Room 401, Monday Midday

[ultron_junior]

Seven-year-old Victor hadn't been able to figure out how to get music onto an iPod from a computer that didn't have iTunes, but teenage Victor faced no such problems. He borrowed Alec's iPod again and spent the morning putting songs on it -- a mix of classical, electronica, world music and rap that represented the best of his collection plus a few things he was pretty sure Alec would dig.

He was in a good mood as he worked, if a bit of a wistful one. Being seven for a weekend had been a seriously cool experience. Plus, now he had some real memories of childhood to mix in with the fake ones Ultron had implanted, which in his opinion was a change for the good.

He frowned a little at his torrent -- the complete works of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan should download a little faster, in his opinions -- and clicked open another browser window. He'd read up on AI virus prevention while he waited.

[OOC: Cracked door, open post.]

Comments

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

"You grew up," Olive noted -- seventeen year-old Olive, it should be noted -- from where she was peeking in the doorway.

[ultron_junior]

"Feels like it happened overnight," Victor agreed. He hit the key combination to lock his laptop and grinned over at her. "Is it just me, or was that kind of a fantastic weekend?"

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

"On the plus side, I got to build a fort and live on cereal for most of the weekend," Olive noted thoughtfully, stepping in to lean against the wall. "On the downside, tiny me was a lot nicer and more forgiving than I am now, and I'm pretty sure I hugged Topher, so. Hit or miss. But you seemed like you had fun. Seven year-old Victor was a blast."

[ultron_junior]

"You got to build a fort with my awesome engineering help," Victor corrected. "And yeah, he was, wasn't he? Now I feel less like I missed out on the whole childhood thing."

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

"Yeah, it was weird being like, little, and -- wait." Olive eyed him, frowning a little. "How do you mean you missed out on having a childhood?"

[ultron_junior]

"Well, I was technically only made four years ago, something like that," Victor told her off-handedly. This was no big deal, right? "I have the fake memories, but now I know jumping off a swing for real feels pretty much like it does in my head."

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

...yeah. She'd figured at some point the android thing might come up again in such a way that she couldn't just act like it was fine without dealing with it, and apparently right now was "some point."

Olive was going to try and keep her face from showing how much that little bit of information kind of...messed with her head, but it was an uphill battle, in light of how much she liked him and thus how hard it was to lie.

"You're four?"

And she'd worried about the jailbait aspect when she turned eighteen to his seventeen next month. Ha ha. Ha.

[ultron_junior]

"Only in a technical sense," Victor repeated. He didn't think of himself as four, he didn't act four, and it wasn't relevant to his daily life whether his childhood memories were real or fake, so it took him a minute to figure out why Olive looked slightly stricken.

"Oh God, is that a little too weird for you?"

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

"Um." Okay, there was a right answer here, and the right answer was obviously, 'Of course not, I like you no matter when you were made,' but even saying that sounded weird to Olive, so she was sort of waffling on what the correct response was here.

"No, she hedged, after a moment, "no, it's not like...dealbreaker weird, or anything." There. That much, she was confident in. "It's just...sorry. Caught me off-guard."

It was really weird. More than the age thing, it was a reminder that he wasn't entirely human, and she wasn't entirely sure how to deal with that.

[ultron_junior]

Victor frowned again, waved her vaguely towards his bed. This seemed like a please-sit-down kind of conversation.

"Sorry," he said. "I don't think about it a lot. It's weird for me, too, knowing so much of the stuff in my head is just -- simulated."

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

She did as gestured, shuffling over and perching on the edge of his bed. "I bet," she offered, not without sympathy. "I'm trying to get it, I promise. I just -- hearing stuff like that totally reminds me that...you know, someone made you and you weren't born?" She winced, and added, "And that sounds awful, like I'm like...judging you or something? And it's not that, I just like...forget, most of the time. We don't even have androids where I'm from. Except in sci fi. Or probably at Google headquarters."

[ultron_junior]

"Even at home I'm pretty weird," Victor said wryly, rubbing his fingertips up over his forehead and into his hair. "Though maybe I wouldn't be weird at all at Google."

He frowned, stared into space for a moment. "I -- I'm glad it's not a dealbreaker," he said first, then, apologetically, "And ... I have no idea what else to say."

[dirtiest-skank.livejournal.com]

Olive winced. "See, I don't want to make you feel weird, and now I feel bad 'cause you were so cool about my pretending-to-be-an-uberslut thing." She shook her head, sighing. "And I was just planning on coming in here and being cute about telling you I was gonna bite you in Spanish and then I got all -- distracted. Um. Is it okay if sometimes I need a minute? I mean, I barely have dated...non-robotic boys. So my learning handicap here's already pretty bad."

[nottrivial]

Alec had woken up early to go to the gym, shock of shocks, and by the time he got back around mid-afternoon, he was very relieved to find a normal-sized Victor in place of the tiny one who'd been around yesterday. "Good to see you're back," he said, offering him a small smile.

[ultron_junior]

"Not only back, but actually finishing the job I started on your iPod," Victor told him. "Hope you don't mind. Call it babysitting payment."

Not that he'd needed much sitting, really.

[nottrivial]

"Oh, thanks," Alec said, surprised. He'd been prepared to let the iPod sit and collect dust for awhile before eventually fighting with it again, so that was a nice thing to hear. "You weren't that bad, though. Could've been a lot worse."

[ultron_junior]

"I appreciate that," Victor said, taking it as a compliment. "Was your brother little, or did you both get out of it?"

[nottrivial]

"Luckily he stayed the same," Alec replied. Which he was grateful for, for the most part -- though he had to admit it would've been a special kind of fascinating to see firsthand what Jace had been like before they'd met. "I didn't know the island even could leave people out during these weekends. It's good to know."

[ultron_junior]

"Never skips me," Victor offered. "Which I didn't mind this time, but I could take a pass next time the girl thing comes around."

He frowned at his computer screen. "Hey, is there any music you know for sure you like?"

[nottrivial]

"Uh." Well. "Not really? I don't usually listen to music unless it's on in a store or something."

Because he had a life, really.

"Maybe the subdued kind?"

[ultron_junior]

"Subdued," Victor muttered, mentally translated it into 'boring,' and added some Sarah MacLachlan and a couple extra trance CDs to the playlist he was building. "You're like my opposite. I seriously can't function without something playing."

Hence the near-umbilic attachment to his headphones.

[nottrivial]

"I think I just like being able to hear if anything's going on," Alec volunteered, swinging his arms awkwardly. This was a little more sharing than he generally did. "Force of habit."

[ultron_junior]

Victor tapped the headphones around his neck with a wry forefinger. "I get it. Volume on these is way down unless I know I'm safe or there are other people around. Plus, I have good hearing."

[nottrivial]

"Smart," said he who had no business judging Victor's safety choices but was going to do so anyway. "Sorry. That sounded a little paranoid. I'd blame Fandom, but..." It totally wasn't Fandom's fault.

[ultron_junior]

"I spent my last six months in L.A. fighting just about every D-list villain on the west coast who needed something to do," Victor explained, with a small almost-smile. "I'd have to be dumb not to be paranoid. Don't worry, no offense taken."