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I don’t like spending time around human adolescents. Granted, I don’t like spending time around most humans, but the adolescent ones can be particularly aggravating. They tend to make reckless, impulsive decisions while also acting like they’re invincible. Something about raging hormones and the parts of the brain responsible for making good decisions not being fully developed yet. It’s a winning combination, I know. I might do reckless, impulsive shit all the time, but at least that’s literally what I’m built for. Plus, juvenile humans are just annoying.
Somehow, despite everything, I had just spent the day hanging out with an adolescent human. Voluntarily. I know, I’m as surprised as you are.
Except maybe it’s not that surprising? Amena is one of the few human adolescents that I can tolerate spending extended periods of time around without feeling the need to tear out my auditory processing system. The fact that she’s Dr. Mensah’s kid definitely helps, as does the fact that Amena is marginally less stupid and reckless than other adolescents. I know that she can handle herself in a crisis, for one thing. And after everything that went down with ART and the whole alien remnant debacle, she really seemed to care about me.
Which was weird. But nice.
Amena genuinely seems to think of me as her friend. Sometimes, that leads to moments like her asking if I wanted to go into the city on Preservation with her because “I have extra tickets to a play and I know how much you like media, SecUnit, and wouldn’t it be nice to spend some time together when neither of us are in danger of being shot at?”
As much as I hated the idea of spending the day around so many humans, the prospect of new media was certainly tempting. I could always download a recording of the play later, but Amena seemed excited about watching it together. And. Sue me. Maybe I wanted to watch it together, too.
So that was how I ended up here, stepping out of a theatre with Amena into the chilly evening air after watching a play together, swept along in the flood of other theatergoers that was spilling out into the street. Being surrounded in such close proximity by this many humans still made me uncomfortable, but I’d had a lot of practice with it at this point. Running my code that makes me appear more subliminally human, no one was paying me any mind.
A few city blocks down, the crowds finally eased up, much to my relief. Amena was keeping up an excited stream of chatter about the play. The plot hadn’t been anything too elaborate, something about a lonely man who found himself living in a haunted house. I don’t always go for horror as a genre - too many humans making stupid decisions - but once I remembered to adjust my visuals to see as poorly in the dark as a human would, even I could appreciate the spooky atmosphere. A number of the audience members had actually shrieked during some of the play’s more frightening moments. At times, I had even caught Amena looking like she wanted to reach for my hand. She never did, though. That was another one of the reasons why I didn’t mind spending time with her.
“And that one moment, with the silhouettes,” Amena was saying, “wasn’t that interesting? They could have easily made the same effect with a holo, but I actually like how it turned out with just the simple lights and shadows. It was so well executed, don’t you think?”
It had been well executed. And it was unlike anything I had ever seen in any of my serials, so it had the added bonus of novelty. I made what I hoped was an appropriate face of agreement.
“And the ghost was wonderfully frightening, too,” Amena continued, stepping around a small puddle. It wasn’t properly raining, but the clouds were heavy and mist hung in the air, rendering everything outside unpleasantly damp. Ugh. I hate planets. They always have weather. “I don’t know if I’ve jumped that hard in --” She cut off, grinding to a halt with a frown.
“Amena?” I asked.
“That had better not be what I think it is,” she said, ignoring me and abruptly turning down a cramped alleyway. Instantly alert, I kept pace with Amena while playing back the last few seconds of my drone footage, trying to see what had caught the attention of a young human before it had caught the attention of the bot-human construct literally designed to detect and eliminate security threats.
I had been monitoring our surroundings, like always, so if Amena had spotted something dangerous that I hadn’t, well. It would be embarrassing, to put it mildly.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Amena sounded furious. Uh oh. I could finally see what Amena had noticed: a group of three human adolescents huddled over something on the ground. When she spoke, all three turned to face Amena in surprise.
“None of your business,” one of the teens snapped. Then he reached for her.
That was unacceptable.
Stepping neatly in front of Amena, I snatched his wrist before he could make contact. Then I spun his body around and twisted his arm up behind his back, immobilizing him. I refrained from breaking his wrist, though you wouldn’t know it from the way he was squealing. The other two teens put their hands up, eyes wide. I finally got a visual on what they had been looming over: a furry little mammal, looking bedraggled in the damp air and thoroughly put-out. I don’t know that I’ve ever encountered one in person before, but I’ve watched enough serials to recognize it as one of those domesticated felines that humans love. A cat.
The cat hissed at the teens, who were still gaping at my sudden appearance.
“What’s going on, Amena?” I asked, without turning to look at her.
“These fuckers,” she seethed, “were tormenting that poor cat. I heard them laughing, and I saw one of them throw something. Look, I think it’s bleeding!” There did appear to be a small gash on the cat’s left flank.
I like to think that all of my time spent watching serials has made me pretty good at identifying human expressions. Right now, Amena looked furious, but she also looked shocked. Maybe she was having a hard time believing that people on her idyllic Preservation could be so cruel. I wasn’t shocked. I’ve had plenty of experience with humans being stupidly, arbitrarily cruel.
“Right.” I gave the teen’s wrist a final warning squeeze before shoving him into his friends, who caught him as he stumbled. “Leave. Now.” My voice was firm.
They had been cocky when they thought it was just Amena confronting them, but after seeing how handily I had incapacitated one of them, the three teens barely hesitated before scurrying off into the darkening alley. Smart choice.
I sent a drone to monitor the junction they had disappeared into. I wasn’t particularly concerned about these particular idiodic juvenile humans becoming a threat, but still, I wouldn’t have survived as long as I have if I wasn’t at least a little bit paranoid. Threat effectively neutralized, I turned my attention back to Amena and the cat.
Taking advantage of the teens’ departure, the cat had wedged itself into a corner, glaring warily up at us. Amena crouched a few feet away, peering through the gloom.
“I can’t tell how badly it’s hurt,” she said. “How do you think we should get it out of here?” She looked up at me. Her eyes were doing this watery thing that I really didn’t like the look of. If I wasn’t invested in helping the cat before, I certainly was now, if only so I could avoid any messy emotions happening around me.
“Let me see,” I said, reaching for the cat. That was stupid.
“Wait –” Amena started, but it was too late.
The cat let out a hiss, surprisingly vicious for such a small creature, and swiped at my outstretched hand, ears pressed back flat against its head. I yanked my hand back just a fraction of a second too late, feeling sharp claws catch my skin. The fur on its tail bristled. My education modules don’t contain anything about the body language of domesticated felines, but it was pretty obvious even to me that the cat was less than thrilled to be here.
Yeah. I could empathize.
“Are you okay?” Amena’s hands fluttered in my direction, like she had been about to reach for me and thought better of it.
“I’m fine.” It was kind of a ridiculous question for Amena to ask. She’d seen me get bludgeoned by a drone, shot, shot some more, contaminated by alien remnants, and experience multiple critical systems failures. I had walked away from all of that, and she was concerned about a tiny scratch?
She quirked an eyebrow at me, still looking concerned. Taking a closer look at myself in my drone footage, I realized that my face was doing something weird. Oh. Great.
It’s not like this was the first time someone had lashed out at me when I was only trying to help. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been flailed at, kicked at, even shot at, all by the people I was trying to protect. Humans (and apparently cats) that get pulled out of dangerous situations are usually skittish. I’m used to it. It’s fine.
(There was also something about the way this cat was backed into a corner, though. Trapped. I didn’t want to think about it.)
Ugh. Please tell me I’m not also about to start having emotions about the cat. That’s the last thing I need right now. I hastily schooled my features. “I said I’m fine, Amena. Do you know anything about how to take care of a cat?” I was eager to change the subject.
“Not really,” she admitted.
I was already running a search in the public library feed. In just a few seconds I had located several general articles about feline physiology and behavior, a chapter from some sort of handbook detailing “the care and feeding of your feline friend,” a surprising amount of media featuring cats as characters (I wasn’t quite sure how that would work, but I saved some of the files, tagged for future consideration), and a local clinic that professed expertise in emergency medicine for domestic and wild animals.
I sent the information about the clinic to Amena in the feed. Her eyes briefly went glassy as she read the clinic’s page, and then compared the clinic’s address to our current location. “That’s not too far from here,” she said. “Definitely within walking distance. I guess now we just have to figure out how to get it there.”
“Do you want me to just grab it?” I asked, not particularly thrilled about the prospect.
“No,” Amena said hastily. “No, I think we should at least try to coax it out first. Try not to cause any more stress, you know?”
Sure. Good luck with that.
Amena crouched down cautiously, turned slightly to the side so as to not directly face the cat. She suggested that I move back out of the way, since I had already frightened it. I obliged, moving to the other side of the alley and doing my best to appear non-threatening. (A murderbot, trying to look non-threatening. What a good metaphor. Or is that irony? Whatever.)
Extending her hand slowly in the cat’s general direction and avoiding eye contact, Amena started gently cooing. She looked ridiculous, but after a few minutes, the cat’s ears were no longer pressed back flat against it’s skull, and the fur on its tail had shrunk down so that it looked less like a cleaning bristle. It certainly seemed calmer. Eventually, the cat took a few tentative steps forward.
Amena didn’t turn to look directly at the cat, even as it slowly approached her. It sniffed her finger, cautious, hesitated, then gently bumped her finger with its nose. Amena froze for a split second. Then, she carefully turned her head to look, just as cautious as the cat had been. When the cat didn’t bolt away, Amena crooked her fingers and began to scratch gently under the cat’s chin.
A few moments passed, with Amena gently scritching and cooing the whole time. The cat leaned into the affection, shoving it’s head up into Amena’s palm, then rubbing its cheek against her knee where she was crouched. How had she just done that? This cat was an entirely different animal than the feral-looking creature that had taken a swipe at me.
Still moving slowly, Amena shrugged out of her jacket. Deftly, she scooped the cat up, wrapping it in the jacket. The cat wriggled a bit, but stilled after a few moments, seemingly willing to trust Amena. Or maybe it just liked the fact that the jacket was warm and dry.
“Let’s go,” Amena said, and we started off towards the clinic.
So that was how I found myself, four hours later, sitting in the kitchen in the farmhouse while all of the humans were asleep, sharing the space with a cat.
The lady working at the clinic had been efficient and helpful. A scan of the cat revealed no serious injuries, other than the minor gash in the cat’s side, which had bled sluggishly. After administering a mild animal-safe painkiller, the clinic’s worker cleaned the wound and applied an appropriate wound sealant.
“The scan hasn’t turned up an ID for this sweet girl,” the clinic worker said as she finished treating the cat’s injury, “which means she’s definitely a stray.”
“So what’s going to happen to her?” Amena’s concern, which had eased when we arrived at the clinic, reappeared.
“Well, she’s more than welcome to stay in our shelter until we can find her a good home. I don’t suppose you’re looking to add a cat to your family? She already seems to trust you.”
Amena barely hesitated before agreeing.
“You’re not going to check with your parents before just bringing a cat home?” I sent Amena a private message in the feed.
“Oh, they’ll come around sooner or later,” Amena replied. “Besides, it’ll be much easier for me to make my case that the cat can stay if my parents can actually see her. First mom in particular was never really able to resist a cute face.”
After that, it was only a matter of filling out some paperwork and acquiring some supplies, and the cat was sent home with the two of us for a ten cycle trial period.
So, yeah. Amena’s family had a new cat. It would be interesting to see how she was planning on explaining this to her parents. That was a problem she could deal with in the morning, though. We had gotten back late enough that everyone was asleep. Amena took just enough time to make sure the cat was settled before going off to rest herself.
I settled myself in the common area, claiming one of the large, padded armchairs that was large enough to fit two humans comfortably. I wanted to take the opportunity to catch up on some of my media. After a long day of interacting with humans, even a human that I kind of liked, it was nice to sit in the dark and not think about anything other than whether or not the main character on Planetary Bodies would realize that they were a clone.
I was two and a half episodes deep into the second season when I detected movement out of the corner of my eye. Evidently the cat, although I had initially frightened her, had grown accustomed to my presence, because she settled down next to me on the seat with a slow blink. A quick reference to my newly acquired feline literature indicated that the blink was a sign of trust.
I was glad Amena couldn’t see my face right now. I was sure it was doing something strange.
Slowly, taking my cue from how Amena had treated the cat earlier, I held out my finger for the cat to sniff. She considered my outstretched finger. I held my breath. Then, she pushed her cheek against my finger.
I felt my eyes widen in surprise, though I kept my body still. She was so soft! No wonder humans in the media liked to touch their domesticated animals. Conscious of my own strength, I gave the cat a cautious scratch, just like I had seen Amena and the clinic worker do, before drawing my hand back and resting it at my side.
I’d have to rewind the last five minutes of Planetary Bodies. Even with my ability to process multiple inputs at once, the sudden appearance of the cat was incongruous enough to distract me. Before I could return my full attention to my media, though, I felt something.
Looking down, I saw that the cat had extended a paw and was gently tapping at my hand. Curling a paw around to the far side of my wrist, it gave a little tug. A far cry from the way it had lashed out in panic at me earlier. Unless I was mistaken, the cat was guiding my hand back to its head. It wanted me to keep touching it.
Well. I am excellent at multitasking. It’s well within my power to stroke a cat while watching my media.
An episode and a half later, that was the position that Amena found us in when she blearily wandered into the common area. With the lights as low as they were, it took her a moment to notice I was there. I could tell because when she finally did spot me, she let out a quiet “eep!” and froze, before relaxing.
“Hi, SecUnit,” she whispered, glancing towards the cat with a small smile.
“There are still several hours left in the rest period,” I pointed out, determinedly not acknowledging the fact that I was still stroking the cat.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Amena glanced towards the cat again, her face a little more sober this time. “I can’t stop thinking about the way those kids were hurting her. I know that people are people, and they’re capable of doing good things or bad things no matter where they are, but…” she trailed off with a sigh.
But this was Preservation. Yeah.
I didn’t really know what to tell her. Pointing out that humans could be arbitrarily cruel didn’t seem like it would make her feel better, as true as it was. ART’s voice popped into my head, unbidden: Tell her you care about her.
What came out instead was, “Do you want to watch media with me?”
Amena smiled. “Yeah, I’d like that.”
“What would you like to watch?” I was happy to take a break from Planetary Bodies . It looked like they were gearing up to delve into some serious relationship drama sparked by sexual infidelity, and that’s a plotline I have very little tolerance for.
“Maybe something scary,” Amena suggested. “That play was fun. My friend was talking about a new horror movie the other day that they said was pretty good.”
I scrolled through the entertainment feed until I found the movie that Amena was talking about and then set it to play on the display surface. Before I started playing the movie, Amena ducked into the kitchen, returning with a container of fried vegetable material.
The movie opened with a group of humans on a survey to a supposedly uninhabited planet. There was the usual banter and light-hearted teasing, establishing this group as a tight-knit crew that worked well together. The inciting incident occurred when one of the scientists found an interesting sample that didn’t behave the way it was supposed to. I think it was a fungus of some sort, white and weirdly geometric, though I’ll be honest, biology isn’t really my forte, and I wasn’t paying much attention to the fake science in this movie anyways. I could already tell that this movie wasn’t going to be realistic at all.
The group argued about what to do with the sample: Plucky Scientist wanted to go look for the sample’s origin, while Stern Leader wanted to wait for guidance from their affiliated university. I could see it coming from a mile away: Plucky Scientist snuck out of their compound during the rest period.
(“Idiot,” Amena commented. “That was a terrible idea. At the very least, he should have taken backup.” I felt a weird stab of pride.)
Plucky Scientist followed a fungal trail back to a series of underground tunnels. He entered the tunnels, because of course he did. Eventually, he wound up in a cramped cave and discovered, much to his horror, a humanoid corpse that was covered in the strange fungus. Plucky Scientist approached (“why, why would you do that,” Amena said, watching through her fingers), and the corpse’s eyes snapped open as it lunged forward and grabbed -
Out of nowhere, I experienced a performance reliability drop that was so sudden and unexpected that I temporarily dropped all of my inputs. Rattled, I watched as Plucky Scientist’s helmet got knocked aside and their eyes went distant, inhaling the spores drifting in the air.
I got as far as the now mindless Plucky Scientist returning to the compound, presumably to murder everyone inside before I caved and switched the display surface over to episode 174 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Amena looked over at me, startled. I ignored her, staring forward at the display.
After a minute, she spoke. “Is this the arc where they accidentally wind up trading places with versions of themselves from the alternate timeline? I loved that bit.”
Somehow, Amena had apparently seen at least 174 episodes of Sanctuary Moon, which I had not expected. Maybe she had watched it with Mensah? I didn’t reply to her, but she seemed content, and she tactfully didn’t press me on the impromptu switch.
Halfway through the episode, though, I still felt a bit jittery. That pissed me off. I know I’m not in a good place when I can’t enjoy my favorite show. My hands were clenched into fists: I could feel my joints grinding. I shook them out, trying to relieve the tension without Amena noticing, and the movement disturbed the cat that I had forgotten was still beside me.
She stood up from the comfortable loaf that she had settled into, stretching luxuriously. Then, she daintily stepped onto my lap, and settled back down. This was obviously unexpected. This was an even clearer display of trust than that slow blink earlier. I froze, not wanting to disturb her further. Was this really comfortable for her? I’m not as squishy as some humans are, and I’m definitely not as squishy as the padded chair she was laying on before.
I was surprised at how good it felt. I hate hugs. You will not catch me touching a human outside of an emergency situation. But this felt… different. The warmth, the gentle pressure. Something about it was soothing. I felt like my thoughts had been fogged over by heavy static, and I was only just noticing now that the static was fading and my mind was clearer.
Yeah. Having a cat curled in my lap felt good. I knew my lap might not be comfortable, but. I didn’t want her to leave.
Inspiration struck. Remembering how miserable the cat had looked in the cold and wet, I upped my body temperature by a few degrees. After a few minutes, I became aware of a faint rumbling, like a little motor. It was coming from the cat. I could hear the quiet rumble, but I also felt the vibrations where the cat was laying across my lap. Anxiety all but forgotten, I sank into the sensation, marveling.
So that’s what purring was.
As the episode drew to a close, another sound joined in: slow, deep breathing, with the barest hint of a snore. Looking over, I could see Amena, curled into a ball, cocooned in blankets. She had finally drifted off, expression peaceful.
Lowering the volume of the display, I queued the next few episodes of Sanctuary Moon, and I settled in for a quiet evening.
Yeah. This felt nice.