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Amena and I both survived the initial collapse, which was kind of surprising. I'd managed to push her clear of some falling rock, but after that it was sheer luck that the section of tunnel above her stabilised. Her feed interface had smashed when she landed, but she was otherwise uninjured.
Most of that falling rock was now crushing my left leg, but it was dark enough that Amena hadn’t realised and there was no benefit to telling her. Especially since her breathing had been getting shakier and shakier the longer we waited, and now she was sniffing in a way that was sounding distinctly...wet.
“The rest of the survey group knows where we were,” I say eventually. “They’ll be able to scan and figure out exactly where we are, and then repurpose some of the drilling equipment to dig us out-”
“I know all of that,” Amena interrupts. “I know they’ll find us, and I know you’ll keep us safe until they do. I’m not worried about that.”
Objectively, I have failed to keep Amena as safe as Mensah would want for most of the time I’ve known her. And if the tunnel collapses further, there won’t be a lot I can do to help Amena. But it’s still…something…to hear her say it, as though it’s obvious.
Amena sighs. “I should be…I shouldn’t be doing this, like I’m still a child. I should be braver.”
I cut together footage of Amena going after drones with a fire extinguisher, Amena insisting she should be allowed to go on dangerous missions (there’s a lot of those), and then remember I’m an idiot and her feed device is broken. Ugh. Doing this with words is going to be so much worse.
“I have significant amounts of drone footage of you being very stupid and very brave,” I say. “And it’s normal to be scared during life-threatening situations. It would be concerning if you weren’t.”
Amena blinks at me, like she wasn’t expecting any part of that. “I forget you have all your drone footage and your… eye -footage saved. You can just see any of your memories, any time you want?”
Not the part I expected her to focus on, but her focusing on anything other than terror is a good sign. “Pretty much.”
“That must be…really hard, and really convenient?”
For a moment she reminds me of Mensah’s smaller human, asking me if it was weird being a SecUnit. I could cut together another montage of clips proving that all Mensah’s offspring were analytical and nosy, if that weren’t a huge waste of time.
“Yeah.” I don’t know what else to say. Everything is quiet except for shifts of rock all around, and Amena’s quiet sniffling. The silence can’t be good for her, and I’m not having a great time with it either, honestly. I’ve turned my pain sensors down but the pressure of all that rock bearing down on my mangled leg is…eugh. Being immobile like this is way too reminiscent of being ordered to stay still.
And that’s without even getting into the fact that one of my clients is in a perilous situation, and if it gets worse there really won’t be anything I can do about it. If the tunnel starts to collapse more I can try and push my way out and get to her, but more than likely I’ll be too slow. And even if I could get to her in time to stop her being bludgeoned by falling debris, she’d still suffocate faster than rescue could get here. And then I’d just be lying there, in the crush, in the dark, knowing I’d failed her.
This train of thought is not helping. Say something, Murderbot, anything.
“Would it help if you…sat closer?”
She snorts. With how messy her face is, it's objectively pretty gross, but I'll still count it as a win. Being bad at talking to her is at least a kind of distraction. “You know what would help? Are the lights on your suit still working?”
I’m so relieved to have something I can actually do for her that I switch on a light immediately, forgetting what she’d see until she gasps.
“Oh, stars, SecUnit.” She crawls closer, eyeing the rubble compressing my leg with obvious horror. Her hands flutter upwards, then hover there, hesitantly. “I don't know if I could shift any of this, but-”
“Don’t. Moving anything could bring the rest of the rocks down on us.”
She blanches and puts her hands down. Great job, Murderbot. Now she's really calm.
“How can you even talk right now? This must hurt.”
“I can turn my pain sensors down.” Experimentally, I dial them up just a little. Oof. MedSystem will probably be reconstructing most of that knee from scratch. Again.
“Oh, that's….” Her face does a lot of things. “That's better than the alternative but…I wish you didn't have to.”
Something about being pinned down is making everything hit harder. She’s so…concerned, like I’m her client.
“It's fine,” I tell her. She rolls her eyes, proving that technically reaching the age of majority has not stripped her of human adolescent behaviours. I don't know how to feel about the fact that my successful distractions so far have been saying something she thinks is stupid. “Okay, it's currently unchangeable and you don't need to think about it.”
She huffs, opens her mouth to say something, then doesn't. It makes me uneasy. I probably wouldn't have liked whatever she said, but now she's sitting in silence and her eyes are welling up again.
“In your trauma treatments…did they give you stuff, for when…did they give you methods of eliminating emotional distress.”
She snorts. “‘Eliminating,’” She repeats mockingly, then sobers. “I have…guided meditation things I listen to, but-” She gestures to her broken feed interface.
I have no idea what a guided meditation thing is, so I don’t know how to replicate that for her. I wish I knew how long it would be before the others got here - the bulk of the group were only a short hopper ride away, but depending on how localised the quakes were, they might not even know anything is wrong yet. And they might not have all the equipment they’d need with them to dig us out, so then we’d have to wait for that to arrive-
“Sometimes I wish I could delete my memories,” Amena says into the silence. “I don't have everything perfectly recorded like you, but the bad parts…they don't fade as fast as everything else. Sometimes it feels like they aren't fading at all.”
I don't think about collapsing in ART's argument lounge. I don't think about the fragments from my organic memory that persisted through the memory wipes. I think about my fucking client, who is scared and traumatised and needs me to not shut down in the worst possible situation to do that.
“And I was thinking…you could, couldn't you? Delete things that you don't want to remember anymore?”
There's no part of that question I want to go anywhere near. It's way too close to all the things I'm absolutely not thinking about. But there's another rumble overhead, and Amena is shivering and staring at the floor, and before I can think better of it I'm saying, “The company used to wipe my memories. It doesn't work perfectly, because the organic tissue still holds on to some things, but they did as much as they could do.” I pause. “Besides, even if I deleted the memories, my shitty brain would just make up fake ones.”
Amena is quiet and I don't look at her face. “Why would they do that?”
“Increased efficiency.” It's not the whole answer, but I don't have a whole answer right now. Out of all my humans, Amena is the one who knows the least about how the Corporation Rim utilises its SecUnits, even after the Barish-Estranza saga. And I probably shouldn't be relieved about that, because her naivety is dangerous and I want her to be safe, but sometimes it's…better, talking to someone who doesn't know. Other times it pisses me off. Feelings are stupid.
“That's an awful thing to do to someone.”
And maybe I was trying not to think about too many things at once, because a thought slips through and now I'm imagining someone taking Amena's memories away against her will and my performance reliability drops a full 4%.
“If you keep doing the trauma treatments, it will get easier. The long-term success rate for the medical centre you attend is high.”
“I know,” Amena answers, kind of flat, like she’s heard that a lot. She bites her lip and hesitates for a moment, and I get the distinct feeling I’m not going to like what she says next. “Has it happened to you again, the false memories and the shutting down?”
“Amena,” I say, warning.
“SecUnit.”
“This isn't about me.”
She throws up her hands. “Yes, well, it's never about you, because you're always too busy saving all of us. Your leg is crushed and you're trying to make me feel better.”
“It's my job.”
“You're chosen to make it your job.” She glares at me, more determination than anger. “But other people can choose you, too. That's what community, family, is about - you choose to make people your problem.”
It’s so…Preservation. And so absurd, to be applying words like community and family to me. I want to say something cruel so she’ll shut up, tell her to go ahead and unchoose me like a human adolescent telling her to go away. We’re trapped here and I need to keep her calm, so I can’t do that.
Even more infuriatingly, I don’t want to. I don't want her - or any of my other humans, or ART, or Three - prying into my stupid emotions. And if they all stopped, it would be…worse. Both things were worse.
A voice in my head that sounds a lot like Bharadwaj reminds me that if I really wanted to be completely alone, that was an option. I’d made a lot of choices, since I went off inventory, and there was a reason I hadn’t chosen to sit alone in a room somewhere, watching media until I ceased functioning. I didn’t understand what that reason was, but it must be there.
“I haven’t had another involuntary shutdown,” I answer her. “But there’s been…stuff. Fragments.” I don’t look at them, but I can see the shape of the things I’m trying to think around. Shards of memory, recent and ancient jumbled together, following me around. I can’t handle Amena asking for details right now, so I keep talking. “Bharadwaj says it’s kind of a good sign. That a lot of the time you only start to process things when you’re in a better situation.”
Amena huffs. “Ugh. Shouldn’t being in a better situation mean you get to feel good for once?”
“Apparently not.”
Bharadwaj had also reminded me that in the first set of logs I’d sent to Mensah, I’d often described feeling like I didn’t care about anything, and that when I talked to her now, it seemed like I was more often bothered by caring too much about things, like when we were trying to save the colonists from Barish-Estranza. She’d said that was progress, even if it didn’t always feel good. I’d asked her if any part of progress would ever just feel good, and she’d smiled and asked me to let her know if I ever found one that did.
Since Amena is apparently hyper-focused on my wellbeing now, I feel like I should be trying to explain some of this to her, but I didn’t know how. Making choices, being part of an actual team that knew what I was, having humans insist that they cared about me…it was excruciating, except for the part that wasn’t, and I couldn’t have the good part without the awful part. Caring about real things happening to real people felt like someone was carving out my organic parts piece by piece, and I couldn’t stop. ART was the place I felt safest, and it was the only place so far where I saw unreal echoes of shit that happened years ago.
There was no good that wasn’t complicated and fucking painful, and I didn’t want to tell her that. Maybe she was young enough that she hadn’t figured it out yet.
There’s a tiny shift in the rocks pressing down on my leg and something in my knee crunches, and I really can’t keep having these thoughts and being asked these questions right now.
“Do we have to do this now?” I say, as neutrally as I can manage.
“No,” Amena says, seeming to deflate. “I just…it upsets me when you're hurt. And it bothers me that you're allowed to help us with anything but we can't help you, like we're just using you and treating you like a thing, like corporates.”
That’s…fuck, I don’t know what that is. “You're not.”
Amena shrugs, and stares at me for a moment, then seems to realise what she’s doing and fixes her gaze deliberately on the rocks above me instead. “What else do you call it, if everything with us is totally one-sided.” She huffs a little. “I mean, obviously I can’t do most of what you do for us, I don’t have guns in my arms or anything, but you’ve been trying to make me feel better the whole time we’ve been down here even though you hate doing that. If I never do anything like that back, then how am I not just using you?”
I still want to reject the whole premise of her question but I don’t have any words to explain it to her. “The stuff people do to comfort you isn’t…anything I’d want.”
“I know,” she says quickly. “I’m not saying…ugh, I don’t want you to pretend I can fix it all by holding your hand or whatever.” She runs an irritated hand through her hair. “I don’t know what I am saying! Just that it doesn’t seem fair.”
It’s still absurd, the idea of anyone caring about whether things are fair for me. Amena’s expression is doing something I can’t read just from peripheral vision and I really, really wish I had cameras or drones right now. I take a glance at her face and it’s that angry-determined look again. A little like the way I’ve seen humans look when they concentrate on their research, putting all their mental energy into trying to solve a problem.
Okay. If I shove whatever feeling that look gives me as far away as possible and just look at the facts…Amena cares about this, this fairness thing, as absurd as it seems to me. Amena is, as I’ve compiled extensive footage of, unbelievably stubborn. I might be able to convince her to not talk about it anymore, but then she’d just sit there being sad and frustrated and wouldn’t actually stop caring about it, whether I want her to or not. And I’m…not really sure anymore, whether I do want her to.
I could make up something she could do that would fix me, but I’d be really bad at pretending to be fixed and also she explicitly told me not to do that. Ugh. I need to think of something to give her that isn’t a total lie. What have humans done to improve things for me, other than doing what I say and not putting themselves in danger? (I think that line of argument would just get her talking about balance and “using” me again).
Well, a bunch of my humans planned and executed a rescue mission just for me. That was a big one. That’s pretty impossible to replicate, and also involves putting herself at risk, so I’d better not say that. I try to think smaller, and maybe it’s because the lack of extra views down here is a constant background stressor, but the first thing that comes into my mind is ART giving me access to its cameras even though we were fighting and I’d never have asked. Mensah and Pin-Lee fighting to make sure I was allowed drones on Preservation. Pin-Lee doing all that pro-bono legal work drafting my security contracts. Ratthi telling Thiago that I’m a “very private person” and that he shouldn’t go confront me and try to have a big emotional conversation.
Thinking about all those examples in a row like that gives me a weird sensation in my organic parts, and also I’m pretty sure most of it isn’t actionable advice I can give to Amena.
“How about,” I say, slow and awkward, “if I can think of something you can do in a given situation that would be helpful to me, I’ll tell you what it is.”
Amena lights up, and her happiness makes me feel like a liar.
“I’m probably not going to be able to think of anything most of the time,” I warn her. I wasn’t just being an asshole, I genuinely wouldn’t want most of the stuff I’ve seen humans do when they comfort each other. And with most of the things people have done for me, I wouldn’t have been able to say beforehand that I’d wanted them to.
“Well, we’ll figure it out together,” Amena says. I make a face and she makes one back, and it occurs to me I’ve seen her have that exact exchange with her siblings multiple times. Before I have time to be properly horrified, she keeps talking. “Okay, you don’t like to be touched, obviously, but…is it better for you if I sit further away or closer?”
Acknowledging that I have preferences about anything, let alone how close or otherwise humans get, is fucking excruciating, so I think as little as possible before answering. “You can sit closer.”
She shuffles closer and lies down on her back a few inches away, and the relief of her being in a position where she can’t be looking directly at my face is immediate. I wish I could see her expressions, but this is still better.
Looking up at the rocks above, I realise how quiet it’s gotten. The aftershocks seem to have stopped.
“Is it okay if I talk?” Amena asks.
My instinct to say yes, since that’ll probably help keep her calm. But now she’s gotten in my head with this stupid agreement, and an unqualified yes kind of feels like a lie. “...Are you going to ask me more questions about my feelings?”
I don’t need to see her expression, because her sigh communicates it perfectly. “No! Just talking. I could…tell you about the awful play I saw when I was visiting the university?”
That…would not be terrible, actually. I tell her that, and she tells me about the play, and she doesn’t look at me or try to get any closer or ask me any more difficult questions. Amena’s a good storyteller, and the secondhand annoyance at the way the production butchered a perfectly good mythological story humans have been telling for hundreds of years helps me think a little less about the ongoing danger and the tonnes of rock pressing down on what used to be my knee joint.
It doesn’t fix anything or make me magically morph into someone well-adjusted and eager to talk about feelings…but the 17 minutes before the rest of the survey team arrive and dig us out aren’t as bad as they could have been.