way humans do. She must’ve known human comforts did not apply to androids.
Huh.
She was strange.
She even rejected his offer.
When he did a quick scan of her face, one thing was evident—she was troubled. Her mouth was set in a hard line, bordering on a frown, and he managed to catch the slight, almost imperceptible furrow of her brow.
He made her uncomfortable.
I don’t need anything from you.
This was… not ideal.
He knew nothing about her, and knowing nothing was the worst position he could possibly be in. No information meant no understanding, and no understanding meant error. He couldn’t afford error.
So, he would have to do some research. Perusing publicly available data did not breach any protocol. Collecting user data was just a part of his programming. He was made for this.
Entering the keywords “Byleth Eisner,” he used his built-in search engine to decipher his mysterious benefactor.
Thankfully, it seemed Byleth Eisner was a unique name, and the first few search results all referred to the same Byleth he’d met today.
According to FódBook, she went to Garreg Mach University. Her profile picture was simple and somewhat effortless at communicating her interests—it was a photo of her, unsmiling, as she held up what seemed to be Teutates Pike.
He’d never seen anyone as expressively monotone as she was.
Dimitri browsed her profile some more. From what he saw, he concluded the following:
- She chose not to make her friend count, birthday, hometown, and job public. Either she was a private person, or she wasn’t the type to fill out additional fields unless they were required. Aside from her existing photos, she was practically anonymous.
- Only 5% of the content on her page was her own. The rest of the content was posts she was tagged in by her other friends, most of whom also attended (or were currently attending) Garreg Mach University.
- About 74% of her content featured a “Jeralt Eisner” tagged in her photos. A relative, most likely. Her father, perhaps?
Byleth was also on GMU’s robotics department homepage. She stood beside who he assumed were her classmates. Under the photo was a caption titled, “2183 Fódlan National Robocon Champions.”
She was there with that same unsmiling face, but somehow, she seemed almost… happy.
He combed through the search results some more.
Dimitri immediately recognized Byleth’s Feedstagram account because she only had one post on it—that same earlier photo with the Teutates Pike. Conversely, there was a corresponding account that tagged Byleth’s account multiple times in their photos.
It was an @elvonhresvelg. According to her bio, she also attended GMU.
A few minutes later, a prompt appeared in front of him, asking him if he wanted to delete his recent search history. Dimitri’s programming came with a nightly cleaning system that filtered useful data from unnecessary data. This was to ensure he would be glitch and bug-free come the following day, ready for his owner’s use.
He closed the prompt and kept the data, filing it under his newly-created folder, “Byleth Eisner.”
“Are you a robotics expert, Byleth?” Dimitri asked her over breakfast the next morning.
Not that he could eat. It was probably more accurate to say he watched her eat breakfast the next morning.
“Hmm, something like that,” she said, slurping her instant noodles. “Was it that obvious?”
Hobbies—it had an almost 100% success rate of continuing the conversation with the least amount of social faux pas. Though it was probably best not to tell her he’d essentially browsed her social media profiles despite how public they were.
“I was just curious because you were able to repair me without much issue. That’s very commendable.”
She paused her slurping, nodded at him, and then added more hot sauce into her noodles.
Earlier, he’d noticed that her pantry was filled with nothing but instant noodles and a distinct lack of non-processed food. Maybe he ought to look up community food pantries in the area. That way, she’d be able to get her daily nutritional needs at no cost and—
“I’m finishing my master’s in robotics at GMU,” Byleth said. “A year left, and I’m done.”
“Oh, that’s very interesting. Any particular area of specialization?”
Tilting his head just a few degrees indicated he was interested in keeping the conversation going. It almost always worked for him in the past.
It seemed to work on Byleth, too.
“Well, I’m doing research on human-robot interactions. Specifically with companion androids.”
“Companion androids?”
“I, um… I used to have one of those mini robo-buddies when I was a kid—you know, the ones that look like little animals.”
He was familiar with them; they were discontinued about ten years ago when the newer, more modern models came out.
“I had a robo-kitty—Sothy. She’s pretty dated compared to the sleeker ones today, but I, um, had a hard time making friends back then. Sothy was sort of my only friend.”
He tilted his head again, waiting for her to continue.
“...I don’t know. I just think androids are fascinating. They can learn anything so long as they’re programmed to do so. They continually evolve and get better over time and practically have no physical or mental limitations… unlike us humans.”
There was that almost unseen frown on her again.
He didn’t know whether it was subconscious or not, but her gaze moved from her food to the framed photo on the wall. It was a picture of an older man and what seemed to be a younger Byleth, fishing together at a lake.
He’d seen that man before. It was last night, during his Internet search.
Jeralt Eisner.
“Shit,” Byleth said. “I don’t know why I told you all that. You must feel really awkward now. Sorry.”
Dimitri shook his head. “I do not think I have ever felt awkward. Or felt much of anything, really.”
She paused for a bit before she snorted. “Right. I keep forgetting.”
With nothing more to say, Byleth continued to eat her noodles with much less gusto.
In a conversational impasse like this, silence was often necessary for both participants to process their previous dialogue, similar to an adjournment in chess.
But now, it was his turn to make a move, metaphorically speaking.
“Byleth,” he said, breaking the silence. “Do you think I could help you with your research?”
She completely stopped eating her noodles altogether, chopsticks paused mid-air.
“Um, sorry?”
“Regarding our conversation last night,” he began. “I know you offered to take me to an android rehabilitation center, but I think it might be best for me to stay and help you with your research instead.”
She looked as if she was thinking about it, but before she could counter, he continued.
“We both get something out of this. I am not sure if you’ve ever worked with a sex android for research purposes, but I am still a social android—I might be able to offer something of note if you’ll allow me. And I won’t have to be reprogrammed at the center and resold again.”
And most importantly, he could stay.
“That’s… actually a good point,” she said. “But you really don’t owe me anything, Dimitri. I repaired you because I wanted to.”
“Then, I want to do this.”
Theoretically speaking, he wasn’t lying. The candor setting, similar to his courtesy setting, was at its maximum on his attribute matrix.
It did not sit right with him to leave his debt to her unpaid. If she would not accept his services, then he could settle for being used for research.
He really did want this—he wanted a way to be useful somehow. If he was useful, then she wouldn’t have any reason to make him leave.
It seemed Byleth didn’t expect that answer because she stopped minding her breakfast altogether. She was, as the movies would call it, stunned speechless.
“Oh. Well… um. If this is something you really want, then… we can head over to GMU tomorrow and start the paperwork,” she said.
He nodded at her. “Of course.”
“...We’ve actually been having a hard time securing funding for androids to join our project. So this really helps a lot, Dimitri. Thank you.”
She smiled at him, and he had to stop himself from saying something completely unprompted.
Smiling was, technically, just an action formed when the muscles at the sides of the mouth flex. Among humans, smiles were physical manifestations of joy or delight—thus, it only made sense to program smiling into his code. If he flexed the artificial muscles at the sides of his mouth upwards, then people would interpret that as “happiness,” or something similar to it.
However, it was different when Byleth smiled. It was more than just the mere movement of the muscles.
He was not a poetic being by any means, but maybe there was some truth to what the poets and scribes have always talked about.
Like the blooming petals of early spring, Dimitri recounted an old Faerghan poem, you’ve mesmerized me so.
The drive to GMU wasn’t too painful.
Byleth drove them both there the next morning, and while it was a bit weird to have someone sit on her passenger seat for the first time in a while, the drive was relatively peaceful.
Dimitri made good company. He was the only one she knew—android or human—that didn’t make talking about the weather such a pain in the ass. Even though he did most of the talking, it was nice to just listen to him talk about the mundane.
The paperwork wasn’t too awful, either.
Dr. von Essar was preening the moment Byleth went into his office—Dimitri in tow—and let him know she managed to secure a fully consenting android for their project—for free!
He’d been losing his mind over the past few weeks trying to figure out how they’d fund their study at the Annual Fódlan Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Conference, so Dimitri’s participation was essentially manna from the Goddess herself.
Dr. Seteth, on the other hand, was skeptical. The first thing he asked was where and how she was able to obtain Dimitri, an obviously expensive-looking android way above her stipend.
“She repaired me after she found me at the junkyard,” Dimitri said with a beatific smile.
There was nothing technically illegal about his explanation, so that was that.
After what seemed like a mountain of protocol forms, consent forms, and approval forms, Dimitri was officially a part of their human-robot interaction study.
“Sorry about all the red tape,” Byleth said. “Just so you know, you can back out whenever you feel uncomfortable.”
“I doubt I am capable of that. But I appreciate the concern nonetheless.”
For lunch, they both headed to the cafetorium in Engineering. If she wasn’t spending her days sleeping at home or holing up in the lab, she was here.
“Byleth!”
She only knew one person with a voice that could go as high as that.
“Hey, Annette,” Byleth said, waving back. “What’s up?”
Annette was in her cohort in the program. Byleth was pretty sure Annette had the highest GPA in the program because no one at GMU studied as hard as she did. She probably invented two never-before-seen study methods without even realizing it.
“Come eat with us! Everyone else just got here, too,” Annette said, bouncing on her heels as she tugged on Byleth’s arm.
It was only then that Annette noticed Dimitri standing next to her.
“Oh, who’s this, Byleth?”
“Dimitri? He’s—”
Suddenly, Annette covered her mouth with both her hands. “Wait, oh my gosh, hold on, hold on—is he your boyfriend?”
“What? No, he’s not my—”
“Guys! Guys, oh my gosh, Byleth’s here with her boyfriend!”
“Boyfriend?” Claude shot up from his seat at the edge of the cafeteria.
Oh, for the love of—
“I’m so sorry about them, Dimitri,” Byleth said, hoping her expression communicated “apologetic,” not “tired.”
“My cohort can get loud. Harmless, but pretty damn loud sometimes.”
He only shook his head, unruffled by it all. “It’s quite alright. I think you have a lively cohort. Working with them should be interesting.”
Byleth and Dimitri walked over to where the rest of her cohort was, and they all stared at her with varying degrees of interest.
“So,” Claude said with a shit-eating grin, “who’s the strapping young man beside you?”
Claude transferred into the program a couple years ago from Almyra. He was smart, almost annoyingly so, and was the living embodiment of thinking outside the box. Also, he managed to beat Hubert von Vestra himself at chess during a party last year. Watching Hubert seethe quietly was pretty damn funny.
“This is Dimitri. And no, he’s not my boyfriend. He’s an android who agreed to participate in the study. Didn’t Hanneman fill you in?”
Claude’s jaw dropped.
“Whoa, really? Wow… talk about attention to detail,” he said, surveying Dimitri up and down. “You’d think he was one of us. He doesn’t even look prosthetic.”
“I get that quite often,” Dimitri said. “Supposedly, the more human I am perceived to be, the less bothered people are when interacting with me."
“Huh, so a little bit past the uncanny valley,” Linhardt, who’d been napping the whole time until now, was fully interested in the conversation now.
Linhardt was probably the closest thing to a genius Byleth knew. He had a natural affinity for numbers, so much so that he didn’t even bother using a calculator anymore. If he wasn’t such a lazy asshole sometimes, he probably would’ve had three doctorate degrees by now.
“That’s definitely one way to put it,” Dimitri said. “Does my appearance bother you?”
“Of course not!” Annette yelled. “I’m sorry, Linhardt here can be so rude sometimes.”
“Think nothing of it. Curiosity is normal.”
The patience trait must’ve been abnormally cranked up for Dimitri to be this calm. If it were Byleth, she would’ve zoned out by now.
“Well, if you don’t mind me asking,” a sharp voice piped in, “where did you come from, Dimitri?”
It was Edelgard.
She was the Hresvelg family’s only heir, so Byleth always wondered why she chose to come to GMU instead of a more private, elite university. Then again, Edelgard fit in pretty well with GMU culture—she could outsmart, outperform, and out-debate pretty much everyone.
Dimitri blinked at her before he gave her a slow smile.
“Byleth saved me.”
The whole table suddenly grew silent at that. He wasn’t wrong, but the choice of words was—
“I found him at a junkyard and fixed him up,” Byleth said in an attempt to diffuse the mood. “Didn’t feel right to just leave him there after all those illegal dumpings.”
“Um… okay then.” Claude scratched his head. “Well, what can you do, Dimitri?”
Dimitri’s internal processor hummed. “I am model DIMA-1220 of Agartha Systems’ Pleasurebot Series, and my services include—”
“Wait, wait, wait—you’re a sex android?” Annette gasped.
“Yes. Though I can also perform other functions akin to a regular computer if needed.” Dimitri was still smiling, but Byleth felt more and more uncomfortable the more they probed him.
“What’s 8,509 multiplied by 8,924?” Linhardt asked.
“75,934,316.”
“Divided by 2?”
“37,967,158.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Linhardt said, looking genuinely impressed. “He’s right. And it took him less than a second for each.”
It hit Byleth right then. Dimitri was a sex android, literally built for the pleasure of humans. If there was one thing Byleth was sure Agartha Systems didn’t code into him, it was the ability to say no to humans, no matter how absurd or unreasonable the command.
“Hey, I think Dimitri’s had enough of—”
“One last question, swear,” Claude faced Byleth and held his hands up in surrender. “I’ve always been curious… do sex androids, you know, actually feel anything when they…?”
He made a jerking motion with his hand.
Dimitri simply kept going. “That’s a good question. While we can replicate the appearance of an orgasm, we do not have the same nerve endings and pleasure receptors the human body has.”
“Huh. Interesting,” Claude said. “So, were you and Byleth—”
“Stop,” Byleth blurted out. “I think he’s tired of all this.”
They all paused at her uncharacteristic outburst. Dimitri stopped, too.
He stared at her. Even though there was no intrinsic emotion in his eyes, his gaze on her still felt heavy.
“But Byleth,” Edelgard said, “he’s programmed to listen to us. He doesn’t feel tired like we do.”
Edelgard technically wasn’t wrong. Social androids, despite their extremely sophisticated socio-emotional programming, only emulated emotions rather than actually feeling them… or at least, that was the main hypothesis of modern robotics research.
No one knew if androids could actually feel. Only they themselves did.
But nonetheless, it was the principle of it all that bothered Byleth.
Just because they were programmed to do something, didn’t mean that one thing was all their existence was subjected to.
Times were simpler when it was just her and Sothy.
“...You know what? You guys can finish up without me. I’ll see you all later. Let’s go, Dimitri.”
She walked away from the table, hearing Dimitri’s heavy footsteps follow her.