Fic: Questionable Moral Authority (the evil scientist AU)
So this was actually supposed to be a little bleaker, but apparently a tiny bit of humor snuck in there as well. *shrugs* What can you do?
Title: Questionable Moral Authority
Author: DF
Fandom: P!atD, FOB
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon, Pete/Patrick, implied Jon/Spencer
Summary Futuristic scientists!AU. Spencer and Ryan looked at each other for a moment, and Ryan nodded. (It's always Ryan's call; everything about the project has to go through Ryan first because at this point, Ryan basically is the project. His entire life has been leading up to this, he thinks. This is his life.)
Disclaimer: This is by no means real.
"Reroute it," Ryan says, tapping his fingers on the desk.
It's a gorgeous wooden desk; according to regulations it should be chrome, plastic, something spartan and easy to maintain. Pete has surprisingly good taste, though, and since he basically funded the entire institute the powers that be had no say in the interior design.
"Are you sure?" Jon asks, flipping quickly through a notebook, and then moving to check the digital copy in the computer. Jon likes having hard copies of everything. "It'll systemize the backups-"
"Just do it," Spencer tells him. "Would Ryan ever do something to jeopardize the program?"
Jon pauses, whuffs out a laugh. "No. But I'm here to make sure everything goes smoothly, remember?"
"Oh, don't kid yourself," Spencer says, smirking. He sits back in his (leather) chair and puts his feet up on the desk. "You know we just keep you for your pretty face."
"Right," Jon quips, grinning at Spencer. "How could I forget?"
"Just do it," Ryan says impatiently, but the corner of his mouth twitches into an almost-smile.
\
Jon used to be new, 50 years ago. That was back when they thought a scientist could do double duty in PR; it'd make the general public more trusting if it was a scientist telling them the information, instead of some perky face who didn't understand the mechanics behind the carefully edited official statements.
That was the idea, anyway, but since it turned out to be impossible - too many fucking complications in their fucking job - Jon's just a full-time scientist now.
He's qualified for it, anyway. He's -
"Jon Walker, tech for General Services, degrees in biochemistry and nuclear physics and I've worked in a couple other fields, too. I'm good with machines, too." Jon stopped, grinned. "And I make awesome coffee."
"And he's charming," Spencer drawled, looking him over. "Ryan, did they say he was charming?"
Ryan shrugged. "They might have mentioned it."
"I don't remember that," Brent said casually, offering his hand to Jon. "Brent Wilson. We don't really have specific job descriptions here."
"You mean yours isn't 'fall guy'?" Ryan asked innocently, looking over at him. Brent just made a face.
Jon laughed and shook Brent's hand. "Nice to meet you."
"I'm Spencer Smith," Spencer said, extending his own hand once Jon dropped Brent's.
"He's in charge of us, among other things," Ryan explained, looking at Spencer fondly. "If you ever have a problem, he'll fix it."
"I'm not in charge of fixing Pete," Spencer pointed out dryly. "That's Patrick's job."
"And whose job is it to fix Patrick?" Ryan asked Spencer, as if he was repeating a line he knew by heart.
"No one's; he's perfect." Spencer and Ryan shared a smile, like it was a joke that no one else got. Technically, it was, but Spencer was still shaking Jon's hand.
"I'm Ryan Ross," Ryan told Jon, looking pointedly at where Jon and Spencer's hands were still clasped.
Jon pulled away and shook Ryan's hand as Spencer said, "Ryan's the real brains of the operation. He put everything into the institute."
"Well, you all seem pretty harmless." When Spencer raised an eyebrow, Jon just clarified, "No one really knows anything about this place. When I transferred here, everyone told me to find out if you guys were really evil scientists."
"We're not evil," Spencer corrected him thoughtfully. "We're... scientists of questionable moral authority."
"What's so questionable about it?" Jon wondered, a smile playing around his lips.
Brent looked down, Spencer just smiled inscrutably; Ryan looked Jon in the eye and said wryly, "The amount we insist on getting paid." Jon was good at knowing when to stop asking.
Instead, he said, "This is so much nicer than the last place I worked at," and let them take it from there.
\
They let Jon into the "inner circle" of the project when Brent left, claiming that it just wasn't the right fit, he was sick of working for the government, he hated all the secrecy, he wasn't fucking obsessed like Ryan and Spencer were.
Ryan maybe still hates him a little for that last, but it's not like it isn't true.
"We lied to you," he told Jon flatly, staring up at the other man. "The machine you show all the reporters who come in is fake. It doesn't do anything."
"But the other power stations, across the country," Jon began, confused. "One station can't just supply the power for the entire country, even if this was the first."
"We couldn't, in the beginning," Ryan admitted. "But we... expanded." He'd been in charge of the expansion, he'd written the algorithms and programs and done the necessary modifications. Maybe Brent was right, maybe he was obsessed, but at least his fucking obsession was currently lighting up everything from the Luxor to the Empire State Building.
"No kidding." Jon laughed weakly. "The entire country? Jesus," he said, and Spencer nodded.
"We channel the power to all the other stations, and they refine and direct it," Ryan explained. "But..."
Spencer stopped him with a hand, turned and looked at Jon. "You've signed the waivers, so if you break confidentiality on anything you see, we're going to own you," he said breezily. "Or at least your vital organs, and you don't want to know what we'd do with the rest of you."
"Do not fuck this up," Ryan said quietly, and Jon nodded almost before thinking about it.
"Yes," he said. "I mean, no. I won't fuck it up. You can trust me."
Spencer and Ryan looked at each other for a moment, and Ryan nodded. (It's always Ryan's call; everything about the project has to go through Ryan first because at this point, Ryan basically is the project. His entire life has been leading up to this, he thinks. This is his life.)
"So come and meet Brendon, then," Ryan said to Jon.
"Brendon?" Jon asked, raising his eyebrows.
"Technically Experiment B, legal code #16U4, government agency 13-12-PATAAID-3, otherwise known as the Wentz Institute for Electricity," Ryan repeated dutifully, if a bit sarcastically.
"Ryan decided he was more of a Brendon," Spencer explained, navigating through the twists and the turns of the lab. (Pete had rather liked the idea of a labyrinthine laboratory, too; this was before they had Patrick to keep an eye on him, tone down his more ridiculous quirks and fancies.)
Jon bypassed the 'he' for the moment, he knew people that personified their machines, and instead asked, "So what happened to Experiment A?"
"You've met him," Ryan drawled, looking back. He might have been smirking, but it could be hard to tell with Ryan. "He lives with Pete."
Jon stopped dead in his tracks. "Patrick?" he demanded, his eyes widening. "Patrick's - what, a robot?"
"A construct," Spencer corrected, taking Jon's arm and tugging him down the corridor. "And don't bring it up around him. He gets defensive sometimes."
"He's real," Ryan added, walking even faster. "He can't be controlled, he's got his own thoughts and feelings - he just wasn't born exactly like a regular human."
"Fuck. You actually synthesized human life." There hadn't even been rumors about this, which meant that no one knew what went on in the institute, which meant that the government just let the institute go their own way. Pete probably paid a lot of money to make it that way.
"It actually wasn't that hard to create sentience," Ryan said seriously, and Spencer nodded in agreement. "We just had to figure out -"
There was a big wooden door in front of them. It was just a door, but it was forbidding, somehow, intimidating. For some reason, though, it was making Ryan smile softly. Ryan smiled, of course, just... not like this.
"Meet Brendon," Ryan said, and opened the door.
Brendon was a boy, only in his early twenties. He was lying flat on a bed, surrounded by intricate machinery that leads out of the room somewhere, his eyes closed and his breathing so slow that it took a second to notice that he actually was breathing.
"We don't know how to make him sentient," Spencer murmured to Jon, watching Ryan walk farther into the room. Brendon was dark-haired and glowing faintly, almost buzzing; Spencer could almost feel the waves of energy rolling off him, but they never seemed to bother Ryan. "It would have fucked up the energy output. Power surges, fluctuations. We don't even know how it would affect his brain."
"So this is..." Jon trailed off, because there were so many ways to finish the sentence.
They watched Ryan for a while longer; he checked the machinery almost mechanically, never taking his eyes off the boy on the bed.
"I could tell you everything that went into him," Ryan said finally, his voice as quiet as Spencer's was. "I could tell you every equation I wrote, every chemical formula. We didn't get his eyes right; he needs glasses. I could tell you the exact prescription. I could tell you his measurements down to the last hundredth of a millimeter, I could tell you the pattern his synapses fire in. I can remember every last thing I put into him."
When he finally turned around, his eyes were dark. Jon shivered a little.
\
It's not that Pete funded the institute so he could trick Ryan into making the perfect person. That's not the only reason, anyway, but it was definitely a pretty major factor.
And it's not like he had to trick Ryan or Spencer into anything. They knew perfectly well that Experiment A was never going to be used in the capacity they pretended it (he) was intended for. So really, they were only tricking the government.
Ryan's really not lying when he says that it wasn't too hard to create Patrick, make an actual human instead of a robot. He gave up a couple weeks of sleep, sure, but Spencer always stopped him before he blitzed and Pete ended up providing a surprisingly large amount of help. Pete's incredibly smart, only he's too easily distracted to ever do anything on his own; the eccentric billionaire genius.
(They'd never have been able to make both Patrick and Brendon without Pete's money; even just one would've been too rich for the government's blood. Pete's reaping the benefits, though, since Brendon brings in huge profits with very little maintenance necessary.)
Anyway, once they got Patrick about halfway complete he pretty much finished himself. No one had been expecting Pete's perfect man to be short and rounded, and Ryan knows that he definitely didn't code the bald spot and predilection for hats, but Pete's adamantly convinced that it was all for the best.
He and Patrick live at the institute now, with everyone else; it's not like they can really leave now anyway, they don't think.
(Patrick wasn't hard, Ryan thinks, Patrick was Pete's dream, Pete's obsession, it was Pete who watched over the process from stop to start. But Brendon - Brendon. There is nothing in Ryan's head that can't connect to Brendon, somehow.)
\
After Jon had to stop being the representative to the outside world - too suspicious, year after year, better just to stop - they started hiring others, girls mostly, for varying lengths of time. Audrey, Anna, Jeanae, Cassie, Jac, Haley, Brittany, Ashlee... They can't stay for too long, or there's a risk of them getting suspicious, or just too attached.
The current one is named Keltie. She's sweet, which isn't a prerequisite, but it helps.
They pay the reps a ridiculous amount of money, expect them to keep a house in the town nearby; no one else is allowed to live in the institute, now. Their time is completely free, they're allowed to bring anyone else they want to live with them, and all they have to do is come in once a month and on special occasions, meet with a designated scientist (one per girl, per term; there's a rotation) and formulate a statement. It's possibly one of the best jobs on the planet.
Back when Audrey was working for the institute, Spencer slipped once. He'd been trying to explain something to her so she could explain it to the press, and she was trying to punch holes in it. Maybe only to simulate what the media might do (they never did; only the radical journals ever try to look too closely at the institute, and they're always completely wrong) but it was pissing Spencer off to no end.
"I've been doing this for longer than you've been alive," he snapped, after she asked if he was sure that - yes. He was fucking sure, alright?
She laughed at him. "Oh, please. I'm probably older than you are."
"Right," he said, "right. Is that all?"
\
A year after Brent left they found out he was dying. The doctors made up bullshit terms to cover up the fact that they had no idea why his organs were collapsing and his body was aging at almost five times the speed it was supposed to.
He lived - the wonders of modern medicine - but when he'd left the institute after seven years he looked exactly the same as he had the day they perfected Experiment B. A year and a half later, he could pass for a fifty year old. He barely survived.
It's not like they hadn't been outside the institute before, but not for more than a couple hours, a couple days, a month when Jon went to visit his family once. Never for an entire year.
So: when they live in the institute, they don't age. If they leave for more than a year, they'll die. And they definitely will die; Ryan and Spencer had been there more than eight years when they found out the news. Jon had a chance to leave, but he didn't take it, just smiled at Spencer and shook his head no when they offered.
Now, of course, they've got no choice. Fifty years and counting; Ryan's more than seventy years old but he'll never get a single white hair.
It might be a perk, for some, the kind of job you'd kill for. Immortality, an exorbitant salary, free reign and no boss breathing down your neck. To work at the institute, though, you have to be a genius, dedicated, driven, patient, committed. Inspired. Obsessed.
\
"Ryan," Spencer says, repeats it when Ryan doesn't listen. "Ryan!"
"What?" Ryan asks, irritated, stretching out the kinks in his back that come from hunching over his desk scribbling down ideas for hours on end.
"Ryan. I'm putting you officially off-duty for the time being," Spencer tells him, imperious but concerned. "Go to your room, listen to some music. Write."
They've all got their methods of coping with life inside a well-decorated box. Spencer calculates, expenses and other odds and sees how it all turns out in the end. When they finished Brendon, he amused himself by adding up statistics and figuring out the effect it would have on the world's oil market, and then watching all his predictions come true. He subscribes to at least five newspapers and three business journals and is working on predicting the federal reserve three years in advance.
Pete's got his businesses; whenever he gets bored he just expands Clandestine Industries a little more, acquisitions and mergers and yes, Patrick, I bought another company, but it's completely awesome, you'll love it. In between businesses he spends too much time on the internet, making up fake names and pitting his alter egos against each other, watching the fall out among the unknowing virtual spectators.
(Patrick's going to have to find another hobby soon, because he's almost finished mastering every single instrument and musical style in the known world. Still, though, he's got Pete to look after, which takes up a lot of time and will never, ever get boring.)
Jon just leaves, takes a car and just drives for days on end until he ends up wherever, loops back around to the institute with a few days worth of beard and a couple cheesy souvenirs, Welcome to Elktown magnets, little plastic snowglobes; his room is full of photographs and overly cheerful postcards.
Ryan used to sew, but there's only so much you can do to embellish a lab coat before it gets tacky.
Mostly, he writes.
\
"Nelson and Wendy Degorin lived in a little house, in a little village at the edge of the world. To be fair, the world didn't end once you went past the village walls; Nelson and Wendy had heard that it went on forever and ever, with no edges or corners or angles. To the villagers, however, it might as well have been the edge," he reads out loud one day, his eyes skimming over his own smudged words. "Just beyond the hill next to Nelson and Wendy's house was a strange building that was called the institute..."
Another day, he reads, "The doctor said, 'I prescribed pills to offset the shakes; to offset the pills, you know you should take it a day at a time.' 'I am alone in this bed,' the patient told him in a murmur, looking at the walls, the floor. 'And she never fixes it, but she...'"
Another day: "He said that I need this, that I can't live without it, that it's scary how much I devote to my job. But he was just lazy, he wouldn't do anything, he never did as much as Spencer did or Jon does. He said it was all about the money, in the end, but he just didn't understand it. I spent my entire life knowing I was going to do something big and I've spent the past decades never regretting a thing..."
And another: "Once upon a time, many centuries ago, there were four boys living in the city of Las Vegas..."
No matter what he reads, Brendon lays silent on the bed, eyes closed, skin still humming with energy. He's the most beautiful thing Ryan has ever seen.
\
And then. And then.
One day, Ryan is saying, "Jon just came back today. He says he just came back from Iowa; he brought Spencer a t-shirt. And he bought new flip-flops, too. I don't even know why, they all look the same."
But this time, a voice replies, "Never underestimate the power of footwear, Ryan. Spencer should have taught you that by now," and Ryan blinks his eyes wide open in shock because Brendon is awake.
Ryan has measured the proportions of Brendon's entire body; he still remembers the thousands, millions of algorithms and chemical reactions that went into Brendon but he has never before heard the sound of Brendon's voice.
"You know my name," he says quietly, trying to start breathing again.
"Fifty years, Ryan Ross." Brendon smiles at him, and Ryan doesn't even believe in miracles but it feels like one. "I remember everything you've ever told me."
"Don't you ever get bored?" Ryan wonders, his voice still soft like he's afraid it's all going to dissolve in front of him.
"Don't you?" Brendon replies.
"I've got you," Ryan explains, and Brendon says, "Precisely." He's still smiling.
Footsteps come pounding up to the door; Jon. He opens the door and all but yells, "Ryan! Ryan, there's a national power outage, we -" He sees Brendon and stops dead, voice tripping over itself and choking into nothing. "Christ."
"Go away," Ryan tells him calmly, still not looking away from Brendon.
Jon backs away, closing the door behind him. "But I wanted to meet him!" Brendon complains, frowning. "That's Jon, right?"
"Later," Ryan says. "Later, you'll meet everyone."
\
The power outage lasts for thirteen hours and twenty minutes, and Ryan stays at Brendon's side through all of it. Brendon doesn't stop talking, except to try the food that Patrick considerately brings him; Ryan wouldn't have it any other way. He's got fifty years worth of silence to make up for.
(Everything seems so much brighter when Brendon's energy isn't being siphoned off to the unappreciative masses; the room is practically glowing, everything in it more vivid. According to Spencer, the hallways are giving off a ghostly light and the computers are still functioning perfectly, but Ryan wouldn't know; he doesn't leave the room.)
He remembers every word that Brendon says, stores away the way Brendon's eyes light up when he's excited, the way his words come almost too quickly for his mouth, the constant movement of his fingers against the sheets. Jon takes pictures, but Brendon's smile is tattooed into Ryan's mind.
\
"Ryan. Ryan, we have to put him back under," Spencer says gently, holding Ryan's arms.
"Why?" Ryan demands, struggling to break free. "No, we -"
"The entire country lost power, Ryan, think of something besides yourself here! This is our job!"
"Just another day, Spence, I need -"
"We can't," Spencer says, staring into Ryan's eyes. "You know we can't."
"Ryan," Brendon says, and beckons him over.
Spencer lets go; Ryan walks toward the bed dazedly, looking young for a moment, and eminently breakable.
"Ryan," Brendon repeats, and kisses him. His hand curls around the back of Ryan's neck, holding him down as if afraid he's going to run away. With a muffled sob, Ryan twines one hand into Brendon's hair. The other hand strokes down his shoulder, over his arm and chest and back like he's making sure Brendon's still real, not going to disappear at any moment.
They break apart finally for air, mouths and cheeks red, and Brendon murmurs, "I'll see you later," before beckoning to Spencer to get on with it already.
Jon pulls Ryan away and holds him back as Spencer helps shut Brendon's consciousness down, but it's not necessary. Ryan is frozen, the scientist in him keeping his eyes open and watching, making mental notes inside his head.
Spencer finishes, finally, and he and Jon have to pull Ryan out of the room because there's no way he's going to move otherwise.
\
"So," Keltie says to Ryan the next day. She's a sweet girl, as young as he was before he got involved in all of this. She likes Ryan, laughs and tells him he's married to his job when he declines yet another of her invitations to coffee.
"So," Ryan repeats flatly, staring into nothing.
"The blackout yesterday - what happened?" she asks urgently, looking so fucking earnest. "The press is already demanding to know what went wrong."
"Nothing went wrong," Ryan states, shoving his chair back violently and standing up. "I can't do this today. You get to meet Jon, he'll tell you everything you need to say."
He storms out of the room, his notebook clutched to his side.
\
Spencer finds him hours later. "Ryan, what is this?" he asks, picking up a sheet of paper. The room's covered in them, blank white sheets scrawled on in Ryan's distinctive handwriting, the scribbles scribbled out.
"Notes," Ryan says absently, furiously crossing out something he'd just written.
Spencer glances at the page he's holding, scans the lines and says, "Ryan, you can't -"
"Can't what?" Ryan demands, looking up, ink smeared across his cheek. "Keep him awake? Make it so that he can leave the bed? As long as the precious power stays on, why can't I?"
Spencer can't think of an answer to that.
"They have him," Ryan continues wildly, "the whole country, they have him, and they don't even care, they don't even - why can't I have him, too? Why do I -" He breaks off, makes another notation.
In a few weeks Spencer will maybe come to him, look over his notes and help correct them, but for now he just presses a kiss to the top of Ryan's head and walks away. Ryan stays, writing equation after equation, sheets of paper drifting down and blanketing the entire room in white.
"He's mine, too," Ryan murmurs, the pen almost a blur in his hand. "Mine."
Title: Questionable Moral Authority
Author: DF
Fandom: P!atD, FOB
Pairing: Ryan/Brendon, Pete/Patrick, implied Jon/Spencer
Summary Futuristic scientists!AU. Spencer and Ryan looked at each other for a moment, and Ryan nodded. (It's always Ryan's call; everything about the project has to go through Ryan first because at this point, Ryan basically is the project. His entire life has been leading up to this, he thinks. This is his life.)
Disclaimer: This is by no means real.
"Reroute it," Ryan says, tapping his fingers on the desk.
It's a gorgeous wooden desk; according to regulations it should be chrome, plastic, something spartan and easy to maintain. Pete has surprisingly good taste, though, and since he basically funded the entire institute the powers that be had no say in the interior design.
"Are you sure?" Jon asks, flipping quickly through a notebook, and then moving to check the digital copy in the computer. Jon likes having hard copies of everything. "It'll systemize the backups-"
"Just do it," Spencer tells him. "Would Ryan ever do something to jeopardize the program?"
Jon pauses, whuffs out a laugh. "No. But I'm here to make sure everything goes smoothly, remember?"
"Oh, don't kid yourself," Spencer says, smirking. He sits back in his (leather) chair and puts his feet up on the desk. "You know we just keep you for your pretty face."
"Right," Jon quips, grinning at Spencer. "How could I forget?"
"Just do it," Ryan says impatiently, but the corner of his mouth twitches into an almost-smile.
\
Jon used to be new, 50 years ago. That was back when they thought a scientist could do double duty in PR; it'd make the general public more trusting if it was a scientist telling them the information, instead of some perky face who didn't understand the mechanics behind the carefully edited official statements.
That was the idea, anyway, but since it turned out to be impossible - too many fucking complications in their fucking job - Jon's just a full-time scientist now.
He's qualified for it, anyway. He's -
"Jon Walker, tech for General Services, degrees in biochemistry and nuclear physics and I've worked in a couple other fields, too. I'm good with machines, too." Jon stopped, grinned. "And I make awesome coffee."
"And he's charming," Spencer drawled, looking him over. "Ryan, did they say he was charming?"
Ryan shrugged. "They might have mentioned it."
"I don't remember that," Brent said casually, offering his hand to Jon. "Brent Wilson. We don't really have specific job descriptions here."
"You mean yours isn't 'fall guy'?" Ryan asked innocently, looking over at him. Brent just made a face.
Jon laughed and shook Brent's hand. "Nice to meet you."
"I'm Spencer Smith," Spencer said, extending his own hand once Jon dropped Brent's.
"He's in charge of us, among other things," Ryan explained, looking at Spencer fondly. "If you ever have a problem, he'll fix it."
"I'm not in charge of fixing Pete," Spencer pointed out dryly. "That's Patrick's job."
"And whose job is it to fix Patrick?" Ryan asked Spencer, as if he was repeating a line he knew by heart.
"No one's; he's perfect." Spencer and Ryan shared a smile, like it was a joke that no one else got. Technically, it was, but Spencer was still shaking Jon's hand.
"I'm Ryan Ross," Ryan told Jon, looking pointedly at where Jon and Spencer's hands were still clasped.
Jon pulled away and shook Ryan's hand as Spencer said, "Ryan's the real brains of the operation. He put everything into the institute."
"Well, you all seem pretty harmless." When Spencer raised an eyebrow, Jon just clarified, "No one really knows anything about this place. When I transferred here, everyone told me to find out if you guys were really evil scientists."
"We're not evil," Spencer corrected him thoughtfully. "We're... scientists of questionable moral authority."
"What's so questionable about it?" Jon wondered, a smile playing around his lips.
Brent looked down, Spencer just smiled inscrutably; Ryan looked Jon in the eye and said wryly, "The amount we insist on getting paid." Jon was good at knowing when to stop asking.
Instead, he said, "This is so much nicer than the last place I worked at," and let them take it from there.
\
They let Jon into the "inner circle" of the project when Brent left, claiming that it just wasn't the right fit, he was sick of working for the government, he hated all the secrecy, he wasn't fucking obsessed like Ryan and Spencer were.
Ryan maybe still hates him a little for that last, but it's not like it isn't true.
"We lied to you," he told Jon flatly, staring up at the other man. "The machine you show all the reporters who come in is fake. It doesn't do anything."
"But the other power stations, across the country," Jon began, confused. "One station can't just supply the power for the entire country, even if this was the first."
"We couldn't, in the beginning," Ryan admitted. "But we... expanded." He'd been in charge of the expansion, he'd written the algorithms and programs and done the necessary modifications. Maybe Brent was right, maybe he was obsessed, but at least his fucking obsession was currently lighting up everything from the Luxor to the Empire State Building.
"No kidding." Jon laughed weakly. "The entire country? Jesus," he said, and Spencer nodded.
"We channel the power to all the other stations, and they refine and direct it," Ryan explained. "But..."
Spencer stopped him with a hand, turned and looked at Jon. "You've signed the waivers, so if you break confidentiality on anything you see, we're going to own you," he said breezily. "Or at least your vital organs, and you don't want to know what we'd do with the rest of you."
"Do not fuck this up," Ryan said quietly, and Jon nodded almost before thinking about it.
"Yes," he said. "I mean, no. I won't fuck it up. You can trust me."
Spencer and Ryan looked at each other for a moment, and Ryan nodded. (It's always Ryan's call; everything about the project has to go through Ryan first because at this point, Ryan basically is the project. His entire life has been leading up to this, he thinks. This is his life.)
"So come and meet Brendon, then," Ryan said to Jon.
"Brendon?" Jon asked, raising his eyebrows.
"Technically Experiment B, legal code #16U4, government agency 13-12-PATAAID-3, otherwise known as the Wentz Institute for Electricity," Ryan repeated dutifully, if a bit sarcastically.
"Ryan decided he was more of a Brendon," Spencer explained, navigating through the twists and the turns of the lab. (Pete had rather liked the idea of a labyrinthine laboratory, too; this was before they had Patrick to keep an eye on him, tone down his more ridiculous quirks and fancies.)
Jon bypassed the 'he' for the moment, he knew people that personified their machines, and instead asked, "So what happened to Experiment A?"
"You've met him," Ryan drawled, looking back. He might have been smirking, but it could be hard to tell with Ryan. "He lives with Pete."
Jon stopped dead in his tracks. "Patrick?" he demanded, his eyes widening. "Patrick's - what, a robot?"
"A construct," Spencer corrected, taking Jon's arm and tugging him down the corridor. "And don't bring it up around him. He gets defensive sometimes."
"He's real," Ryan added, walking even faster. "He can't be controlled, he's got his own thoughts and feelings - he just wasn't born exactly like a regular human."
"Fuck. You actually synthesized human life." There hadn't even been rumors about this, which meant that no one knew what went on in the institute, which meant that the government just let the institute go their own way. Pete probably paid a lot of money to make it that way.
"It actually wasn't that hard to create sentience," Ryan said seriously, and Spencer nodded in agreement. "We just had to figure out -"
There was a big wooden door in front of them. It was just a door, but it was forbidding, somehow, intimidating. For some reason, though, it was making Ryan smile softly. Ryan smiled, of course, just... not like this.
"Meet Brendon," Ryan said, and opened the door.
Brendon was a boy, only in his early twenties. He was lying flat on a bed, surrounded by intricate machinery that leads out of the room somewhere, his eyes closed and his breathing so slow that it took a second to notice that he actually was breathing.
"We don't know how to make him sentient," Spencer murmured to Jon, watching Ryan walk farther into the room. Brendon was dark-haired and glowing faintly, almost buzzing; Spencer could almost feel the waves of energy rolling off him, but they never seemed to bother Ryan. "It would have fucked up the energy output. Power surges, fluctuations. We don't even know how it would affect his brain."
"So this is..." Jon trailed off, because there were so many ways to finish the sentence.
They watched Ryan for a while longer; he checked the machinery almost mechanically, never taking his eyes off the boy on the bed.
"I could tell you everything that went into him," Ryan said finally, his voice as quiet as Spencer's was. "I could tell you every equation I wrote, every chemical formula. We didn't get his eyes right; he needs glasses. I could tell you the exact prescription. I could tell you his measurements down to the last hundredth of a millimeter, I could tell you the pattern his synapses fire in. I can remember every last thing I put into him."
When he finally turned around, his eyes were dark. Jon shivered a little.
\
It's not that Pete funded the institute so he could trick Ryan into making the perfect person. That's not the only reason, anyway, but it was definitely a pretty major factor.
And it's not like he had to trick Ryan or Spencer into anything. They knew perfectly well that Experiment A was never going to be used in the capacity they pretended it (he) was intended for. So really, they were only tricking the government.
Ryan's really not lying when he says that it wasn't too hard to create Patrick, make an actual human instead of a robot. He gave up a couple weeks of sleep, sure, but Spencer always stopped him before he blitzed and Pete ended up providing a surprisingly large amount of help. Pete's incredibly smart, only he's too easily distracted to ever do anything on his own; the eccentric billionaire genius.
(They'd never have been able to make both Patrick and Brendon without Pete's money; even just one would've been too rich for the government's blood. Pete's reaping the benefits, though, since Brendon brings in huge profits with very little maintenance necessary.)
Anyway, once they got Patrick about halfway complete he pretty much finished himself. No one had been expecting Pete's perfect man to be short and rounded, and Ryan knows that he definitely didn't code the bald spot and predilection for hats, but Pete's adamantly convinced that it was all for the best.
He and Patrick live at the institute now, with everyone else; it's not like they can really leave now anyway, they don't think.
(Patrick wasn't hard, Ryan thinks, Patrick was Pete's dream, Pete's obsession, it was Pete who watched over the process from stop to start. But Brendon - Brendon. There is nothing in Ryan's head that can't connect to Brendon, somehow.)
\
After Jon had to stop being the representative to the outside world - too suspicious, year after year, better just to stop - they started hiring others, girls mostly, for varying lengths of time. Audrey, Anna, Jeanae, Cassie, Jac, Haley, Brittany, Ashlee... They can't stay for too long, or there's a risk of them getting suspicious, or just too attached.
The current one is named Keltie. She's sweet, which isn't a prerequisite, but it helps.
They pay the reps a ridiculous amount of money, expect them to keep a house in the town nearby; no one else is allowed to live in the institute, now. Their time is completely free, they're allowed to bring anyone else they want to live with them, and all they have to do is come in once a month and on special occasions, meet with a designated scientist (one per girl, per term; there's a rotation) and formulate a statement. It's possibly one of the best jobs on the planet.
Back when Audrey was working for the institute, Spencer slipped once. He'd been trying to explain something to her so she could explain it to the press, and she was trying to punch holes in it. Maybe only to simulate what the media might do (they never did; only the radical journals ever try to look too closely at the institute, and they're always completely wrong) but it was pissing Spencer off to no end.
"I've been doing this for longer than you've been alive," he snapped, after she asked if he was sure that - yes. He was fucking sure, alright?
She laughed at him. "Oh, please. I'm probably older than you are."
"Right," he said, "right. Is that all?"
\
A year after Brent left they found out he was dying. The doctors made up bullshit terms to cover up the fact that they had no idea why his organs were collapsing and his body was aging at almost five times the speed it was supposed to.
He lived - the wonders of modern medicine - but when he'd left the institute after seven years he looked exactly the same as he had the day they perfected Experiment B. A year and a half later, he could pass for a fifty year old. He barely survived.
It's not like they hadn't been outside the institute before, but not for more than a couple hours, a couple days, a month when Jon went to visit his family once. Never for an entire year.
So: when they live in the institute, they don't age. If they leave for more than a year, they'll die. And they definitely will die; Ryan and Spencer had been there more than eight years when they found out the news. Jon had a chance to leave, but he didn't take it, just smiled at Spencer and shook his head no when they offered.
Now, of course, they've got no choice. Fifty years and counting; Ryan's more than seventy years old but he'll never get a single white hair.
It might be a perk, for some, the kind of job you'd kill for. Immortality, an exorbitant salary, free reign and no boss breathing down your neck. To work at the institute, though, you have to be a genius, dedicated, driven, patient, committed. Inspired. Obsessed.
\
"Ryan," Spencer says, repeats it when Ryan doesn't listen. "Ryan!"
"What?" Ryan asks, irritated, stretching out the kinks in his back that come from hunching over his desk scribbling down ideas for hours on end.
"Ryan. I'm putting you officially off-duty for the time being," Spencer tells him, imperious but concerned. "Go to your room, listen to some music. Write."
They've all got their methods of coping with life inside a well-decorated box. Spencer calculates, expenses and other odds and sees how it all turns out in the end. When they finished Brendon, he amused himself by adding up statistics and figuring out the effect it would have on the world's oil market, and then watching all his predictions come true. He subscribes to at least five newspapers and three business journals and is working on predicting the federal reserve three years in advance.
Pete's got his businesses; whenever he gets bored he just expands Clandestine Industries a little more, acquisitions and mergers and yes, Patrick, I bought another company, but it's completely awesome, you'll love it. In between businesses he spends too much time on the internet, making up fake names and pitting his alter egos against each other, watching the fall out among the unknowing virtual spectators.
(Patrick's going to have to find another hobby soon, because he's almost finished mastering every single instrument and musical style in the known world. Still, though, he's got Pete to look after, which takes up a lot of time and will never, ever get boring.)
Jon just leaves, takes a car and just drives for days on end until he ends up wherever, loops back around to the institute with a few days worth of beard and a couple cheesy souvenirs, Welcome to Elktown magnets, little plastic snowglobes; his room is full of photographs and overly cheerful postcards.
Ryan used to sew, but there's only so much you can do to embellish a lab coat before it gets tacky.
Mostly, he writes.
\
"Nelson and Wendy Degorin lived in a little house, in a little village at the edge of the world. To be fair, the world didn't end once you went past the village walls; Nelson and Wendy had heard that it went on forever and ever, with no edges or corners or angles. To the villagers, however, it might as well have been the edge," he reads out loud one day, his eyes skimming over his own smudged words. "Just beyond the hill next to Nelson and Wendy's house was a strange building that was called the institute..."
Another day, he reads, "The doctor said, 'I prescribed pills to offset the shakes; to offset the pills, you know you should take it a day at a time.' 'I am alone in this bed,' the patient told him in a murmur, looking at the walls, the floor. 'And she never fixes it, but she...'"
Another day: "He said that I need this, that I can't live without it, that it's scary how much I devote to my job. But he was just lazy, he wouldn't do anything, he never did as much as Spencer did or Jon does. He said it was all about the money, in the end, but he just didn't understand it. I spent my entire life knowing I was going to do something big and I've spent the past decades never regretting a thing..."
And another: "Once upon a time, many centuries ago, there were four boys living in the city of Las Vegas..."
No matter what he reads, Brendon lays silent on the bed, eyes closed, skin still humming with energy. He's the most beautiful thing Ryan has ever seen.
\
And then. And then.
One day, Ryan is saying, "Jon just came back today. He says he just came back from Iowa; he brought Spencer a t-shirt. And he bought new flip-flops, too. I don't even know why, they all look the same."
But this time, a voice replies, "Never underestimate the power of footwear, Ryan. Spencer should have taught you that by now," and Ryan blinks his eyes wide open in shock because Brendon is awake.
Ryan has measured the proportions of Brendon's entire body; he still remembers the thousands, millions of algorithms and chemical reactions that went into Brendon but he has never before heard the sound of Brendon's voice.
"You know my name," he says quietly, trying to start breathing again.
"Fifty years, Ryan Ross." Brendon smiles at him, and Ryan doesn't even believe in miracles but it feels like one. "I remember everything you've ever told me."
"Don't you ever get bored?" Ryan wonders, his voice still soft like he's afraid it's all going to dissolve in front of him.
"Don't you?" Brendon replies.
"I've got you," Ryan explains, and Brendon says, "Precisely." He's still smiling.
Footsteps come pounding up to the door; Jon. He opens the door and all but yells, "Ryan! Ryan, there's a national power outage, we -" He sees Brendon and stops dead, voice tripping over itself and choking into nothing. "Christ."
"Go away," Ryan tells him calmly, still not looking away from Brendon.
Jon backs away, closing the door behind him. "But I wanted to meet him!" Brendon complains, frowning. "That's Jon, right?"
"Later," Ryan says. "Later, you'll meet everyone."
\
The power outage lasts for thirteen hours and twenty minutes, and Ryan stays at Brendon's side through all of it. Brendon doesn't stop talking, except to try the food that Patrick considerately brings him; Ryan wouldn't have it any other way. He's got fifty years worth of silence to make up for.
(Everything seems so much brighter when Brendon's energy isn't being siphoned off to the unappreciative masses; the room is practically glowing, everything in it more vivid. According to Spencer, the hallways are giving off a ghostly light and the computers are still functioning perfectly, but Ryan wouldn't know; he doesn't leave the room.)
He remembers every word that Brendon says, stores away the way Brendon's eyes light up when he's excited, the way his words come almost too quickly for his mouth, the constant movement of his fingers against the sheets. Jon takes pictures, but Brendon's smile is tattooed into Ryan's mind.
\
"Ryan. Ryan, we have to put him back under," Spencer says gently, holding Ryan's arms.
"Why?" Ryan demands, struggling to break free. "No, we -"
"The entire country lost power, Ryan, think of something besides yourself here! This is our job!"
"Just another day, Spence, I need -"
"We can't," Spencer says, staring into Ryan's eyes. "You know we can't."
"Ryan," Brendon says, and beckons him over.
Spencer lets go; Ryan walks toward the bed dazedly, looking young for a moment, and eminently breakable.
"Ryan," Brendon repeats, and kisses him. His hand curls around the back of Ryan's neck, holding him down as if afraid he's going to run away. With a muffled sob, Ryan twines one hand into Brendon's hair. The other hand strokes down his shoulder, over his arm and chest and back like he's making sure Brendon's still real, not going to disappear at any moment.
They break apart finally for air, mouths and cheeks red, and Brendon murmurs, "I'll see you later," before beckoning to Spencer to get on with it already.
Jon pulls Ryan away and holds him back as Spencer helps shut Brendon's consciousness down, but it's not necessary. Ryan is frozen, the scientist in him keeping his eyes open and watching, making mental notes inside his head.
Spencer finishes, finally, and he and Jon have to pull Ryan out of the room because there's no way he's going to move otherwise.
\
"So," Keltie says to Ryan the next day. She's a sweet girl, as young as he was before he got involved in all of this. She likes Ryan, laughs and tells him he's married to his job when he declines yet another of her invitations to coffee.
"So," Ryan repeats flatly, staring into nothing.
"The blackout yesterday - what happened?" she asks urgently, looking so fucking earnest. "The press is already demanding to know what went wrong."
"Nothing went wrong," Ryan states, shoving his chair back violently and standing up. "I can't do this today. You get to meet Jon, he'll tell you everything you need to say."
He storms out of the room, his notebook clutched to his side.
\
Spencer finds him hours later. "Ryan, what is this?" he asks, picking up a sheet of paper. The room's covered in them, blank white sheets scrawled on in Ryan's distinctive handwriting, the scribbles scribbled out.
"Notes," Ryan says absently, furiously crossing out something he'd just written.
Spencer glances at the page he's holding, scans the lines and says, "Ryan, you can't -"
"Can't what?" Ryan demands, looking up, ink smeared across his cheek. "Keep him awake? Make it so that he can leave the bed? As long as the precious power stays on, why can't I?"
Spencer can't think of an answer to that.
"They have him," Ryan continues wildly, "the whole country, they have him, and they don't even care, they don't even - why can't I have him, too? Why do I -" He breaks off, makes another notation.
In a few weeks Spencer will maybe come to him, look over his notes and help correct them, but for now he just presses a kiss to the top of Ryan's head and walks away. Ryan stays, writing equation after equation, sheets of paper drifting down and blanketing the entire room in white.
"He's mine, too," Ryan murmurs, the pen almost a blur in his hand. "Mine."