[[quoteright:265:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/jeff_and_deacon.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:265:Now, where would this fall on the JustForFun/{{Kinsey Scale|OfTropes}}?]]

-> ''"Actually I prefer the term... inhuman."''
-->-- '''Deacon'''

A completed webcomic by author Creator/AlexWoolfson and artist Winona Nelson, which ran from March 2011 to March 2012. One of four finalists for the 26TH Annual Lambda Literary Awards in the "Graphic Novel" category. It can be found [[https://youngprotectors.com/artifice/artifice-title-page/ here]].

It was supposed to be a routine "clean-up" mission on the isolated colony Da Vinci Four, but Deacon, a prototype android soldier, has failed spectacularly. Not only did he disobey orders, letting a 19-year-old business liability named Jeff survive, he also attacked and killed those who were sent to help him. Now, the brilliant and uncompromising robopsychologist Clarice Maven has been summoned by the Corporation to determine why.

With Deacon at her absolute mercy, Maven will find out exactly what happened between the android and this boy—and she will use her terrible power to make sure Deacon never fails the Corporation ever again.

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!!Tropes:
* AIIsACrapshoot: WordOfGod says that this is what Deacon is afraid of.
* AllThereInTheManual: According to comments left by alex in the comments section, the other four Deacon-lookalike androids all have names starting with "D" as well, though he hasn't yet revealed what exactly those names are.
* AndIMustScream: Thanks to his immobilization codes, Deacon was paralyzed, helpless as the man he loved was knocked unconscious, then thrown into a cell when he laid inert on the floor for three days, having nothing but part of the wall and worrying about Jeff to occupy the time until his battery died. Yeesh.
* AndroidsArePeopleToo: Subverted. The corp's marketing pitches this idea to the public to make them more comfortable about androids. But behind closed doors they treat them as tools and weapons.
* AntiHero: Deacon shows contempt for humanity and has, in the words of another (more famous) android, "done questionable things" in the service of his masters
* ArtificialHuman: Deacon looks and, for the most part acts, completely human, even though he rejects the term.
* ArtificialIntelligence: Deacon is an android soldier.
* BerserkButton: Maven gets ''pissed'' when Deacon tries to steer the flow of conversation during their session, or when he tries (''tries'') to outsmart her with vague answers.
%%* BoysLove
* BullyingADragon: The security guard does this in the opening, with predictable results.
* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Seems to be what runs the company. They will even order mass-murder to prevent the leakage of compromising information that could threaten their stock price.
* DeadpanSnarker: Deacon.
* DidntSeeThatComing: [[spoiler: It never occurred to Maven (or anyone else) that since Deacon knows his own override codes (he has to be able to respond to them after all), he could ''tell'' somebody else, like Jeff, what they were so that Jeff could invoke them to order Deacon to rescue to him. Maven also failed to foresee that all Deacon needed to do was prevent her from speaking in order to render her incapable of giving him commands]].
* DoAndroidsDream and JustAMachine: Two security guards taunt Deacon in the opening scene, referring to him as just "an appliance."
%%* FictionalFieldOfScience: Robopsychology
* GoshDangItToHeck: Jeff seems to have shades of this, twice employing the word "freaking" when an f-bomb would seem less shoehorned by comparison.
* GrievousHarmWithABody: While trying to protect Jeff, Deacon attacks members of the recovery team with... other members of the recovery team.
* GrowBeyondTheirProgramming: Deacon learning what it is to be in love, and to have that overcome his design to follow orders dispassionately.
* HeteronormativeCrusader: The colonists of Da Vinci Four. Even Maven notes with some disdain that people from the outer colonies are often socially "regressive".
* InMediasRes: The story opens after Deacon has left Da Vinci Four. We find out what happened there as he tells his story to Dr. Maven.
* LeaveNoSurvivors: Deacon's team's orders, and nobody seems to see [[UsefulNotes/TheLawsAndCustomsOfWar anything wrong with that]].
* LudicrousPrecision: Deacon estimates the odds that he and Jeff survive as 1,732,413:1. [[spoiler: Subverted in that he's just pulling those numbers out of his ass.]]
* MegaCorp: The corporation that created Deacon has its own military, makes its own rules and has seemingly endless resources.
* OneWordTitle: Presumably referencing the "Artificial" bit of their {{Artificial Human}}s...
* PsychoPsychologist: Even taking into account that Deacon has killed several people, the pleasure Maven seems to take in being especially vindictive towards him is unprofessional to say the least.
* {{Robosexual}}: Android soldier Deacon has a romance with a human, Jeff. Although Deacon is the one who initiates the relationship, Jeff quickly comes to enjoy it as well. Seeing how he had been treated up until then, he might just fall for [[AMatchMadeInStockholm the hot, muscular guy that actually is interested in him]] for once.
%%* ScaryShinyGlasses: Maven.
%%* StraightGay: Jeff.
%%* TheStoic: Deacon, at first, even when getting violent. Though this later seems to slip when he interacts with Jeff, and when Maven starts getting tough with him.
%%* TraumaticHaircut: Although it's got to be said-- when you compare the 'before' and 'after', [[spoiler:even though Jeff's pretty horribly beat up,]] it would seem that a lot of people think it's almost like a [[spoiler: haircut]] version of TheGlassesComeOff combined with BeautifulAllAlong.
* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: Understanding what went wrong with Deacon is important to the corp only inasmuch as he is a very expensive construct. Plus, their androids have now reached a level of sophistication that they can no longer simply troubleshoot their hardware and software. Deacon is undergoing psychoanalysis in order to determine what the fault was and how to prevent it in future models.
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