Chương 100: 7.02 No Return without Receipt or Label

2104: 03: 27: 15: 20: 09 At 19° Celsius it was an unusually warm and sunny day for a March 27 th, especially when compared to yesterday's cloudy yet dry 9° Celsius. The sudden change in weather must've triggered some biochemical response mechanism inside Millie's brain (or some other equally erratic Millie-specific decision-making organ) as she'd unilaterally decided to all but drag Jolie, Saga and I to the beach.

Only Amber the Ever Nimble had managed to escape her clutches by citing prior obligations with her own respective friends – a likely excuse (literally; I believed it). Besides Millie, other Charmites seemed to have gotten the same. For a workday afternoon in March, the beach was practically packed. Most of them were parents with their children marched down the wooden boards spread across the beach, passing shops and looking for little doodads and souvenirs, eating ice cream, waffles, crepes, etcetera.

Then there were the other teens jostling about with each other, joggers and rollerbladers exercising on the asphalted parts of the embankments, couples of all ages walking the beach, elderlies on a nice day out, groups of students by the beach bars and cafes enjoying the sun over tea, soda, wine and/or beer, and the rare working-clothes adults taking a quick breather from their jobs.

Only a few swimmers though – the cold wind and time of year were too discouraging for all but the bravest – but there were some wind- and kitesurfers. As for our presence at this time of day: ever since the new year began and school schedules shifted around, Thursdays had become the shortest of them all. Ending with the fifth period at 14: 35, it left us plenty of time to enjoy ourselves alongside those already here.

Currently we were seated on the wooden flooring of the pier at the Bayside Boardwalk, dangling our feet over the water from up high, our heads and arms resting on the lower set wooden planks of the pier's railing. Next to me was Mille, with Jolie and Saga on the other side of her, all of us watching the gentle waves lap at the beach a couple dozen meters down the way we came as we talked about everything and nothing. But honestly, I did very little of the actual talking.

My mood since Tuesday's therapy session had been a mix of many things, but ultimately settled on a kind of moroseness made of one part bewilderment and one part 'I should've expected this'. Things hadn't gone the way I'd thought they would with Marianne. Nor had the research I'd done before and my predictions of the future conformed to the actual way forward Marianne had advised. That my nature as an android would be doubted had been the last thing on my mind.

That, from an outsider's perspective at least, that doubt had some validity to it was incomprehensible. Though I'd heard of Raadsburg and the troubles the Last City of Europe had to deal with ever since the Sinking of said continent, I'd never heard of the Raadsburg Artificiality Test. Nor the General Authenticity Check for that matter – let alone that I'd already passed the latter. How was I supposed to have known that they already tested me for androidhood, and thrown out the possibility?

Not that I believed the conclusions of the GAC, regardless of all the other points Marianne had raised. I still believed I was an android, felt that fact deep in my bones and had felt it from the moment I woke up on that metal slab of a table back in my creator's laboratory. I've lived in fear with that fact for all my life, however short that might be compared to other people's. I was experiencing the ramifications of that fact – with Mad Android Syndrome, with the Heroic Impulse, with pseudo-Sam.

So what if others believed otherwise? Besides, why did I have to be the one to prove my existence to others? No one else had to. No one else had to take a hyper-specific test to prove they were- well, okay, the achronally displaced did have to take the GAC. But the point stood: very few people had to prove they were who they thought they were. The only benefit to the in-doubt nature of my androidhood was that I wasn't immediately arrested or killed. Which was a great benefit to be sure, but still…

more than a bit irritating regardless. Especially since Marianne proclaimed that being an android might not necessarily be an all-but-automatic death sentence, so who knew if there even was an upside to all of this. Speaking of, that second fact – that androids weren't some kind of hunted-down form of created beings – also came as a shock, albeit less so than the first.

I should've known that researching the topic on the internet could lead to doomerism, and in hindsight my search queries – 'do androids always have to get killed when they're discovered?' – weren't exactly value neutral. That, and my dismissal of government information on Mad Android Syndrome and the like might've been too hasty.

"-so then Marshall-" a Y2C student and longtime classmate of Millie, Jolie and Saga, "-got like, all huffy and red in the face and said, 'well, she should've just told me instead of hiding behind a letter!' But Leila was standing right behind him! It looked like she was about to cry and when Marshall turned around, the guy looked sooo miserable and guilty. But when he was about to apologize- or well, he looked like he was about to apologize anyway, Leila kicked him right in the nuts before running off in tears!"

Millie laughed at her own story.

"We know, Millie," Jolie said, rolling her eyes.

"We were there. Stop bringing it up."

"Yeah, but Sam wasn't," Millie said.

"And she has the right to know – it's class history!" I blinked and stared at her vaguely, deliberately making my eyes appear unfocused.

"Hmm? You were talking?" Millie rolled her eyes and said, "Haha, you're sooooo funny," in a completely deadpan tone.

"Here I'm just trying to cheer you up, enlighten you-""Not what that means," Jolie interjected.

"-and what do I get? Hm?" Millie feigned looking around.

"Mockery, that's what."

"Indifference, more like," Saga said.

"Even worse!" Millie said.

"That's like, the opposite of love." Jolie nodded.

"You're absolutely right; she should hate you instead." Saga nodded twice.

"We should join her. Out of solidarity, you know?" Millie gasped, clutching at her pierced heart.

"Intrigue and collusion? In my palace? Say it ain't so!" She genuinely looked about to tear up, but that illusion was broken by a quick smirk. I smiled, but it felt hollow. For all the banter and jokes, nothing managed to change my mood – the thing I suspected was Millie's whole point behind this outing in the first place. But while that part of her plan hadn't worked out as intended, I'd figured this outing was as good a moment as any for an entirely different reason: telling them I was an android.

As I'd promised Marianne, I would be telling my mom about it… soonish. But not right now. Telling Marianne had been difficult enough, and she had a professional obligation to listen and not, you know, flip out on me immediately. That, and unlike with Mom, Marianne didn't have a deep, personal tie to the Samantha Pearsson – neither me, nor the achronally displaced one. My friends were the next logical step. Personally attached, yes; but in a very different way than Mom.

And there was one specific thing they – or rather, Millie – could do that Marianne couldn't. I spared a quick glance at my surroundings. People were walking by, but none were paying attention to us, and we were isolated enough from the main thoroughfare as to not be overheard. And besides, what kind of person would listen in to a bunch of teenagers and believe what I was about to say? In a low tone of voice, "Millie, can you do the brainscan thingy?" I asked. Millie stared at me without blinking, uncomprehending.

"You know, the lie detecting one?" Now Jolie and Saga leaned over from behind as well, looking at me with a confusion plain as day.

"… Sure?" Millie responded. Strangely, despite this being an important make-or-break it moment, and a test run on what I might have to deal with later with Mom – and get some advice too, of course – I didn't feel nervous at the outcome. Sure, I was dreading telling them, but it was like the outcome was already set in stone. Perhaps that was the true benefit of all Marianne had told me about her and society at large's perspective on androids.

That, or I was just so wrung out I could hardly muster any emotion, good or bad. The words came out calm, almost detached.

"I'm an android." Silence met my words, all three of my friends staring at me blank-faced in shock. Then, Saga and Jolie's attention shifted to Millie, their movement quick to the point of whiplash. This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. Millie continued to stare at me, her shifting expressions telling the story better than words ever could. First, she stared at me frozen in disbelief.

Then came a narrowing of the eyes and thoughtful scrunching of the brow, before a surprised realization took over at the confirmation I was telling the truth. And finally, a widening accompanied by a jaw drop.

"Oh my God, you're not kidding," Millie said. Saga and Jolie's eyes shifted back to me in an instant.

"No way," "That's…!" Saga and Jolie said at the same time, mouth agape. Their eyes were wide with shock, but not the kind of shock I would've once expected. This wasn't the terror of discovering a villainous, possibly murderous android in their midst, or even the pain of betrayal on discovering their friend wasn't who they thought they were, wasn't even a person at all. No, this was the simple shock of disbelief and wonder. It reminded me of the look they wore when I told them I was Jester.

A positive kind of shock. It settled something within me. Something content and snug that helped chase out a part of the bleakness I'd felt these past days, making me feel better about it all – even if only a little. Still, there was also a hard core of disappointment. Not aimed at them, but myself. Having lived and lied for so long about my nature while laboring under the misconception that androids were something intrinsically feared, only for my friends' reactions to be the equivalent of 'wow that's awesome!'

Yes, I was a little disappointed, the disappointment of work gone to waste, and of months of worrying revealed to have been for nothing. The disappointment of not being as smart as I thought I was. Still. Overall, the positives vastly outweighed the negatives, and it wasn't like it came as a surprise. Part of me had expected this reaction, and was glad to have it confirmed. But for all of that – the contentment, the disappointment, the confirmation – I was still not exactly happy at my friends' reactions.

I saw that they didn't really comprehend what I was saying – not yet at least. The only one who might was Millie. Compared to Jolie and Saga, she was looking at me less with shock – though that too – and more in consideration and thought. As a Prospectus, it would not surprise me she might've been taught a thing or two about androids, including Mad Android Syndrome. But much more important than that, Millie knew Kati Pearsson and what her powers were – and also what they weren't.

"So that's where your powers come from!" Jolie exclaimed.

"Wait, who's your creator? Is it your brother?" She gasped.

"Is that what happened over the winter break? No, wait the timeline doesn't-" She interrupted herself with another gasp, arriving at the other wrong conclusion. Saga arrived at the same misconception.

"It's your mother, isn't it?" She shook her head in sympathy.

"God, that's rough. No wonder your brother got mad at her – and why you couldn't tell us about it." Heavy like lead, I shook my head.

"No, my mother didn't create me." Before either of the two – or Millie – could ask, "It was some guy named Trajan Baker, and he's been dead since before I came to the city." Jolie frowned.

"Wait, but-" and again came to a realization.

"Oh."

"She doesn't know, does she," Millie stated, eyes narrowed. I shook my head in response, looking down to avoid her judgment. The prior semi-good feeling vanished entirely.

"That's fucked up Sam," Millie stated. I flinched at her words, still refusing to meet her eyes again.

"Millie!" Jolie said, winding herself up to come to my defense, only to deflate just as quickly.

"That's… I mean, it must've have been difficult for Sam to…" Not even she could defend me. Not full heartedly, at least.

"I believed," I began, voice forcefully kept steady, "that the moment she or anyone else found out, I'd be as good as dead. Especially with me having taken over the identity of Samantha Pearsson – something I had no choice in, but…" I shook my head.

"All I wanted to do – what I was focused on – was becoming this great hero the world had never seen before." Something I couldn't do if I was dead, I didn't say. A brief moment of quiet.

"What changed?" Saga asked.

"Well… you all know Mad Android Syndrome?" Only Millie knew of it, Saga and Jolie shaking their heads.

"Well basically, all sorts of complicated maker tech degrades if their makers either die or their powers stop feeding them for some reason. Normally this means that their technology just… stops working. But for androids – and for all intelligent maker machines, really – this means breaking down on a more personal level. They become a so-called 'Mad Android', and if they already weren't before that happened they then slowly but surely start losing all morality."

I looked each of them square in the eye, driving the point home.

"They end up becoming a villain." Saga and Jolie tensed, though Millie didn't. She continued staring at me, eyes laden with judgment. I looked away and continued.

"At first I thought I was immune to this thanks to something my maker did, since from all I could find it normally sets in quite quickly after the maker disappears. But ever since Nth-Sight, I've been having troubles with my mental state, so apparently I'm not as immune as I thought."

"Mental state?" Saga asked. I told them all as much as I could about my Heroic Impulse, pseudo-Sam and everything else that happened while avoiding their cause: Mom and Michael's reveals as masked.

"And you've been dealing with this since Nth-Sight?" Jolie asked, aghast.

"You've been dealing with this for months?" I nodded.

"Well, the issue is on and off for the most parts – but yeah, basically."

"But again, what changed?" This time it was Millie that asked that question, her judgment wavering for the first time.

"If it's been an issue that long, why such a sudden change of heart? I mean, if your reason for not telling your mother was you still feared getting killed, why not hide it longer or… or ride it out or something?"

"Well, I can't exactly ride it out, can I?" I said with a forlorn smirk – more of a grimace, really.

"I did everything I could to hide my nature because I wanted to be a hero. Something I can't exactly do if I turn into a murderous android all of the sudden."

"That doesn't mean you had to tell us," Millie countered, "or you would've done so months ago when your Mad Android Syndrome first started. So, what was it really? Just a sudden change of heart? Just wanted to share your big secret before you, what? Turn villain all of a sudden?" It was painful to hear the scornful suspicion in Millie's voice. She clearly didn't believe I had decided to suddenly do the right thing simply for its own sake. It stung, but what stung more was that her suspicions were right.

"Have you heard of the GAC? The General Authenticity Check?" This time they all three shook their heads.

"It's basically a test they perform on anyone they suspect to be an imposter or something. In my case, they did it because of the cover story my creator had prepared for me: a return from being achronally displaced."

"Not a very good test if you passed it," Saga snarked. I was surprised to hear that the snark wasn't hostile-sounding, and looking at her she seemed to be the most relaxed out of the three of them. Unlike Jolie's palpable disappointment and sadness, and Millie's rightful anger and suspicion, Saga seemed almost uncaringly accepting of what I'd done – or at the very least, wasn't condemning me for it.

"Well, that's exactly the problem," I said.

"I talked it over with my therapist and… well, she basically doesn't believe I'm an android." All three looked taken aback. Even Millie's expression shifted away from suspicion briefly. I continued.

"She- well, I don't know what she thinks really happened, but she said the GAC can't really be spoofed in the way I thought my creator might've done, and thus that I can't be an android. And I think from the way she reacted to how I described the Heroic Impulse and pseudo-Sam, she figures the issue is something else entirely, something other than being maker-tech suffering from Mad Android Syndrome. Which is why I'm going to do the RAT – basically the GAC times ten, or something." They all looked at me confused.

"So, wait. You aren't an android?" Saga asked.

"I know I am," I emphasized, "but my therapist doesn't believe so. But since I want to do something about my Mad Android Syndrome – even if that something ends up with me being locked up or whatever – I need to prove to her and everyone else that I am an android." Another few seconds of confused silence, before Saga threw up her hands.

"Welp. I'm lost."

"You're telling me," I said, huffing in agitation.

"I- I really thought I might die when I told her, you know? Or get the Guardians called on me at the very least, but no! Now I need to do this stupid test just to prove I am what I say I am for that privilege!"

"You still think you're going to get killed?" Jolie asked. I deflated.

"Well, I don't know... Maybe?" I shook my head.

"Not as much since I spoke with Marianne last Tuesday. And since you aren't screaming murder and calling the heroes, I was clearly wrong about people fearing androids so much. But once I finally prove I'm an android, then I'm for sure going to prison, right? Or at least an asylum or something; some place where I can't harm anyone else when I go…" I traced circles around my ear, "you know?"

"Yet you still decided to tell us despite that?" Jolie's expression at that looked… proud or something? It was strange. I shrugged in response, uncomfortable under her gaze. Me having hid this for so long was nothing to be proud of.

"You know, why do you think you're an android?" Millie asked. I groaned in dismay.

"Oh no, not you too."

"No no, hear me out. Superpowered androids are like, super rare – much rarer than achronally displaced. Then there's you passing a test supposed to be unpassable to people not claiming who they say they are, and the whole," she gestured vaguely off in the distance, "earthquake thing from your return from achronal displacement – that one was even in the newspaper!"

"That's the thing," I said, "my creator was the one that was displaced and then returned – not me. He then made me, and then died three days after the first earthquake when one of the aftershocks collapsed the laboratory I woke up in. So basically, I woke up three days after the earthquake; it couldn't have been me." Millie didn't believe me.

"And he built an entire laboratory in, what? A single day after returning from achronal displacement? While the aftershocks were still ongoing?" I shrugged, suppressing my irritation at her skepticism.

"That's just powers, you know? They don't make sense. And besides, he wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed; who know what went through his mind in those three days?"

"Uh-huh. He just built an entire base getting materials from God knows where; created the tools necessary to build you and somehow grew this-" "Ow!" I slapped her hand away, "-fleshy shell; programmed and installed the Heroic Impulse inside you, alongside the servers necessary to run it; then programmed you and gave you knowledge about language, and history, and everything else but specifically not anything like memories or a personality?

And after that, even managed to give you superpowers – but also not all the superpowers? Everything, all of that, in just three days while being constantly plagued with earthquakes caused by his own return?" Shaking in anger, I yelled, "I don't know, okay!" and jumped out from where we sat between the bannisters, tears of frustration burning their way out of their ducts. I shut my eyes and did my best to wipe the tears away, but they just kept flowing in spite of my efforts.

Every word she said had been ones flitting through my own mind ever since Tuesday, trying to keep them suppressed as best I could. But all things had their limits.

"I just- I just know and I don't -" I cut myself off, trying and failing to take a deep breath.

"I-I'm telling you all this because- well, besides you deserving to know, I-I need to know how to tell my mother about the RAT test and- and I- I can't deal with it all at the same time, so just please let it-!" At the comforting touch of Jolie's hand on my shoulder, I opened my eyes again and saw we'd attracted attention. Not enough to have people circling, but enough to earn sideway glances from passers-by. Saga stood in-between me and the crowd, glaring to scare them off, but it was a half measure at best.

Jolie made soothing noises, saying, "It's okay," over and over again as she rubbed circles on my back.

"Let's go somewhere else for a bit and then we'll continue, okay?" Millie suggested, warily eying the passersby. I nodded and they guided me away from the pier. As we walked down the boardwalk and onto a secluded part of the beach underneath that same pier, I found myself growing more and more steady, some of the frantic, nervous, unstable energy flowing out of me. I continued from where I left off.

"I mean, what can I do? How can I tell Mom all… all of this?"

"I don't know, Sam; I don't know," Millie said comfortingly.

"I don't think anybody knows."

"Why do I have to- to deal with all this stupid shit." I sniffled, desperately wanting to kick something.

"Why can't I just be Sam, you know?"

"But you are Sam," Jolie said.

"I'm not."

"You're our Sam," Saga said.

"Why can't I be everyone's Sam?" I all but wailed, then hiccupped. I heard Saga snort besides me and I shot her a venomous glare.

"Sorry, sorry," she said.

"It's not funny."

"You're right: it's not fu-hic-ny," I said, almost chocking on my own hiccups. Saga looked like she was trying to restrain herself, but before I could comment on it, Jolie came to her rescue.

"Just ignore the lunk," Jolie said, a radiant smile on her face as she hugged my side with one arm.

"And as for your conversation with your mom, I don't think you have to worry." I looked up, hopeful.

"What do you mean?" My body convulsed, but this time I managed to repress the sound. Still, I could hear Saga's repressed guffaws, so I shot her a teary-eyed glare again. Which, from Saga's expression, did nothing to help. Jolie squeezed me closer, jostling me a bit.

"Just do as you did today, and I think you'll do just fine." I huffed.

"And what is that supposed to mean?" I said, focusing my growing irritation at Jolie.

"Hey, you know what would cheer you up?" Millie asked, coming in for the rescue, her prior judgement seemingly gone.

"How about Saga goes and gets us all some ice cream?"

"I'm not-" A hiccup, this time unrestrained.

"I'm not a baby," I ground out.

"You're barely six months old," Saga deadpanned. Something about the joke – my joke – short-circuited something in my brain. Laughter, tears and angry curses all leaked out of me as I gave chase to Saga, doing my best to give her the kick in the ass she richly deserved.