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Arada was sick, and so was Overse. Stomach bugs travel fast when you live together. The both of them managed to hole up on their own for two days, getting over the bit where they were likely to cause other people to catch their particular stomach bug. Ratthi rolled his eyes at their stoicism, because frankly he could have come by and made them food and cleaned up a little bit with an open window and the promise not to lick anything they had touched. He would have been fine. But the misery that radiated through Arada’s feed message (a voice recording, not text, and that meant she really wasn’t feeling great, if texting took too much effort) convinced him not to force himself on them.
If they wanted to keep their suffering to themselves, well, he could bring them some cheer up and tea leaves once they were on the up and up again.
Two days later, Ratthi convinced them that there was no way they’d still be infectious. Stomach bugs of this kind, and any that showed up on Preservation, were usually vicious but short-lived. (“And you’ll be short lived too if you don’t get some vitamins back into your systems,” he had joked. On the other side of the comm link, Arada had giggled, and Overse had groaned in mockery.)
He arrived in the quiet hours just after noon, when most Preservation people were resting after lunch, not bothered by the humid heat or the bright skies. It took him a moment to adjust once he entered the Arada-Overse family home, windows all closed and darkened against their combined headaches.
Ratthi didn’t hug Arada like he usually would, no cheek-kisses either, although he was sure it would be fine. He gave a grin instead, one she mirrored weakly, one sided.
“You look rough,” he said gently, and followed her into the living space. Overse was curled up on a couch, one foot hanging out from underneath the blanket.
“Don’t insult my girlfriend,” she croaked.
“Oh? Did I miss something?” Ratthi placed the cooling bag on the low table in front of the couch.
“Is my girlfriend,” Overse muttered, retracted her leg, and turned away from him. Ratthi felt his face twist through five stages of affection before he looked up at Arada, now leaning in the doorframe.
“You know how she is on painkillers.”
“I think she’s got a crush on you,” Ratthi winked. “Wait til she hears you’re married.”
Arada giggled, face flushed. Ratthi told himself that certainly was from how much she adored her wife, not the latent fever she seemed to have. There was a sweaty sheen to her forehead.
“So, what did Little Red Riding Hood bring us?”
“Why don’t you sit down and let me show you, gran?”
“Fine.” Arada sat on the ground beside Ratthi, who had folded his legs under himself. She should be in bed, he thought, from the shake of her hands. If only his friends accepted help when they could use it, and not when things were shitty enough they needed it.
He pulled boxes and containers out of his bag, stacking them, giving descriptions of what he had brought. Mostly ready-cut fruit, dry bread, drinking packs. Food for children, in funky colors, nothing too heavy. After three minutes, Arada paled, and shook her head. “If you keep talking about food I’m going to be sick again.” He pointed at the pack of tea leaves instead. “Yeah, fine.”
“Go lie down, I’ll make you two some.” Ratthi helped his friend to her feet, who looked around disorientedly, spotted a perfectly suitable couch right behind her, then noticed the miserable curl that pretended to be Overse, and tapped over.
Back when they had just moved in together, they had a small two-seater of a couch, one that two people could lie on if they lay on top of each other. For their twoyear anniversary, which was way too long to wait with such a thing in Ratthi’s humble opinion, they had decided to upgrade to a corner couch. It fit four people well, for watchparties, and six if you didn’t mind cuddling. Seven if you counted the spot in front of the shorter end, where a SecUnit could lean against the side of it perfectly without having to look at anyone.
Arada flopped down on the other half. Well, the couch fit two sick people, that’s what mattered. Ratthi removed himself into the kitchen, to the backdrop of Arada soothing Overse’s complaining. He didn’t need to search for kettle and mugs - how many times had he made tea for these two, or himself, to battle a hangover, or to get rid of cold hands in the winter? How many times had he thought he needed to make sure these two idiots remembered to hydrate when the whole team was stuck on revising a survey, lost in the tunnel of exciting work and new discoveries?
By the time the tea was done and the kitchen filled with the soothing scent of herbs, both of them had fallen asleep. Arada snored.
He put the mugs down on little coasters (he remembered those too, gifts made by Dr. Ayda Mensah herself, before she was their planetary leader, and really just their one friend who was most competent to lead surveys. Ayda had no eye for design, so the motifs on the coasters were all off. The idea had come from one of her kids, who was at the time deeply smitten by soldering irons, and pressed little patterns into any surface available). “Tea’s ready,” he said, not too loudly. Arada sniffed, then continued snoring. Overse said something unintelligible.
Ratthi sighed, considering to wake them for necessary hydration, but then figured he could just let them nap.
For the next twenty odd minutes, he cleared the kitchen of the previous cycles’ battles, washing dishes quietly (yes, sure, he could have turned on the machine for that, but Overse had some very thin plates and he preferred scrubbing them by hand), ordering the fridge, and stacking the things he brought along into it. A recipe he didn’t know yet was pinned to the fridge, scrawled in barely readable handwriting on actual, flimsy paper. He squinted at it. It wasn’t actually a recipe for food, but one for… clay? With baking instructions and everything.
Next up, he opened the windows properly, to get some actual air into the apartment, not just the same recycled and filtered stuff, not that the filters weren’t effective. It made the rooms warmer, brought some movement along, causing some decorations on the walls to flutter and chime quietly. One of the upsides of having a permanent home down on the planet - if you stayed on a station for very long, you forgot what natural air felt like. It was softer, somehow. Ratthi couldn’t quite explain it.
He picked up some stray items from the floor in the living room. By that time, Arada had woken up again, or was at least not completely asleep anymore. She apologized for the mess once or twice, but didn’t complain. The background noise of someone puttering around the place seemed to restore some of her energy, at least.
Once she sat up, feet stuck under Overse’s grasp, he handed her the mug.
“That’s lukewarm,” she noted, mock-offended.
“Your itty bitty tummy won’t mind.”
She took a sip, and didn’t even make a face. “Thank you.”
“I did the dishes. But showering you gotta do yourself.”
She snorted into the tea and rolled her eyes. “That bad?”
Ratthi inhaled deeply, scrunching his nose up, and said, “Oh grandmother, you stink like the wolf himself.” Arada punched him in the shoulder.
“That’s called spice.”
Quietly, Overse said, “Babe, that’s disgusting.”
Arada nudged the second mug of tea into her wife’s direction, who took it. “Not that. That. Smells nice.”
“See,” Ratthi said, “at least someone here has taste.”
They had their tea in silence.
Eventually, Ratthi said jokingly, from the floor again, “If I’m Red Riding Hood, and you two are the grandparents in need, then who’s the wolf?”
Overse shrugged. She wasn’t so keen on old stories, especially not ones that were full with old biases and morals that no one needed anymore. (She still cried over some of them, when she was drunk enough, but that was a secret that didn’t leave this couch ever.) Arada said, “Hard to be eaten by a wolf when the little child has a sword.”
Now that was cryptic. “I don’t have a sword, Arada.” He squinted. “Is your fever that bad?” She touched her cheek, then her ear.
“It’s gotten better. Don’t worry.”
“I don’t get the joke,” Ratthi pouted.
She pointed at the drone floating in the kitchen.
“Ah.”
Silence. Then Arada groaned. “Was the joke that bad?”
The drone beeped. Once.
Maybe SecUnit had just sent a message. Neither of the two poor sick things were currently in the feed (which was good, because otherwise at least Overse would have tried doing work, and that would just have been such a mess, beside the unhealthy aspect of it. But they were good at that, at least, taking breaks. That too was a skill that had to be learned). Ratthi checked on his external display device. There was indeed a message. It read, I am the wolf.
A second later, another message arrived. Ratthi couldn’t help himself. He downright chortled.
“What?” Arada raised a brow.
He turned the device to her.
“Did,” she said, “did SecUnit send that smiley?”
“Yep.”
“Oh stars. Quick, take a screenshot, before-”
“Too late.” The messages deleted themselves.
“Aw fuck.”
“Language,” Overse I said. Then she added, after a moment, “What just happened?”
Ratthi smiled, because he really couldn’t help himself. He hadn’t even noticed the drone following him to their house, but of course SecUnit was watching. It cared, too, for the sick humans. And for him, maybe. Definitely. It cared so much about everyone, enough to stay on the planet primary as the team prepped for the oncoming survey. (It was helping set up their armory, it claimed. It also was making sure every child in Mensah’s family knew how to kick someone in the kneecaps.)
“SecUnit joined the conversation, and used a smiley, and then deleted that it did that.”
The drone beeped again. Overse, still clearly a bit out of it, said, “If you wanna talk so badly just get your ass over here.”
“Overse,” Arada said, second syllable stressed in surprise. “You can’t just-“
Overse looked equally stunned. “Sorry, sorry, oh SecUnit sorry!” She was looking at the drone, or tried to. The drone said nothing. In the feed, SecUnit didn’t reply either.
“It’s mad at me,” she said, setting the mug back down with too much force. “Man, fuck.”
“I don’t think it is,” Ratthi said, pretty much certain of the fact. He had never actually seen SecUnit properly angry at anyone except when they brought themself into mortal peril. “Don’t panic.”
Hopefully he was right.
It read more like a joke reaction to him, but also he was an optimist who tended to interpret some of SecUnit’s erratics as akin to teenage moodiness.
It turned out that he was right - sixteen minutes later, the drone beeped again, lifting off from where it had settled on a shelf. Overse, who had gone back to napping, woke up again. By then, Arada had made Ratthi proud and decimated three more mugs of tea. The drone evaded her neatly just as she was on the way back from the bathroom. Ratthi saw the drone flit around her head, causing her to turn. She startled at what she saw, outside of Ratthi’s field of view, and then laughed.
“Really?” She sounded excited. Ratthi felt his chest tighten with fondness. Never challenge a SecUnit. The sound of an opening door, and a calm, deadpan voice that said “I have gotten my ass here.”
Arada wheezed so hard Ratthi wondered if she was going to need to sit down. She returned, SecUnit in tow. SecUnit was carrying a backpack. That was unusual. Arada hadn’t noticed, and was telling it that the couch was, sadly, taken by sick gross humans, and that the offending human was asleep. SecUnit didn’t take the beanbag she was pointing at, and instead put its backpack down in the kitchen.
Ratthi shoved to his feet and followed. “What’s that?”
SecUnit dumped most of the content of the backpack on the kitchen counter. Ratthi glanced it over, wrestling the urge to smother the construct in a big hug down with all he had. “SecUnit! That’s food for months!”
From the couch, Overse called, sounding not only confused but completely deranged, “SecUnit is here?”
“Yes, babe, in the kitchen.”
“Oh burning void hold on let me-“ a thumping sound. SecUnit, beside Ratthi, heaved the most world-weary sigh he had ever heard. It glanced at him, for a second, and he shared the sentiment. Then, Overse was in the kitchen, blanket over one shoulder, in rumpled pyjamas, her short hair sticking up wildly. “I’m so sorry SecUnit, I shouldn’t have insulted you, I forgot who I was talking to, I thought you were Gura-“
“It’s fine,” it rumpled. It grabbed one of the wrapped things from the counter. “Here.”
“Huh.” She took it from its hand. Looked at it. Turned it over. “A potato?”
“I analyzed the meals Dr. Ratthi brought for you and noticed a lack of- … food.”
Ratthi, only a little bit offended, said, “What do you know about food?”
The drone turned to face him, intensely. “Nothing.”
“Let me see the rest,” said Overse, having apparently forgotten about how she thought SecUnit hated her now. She pushed in between him and SecUnit, and sorted through the various items. After a moment, she giggled. Then laughed. “Did you steal our grocery list?”
“No,” it said. SecUnits didn’t steal, they dug through all your data and remembered the important bits, Ratthi thought. And then doubled the amount by ten. It didn’t say more than that, so Overse slumped her shoulders. “Fine. Fine. Thank you.”
She pulled the blanket closer around herself and shivered. “I’m gonna-“ she nodded back towards the living room. “Get comfy if you want.”
Ratthi watched SecUnit after she waddled out of the kitchen. “That’s very kind of you. Did you buy all of this?”
“Food is free here.”
Ratthi was struck by a very vivid image. SecUnit, its shoulders hunched up so far that its chin disappeared under the collar of its hoodie, trying to barter for food. It wouldn’t logically know anything about how buying food on Preservation worked - meaning you didn’t really have to buy anything, food was in fact free. But if you wanted to get such large quantities of food, you’d have to compensate somehow. CR money wouldn’t do much, however. He imagined the discussion between SecUnit and whoever was running that particular stall, in which SecUnit got more and more confused. The thought was so surreal he couldn’t help laughing either. “I won’t ask.”
He and SecUnit unpacked everything, and Ratthi thought of a way to store all this stuff, making extra space in every cubby. Then he made more tea, including himself this time. SecUnit stood in front of the fridge, glaring intently at the piece of paper.
“I wanted to buy this too.”
“But?” Ratthi peeked over its shoulder. It would have needed a craft store for this, or a gardening supplier.
“I can’t read this.”
“The writing is pretty bad, yeah.”
(From the couch, Arada called,“ey! I heard that!”)
SecUnit said nothing. Then it turned and left the kitchen. It took Ratthi a moment to realize that maybe, SecUnit couldn’t read non-digital text. He’d have to ask about that eventually.
Ratthi brought more tea to the living room. Both his human friends were now sitting up, not looking at SecUnit, who had just dropped its full weight of what had to be above 110kg into the poor beanbag, and was drawing its knees in.
“We could watch something?” Arada sounded like she meant the offer. “My headache got better. I think I could handle some moving images. You?”
Overse thought for a moment. The moment was a few seconds too long, apparently, because SecUnit said, “No. It’s fine.”
Overse deflated, but said, “Thank you,” instead of ‘sorry,’ which was a win in Ratthi’s book. After a moment of quiet, SecUnit said, “I am not mad at you.”
“I’m glad,” Overse said.
“Actually,” it continued, “I found it kind of funny.”
“Funny?” Arada raised an eyebrow.
“It’s been a while since someone insulted me.”
Ratthi wondered who would insult SecUnit, and then remembered the reality of life outside Preservation. Arada, apparently, didn’t. “What’s the worst insult you’ve been called?”
SecUnit looked at her, for just a moment. She threw her hands up, spilling some tea over herself, “No, don’t answer that. What’s the funniest insult you’ve been called?”
“Idiot.”
Arada cocked her head, and somehow Ratthi felt relieved. He had expected something incredibly awful. “Really?” Arada was dubious. “Not even something more Pin-Lee-ish?”
“Pin-Lee has not insulted me more than she has Ratthi.”
“Hey!”
Overse snorted. “Who called you an idiot?”
“ART.”
All three of them made noises of agreement.
“ART has called me an insufferable know-it-all before,” Ratthi said lightly, remembering that particular instance in which he had simply tried to make sure the lab he was using had been adjusted correctly. Never doubt the big smart AI.
SecUnit made a sound at that. Ratthi looked up, startled. SecUnit was smiling into its knees.
“If anyone is an insufferable know-it-all, it’s ART.” Its voice sounded just a little bit off.
“I’d actually call it a massive dickhead, if I’m honest,” Overse added, and immediately clapped a hand over her mouth. Arada shot her a look.
Another noise came from SecUnit, higher pitched this time. Before Overse could start excusing herself again for the lack of a filter she had at the moment, SecUnit went on, “You’d think something with its brain size would be more creative with its insults, too. ‘Little idiot’? Really?”
“Wait, wait, it called you ‘little’?” Ratthi leaned forward, very entertained.
“I don’t qualify as a ‘giant’ idiot, apparently.” It made another noise. Maybe it was glitching?
The realization hit Ratthi in the face like a frisbee he didn’t see coming. Those weird noises were laughter.
He glanced at Arada, whose expression mirrored a similar understanding. Her face was flushed, either from fever or from the hilarity of the situation. Overse looked similar, but in her case it was definitely still fever.
Overse said, “You know, next time, you gotta throw some really bad insults right back at it.”
Arada’s eyes widened. “Like?”
“Frothy crook-pated dewberry.”
“I don’t know what that means.” Its voice jumped an octave and back in between the words.
“Me neither,” Overse said, almost in hysterics, “But I’ve got more of those.”
“Prove it,” SecUnit said, and if Ratthi knew any better he’d apply the same level of hysterics to Secunit. This was incredible. He locked eyes with Arada while Overse continued.
“Pompous thunderwaffle.”
A singular, high-pitched wheeze came in reply. It continued like this, Overse throwing together words that, for anyone beside herself and a continuously dissolving SecUnit, would not be funny at all. Such was the way, as Ratthi knew - once you started laughing over something, once those hormones were kicking, anything was funny. He just had never expected this to work for a SecUnit, particularly this SecUnit.
He’d never actually seen it laugh. If he was honest, he thought it couldn’t. Wasn’t built to. Lungs need to be a certain size to compress properly into laughter, it needed a certain amount of muscles in chest and throat and mouth that he assumed a construct intended for security and surveillance simply wouldn’t need.
The amount of breathless whistling noises, muted by the arms SecUnit had buried its face in, proved and disproved that theory at once.
There was also a disjointed beeping coming from the one drone in the kitchen. When Ratthi checked on it, he saw it was struggling to stay afloat.
His own stomach hurt from giggling along; there was no way not to laugh with them. Overse was gasping for air and holding her tummy, sweat running down her temple. Arada kept trying to remind her to drink, but then Overse almost did a spit-take at herself and that just made it worse. Arada put the mug away just in time before Overse fell over, into her lap, trying to catch her breath.
She calmed down eventually.
So did SecUnit, who had turned from a curled up form on the beanbag to stretched out and exhausted instead, feet reaching under the low table, arms thrown over its face. It took it much longer than it did Overse to stop from heaving.
Then, suddenly, it sat up straight.
Ratthi startled out of his own contentedness. “You okay?”
“Please wait as I search for that information.”
For a second, dread filled Ratthi. That blank stare usually meant SecUnit was accessing something from its core systems, a diagnostic or something. It was never a good sign. He waited, looking at its face. Its nose twitched once, then its eyes focused again.
“SecUnit?”
“I… I may be experiencing a glitch. My diagnostics do not show any, though.”
Ratthi wanted to put his hands on SecUnit’s shoulder and shake it gently. He valued his life, though, so he didn’t. He did, however, close his eyes and snorted. He couldn’t believe this construct, sometimes.
“Describe that glitch to me?”
SecUnit frowned. “You heard it.” It put a hand on its chest, looking down, and breathed in deeply. “Maybe I broke my lung.”
Not putting his hands in his face took every ounce of self-control Ratthi had. He glanced helplessly at Arada. She shrugged, a hand on Overse’s head. She said, “Does your chest hurt?”
SecUnit looked confused. “A bit.”
“A kind of needling pain in your sides?”
It looked even more confused. “Yes.”
“You laughed yourself into having a stitch.”
Its eyes widened. Ratthi waited for that to sink in. Had it laughed before, ever, in its life? Had it ever heard itself laugh before? Gently, after counting to thirty in his head, Ratthi said, “Laughing is a normal reaction to all sorts of emotions.”
A glare shoved daggers into Ratthi. Arada hissed. “You’ve said the E-word. Big mistake. You big idiot.”
“HAH,” SecUnit said, and then slapped both its hands over its mouth, eyes wide, almost scared. Arada also giggled again.
“This is definitely a glitch,” SecUnit said firmly. “A stupid one.”
“It’s a glitch that means you’re enjoying yourself.” And also that you trust us enough, if you laugh like that, so completely unrestrained , but Ratthi didn’t add that. Laughter meant connection with people, a social function as much as an expression of hormones. If he unleashed all of that on SecUnit now, it might leave the planet before the coming survey started. (Well, no, hopefully not that. But there was a chance he’d ruin this little discovery, and never hear that sound again. And even though he liked being a know-it-all at times, he was not going to risk it.)
The construct squinted, and stayed quiet for a moment. Ratthi assumed was rolling back all of the past half hour, evaluating it again like it did a fight after surviving it.
“This was weird,” it said, finally.
“But it was also funny,” he said softly.
SecUnit didn’t look at him. It just blinked. “Yes.”
It didn’t say much more after that, apparently too stupefied by its own reactions. Maybe it felt awkward. Maybe it was embarrassed. It really didn’t have to be - but if he tried to explain that right now, he would make it worse, Ratthi knew.
He picked up a casual conversation with Arada instead, to keep the silence from becoming fraught. She picked it up quickly, and he knew that once SecUnit had left, she’d have to have a lot to say about what just happened, whether or not its drones were listening in.
SecUnit did leave, not too long after Overse snoozed off again. By then, Arada was also flagging, which was only logical. After all, she too was still recovering from that stomach bug. Ratthi stayed for another hour, making sure the two of them ate something proper before going home.
The next morning, he had a feed message from Arada that suggested they should look into getting Pin-Lee to write down her best insults and swear words for SecUnit’s amusement.