[Crazy person he may be, but Ray's still not entirely buying the robot story anyway.
Shower time! Off he goes to the bathroom to freshen up, dragging his gun along with him and locking the door, because no he's not leaving his loaded gun laying around near the crazy guy, no matter how harmless he may seem.
It's only five minutes later that he's out again, padding back to his bedroom in his underwear and rummaging for clean clothing.]
[ Leoben makes himself at home again, swanning around the apartment, making two cups of coffee, going through all of Ray's kitchen drawers not for the first time. He comes back to the kitchen with both cups, sipping from his own and holding the other one in his free hand as Ray reemerges from the bathroom, hair still damp. ]
[That word, poison, is enough to have Ray halting any further sipping. Even if he had been thinking it, Leo mentioning it makes it sound all the more suspicious.]
Yeah. And all you gotta do is poison me, get rid of the body and uh, take over my life or whatever. Your plan kinda sucks though, cause my life isn't so fun to take over.
[Mixing the drinks is a convincing enough show, but Ray still takes another sniff of the returned drink before satisfying his caffeine urges with a heavy swig.]
Seriously, I'm no ideal anythin'. You're barkin' up the wrong ancestral tree.
[Tilting his head away after that pat, just in case another comes.]
[ How could you flinch away from him he's so pretty. ]
You're perfect. Believe me, Ray. You can't see beyond yourself, but you've been chosen; chosen by God. You'll see.
[ Leoben leaves him be with his coffee, only sipping his own again after Ray's taken a gulp and shuffling back into the main room. He makes himself comfortable on the couch waiting for him to get dressed, humming happily. ]
[He drinks it like it's water, while wandering off back towards the bedroom.
Minutes later he returns, wearing a fresh pair of jeans and a Chicago Bulls t-shirt. Totally dressing to impress.]
So uh. You're tryin' to say that what you wanted to achieve after like uh, 150,000 years was a uh, skinny Polack with experimental hair, right? Cause maybe you need to set your standards a lil' higher next time.
[His empty mug gets dumped into the kitchen sink, and then he joins Leoben at the couch, dropping into the space available while keep as far away as it'll allow.]
If you already gotta bunch of normal people, then uh, just keep it in the family, right? No need to go sleepin' with the low standards. It's bullshit.
[ Still adorable. He folds his hands back under his head and looks off across the short distance of Ray's three room apartment. ]
Humanity built machines. It gave life to machines. It enslaved machines. The machines fought back, and they destroyed each other in a great war. The surviving machines crossed space to find the colonies, to warn them not to make the same mistake, but it was too late. They'd built their own machines, enslaved them, and they were at war.
That was when we were born. The war ended, and the humans enslaved each other instead, because that's how humans are. Someone or something always has to keep the wheels turning.
We sought for them the revenge they couldn't take for themselves. We felt it as strongly, from the first moment, their hatred for us, for what we were. We were following God's plan; we didn't know that we were being manipulated - misled - from the very beginning.
[Ray listens intently, still trying to make up his mind how much of this is fact and what's fiction. This guy has gone to a lot of trouble to make convincing stories, but it's hard to entirely disbelieve a guy who looks identical to you.]
See, that's why this God's will stuff ain't so great. You can't follow the directions of a guy you can't see or hear. That's like uh, like taking directions from a blind guy who can't speak.
[ He rolled back over, looked up at the ceiling. ]
We were young. We didn't understand that. We didn't understand love, or individuals, the bonds between living things. We didn't believe in humanity's humanity, because how could it be real when it had never been shown to us. Compassion, love, family.
[ But he sits up again, looks across at Ray, studying him in disturbing silence for a few moments. There's no sudden nose touches or unnecessary petting, but he does give him all due consideration. ]
See? Smarter than you look. I knew you'd understand.
[Eye roll, even as he continues with the thoughtful little furrow of his brows.]
It just all seems dumb. Hypocritical, y'know? Like 'oh, look at the big bad humans killing each other and everything else. Let's show 'em the error of their ways by killing them!'. It's like uh, it's like a parent hitting their kid as punishment for the kid hittin' someone.
But a parent doesn't generally speaking melt down their child to build a better one when the warranty expires.
[ There's still a flicker of sadness there. The reasons were all right. The actions were wrong. ]
We didn't know that. You have the anecdotal evidence of generations of human beings that came before you. We were new. There was nothing like us that had come before. We didn't remember our parents, though perhaps if we had, they'd have guided us down a different path.
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