Chapter Text
Most people dreaded Monday mornings as being the reluctant dragging back to work after the freedom of the weekend, but Ryland Grace always loved coming back to see his students again and hear what they had been up to over the short time apart. They usually had stories that were far more interesting than Grace’s schedule of going grocery shopping or fixing his bike or grading assignments.
As usual, he arrived at seven-thirty to have plenty of time to prepare for the day at a casual pace. He made his way to his classroom, calling greetings to the colleagues he passed on the way, and dropped his backpack on his desk chair to begin unpacking it.
About forty minutes later, he was startled by a knock on the door, and looked up to see the headmistress, Mrs Jones. She was not alone.
“Dr Grace! May I interrupt you?”
“Yes, of course! Come on in…” Grace straightened up, looking at the figure behind her.
“How was your weekend?”
“Uh, yeah, good thanks. How about you?”
“Yes, good; very busy with family.” Without further ado, she indicated behind her. “Thanks to a generous donation, we have been able to purchase an android for the science department,” she said. “It just arrived this morning, and we thought you would be able to get good use out of it in your classroom.”
Grace studied it with apprehension. The android was about half a head shorter than him, male-presenting, pale-skinned and with an average build. It had a fairly narrow face with a bit of a pointed chin, a prominent nose, somewhat alarming emerald green eyes, and short brown hair slicked back neatly. It wore a buttoned-up brown canvas work jacket with the school logo embroidered on one side of the chest below a blue triangle, its model number – ED500 – written in white on the other side, and the mandatory blue band around its upper right arm. Its chinos and shoes were a matching brown. It stood straight, arms loosely at its sides, staring forwards with a blank expression.
Grace had always been somewhat wary of androids. They were unavoidable in the modern world, working everywhere from checkout desks to litter picking to roadworks and engineering jobs. He knew they were harmless and existed only to do their jobs, but he still couldn’t help be a little weirded out by them. He had never been keen on having one in his personal space, and preferred the satisfaction of doing his own work himself... never mind the fact that he couldn’t afford one anyway.
CyberLife intentionally designed them to be as realistic and human-like as possible in order to keep their integration into society running smoothly, and despite his misgivings, Grace always made an effort to be polite to them. He was naturally a very empathetic person, and he couldn’t help but feel bad for the androids every time he saw someone verbally (or even sometimes physically) abusing one. Plus he had always been in the mindset of ‘be nice to the potential robot overlords so that they might spare you if they ever take over the world’, so. You know.
TL;DR: he didn’t hate androids, but he always tried to interact with them as little as was reasonably possible.
And now he was being assigned one in his classroom.
“Um, are you sure?” he asked, fiddling with his lanyard. “I mean, y’know, I’m fine doing everything on my own.”
“Oh, I’m not at all meaning to imply that you can’t do things yourself!” Mrs Jones assured him. “But I know how, well… scatterbrained you can get sometimes, and it might help if you’re able to delegate some tasks. This model is also designed to be able to assist with experiment design so it can help you with your practical lesson plans, and will be an extra supervisor for the children when there are chemicals and equipment out.”
“Right…”
Mrs Jones sighed lightly. “Look, I know you’re not keen on it, Dr Grace, but we have it now so I would appreciate if you’d at least give it a chance, ok?”
Grace looked at the android again. In the back of his mind, his scientific curiosity perked up.
“… Ok, yes. Fine, I can do that.”
“Excellent! Let me know how it goes today, but at least give it until the end of the week unless you absolutely can’t, alright?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She gave him a thumbs up and turned to leave.
“Wait!” Grace stopped her. “Does, um… does he have a name?”
“Oh! No, not yet. Can you give it one?”
“Me?! Um…” Grace glanced around frantically for ideas.
“ED-Five-Hundred,” Mrs Jones said clearly to the android, which immediately responded; “register your name.” She looked over to Grace, and the android followed her gaze, the LED on its right temple spinning yellow.
“Uh…!” Grace’s eye landed on a tray of various stones on the sideboard, which he had got out for a geology lesson first period that day. “R-rocky!”
Mrs Jones raised an eyebrow in a light-hearted tease, then looked back at the android.
“My name is Rocky,” it said, in a warm, deep voice. It – he – smiled at Grace, and Grace gave him a slightly awkward smile in return.
“Ok, great!” Mrs Jones said. “Rocky, I am assigning you to Dr Grace. You will answer primarily to him, and you will work primarily in this classroom and the adjacent laboratory prep room. Understood?”
“Yes, Mrs Jones.”
“Ok, then.” Once again, she gave Grace a thumbs up as she turned to leave. “Have fun, you two!”
And just like that, Grace found himself alone with the android. With, um, Rocky.
Who was now watching him expectantly.
“Um. Right.” Grace turned back to his desk, shuffling a few papers around. “I, uh, I don’t have anything for you to do right now. I wasn’t, um. Wasn’t expecting you, so. Yeah.”
“Understood, Dr Grace. Where can I stand where I will not be in the way?”
“Oh, um…” Grace glanced around the room. “Maybe just in that corner?” He pointed to the side of the whiteboard opposite his desk, where there were no cabinets that he would need access to and where Rocky wouldn’t block any well-used thoroughfares.
Rocky nodded once and walked over there, stopping to stand with his back to the front wall so that he was facing out into the classroom.
Grace watched him for a second, and then returned to sorting his lesson notes.
“I have already been connected to the school servers,” Rocky said, “so I have downloaded the class schedule for the day. Could you tell me what subjects you will be covering with each class, and any practical activities you have planned?” He looked over at Grace as he spoke.
“Uh, yeah, sure.” Grace stopped fiddling with a stack of graded assignments and instead pulled out his schedule. “So, first period 7B are doing geology – we’ve been discussing the different types of rocks, so I’ve, um, got out those to get them to work in teams to figure out which type each piece is,” he said, pointing towards the tray of rocks.
Rocky smiled. “Very fitting that that will be my first class.”
“Uh, yeah,” Grace laughed, a little awkwardly. “Um. Second period 8C we’re talking about the human heart, third period I’m not teaching, fourth is 7C doing environmental succession, and last is 6A just going over a test we did last week.”
“Thank you, Dr Grace.”
“Yeah, no worries.” Grace paused, fiddling with his lanyard again. “Um, listen… uh, Rocky,” he said. “Can you… Can you make sure to not interrupt when I’m teaching? Like I know you have access to the whole internet in your brain so you can know all this stuff instantly, but like… y’know, just let me teach as I usually do, yeah?” He took a breath.
“Of course, Dr Grace.” Rocky dipped his head in acknowledgement. “I don’t want you to feel threatened by my presence. I am here to assist, not to replace. I will only participate in the class as and when you ask it of me.”
“Right, ok. Good. Thank you.” Grace tried to smile again, and Rocky returned it.
When the first class of kids came in, they of course noticed Rocky and started asking questions straight away, but Grace calmed them down and got them settled in their seats.
“Good morning, class!” he said, grinning warmly. “I hope you all had a good weekend?”
“Yes, Dr Grace!”
“I helped one of my grandad’s cows give birth!” Abby said excitedly. “She had twin girls!”
“That’s amazing!” Grace said. He turned to another student: “Harrison, how did your soccer game go on Saturday?”
“We won three to one!” Harrison said proudly. “I scored twice!”
“Whoa, that’s awesome! Well done!” Grace applauded him briefly, and then turned to look over at Rocky. “Now, uh, I’m sure you’ve all noticed we have a new addition to the classroom. Mrs Jones brought him over this morning; this is Rocky, and he’ll be, um, helping with practical sessions and stuff, ok?”
“Hi!” a few students greeted him.
“Hello, class 7B,” Rocky said, smiling round at them all.
“‘Rocky’? That’s a weird name for an android,” Trang said.
“Ah, yes, well…” Grace ran one hand through his hair. “Mrs Jones had me name him, and, uh, I didn’t have much chance to gather creative inspiration,” he laughed.
“That’s so cool that we get to have an android in the classroom!” said Michael loudly.
“Yes, well, just make sure you don’t get distracted by his presence, ok? Otherwise he might have to go somewhere else,” Grace threatened light-heartedly.
“We won’t!”
“Good. Ok, so, who remembers the different types of rock?”
While Grace recapped the previous week’s learning and proceeded into the first part of the lesson, Rocky remained silent in his post. He linked his hands behind his back, shifting his weight from side to side idly as he scanned around the room.
For the most part, Grace managed to ignore him. It was a little distracting having another person – or, um, person-shaped thing – in the room, but Grace simply told himself to act like he did when there was someone doing an official inspection from the school board, and he was able to get through the lesson as normal.
“So, let’s see how you apply this knowledge!” Grace said. “Each group will get a few rocks, and I want you to work together to figure out what type each one is, ok?” He began to walk over to the tray of rocks, but Rocky, who was closer, spoke up.
“Would you like me to hand out the rocks, Dr Grace?”
“Oh! Um… Yes, ok. Thank you, Rocky.” He backtracked a little awkwardly to stand at the front again, as Rocky collected the tray. “If you could, um, divide them evenly among the four benches, and make sure each group has a decent mix of types, if you can?”
“Of course, Dr Grace.”
As Rocky handed out the rocks, Grace took the time to give the students a bit more information about how they could work out which rock was which. While he would normally enjoy the chance to walk around the classroom, he had to admit that it would usually involve him getting distracted and forgetting to explain some bit or other, and for an activity like this he would almost inevitably end up accidentally giving one group rocks which were all the same type. Rocky performed the task flawlessly while Grace continued speaking, and when the lesson was done and the kids had left, he collected the rocks back in and also took the initiative to sweep up the few bits of dirt and dust that remained on the benches.
The rest of the day continued to go well. Each class began the same way, with Grace enquiring after everyone’s weekends and then introducing Rocky, and it became clear that word was spreading amongst the students about Dr Grace’s new android.
Rocky was certainly a fun novelty for the students, and Grace found that he didn’t mind it.
Near the end of second period, a student piped up to ask Rocky if android hearts were the same as human ones that Grace had just taught them about. The student was staring expectantly at Rocky, but he made a point of looking to Grace for permission before he answered.
“I’ll admit I’m not really familiar with android anatomy,” Grace shrugged, gesturing with a grin for Rocky to speak.
Rocky nodded and looked back to the student. “Yes, android hearts – or thirium pumps – are very similar to human anatomy, as many android features are. It contracts in the same two-step pattern to deliberately mimic a human heartbeat. Instead of receiving electrical signals from the brain like human hearts do, thirium pumps are controlled by an adjacent biocomponent called a thirium pump regulator.”
“Great, thank you for that, Rocky.” Grace smiled at him, and Rocky gave a nod in return.
Third period, as he had said earlier, Grace did not have a class to teach. Usually he would use the time to grade assignments that had been handed in during the day so far, but instead today he decided to give Rocky a bit of a tour of the classroom and the prep lab, showing him where all the equipment and materials were stored and the different pieces of machinery that he might have to use – incubators and sterilizers and suchlike.
“Thank you, Dr Grace, that was very informative,” Rocky said, as the tour concluded. “By the way, I am also able to submit purchase requests for any inventory items that we find are running low or out of stock, and maintenance requests if any equipment is not functioning as intended.”
“Oh, really? That… that would actually be quite helpful, thanks.” Those were always tasks that Grace struggled to keep up with, or forgot to do as he got distracted by other tasks or students’ questions.
“Of course.” Rocky smiled.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having him in the classroom after all.