Archive of Our Own

Friday afternoon found Hank staring off into space, definitely not working and maybe contemplating getting another cup of coffee, when Connor abruptly stood up from his desk.

“Hey, where are you going?” Hank asked.

“Pardon me, Hank, I thought you had fallen asleep with your eyes open. I arranged an appointment with Yolanda Rogers, the forensic scientist we met yesterday, to give a demonstration of some of my abilities to a few of her colleagues. She requested that I arrive at 2 p.m.”

Hank glanced at the clock on his computer terminal. It was 1:56. “So you’re just gonna, what, lick stuff for them?”

“In our email communications, Dr. Rogers requested that I attempt to identify several different bacterial samples from cultures in the lab. So yes, I will be ‘licking stuff’ for them, as you put it.”

Hank stood up from his desk. “Okay, that’s gross, but this I gotta see.”

“You’re welcome to come with me, but I would appreciate it if you refrained from complaining about my sampling methods. It’s getting old.”

Hank held up his hands. “Fine, fine, I’ll keep it to myself. Lead the way. I haven’t actually bothered to visit the forensics labs since we moved to this building.”

Connor led Hank down several hallways and down two flights of stairs, which Hank suspected he’d deliberately chosen over the elevator just to make Hank get some exercise. When they arrived in the basement level, Hank saw that there was a crowd of people clustered around a double door entrance near the end of the corridor, most of them in scrubs. “I wonder what’s going on down there.”

“I believe that is the entrance to the lab Yolanda instructed me to meet her in. I was under the impression that I would only be giving this demonstration to a few of her colleagues, but I realize now she did not actually specify that.”

One of the techs standing outside the doors noticed them walking down the hallway. He turned and called into the lab, “Hey, Yolanda, I think they’re here!”

Yolanda pushed her way through the crowd of people and came out to greet them. She was carrying a white disposable lab coat in one hand. “Hey, hey, thanks for coming! I thought you might bring your partner. Lieutenant Anderson, right? We’re not technically supposed to let people in here without PPE, uh, personal protective equipment, but I figure it’s fine this one time as long as you wear a coat. Please, put this on,” she said and shoved the lab coat roughly into Hank’s hands before retreating back into the lab. “This way, please! God, could you all like, make some room?”

Connor and Hank trailed her into the lab. There were even more people in here, all of them wearing coats in addition to their scrubs, in desk chairs and pressed up against lab benches and lining the walls of the room. “Wow,” Connor said. “Ah. Well.”

“Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to surprise you with this. It’s just so cool though! I told, uh, everybody?”

“I didn’t even know we had this many people in forensics,” Hank said.

Yolanda coughed into her hand. “Well, that is, um, strictly speaking we don’t? I also emailed a couple other departments that deal with pathogen identification on a regular basis. So.”

Another woman stepped forward from the crowd. “Hello, Connor, Lieutenant Anderson. I’m Dr. Anoosha Day from the department of Water Services. Yolanda said you were going to show us some analysis capabilities you have? I’ve brought some samples.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Day. Is there something you’d like me to start with?” Connor was fidgeting awkwardly with his hands, clearly a little overwhelmed by the number of people. “I’m sorry, I’ve never really ... done this before.”

“Don’t worry about it, you’re fine. Sorry I sprung so many people on you. We’re just all really excited about what you can do! Do you have any restrictions on the types of samples you can deal with?” Yolanda asked.

Connor shook his head. “Not for bacterial identification, no. If you want sequencing, however, I’ll need a liquid sample. I also have a few enzyme assays available for the parasites currently monitored by the CDC if you’re interested.”

“Holy shit,” someone muttered in the background.

Yolanda clapped her hands together. “Great! Tony, any chance we have anything like that?”

A man sitting in one of the desk chairs responded. “I don’t think so? We don’t exactly keep a lot of ... loose blood. I don’t know that we’d even know if it was from someone with a parasitic infection anyway unless autopsy turned up something or it was, like, an obvious blood parasite. I could e-mail our contact at ARUP and see if they have something they could lend us?”

Another young man spoke up from across the room. “Actually I’ve got a malaria from that homicide Wednesday? I’ll go get that. Also obviously that’s like, really infectious, so ... be ... careful?”

“I assure you that I cannot carry disease and any part of me that your specimens touch will be thoroughly sterilized. Please, I’m happy to show you whatever you’d be interested in.”

The young man nodded and then hurried into an adjacent room.

“Okay Anoosha, I found him, so I’m going first,” Yolanda said.

Anoosha laughed good-naturedly. “Of course.”

“Okay, Mr. Connor. I’m going to go grab some plates I’ve prepared, nothing that’s an aerosol hazard obviously since we’re doing this outside of a biosafety cabinet, and I’ll be right back.” She pulled a pair of gloves from a box on the wall and left to the same side room her employee had just gone into.

Connor looked taken aback at being called “Mister.” He glanced at Hank a little desperately as all the people in the room silently stared at him, waiting for Yolanda to get back. Hank raised his eyebrows meaningfully. Connor chose to humor the lab nerds, this was his socially awkward situation now.

Yolanda returned with a stack of Petri dishes of various colors and a fistful of individually-wrapped plastic stick things. She shooed someone standing at a counter out of the way with her elbow and set them down. “Alright, I’m going to scrape a bacterial colony off each of these one at a time and hand it to you. Ready?”

“Ready. Do your worst,” Connor said with a tentative smile. He got a chuckle from the room for that.

Yolanda opened a Petri dish that had some sort of red goo in the bottom and was covered in little yellow dots. Were those bacteria? She scraped a bacteria dot up with one of the plastic sticks, which Hank now saw had a tiny loop at the end.

Connor gingerly took the stick and touched it to the tip of his tongue. Hank felt bile rise in the back of his throat; maybe he didn’t think through agreeing to come watch this. A woman in the crowd exclaimed “Oh my god, that’s so gross!,” except she sounded excited about it.

“Staphylococcus aureus,” Connor declared.

“Got it. How about this one?” Yolanda opened a dish with hot pink goo this time and scraped up another pile of bacteria.

“Escherichia coli non-O157:H7 serotype, sorry I can’t be more specific than that.” Connor frowned, but Yolanda looked pleased and handed him another stick.

“Burkholderia mallei? Yolanda, is this one of your CAP proficiency testing samples? You know you’re not supposed to outsource those,” Connor joked. At least Hank thought he was trying to joke. Between the fact that he still talked like an alien even when joking and the fact that Hank only understood about half of what he’d just said, it was unclear. Yolanda laughed, though.

“Don’t worry, we already completed our proficiency testing for the year. You’re not helping us cheat.”

The young man who’d left earlier finally returned, carrying a test tube full of, oh god, blood. Hank was fine with seeing blood all over crime scenes but apparently not just in a tube in someone’s hand. “I’ve got it!” the guy crowed. He looked around. “Um. I didn’t think this through. How should I give this to you? I don’t really want to open it outside a hood....”

Yolanda waved him over to a large metal box thing with a glass front that was built into the counter she was standing at. “Just use this hood, Sean. Mr. Connor, would you mind working over here for a minute?”

“Of course, Yolanda. I appreciate your staff’s commitment to safety with potentially-infectious materials. And please, just call me Connor. I appreciate that you’re trying to indicate your respect by addressing me with a title, but that’s a human politeness that makes me a little uncomfortable, to be honest.”

Hank hadn’t known that. He made a mental note. It had been about six months since the revolution, but even now it was still weird to hear Connor actually intentionally express something like that to a stranger. Regardless, Yolanda took it in stride. “Of course, Connor. Okay. So I think if you put on a pair of gloves, do what I saw you do at the scene the other day, and then trashed them into the biohazard waste, that would be good?”

Connor did as she instructed, carefully removing the rubber stopper from the test tube while it was inside the hood and using his gloved fingertip to transfer a drop of the blood to his mouth. A lady laughed hysterically in the background. Hank thought it was probably the same woman as before.

Connor turned to smile at Sean. “This is indeed a malaria case. Plasmodium vivax, to be specific.”

“You’re so fucking cool,” Sean blurted out. He immediately blushed like he hadn’t intended to actually say that aloud. To an outside observer it probably looked like Connor didn’t have any reaction to this, but there was enough of a minute change in his expression that Hank could tell he was fucking preening, the smug bastard.

“Alright, Anoosha, do you and your people want to take a turn? I think we’ve monopolized enough of Connor’s time for the moment.”

Dr. Day hefted a cooler bag Hank hadn’t previously noticed she was carrying onto the counter. “I sure do.”

Dr. Day produced another series of samples for Connor, which he dutifully reported on. Hank recognized some of the names he said from news articles about food poisoning or water quality, but most of them were nonsense to him.

Even after Dr. Day and Yolanda ran out of pre-prepared samples, people started coming up with things they wanted Connor to identify. This progressed rapidly from Oh! Let me go get something out of my lab! to Hey, can you identify the mold growing on the tupperware Jackson left in the fridge when he quit? to Lick my hand!

That was the point at which Yolanda put a stop to it. She clapped her hands together to draw everyone’s attention. “Okay, everybody! That’s enough for today. Thank you for your time, Connor. I’ll have Tony, he does our instrument validation, anyway I’ll have him set up a QC protocol for you? As long as you’re willing to come in on a regular basis and have it validated.”

“I’d be happy to,” Connor said. He genuinely looked really excited that people thought his weird android shit was cool. It was kind of endearing. “Thank you for being so ... kind about my differences from you.”

“No, thank you, this is the coolest shit I’ve seen all year. Really. I think a lot of us are kind of jealous actually?” Yolanda said, looking around. Several people nodded. “You’re pretty cool for being so patient with us, too, man, thanks.”

Connor nodded, looked embarrassed (or as embarrassed as someone without the physical ability to blush could look, Hank felt), and said “Goodbye.” Then he abruptly turned and left the room, leaving Hank standing there. Still hadn’t learned how to make his way gracefully out of awkward situations, apparently.

Hank looked around at all the bemused science nerds he’d been left alone with. “Well. That’s my cue. Goodbye, folks,” he said with a half-hearted wave and followed Connor out the door.

—

TO: City of Detroit Human Resources Department
FROM: Chadson, Bradwick
SUBJECT: Viral video involving city personnel

Someone just linked me this video and I’m pretty sure this is our forensics department. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbbque0Y4FU

Can anyone follow up on whether this could constitute a HIPAA violation or whether this is breaking our Code of Conduct/social media polices? Also (assuming it’s not a HIPAA violation) do we actually care?

Bradwick Chadson, MBA
University of Colbridge, Class of ‘34
City of Detroit Human Resources Department

TO: Chadson, Bradwick, City of Detroit Human Resources Department
FROM: Ledesma, Cynthia
SUBJECT: Re: Viral video involving city personnel

Hey, isn’t that the new android detective guy?

Also I followed up with the head of compliance for the labs. He said the micro supervisor made sure there was no PHI or proprietary info in the room during the demo and as far as he’s concerned they’re going to consider this a sanctioned video for PR purposes. He’s not going to pursue any action against anyone for violating their social media policy since it was cleared with him. I say we follow his lead.

Cindy

TO: Ledesma, Cynthia
FROM: Chadson, Bradwick
SUBJECT: Re: Re: Viral video involving city personnel

Thanks Cindy! Also: can we still call ourselves HUMAN resources????

Brad Chadson

TO: Chadson, Bradwick
FROM: Ledesma, Cynthia
SUBJECT: Re: Re: Re: Viral video involving city personnel

Thanks Chad, that’s a good point! I’ll bring it up with legal.

Cindy

TO: Ledesma, Cynthia
FROM: Chadson, Bradwick
SUBJECT: Re: Re: Re: Re: Viral video involving city personnel

My name is Brad.