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Peri's SecUnit was a mess.
If he was honest with himself, Seth hadn't expected it to be as intact as it was. Losing it had been an impossible blur, a storm of too-bright colors and too-loud sounds and too-much pain. He'd thought for sure that the ag-bot had killed it, and that the colonists would cannibalize it for parts. He'd been bracing himself to try and blindly navigate the unknown, hostile frontier of Peri's grief.
Peri did a lot of posturing. Every semester, it liked to flex its processing power to intimidate the freshmen—and to amuse the upperclassmen. It could be exasperating, but it was always obvious to Seth that Peri never intended to harm anyone, regardless of what it said.
You are incorrect, Iris. I can bomb the colony.
That hadn't been posturing. Seth had never heard Peri speak like that, without a trace of warmth or irony. Not to anyone on its crew. Not to Iris, especially.
He didn't understand the connection that Peri had with the SecUnit, but if Peri was willing to kill for it, Seth was glad to have it aboard and in one piece.
...More or less, anyway. Its hand had been detached at the wrist and stuck back on with sloppy haste, and the amount of blood and fluid it was leaking suggested that some vital something might have come dislodged inside its torso, but it was conscious and coherent enough to trade snark with its clients as well as with Peri.
One of the SecUnit's friends—the child, Amena—made a joke at its expense as Kaede drew yet another bullet out of the SecUnit's torso. Rather than respond to her verbally, it made a rude hand gesture in her general direction. Amena countered with a gesture of her own, and Seth thought that she and the rest of the SecUnit's companions seemed pleased with its reaction. Like its ability to process and respond to sarcasm in kind was one of the litany of small tests that it had to perform to prove that it was functional. Turn your head to the left. Okay, now the right. Ping me through the feed. Tell me to fuck off. Good.
Constructs are uncanny by their very nature. Seth had lived and worked in the Corporation Rim for the whole of his life, and a lot of that time spent living and working was up close with SecUnits, for one reason or another. He'd always thought that the way their human faces rested, blank and unfeeling as dolls, while they stared you down in obvious threat was deeply unsettling at best. Some people called SecUnits monsters, but Seth couldn't agree with that; they were just bots draped in human skin, convincing until you got close enough to see that there was nothing inside them that felt or thought.
Or so he had deluded himself. Peri's SecUnit was uncanny in itself precisely because of how human it truly was. It wore a spectrum of emotions plainly on its face for all to see, and even that much Seth could tell was uncomfortable for it.
He opened a file he'd saved months ago, when Peri had first told him about the new friend it had made while it was on its latest cargo run. The security footage was taken from cameras in one of Peri's lower corridors. Seth watched as the SecUnit stalked up and down the length of the hall, trying and repeatedly failing to convincingly mimic the natural stride of a human.
You walk as if you've never seen it done before, commented the Peri of the past. The SecUnit stopped to glare at the nearest bulkhead.
"Let's see you do better," it snapped.
At the time, Seth hadn't known what to make of the footage. At first Peri had been reluctant to admit that it had broken the no-contact rule, but when it became clear that the crew's suspicions concerning depleted medical stocks couldn't be assuaged with doctored logs, it had come out with everything all at once. When the dust had settled and everyone had come down from the shock enough to listen to Peri's explanation, Seth had been struck by the undercurrent of pride in its story. It talked about helping its rogue SecUnit escape corporate bondage the same way that it talked about solving advanced theorems.
("Love" was a word that Peri would have objected to. It accepted "I love you"s from Iris with indulgence, and Seth knew that it was fond of her and the rest of the crew with a depth of emotion that a human could never hope to articulate, much less feel themself. But when he'd first watched the footage of Peri's SecUnit and listened to them trading barbs as if they had been friends since Peri's activation, Seth thought that Peri loved the SecUnit, in its own way. He thought that again now, watching through the feed as it was put back together under Peri's supervision.)
Captain Seth.
Seth minimized the camera input in his feedspace to give Peri his full attention. He thought he knew what this was about. Peri only called him "Captain" in an official capacity. Or when it wanted something. "Yes, Perihelion?"
Peri paused for a full second, acknowledging his sarcastic use of its full name. I would like to offer a proposal.
Yes, Seth definitely knew what this was. He thought about opening with his ruling, but Peri was being uncharacteristically polite, so he decided to respond in kind. "What sort of proposal?"
He should have expected Peri to make its case as strongly as possible, but Seth was still momentarily stunned as his feed flooded with data. Graphs charting annual budgeting related to damaged equipment and crew injuries and consulting fees superimposed themselves in his vision, accompanied by clips taken from cameras and drones and what he suspected were the SecUnit's own eyes, depicting it facing down multiple opponents at once and, he guessed, extracting clients from dangerous situations. (He didn't recognize the young woman that the SecUnit carried into Peri's medbay, but there were also images of his own crew, including himself, that were obviously recorded mere hours ago.)
"Peri—" There was so much information to process at once. Peri was aware of the limits of the human brain—it kvetched about such things at every opportunity, delighting in reminding its crew that the processing power of their organic brains was severely inferior to its own. If it was bombarding him with the whole of its argument at once, Seth suspected that it was anxious. That it was anticipating rejection and wanted to make certain it killed off all potential arguments immediately. The effect was that Seth had no idea where to direct his attention, much less begin discussion.
If you would turn your attention to Chart A, you will see that the University of Mihira and New Tideland budgets a frankly unnecessary amount of credits towards the eventuality of stolen and damaged equipment, said Peri, steamrolling Seth before he could complain about the feed-overload headache he was already developing. Such expenditure could be reduced or even eliminated completely through the employment of a full-time security consultant.
"Peri, you—" Seth closed tabs blindly, trying to clear his feed so he could think straight. He shut a tab displaying a colorful pie chart, only for Peri to open it again and start highlighting values.
Here, I have broken down the average annual expenditure on security consulting fees for each of the vessels in the University's advanced fleet. Seth tried to focus as Peri indicated the two largest slices of the chart. The last time we reached the cap on our consulting budget was eight fiscal quarters ago. By comparison, the Apogee has consistently exceeded its consulting budget for the last five quarters.
That was because Captain Madara was getting more paranoid with each passing year, in Seth's opinion, but pointing that out would be a waste of breath. "Peri, listen—"
According to my calculations, retaining permanent onboard security would be significantly cheaper than continuing our current policy of vetting and hiring consultants on an as-needed basis, if we account for costs saved on equipment, and assume that said consultant would not also require additional sustenance.
There it was. Seth forced all of his inputs closed at once and spoke as quickly as he could while he had a moment. "Peri, if you're suggesting that I hire your friend—"
I am of course aware that, when they were first drafted, the captains' guidelines advised that active SecUnits should not be permitted onboard under any circumstances, Peri blasted on ahead, playing its own devil's advocate. But if you check the most recently updated copy of the guidelines, you'll see that an exception has been logged.
What? Seth started to open the Perihelion knowledge base, only for Peri to decide that he was moving too slowly and open it for him. It highlighted the relevant item. Seth read it aloud.
"Due to the extreme danger presented in the employment of Security Units, the Captain is advised to oppose any suggestion that one be brought onboard the vessel. Further, the Captain should treat the insistence by diplomatic parties that a SecUnit enter the ship as a deliberate threat of harm against their crew, and terminate any ongoing negotiations with prejudice." That was all the same as it had been when the advanced fleet was first launched, but Peri indicated a clause that Seth was positive hadn't been present the last time he had checked. "An exception may be made, provided that the SecUnit in question is operating under its own power and is not beholden to the orders of any controlling entity, corporate or otherwise."
For fuck's sake. "Peri, you can't just edit the guidelines when they don't suit you."
I believe that when we reenter University feedrange, you'll find that the University's master copy says the same thing.
"You can't hack the University's document library!" Seth knew that his protests were pointless; no doubt Peri had edited the master document immediately upon its return to the University after it met the SecUnit. It would be completely impossible to prove that the change hadn't come from the dean of the AI department, as well, provided no one asked her directly.
Peri didn't refute the accusation with any of its usual sly smugness over having defeated the written rules. It sat silent in the feed for several heavy seconds, and Seth realized that he'd cowed it. It had interpreted his disapproval as preemptive denial.
"Peri," he said, softly. Parent to child. "Why do you want to hire the SecUnit, really? You know that we don't need to retain a full-time security consultant."
The necessity of the position is... not the primary motivation behind my request.
"Obviously not. Tell me what is."
Another pause. Seth suspected that Peri was rearranging the rest of its documentation to select the single argument that it thought would give it the highest chance of success.
SecUnit is my mutual administrative assistant.
Seth wasn't sure how to respond to that. "What does that mean?"
SecUnit is averse to use of the word "friend."
He nearly laughed, but Peri had fallen silent again, and Seth didn't want to tease it any more than he already had. "Peri, you know that all you had to do was ask, right?"
The overhead vent sighed a quick blast of cool air before closing again. Peri experimented occasionally with signaling its emotions physically through creative manipulation of its systems. Some things, like flickering lights or toneless beeping, were fairly obtuse and difficult to parse. This wasn't. Seth smiled at the nearest camera. "After the absolute shitshow that this week has been, did you really think I wasn't already planning to offer your friend a job?"
I calculated the risk of a refusal as slim, but not negligible.
Fair. "I'll extend the offer when it's had a chance to recharge."
Peri said nothing for several seconds, and Seth reached up to rub his temples. "You already offered it the job, didn't you."
Presumably. I have quarantined SecUnit's kernel and a small potion of myself while I extract the infection from its code. I did so with the intention of asking it once I was done.
Seth reopened the shuttle bay camera. SecUnit was still on the floor, but the crew had backed off when they finished the most urgent repairs. With SecUnit stable, the next step was to get it to medical. Since it was—for all intents and purposes—unconscious, the group was waiting somewhat awkwardly for the gurney that Peri had presumably already dispatched. "You think it will say yes?"
Rather than answer the question directly, Peri said, I will find out once I sync with the sequestered part of myself.
It had been overwhelmingly anxious about the possibility of Seth shooting down its hope of hiring SecUnit, so Seth thought that Peri was probably wringing its operating system over what SecUnit would say to its offer. He didn't know SecUnit well enough to guess, personally. Regardless—
"Peri, you need to fix the guidelines before someone notices your edit. I'll talk to the dean myself, but it'll make things that much more complicated if I have to present with an argument in favor of contracting with a SecUnit as well as yet another apology on behalf of my rogue transport for its immature behavior."
I am neither rogue nor immature.
"Reset the knowledge base copy, please," Seth reiterated firmly. "But save a draft of the edit. I'll propose it officially to the dean when we get home."
Peri acknowledged, and a second later it sent Seth the repaired document. He saved it to his personal storage, tagged with a reminder to skim it to see what other rules Peri had quietly edited when he wasn't paying attention. There were almost certainly at least a few.
The last several days might as well have lasted years. Seth was exhausted in every sense of the word, and wanted nothing more than to drag Martyn out of his room in medical for a nap. But Peri's mood was easing, and it was hard not to feel better now that it was beginning to relax. Half of the crew was in medical isolation, and the list of broken systems was a lightyear long, but nobody was bleeding out, and nothing was on fire. Sometimes, that was the best that the captain of the Perihelion could hope for.
Peri continued to hang in Seth's feedspace. It was of course omnipresent within its own body, and could devote equal attention to operating on SecUnit and discussing engine repair with the group in engineering and making itself conspicuous in Seth's head. Seth waited for nearly a minute to see if it would speak up unprompted.
"Are you alright, Peri?"
A one second pause. Peri had to think about it, but barely.
Yes, Captain.
"Are you sure? You're still calling me 'Captain.'"
Peri sent a sarcastic amusement sigil, something that it rarely bothered with. I apologize for my formality, Seth.
"You're forgiven. What are you thinking about?"
Seth anticipated a scathing retort, something to the effect of 'I am thinking about everything all at once, always, and you're welcome for it.' But for once, Peri forwent the deliberate misinterpretation of the broad question.
Thank you for hearing me out.
Peri wasn't much for sincerity. Irony allowed it room to preen, and was generally received with positivity by its crew. A genuine remark was a rare gift, even for its captain. Peri's thanks was confirmation for Seth that being with SecUnit meant the universe to Peri, that it had found someone it loved, in its own way.
"Of course, Peri."
It was the best that the captain of the Perihelion could hope for.