Chapter Text
It was 6 am when the alarm clock broke the silence of the dying night.
Loki Laufeyson let out an exasperated groan and gave several fruitless hit on his bedside table until his blind hand reached the source of the nuisance. Then he rolled over and dug himself further under the sheet. Doing so gave him a smug sense of superiority. That stupid little orange clock he had won as a prize at some science fair as a kid could stare at him with its omniously cheerful smile as much as she wished, he would still get up when he had decided. Possibly around noon. That was one of the rare privileges of being unemployed.
His mind was already drifting back to sleep when another noise brought him back in the world of the living. This time it was his Tempad.
“Shit”
By the time Loki managed to grab the small rectangular device and flipped it open, the bipping sound had stopped. Loki squinted to look at the small LCD screen and read the name of the imbecile who thought this was an hour to pass a call.
MOBIUS
“Shit” Loki moaned as if he was angry at the device itself. The Tempad replied by a new, short bipping sound. The text message appeared on the black screen in orange letters.
Hey Lokes. Still not a morning person, right ? Listen, I need to talk to you as soon as you get your ass out of bed. Emergency. The kind of shit I can't deal without you. 1 o'clock at McDonald's ? I'll even treat you breakfast. See you !
Loki rolled his eyes. For a moment, he was tempted to answer with a sorry, the number you are trying to reach is not available or some bullshit of the sort, but he knew his old friend Mobius. He would not be asking for help if he wasn't in serious trouble.
Also, taking Loki out of retirement was not a habit for Mobius. In fact, the simple idea that a serious agent like him would risk his job revealing sensitive information was enough to itch Loki's curiosity.
Admitting the truth was bitter, but Loki hadn't passed a single day of his self-inflicted unemployment without yearning for a case. Anything, even a missing cat or a paranoid husband suspicious about his wife suddenly getting a new haircut.
Now perfectly awake, Loki almost jumped out of bed and pulled the discolored curtains. He immediately regretted it when the city's lights assaulted his eyes. At this time of the year the sky was still pitch black, but it didn't matter much. The lights of Midgard knew no winter nights.
When Loki was a child, his mother had taken him and his brother on a trip as far as possible of the city and for the first time in his life, the young boy had seen the moon with his eyes. It had been his biggest pride during the rest of this elementary school days. Not many children, or adult for the matter, could say they had seen the real deal. What he never told his classmates, however, was how small and disappointedly translucent the celestial body was against the sickly brown of the sky.
On the billboard facing his decrepit condo, a software company was praising the merits of a new holographic companion, entirely customizable and powered by the latest AI. Loki didn't really get the appeal of that kind of product. Maybe that was the future of mankind, marrying a life size video game character with orange pigtails... anyways, if that was the case, Mobius and the other would soon join him in the ever growing mass of the unproductive. And daddy wouldn't lose a penny, most software companies already belonged to Asgardia.
Loki walked to the small kitchen hidden behind flimsy smoked plexiglass walls. He opened the fridge and poured synthetic milk in a pan. While it was heating, he put the radio on. Maybe he could get a clue of what this mysterious case was from the news segment.
Good Morning from Earth ! The annoying voice of Buster Friendly boomed from the round speaker on the side of the blocky brown device. 7am and it's time for a news flash. New scandal at the parliament as the senator of the Artemisia colony attacks his fellow representatives on the issue of...
Loki added some porridge to his milk, his mind floating over the latest senatorial playground squabble. The flakes of accelerated growth oats had the taste of paper confetti. Undeserved comparision, at least the confetti he had previously consummed had time to soak with champagne, but it was all he had left in his kitchen cupboard. Foolish hope made him open the pizza box towering over half a dozen of various dirty take-away container, but obviously there was nothing left but traces of fluorecent red sauce and grease.
New twist in the trial opposing millionaire Jeremiah Spades to his ex companion, adult entertainer Cherry Peaches. For those of you who suffer from short memory, the millionaire demanded a divorce after he noticed suspicious behavior pattern in his voluptuous wife. According to his lawyer, he was duped as he thought he was marrying, I quote “A real human woman, and not another of these goddamn bots”.
Peaches' lawyer still has to make a declaration, but the young woman never stopped claiming she is a real human being. “This son of a -biiip- knows I am a person made of flesh and blood. His so called Voight-Kampff stuff is bollocks. I'm an actress, that's my job to smile and giggle when I don't understand the lines !”
Moral of the story, gentlemen, before you get married, don't forget to check if your sweetheart has several face expressions available or you might end up pleading your case at the TVA !
Buster let out a bombastic laugh mixed with the high pitched giggle of his female cohost. Loki loathed them equally. This entire “news” story, big quotation marks on “news”, was complete bullshit. Loki knew nothing of the case, and he wasn't even sure of who Jeremiah Spades was, but he had spotted at least three innacuracies in that short segment alone.
There was no way the Tribunal for the Validation of Androids would take a case like this one seriously. Either the millionaire was terminally stupid, or the whole story was staged as a disinformation campaign. He had noticed some intriguing trends in the media recently.
When Loki finished his bowl of porridge, Buster and his female cohost Amanda were still droning about the dangers of replication and people getting mysteriously replaced by android version of themselves. Complotist nonsense at its best.
Maybe that was the whole point of Spades' absurd lawsuit. Everyone, at least everyone with a minimal knowledge on the topic of Replicants, or Androids as the general public still called them, knew that Cherry Peaches was not human. She was in too many movies and her face hadn't changed in the last ten years. Spades definitively knew, he had probably purchased her himself. Loki had never heard Cherry Peaches was a commercialized model, so he had probably bought a standard model from Asgardia, and then had her customized.
Asgardia was the leader on the market and doing anything shady like making a replica of a licenced model was a violation of their term of contract, but money opens a lot of doors. Maybe the studio that owned the copyright for Peaches' appearance decided to take legal action.
That was a tricky case. Most of the public had no idea a large number of the most popular entertainers were Replicants and it was not in the interest of the studios to have this little secret revealed. Yes, the studio probably theatened a lawsuit and Spades moved first. Now he had two options : pretend the Peaches he married was an android copy of the real actress, or reveal to the public there was no real actress called Cherry Peaches, just Replicants relaying every 4 years since the beginning of her “career”. Everything depended on the secret accord between the studio and the millionaire. And no matter the decision of the judge, the players had already prepared their cards and Cherry Peaches would lose no matter what.
Case closed.
Over the years, Loki had found out that most of the “replacement” cases were either insurance fraud, cover up for a failed insurance fraud, and sometimes a sensational news title staged up by a major company to get the public attention and divert it from the real scandal (usually tax evasion or environmental hazard).
It was not that an actual case of replacement was impossible. Nowaday lower entry models of humanoid Replicant were accessible to most middle class people. With all the customization choices available, it was possible to have a convincing doppelganger built for the price of a small car.
But it was still pretty rare. In his five years working as a detective for the TVA, Loki had only seen a handful of cases. Most of them were cover-up for adultery or petty crime. Nothing big or glamorous like what happened in movies and over-exagerated news stories in tabloids.
Because obviously, it was not drab human mediocrity that interested the public. They wanted horrific tales of Replicants suddenly killing their owners for mysterious reason, epics of rebellions estinguished in blood, or a reason to hate a celebrity who had done nothing wrong. But all these scenarii were pure fantasy. Replicants rebellions were extremely rare and usually happened on mining colonies where the Android working force was submitted to intense life threatening conditions that could damage their programming. Household Replicants were very unlikely to break out of programming. Doing so would require free will, the only human quality they were denied by design.
Loki rinced his bowl and gathered the empty boxes and paper in a plastic bag and decided to go for a walk. He still had a few hours to kill before he met Mobius at McDonald's and insipid porridge hadn't quenched his hunger. Maybe he could take something to eat at a Ground Level shop.
He turned the radio off and put on a pair of brown slacks he found rolled in a ball under the night stand, a clean shirt that had surely been white at some point and a a beige jacket. Before he left the door, he threw a last glance a dusty mirror hanging between the key hooks and the cloth hanger. Tired greenish eyes stared at him, lost on a waxy face.
Loki was aware he had a certain charm, some ladies and gentlemen as well had called him handsome, back when his life was all parties and occasional one night stands. But those days were far behind and now a few wrinkles adorned the side of is eyes and his once carefully straighened and styled hair were now a mess of unruly curls that almost reached his shoulders. Oh, any outside party would still have called him beautiful, even more now he had entered his 40s and didn't look like an overgrowned school boy anymore, but Loki himself couldn't look at his face without feeling a hint of disgust. Anywhere he went, his eyes would always reflect the dull atrocities they had witnessed like a pair of cursed mirors.
In the entrance lobby, Mrs Sherman was sweeping the floor humming cheerfully. Visibly, she had doubled the dose of endorphines in her morning emotions brew.
“Mr Laufeyson !” she greeted Loki with an exstatic smile. “You are an early bird today ! Have you watched Mercer's sermon about the dangers of wasting time by yourself when you could use it to take on someone else's suffering ?”
Loki shook his head politely, even though the seemingly innocent comment was rubbing him the wrong way.
“You know I don't own an empathy box, Mrs Sherman. But I'll try to mediate this wise advice.”
The housekeeper's face turned sour and Loki suspected her eyes would probably have stabbed him if they owned little daggers.
“Poor soul !” she sighed “This is not a way of living. Wasting your precious time alone when you are still young enough to pursue a more glorious purpose.”
Loki summoned an immense effort to not roll his eyes when he replied over his shoulder.
“Thank you for the advice. I'll try to think about my glorious purpose after I've had my morning donut and coffee.”
On those words he didn't even turned around, but imagining the old lady's outraged face was enough to bring him satisfaction. Loki had nothing against the followers of Mercierism, but he had no plan to convert, neither in near or far future. Because of that, people often assume, wrongly, he was one of the rare remaining Christians who had emigrated to the colonies a few generations ago. Reality was way wierder and honestly more entertaining when Loki was well disposed to explain.
Loki crossed the street to the next train station. Midgard was built in a way that it had developped on multiple Levels. The skyscrappers had grown so high bridges and platforms had been built between them, forming a complex fabric of suspended streets and plazas and gardens. This megalopole was a unique on the whole planet and a model for the new cities on the Mars colonies. The most impressive thing about it was that everything had been built less than fifty years ago, starting as a small corporate town for the workers of Asgardia.
To get to Ground Level, Loki had to take a train that was a few blocks away. His appartment was situated in the middle Levels. The higher Levels were reserved to Asgardia's executive. Loki was familiar with them. Gilded towers and large glass pannels overlooking the city. For having spent his first decades in one of these luxurious penthouses, it was not worth the fuss. The beating heart of Midgard was on ground Levels, where the unemployed, the small business owners and the dubiously acquired androids thrived.
Riding the inter-Level train was a spectacle that Loki had never grown bored with. The railway was spiralling down between the many towers, stopping in the regular stations where travelers could join and leave. The highest Levels were accessible by flying vehicles and private elevators only. For this reason, Loki was already an older teen when he took the train for the first time. From his childhood bedroom's window, it looked like a miniature train set doing rounds in a building blocks city.
As the train progressed toward the Low Levels, its travelers changed gradually from station to station as smartly dressed people stepped out and a colorful, heteroclite crowd took their place.
Ground Level was like a miniature Earth prserved under the metal ceiling of the city. Loki had never been on Earth, but for an unknown reason, he felt at home there. No meticulously mawed lawn, no artificial moon, no reconstructed animals carefully cooped behind plexiglass walls, just people with their many languages, clothing and food.
Despite the evocative names given to their neibourhoods and shops, Loki was pretty sure none of these people had ever set a foot on the home planet for generations, and yet it was a patchwork of the lost world that survived in the slums, thriving off the junk fallen from the metal sky. It even had weeds here and there, growing from cracks in the concrete.
Loki walked through the East-Asian district, his mind set on a confectionary shop in particular. Several people greeted him with their variety of accents and he smiled back. Other people changed side walk or hid in the shadows when they noticed his distinctive silhouette and brown costume. He didn't need to wonder why, but it left a pit in his stomach everytime.
The tea shop was held by an old Japanese woman called Satoshi-san who sometimes got help from her granddaughter Himiko. As far as Loki had been a client, she had always been a widow. Her children all worked for Asgardia and lived in the upper Levels. They had proposed to take her with them, she had once told Loki, but she had always refused. This shop was her whole life and she would die there.
“Hey, Mr Laufeyson” Himiko greeted him with a friendly smile, “long time no see !”
Loki nodded in silence.
“Cat got your tongue I see !” she teased him.
He remembered her as a mischievous seven years old. She was a young woman now.
“Hey, Himiko. How is college ?”
“Not bad” the girl replied “I just got an internship in one of Sector 7 labs !”
“Congatulation” Loki replied. “Your grandma must be proud.”
She shrugged dismissively.
“Nah, you know her. This tea shop is all that matters to her.”
Loki understood, and in his secret thoughts, he agreed with her. Midgard needed Japanese pastries makers more than it needed anonymous geneticians filling lines of code on a screen from nine to five.
“Don't worry” she told Loki with a wink “When I work for Asgardia, Oba-san will get all the Androids she needs, specially programmed to make the best wagashi and matcha tea !”
Loki doubted the old lady would accept the offer easily. She had always refused to hire Androids. Old people from ground Level were often reticent at the idea.
Mechanical assistants, like the ones they made during the past century, were still popular in the slums and Loki could name a few constructors who worked from recycled metal pieces and eletronic boards. Artificial animals were fine too, even though their price made them quite a luxury. But many people of Satoshi-san's age drew a line at Nexus Zero Androids.
Loki could almost understand why. In a way, they looked similar to people, too similar if you had not been raised among them. But it was only a trick of the eye. Asgardia had flourished on the withering roots of Tyrell Corporation, perfecting the genetic engeenering to new heights of perfection. Nexus Zeros had nothing to do with the mass produced human beings once promised by late Niander Wallace. They were Androids, in the purest meaning of this word. Robots, as they called them in the ancient world. Mindless puppets of flesh moved by carefully crafted electronic circuits. But older, more traditional people struggled to see past the appearances.
“My ancestors fought hard to abolish slavery, young man. You won't catch me dead rooting for Asgardia's business.” an old man had once told Loki. He owned half a dozen of highly sophisticated mechanical Androids who likely had the same Level of sentience as low entry models sold by Asgardia. Strange prejudice in a world where the average human being had more mechanical spare parts than an organic Android.
Satoshi-san joined her granddaughter at the counter and served Loki a teapot of green tea with home made pastries. He gave them a generous tip before leaving the shop. He still had a few hours to kill before his appointment with Mobius.
Back to the mid Levels, Loki made a detour by the botanical garden. One of his oldest memories was his mother taking him on a picnic alongside Thor and Hela. He must have been something like six or seven, but it was the first time he was leaving the Spires. He had enjoyed his day, discovering the many sorts of plants and trees, but his mind would always associate this trip to one single event. The feeding of the sheep by the zoo keeper.
The middle aged man was shoving armful of dried grass in the fold and he allowed children to touch the sheep.
Back at home, the first thing Loki had said when his father has asked the children about their day was how much he had loved petting the sheep. His father had laughed and promised him he would get his very own sheep. Loki had gone to bed very excited.
The day after he received a life sized electrical sheep. For the child it was a disappointment. How was he supposed to give dried grass to the animal. He went to his father and asked for a real sheep.
Odin Borson laughed as if his youngest son had said the most hilarious joke he had ever heard.
“My son, there is no such thing as a real sheep anymore. They all disappeared last centuries. What you saw at the botanical garden was an organic facsimile. It is exactly like your toy sheep, but made of meat instead of metal. Believe me, an electric animal is far less trouble for your mother and the maids.”
It had been a bit of a complicated lesson for a seven years old, but with time Loki had assimilated it. Nothing that left the production lines of Asgardia Corporation was really alive. And it was better that way.
Mc Donald's. Another relic from a long dead world.
Loki entered the fast food restaurant and found himself a table. The first thing he noticed was the look one of the cashier girls threw him.
A dark glance full of fear, with maybe a little bit of hate. He had seen this look many times.
A few tables away, two men in military uniform were eating a burger. Loki made a quick sign of the head and the men nodded back. Hunters from the Agency. He could not remember their names, but he was absolutely sure they had been coworkers. Nice to see they were still alive.
While he waited for Mobius, his eyes kept drifting towards the cashier. She was rather unremarkable. A slender woman with a pointy face and mousy brownish hair that retained traces of bleach. A perfectly average background character in an overcrowed city. For an untrained eye, she looked perfectly human.
Loki wondered how such a fancy model of Nexus Zero had ended up serving fries in a McDonald's. None of his business. He only hoped the two Hunters at the back of the room had nothing to do with her presence here. Androids had short enough lives, it would have been a waste to take back the few years or months she had left.
Androids were not people, but they still have a certain Level of sentience. It was one of the reason Loki's sleep was still plagued with nightmares.
Mobius arrived just in time, at 1pm. The Agency was very strict with timing.
“Hey, Lokes !” he greeted his old friend. “It's been a while ! How are you ?”
Loki gave him a pat on the shoulder and they exchanged some small talk. It was nice to hear from the rest of the team. Verity was still working on the field and Casey had found himself a passion for repairing old electronics. No one had forced Renslayer to pass the Voight-Kampff test yet, but everybody knews how it would result anyway.
“I wanted to pay you a visit” Mobius admitted, “but it took me a while to find your new address so I assumed you wanted to disappear for good.”
Loki stared his friend.
“I would not have minded if you had found me, but it's true, I prefer putting the past behind. Thank you for respecting my privacy.”
“It's the least I can do for a friend.”
A blond teenager came to take their order and returned five minutes later hands loaded with food. The two men thanked him and Loki picked up a fry.
“I couldn't help but noticed you changed your last name” Mobius said “I suppose it makes sense now that the cat is out the bag.”
Loki took a sudden interest in unwrapping his burger.
“My father doesn't care. It's not like he ever had any expectations from me. Thor is the golden son and Hela got married last year.”
“You took your mother's name. I mean, your biological one. Do you have any memories of her ?”
Loki frowned, this time he was feeling uncomfortable with his friend's questions.
“You should have told me it was an interrogation, I would have booked up a Time Theatre” he joked to mask his embarrasment.
“I'm sorry” Mobius said “I didn't mean to be prying. Must be the job doing that.”
“I met her a few times” Loki said suddenly.
“Who ?”
“Professor Laufey Ymirdottir. I don't really have an opinion on her. I suppose she was beautiful, but even as a child I noticed how sad and angry my mom was everytime she heard about her. I didn't take her name out of sentimentalism. I just had a perfect opportunity not to be an Odinson anymore and I took it.”
Mobius nodded and didn't add anything. It was one of those things Loki really appreciated with his friend. He knew when to shut up. They ate their cold food in silence, like in the good old days. Who knew, maybe Loki would feel a bit of the thrill again. If he was able to put all the bad memories in a corner of his mind.
Mobius hadn't changed at all since Loki had last seen him in person, five years ago. His little mustache was still trimmed in the exact same way and his grey hair was perfectly combed on the side. So much stability almost felt pathological, but it was how things went at the Agency. Mobius used to joke time passed differently there, and maybe there was a kernel of truth.
“You needed to talk to me about a case, I think” Loki prompted after a long silence.
Mobius chewed his pie and Loki waited for him to swallow so he could get an answer.
“Yeah. But I'm afraid I cannot talk here” the agent replied, giving a sideway look to the people around us.
“Of course” Loki said.
Years later, he would still wonder if Mobius had chosen this place randomly or if it had been part of a test. But if he suspected anything about the cashier, he didn't let anything show.
“All I can say is that it's something big. The future of Asgardia might depend on it.”
“Is it that important ?” Loki was feeling a bit alarmed all of a sudden.
“Yeah, I might be blowing the problem out of proportion. But if things went sideway, the public opinion might be shattered for good. And we all know how it went for Tyrell Corporation.”
Suddenly, an apprehension fell on Loki like a wave of cold water.
“If you think my ties to the big shots of Asgardia can help you in any way, I'd rather stop you immediately. I haven't talked to my dad in years and look at me, I'm just your run-of-the-mill unemployed loser from sector 4. Really, you won't get any intel from me. I haven't learned one juicy gossip since I was a fourteen years old little rascal spying on my dad.”
Mobius laughted wholeheartedly.
“Don't worry, I am very aware of your complete lack of influence. What I need you for is your intellect. A brain like yours is a once in a decade occurance at least. And more important, I need my friend back.”
“In that case, maybe I can do it. Like in the old days.”