We spent the weekend doing exactly what normal boyfriends did; reading, cuddling, making out, talking, and laughing. We even went for a walk down to the river while the sun was out. We didn’t encounter any other A-Class androids, and either the humans didn’t notice us or care, because we were blessedly left to ourselves.

After a few well-spent hours in the bedroom, Shaun was having a shower when the phone rang. True to his word, Myles phoned again on Sunday evening. Caller ID showed SATinc’s number and I considered not answering, but with a heavy sigh, I said, “Answer Call.”

“Good evening, Mr Salter. Myles Dewegger, SATinc,” he began. “How was your second week with your A-Class?”

It grated on me that he didn’t use his name. “Very good,” I said, aiming for cheerful.

“You were concerned about the instruction manual update,” he trailed off.

“Oh yes, that’s all sorted, thank you.”

There was a brief pause. “Do you… have any concerns or questions?”

“No.” I frowned. “I’m very happy.”

There was another pause, almost like he wanted to ask or say something but didn’t know how to. So I prompted him, “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

“No, no. But if you do have any concerns…”

Why would he keep asking that? Did they know something? Did they somehow know Shaun was different? My eyes shot to the home hub. The source of internet, a wireless tether to SATinc.

“Mr Salter?”

I startled at his voice. “Oh. Yes, thank you, Myles. If I do have any concerns, believe me, I’ll be in touch.”

“May I ask where your unit is right now?”

Now it was me who paused. “He’s having a shower. He needed… cleaning.” I cringed, hating that I needed to admit that. There was, after all, only one reason Shaun needed to clean himself. “Why?”

“Oh, no reason. It just sounds very quiet.”

“I like silence,” I replied. “If you’ve read my psych report, you’d know that.” I didn’t care for his tone or what he was implying. “If we’re done…”

He went back to using his professional tone. “Yes, of course, Mr Salter. Have a good evening.”

The call clicked off just as Shaun walked out. He was freshly showered, his hair brushed neatly, dressed in his pyjamas, looking all domestic and handsome. But there was a cautious look in his eyes, and I knew he must have heard me on the phone. “Everything okay?”

I gave a smile and patted the couch next to me. “Yes. That was just Myles from SATinc, doing his follow-up calls.”

Shaun sat down, his back straight. “Did he say anything about me?”

“He wanted to know if I had any concerns,” I explained.

Shaun turned his head to look at me. “Do you?”

“Actually I do have one concern,” I said with a smile. “How am I supposed to go to work this week when all I want to do is stay home with you?”

Shaun visibly relaxed when he realised I was joking. He smiled, and I lay down against him, settling back on his chest, and together we finished reading Moby Dick. Then he stroked my hair and we talked about Ishmael and Ahab, and Shaun told me his interpretation of the religious symbolism. This went beyond android behaviour. Far, far beyond it. He wasn’t reading some footnotes from an internet essay. He was telling me how it made him feel, how he saw existential religious correlations, and how interpretation is subjective to one’s spiritual beliefs.

Did I have any concerns regarding my A-Class unit?

God yes, I did. But not the concerns Myles might assume. Oh, no. My concerns weren’t that Shaun’s behaviour might be outside his parameters. My concern was what they’d do if they found out.

I stared at the home hub.

Were they listening? Were they watching? Did they have direct access to his CPU?

“Lloyd?” Shaun whispered. “You are distracted. Is anything the matter?”

“No, nothing.” I stood up and held out my hand. “I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.”

I stared at the home hub as I walked past it, and although it was completely futile, I closed my bedroom door behind us. When we were in bed, instead of falling asleep in his arms, I pulled him into mine. He laid his head on my chest and I found his weight soothing. I stroked his hair, as I knew he liked. I relished the silence, the no loud breathing, the no snoring, his warmth, his clean smell. I stared at the ceiling and wondered how on earth I’d ever lived without him before I knew him—and if it ever came down to it, how on earth I’d live without him now—until I fell asleep.

* * *

When I sat in my usual seat at lunch, I waited for Jae to join me. He was a few minutes late, which was nothing new. He did have to walk further from the IT department than I did, but I smiled when he walked in.

He was wearing his usual all-brown attire, carrying a mandarin, he had soup and a rye bread roll. Predictable, predictable, predictable. It was comforting.

He sat down and arranged his tray neatly, then looked up at me and smiled. “How was your weekend?”

“Good. And yours?”

“Yes, the DCC was on all weekend.”

“The DCC?”

He looked at me like I was daft. “Digital Chess Championships.”

“Oh right.”

“Live coverage feeds from all around the world. It was awesome.”

I wasn’t entirely sure watching computers versus each other playing chess would be riveting. “Sounds it.”

He smiled, knowing I thought it was anything but that, and he silently finished his lunch. I watched him as he ate, my finished lunch wrapping neatly folded on my tray. “Jae, may I ask you a question?”

His eyes widened a fraction behind his thick-rimmed glasses. “Sure.”

“It’s about the home hub unit,” I started, not even sure what I was trying to ask. “Information can stream in, yes. But can information be taken?”

He tilted his head. “You mean uploaded? With or without your permission?”

I glanced quickly around us to make sure no one was paying any attention to us. “Without.”

He stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. “Home hubs are a unidirectional network, also referred to as a unidirectional security gateway. They’re a network device allowing data to travel only in one direction, guaranteeing information security. They’re government approved,” he said slowly. Then he sat back in his seat and whispered, his lips barely moving, as if he wasn’t speaking at all. “Do you think the government is watching?”

“Not the government.”

“But someone.”

I nodded. “I have… concerns.”

He swallowed visibly and looked at someone as they walked to empty their rubbish into the bin. No one could hear us, but his unease worried me. “The unidirectional network is monitored. They might claim it’s not, but it has to be.”

“Who’s they?”

He looked at me like I wasn’t following. “The government.”

“Why did you say it has to be?”

“Our entire lives are digital. Everything. Since the Russians first shot satellites into space a hundred years ago, there’s been a war for information. It’s one thing to have satellite imagery of our enemies’ military bases, but of our allies too. But guess what happens when every government knows civilian information?” He leaned forward and whispered, “They own us. Financial information, health records, GPS locations in your watch, your phone.”

Okay, wow. He was a conspiracy theorist. And I thought I knew him…

He just kept going. “And if that’s not bad enough, everything in our homes is connected to and run by the home hub. Did you think the government putting an information gateway in every house in the country was for our benefit?” He shook his head. “So it’s one thing that they know you transfer some money, or where you buy all your porn online, what kind of coffee you drink, or that you’re getting treatment for an STI. But it also means you can’t watch television, search anything on the internet, boil your kettle, or leave your apartment without them knowing.”

I let out a low breath. I wasn’t prepared for his anti-government or Big Brother tirade but it did work in my favour. “Is there any way to turn off certain appliances? Not turn the appliance off, but turn off their connectivity and keep the appliance on?”

He blinked, clearly surprised by my question. “I don’t… that depends. Like your TV? Or your internet browser?” he asked. “If you want to search something online, do it from here. But be aware, nothing illegal. There’ll be someone busting down your door before you’ve logged off.”

“It’s not my TV or the internet,” I admitted, but that wasn’t a bad idea. I could do information searches from a library access point. As long as I kept it general… unless SATinc somehow had eyes on my internet activity at work too… I cleared my throat. “What if it was an android?”

He stared, unblinking. His nostrils flared. “What kind of android?”

I considered telling him but stopped myself. “Any. They’re designed to send information back to the AMA if mistreated, right?”

“Yes,” he replied cautiously.

“So, can the AMA access information at will?”

Jae studied me for a moment. “Lloyd, has something bad happened to one of your androids? Because that’s a federal offence.”

“No,” I answered quickly. “But what about a manufacturing company? They can download automatic updates to keep their androids abreast of say, traffic law updates, yes?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Can they upload information from the android? Like, if they wanted to double-check what CPU they were running on?”

Jae stared and blinked, and I knew I’d asked a question that was too specific. He answered quietly. “They’d need internet connectivity, and they say it’s a unidirectional network, but I have no doubts it’s possible. They watch everything.”

I looked around the lunch room to find it almost empty. I asked my next question, looking at the door instead of him. “And if I wanted to disconnect my android from my Wi-Fi?”

“Depending on what kind of android it is; they all have different parameters for how long they could be without internet. But it would eventually shut down, and the AMA would be notified.”

I sighed. “That’s what I thought.”

“I’m going to ignore the specificity and sensitive nature of your questions, Lloyd, and ask if everything’s okay? Are you in trouble?” Well, weren’t they loaded questions—and ones I apparently didn’t have to answer. “I guess you wouldn’t have asked otherwise.” He leaned in again and whispered, “Don’t do anything stupid. They’re always watching.”

I wasn’t sold into his conspiracy theories about the digital war on cybernetics or whatever he thought the government was doing, but there was a truth to his madness. They were watching. Maybe not the government per se, but I was beginning to think SATinc was. They had an vested interest, didn’t they? Something about the questions Myles asked, the way he asked them, the way he paused, made me uneasy.

I didn’t even trust them to search for information myself. But there was no reason Jae couldn’t, was there?

“Can I ask you to search something for me? You have your ear to the ground on these things, right?”

He smiled like I’d just validated his entire existence in his personal war against the digital Goliath. I took it as a yes.

“Can you find out what companies like SATinc have access to? Once an android is registered to a home hub, what can they access?”

His eyes went wide, his mouth fell open. “SATinc?”

I nodded, giving myself away completely. There was no point in hiding it now.

“Holy shit.”

“I’d rather no one know,” I added. “But—”

“But they’re a very big fish in a very small pond.”

“I know.”

“And you don’t trust them.”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t.”

His eyes narrowed. “Leave it with me. I know certain people, certain underground people…”

Oh boy. Was he talking… “Darknet?”

He nodded quickly. “I’ll see what I can find out. Might take me a few days.”

“That’s fine. Thank you.”

He left like I’d given him a secret operative mission, and I felt better for having asked. I got through my afternoon classes and couldn’t wait to get home. Shaun greeted me with a tight hug, as though he didn’t want to let go of me as much I didn’t want to let go of him. He rubbed my back, ran his hands over my arse, and gently massaged the knots out of my shoulders. I melted against him, and my God, he felt so damn good. Eventually he pulled back and kissed me softly. “How was your day?”

“Okay,” I answered. “How was yours?”

“Quite good,” he said, pulling my hand and leading me to the sofa where we sat down. “I cleaned again and ordered your food, and I watched this.” He faced the holographic TV screen. “It is most interesting.”

I stared at what was on the screen. Oh boy. “Home and Away?” I asked, disbelievingly.

“Yes. It is very exciting.”

Exciting? Oh boy, indeed.

Home and Away was a drama show that had graced Australian television for eighty years. It was… not exciting. It was woeful. Every possible conceivable plot point had been acted out a thousand times and several characters had died and miraculously reappeared, usually without their memory. It was predictable television trash that was somehow still on TV.

“I was scrolling through channels,” Shaun said, “and saw there were androids acting.”

Oh, of course. “Yes. It’s a scripted show to depict real life.”

“This android in particular is named Alf. He has a very unusual vernacular.”

I smiled. “Is that right?”

“Yes,” Shaun answered seriously. Then he pointed to the screen, where a blonde woman was frozen mid-pause. “And that is Sharon. She is human. Her best friend and her ex-husband have been having a secret sexual relationship. Alf has befriended the ex-husband and knows about the affair. Sharon wants Alf to disclose information, but Alf cannot cause harm or lie to humans. He does not want to hurt his friend, yet he has to answer Sharon honestly. It is quite the conundrum.”

I fought a smile. “Yes, I can see how it might be.”

“Is something funny?”

“No,” I lied. “You’re just being completely adorable.”

“Adorable. Inspiring great affection or delight.”

I leaned in and kissed him. “Yes. There are a lot of movies with androids and plenty of TV shows. We can make a list if you want. It never occurred to me that you’d like to identify with characters on TV.”

“Social representation of all groups is important.”

“Yes, it really is. We can watch one later if you like.” I took his hand. “Did you want to go for a walk? You’ve been cooped up in here all day.”

He was quiet for a few seconds, like he was thinking of his answer. “Yes. I think I would like to take a walk.”

I put my coat back on and Shaun slipped into his and we walked down toward the river. It was getting dark, though the sky was cloudless, the night cold and clear. Passers-by mostly kept their heads down and collars up, minding their own business. But Shaun looked around bright-eyed and curious, like always, keen to take everything in and learn. He held his hand out, wanting me to hold it, and I happily threaded our fingers.

While we were out in the open, I took the opportunity to speak freely. If SATinc could hear directly by somehow relaying his recurrent networks and audial feeds, I had no idea, but I hated the idea of keeping things from him.

“I spoke to Jae today. He’s a friend at work who specialises in IT. He’s very attuned to all things internet related. He has friends who are able to find out information no one else can obtain. I asked him to find out what he can on SATinc.”

Shaun paused. “Why? If you want to know something, I can access any information online.”

“This information won’t be readily available on the internet. It’s on what’s called the darknet.”

He paused for a second. “Darknet. Any overlay network that can be accessed only with specific software, configurations, or authorisation, often using non-standard communications protocols.”

“Yes. Secret stuff. Yes, like if SATinc is capable of accessing your processing unit and taking data without your consent.”

Shaun nodded. “And you trust your friend Jae?”

“I do. He has some weird theories about how much the government oversees, so he knows about secrecy. He said it might take a few days.”

“What do we do in the meantime?”

“We carry on like there’s nothing wrong. We act like they’d expect us to act.”

Shaun gave me his crooked smile. “Would they expect us to go home and for you to see just how many of my internal sensors you can activate at once?”

I barked out a laugh. “I think that might be expected, yes.”

He turned back for home. “Then I would hate to disappoint them.”

* * *

I didn’t see Jae the next day, though I did look for him. Someone said they’d seen him earlier but there was some software issue in the science department that took priority. I was a little disappointed, but I trusted that if Jae had any information to give me, he’d find me.

When I got home, I was greeted with my usual, and very welcome, long hug from Shaun. He met me just inside the door and slid his arms around me and buried his face in my neck. “I missed you today,” he murmured. Then he pulled back and kissed me. “Did you speak to Jae?”

I put my finger to my lips and shook my head, then nodded toward the home hub. “No, he was busy.”

Shaun blinked and his brow furrowed. He walked to the table, picked up a notepad and pen, then sat on the sofa. “I have cleaned today,” he said, his voice a little stilted, robotic. “And I enjoyed more Home and Away. Poor Alf is in quite the predicament and Sharon is being rather unpleasant…” He continued to tell me about the episodes of the silly show he enjoyed while he wrote on a notepad.

I sat beside him and he handed it to me.

Is his absence something that should concern us?

My gaze shot to his. “I’m sure Alf will find a way out of it. He can’t lie or hide the truth, so I’m sure in the end, it will all work out,” I said as I wrote my reply. No. There was a tech emergency. All is well.

“I’m sure you are correct,” he said, answering both conversations. “Are you hungry? I can get your dinner.”

I leaned in and kissed him. “Dinner sounds great.”

I took the notepad and followed him into the kitchen. The fact he’d used initiative and creativity to even think to use a silent, analogue way to communicate was incredibly clever. And well and truly outside of android parameters. And did he use a contraction just now?

“I think I feel like vegetables tonight,” I said while I wrote on the notepad. Clever use of pen and paper.

He took the vegetable dinner from the fridge, grinned at me, and kissed me with smiling lips. He placed the meal in the oven and quickly wrote on the paper. Thank you. Then writing messages became our thing. During dinner, afterwards, watching TV. He seemed to find it exciting and amusing. Now we’ve finished Moby Dick, would you like to select a new novel for us to read?

Oh. I totally wasn’t expecting that. Would you like to choose?

Shaun could write so much faster than me. His hand flew over the page so fast. I think I would like to reread Moby Dick.

I also wasn’t expecting that.

Then he added, Though you have read it many times and may not wish to read it again so soon.

I took the notepad, and he waited patiently for me to write. I’ll happily reread if you want to. I love it.

He took the notepad and pen and hesitated. He put the nib to the page several times and obviously thought about what he wanted to write. Why do you love it?

I took the pen. It’s a literary masterpiece.

His brow creased and he wrote quickly. Love indicates emotional attachment, therefore it makes you feel.

Yes. Reading elicits many emotions. I get great enjoyment out of it.

He took the notepad back and held the pen poised, and he seemed to think for a long moment, then put his pen down and slowly put the notepad on the coffee table.

“Shaun?”

He looked at me and sat back, his hands fisted on his thighs. For the first time in a long time, he looked… like an android.

“What’s wrong?”

He glanced at the home hub and shook his head. I picked up the notepad and pen and handed it back to him.

He stared at me for a long, long moment, then wrote three words that changed everything.

What is love?