Work Text:
The bot’s primary function was cleaning toilets, so when it started killing people, no one exactly saw it coming.
It suffocated 35 miners before someone thought to axe off its plunger extension. This left it with a jagged extendable piece of metal it used to impale some dozen more contract labourers, and presumably stopped only because it ran out of room. The remainder of the station it killed by flooding the levels with waste water.
I could have easily not gotten involved with this one. But then I agreed to come to a planet.
#
The thing about planets is that they universally suck.
(And you can trust me on this. The data ART and I have been recovering from my organic parts showed I’ve been to a minimum of 3564 different planetary systems, and trust me when I say that none of them were good.)
This one sucked especially bad, because one sad colony notwithstanding, it was populated exclusively by teenagers. In the time it took me to reflect upon every bad choice that led me here, the promising young minds of the current PUMNT class managed to split up into nine separate fractions, and it was a miracle only eight were trying to do illegal substances.
The rest of the teens (I was reporting the underage substance use on the security feed I had already hacked my way into, and sectioning off a part of my processing grid to monitor the fifteen panicked calls Tarik was receiving over this) were at a sports court, trying to decide how to split into teams to play whatever game the court in question was intended for. (Okay, it was a volleyball court.) (I knew about those because ART and I had just watched six seasons of a show that revolved entirely around teenagers playing it. I had a feeling whatever happened here wouldn’t be as wholesome, or rule-abiding.) I was the class chaperone, so all of this was sort of my problem.
(Back on the shuttle, Tarik was telling an angry colony overseer he hadn’t shared his security key with me and promising PUMNT had nothing to do with my access to sensitive information.) (Honestly, I’d hacked their feed the second we were within range, so if they were only noticing now, they had way bigger things to worry about.)
Most conversations died as I walked past. I ignored all of this. Amena, who was most of the reason for why I was here and also currently sat next to a teenager with an illicit substance in their hand, looked up at my arrival.
“Don’t even start,” she told me (the other adolescent hurriedly threw the tobacco product into the shrubbery behind them, and I walked over to stomp it out). “I’ve been telling them to stop, I ’m not smoking, You have nothing to tell my mom.”
Right. Because running to Mensah with details about her daughter’s boring life was all I ever did. I said, “I could go to your uncle.” I would not be going to her uncle.
She snorted. “Which one?” And then to the other teen, “Relax, it won’t get you in trouble.”
Yeah, I wasn’t committed to that yet. I didn’t argue, though, because I had finally realized the other teen was maybe 80% metal and was wondering why my chaperone file didn’t think to mention it.
(Probably because that was safety consultant stuff, and I wasn’t currently a safety consultant.) (Tarik was. I wasn’t even meant to be here, honestly, but once I heard Amena wanted to join a class trip to Corporation Rim I called Pin-Lee and she made them give me a contract.) (Yeah, I know. I wasn’t thrilled about the chaperone position either, but Pin-Lee said it was either that or getting a fake identity as a student, and I wanted to do that even less.)
(Anyways. Metal kid, right.)
They seemed to have a quarter of organic limbs, with both their arms and one and a half of their legs being some flashy new CorpRim augment. I was now tapping into the SecSystem, and it was telling me the brand name was FierCo, and that the teen also had a metal spine and a neural implant that allowed them full mobility.
Damn. A few more organs here and there, and they could have qualified for a SecUnit.
“Rin?” Amena was clearly repeating herself. Fuck. I blinked to attention. (Yeah, I was going as Rin again. I was pretending to be an augmented human too, because humans generally didn’t like SecUnits watching their kids.) (Unless it was a labor camp, of course. Then no one cared what humans liked or didn’t like.) I replayed the last five seconds just to get some context, and then three more times to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating.
SecSystem confirmed I wasn’t glitching again. What the fuck. I stared Amena down.
“You want me to play a human sport with you?”
“Just a sport, yeah, because we’re all human here.” Amena gave me a look. Right, whatever, my secret identity. “And I was just saying, if you don’t want Petra to smoke, come join the game so she can play instead.”
Right. So.
The issue my kids were having —
(Kids I was in charge with. Not my kids.
I was not claiming any of them once this contract was over.)
— Was that no one wanted to play with Petra the mostly-augments teen, presumably because she was mostly augments and they were all brittle human bones and muscle. This led to a different problem, which was that none of the kids Tarik was currently rounding up from their drug-escapades wanted to play either, which meant that they didn’t have enough people for a real game.
Amena’s solution was to ask me to play against Petra. There were several obvious issues with this.
“I’m the class chaperone,” I said, because stronger than a human doesn’t mean as strong as a SecUnit and are you sure you didn’t have any drugs weren’t likely to go over as well. “I can’t play sports with you.”
“Yes, you can,” said Amena, the self-appointed expert on intergenerational relationships. Whatever. “It’s not a competition, we just need someone to complete a three-person block.”
I’d be spiking if I chose to play, but whatever.
“Are you even that much older than us?” Petra was now asking. I decided not to snap at her, because she had been nice enough to go back behind the shrub and retrieve her inflammable trash. “You don’t look that much older than us.”
I’d be looking much younger than her soon if she kept smoking, but it wasn’t my job to tell her that. “That’s not relevant.” Shit, wait, was it my job to tell her that? I wasn’t really sure what chaperones did.
Not that any of this mattered. I shook my head, looked at Amena. “Don’t you have anything else to do?”
“This is a free period,” Amena said. “They can’t let us into the rooms until they’ve decontamed them from the previous group. Were you even listening to the introduction speech?”
There had been a speech at some point, and I did listen to an audiobook all the way through it. “I have it recorded somewhere.”
“Ha, that’s funny,” Petra said. (Shit, I was being a bad chaperone). To Amena, she added, “And leave it alone. It probably can’t say I freak it out while on the clock.”
Well, yeah, they generally preferred employees not to say shit like that. I said, “I am not freaked out.”
Petra made a face.
Amena matched it. “So you just don’t want to lose to a student?”
Oh, she was trying reverse psychology now. Tough luck, I lived with ART, I was basically immune.
Petra said, “I guess it would be no fun to play if I blocked its every shot.”
And that made me pause. I said, “You think you can block me?”
Petra grinned. “I know I can block you.”
Yeah. We would see about that.
#
The plan was to go easy on the teenager I was in charge of supervising. Then it turned out she was actually really good at this, and I got carried away.
She wasn’t as fast as me, but was closer than I had expected. She was also just really good at volleyball, and I wasn’t, which, okay, whatever, I could deal with that.
(I wasn’t dealing with that.)
We played one game, then we talked the teams into another, and then everyone abandoned us and it was just us on the court, while a rotating cast of students threw balls for me to try and get past her.
“You are too obvious,” she was currently telling me. “I can tell which way you’ll go just from your face.”
And that was why I should have been allowed to show up in full armour. “Shut up.”
She grinned. “Are you even older than us?”
I almost replied with something extremely non-pedagogic, but then I noticed that Tarik was watching from the sidelines.
Uh-oh. I think I was in trouble with the security consultant.
“Just a second,” I told Petra, and then walked over to where Tarik and some other human I didn’t know were exchanging hushed words. The other human left before I got to them (I wasn’t complaining), and Tarik went back to giving me the look I had to assume was perfected during his first week on the death squad.
“Is this what you are being paid to do?” he asked as soon as I was within earshot. The teenagers around us did a bad job of pretending not to eavesdrop.
Mostly because of this, and not because I was scared of what my voice would do, I messaged him. That and the hacking.
His mouth curled up. “Can we have a word about that?”
Okay, ignore my attempts at private communication, whatever. “Can I say no?”
He blinked, then rolled his eyes. I continued not caring.
Behind me, Petra was now running up. “Are we in trouble?”
“Only me,” I said, because I could tell Tarik was about to speak and I wanted to piss him off. “They saw how bad I lost at volleyball and now you’re getting my job.”
The security camera caught her do a startled laugh. “I don’t want your job, ew.” And then, “And you were really good! It’s been a while since I had to try at all.” This is what humans call rubbing salt into the wound. “I think I even strained a muscle.”
That made us both react. “You strained a muscle?” Shit, I was losing this job for real.
Petra waved it off. “It’s a normal thing for me, the augments are just weirdly heavy.” She rolled her shoulder, winced. “I’ll just drop by the MedBay.”
I glanced over at Tarik. He caught my eyes, shrugged.
“Sorry,” I told Petra.
She snorted. “It wasn’t your fault.” She bounced. “Please come to our university again. This was so much fun.”
“Only if you stop smoking,” I said, and no, I don’t know what the fuck either.
She laughed (deserved), then walked away. I assumed she was going to the MedBay, and turned back to Tarik.
He said, “You’re surprisingly good at this.” I knew he was being sarcastic, but he came off almost genuine.
#
Then the dorm was declared okay to use, so I had to make sure everyone picked a bed without fighting and Tarik had to do whatever half-assed security work he did. He messaged me to meet him outside the MedBay half an hour in, and I told him to wait and listened to three students explain why they specifically deserved the loft bed by the window. Tarik messaged me again fifteen minutes into their stone-feedscreen-scalpel rematch, and by that point, I decided I’d kept him waiting long enough. I told the students I’d be taking the loft bed (they groaned, but gave up) and walked down the ramp to where the MedBay was.
Tarik was leaning against the wall, looking his regular amounts of tense and over it. I approached him at a volume he could hear, because it’d be embarrassing for him if I made him jump.
“Hi,” I also said. I was being so polite.
Tarik didn’t even look up from some small device in his hand. “Thank you for your prompt response.”
And the message we’re taking from this is, don’t even bother.
I rolled my eyes. “I have a job to do. Don’t you?”
He grit his jaw. “I’m trying.”
And we were all so proud of him. “And it involves taking me away from my students now?”
He made a face, and said nothing.
My risk assessment module thought to let me know something might be up.
“The colony failed to report this,” he said, like it was related to anything we were talking about. “I found out 45 minutes ago. Uh.” He swallowed. “They suffered a viral attack five cycles ago, and are still trying to isolate the source.” Uh-oh. “It made a cleaning bot go feral and kill the entire subterranean level.”
Uh- oh .
(Well. That explained the low population density.)
“I’d ask you if you feel like you were hacked,” he went on. “But I don’t think it’d let you tell me.”
Yeah, I was feeling some sort of way about that.
“My governor module is off,” I said, but I sounded more like I was trying to convince myself. (I didn’t feel like anything was taking me over, but Tarik had a point, what were the odds I’d know?)
Tarik said, “Bots don’t have governor modules.”
That was just semiotics now, but whatever.
The rest of the situation was sinking in, so I had to address that first. “Wait, you lured me down here because you’re scared I’ll start killing people?” Again. ”Did you think you could take me out?”
He snorted at that. Okay, at least we agreed that idea was laughable.
“I told an intern up there what I’m doing.” He motioned with his chin. “If I don’t report back every thirty seconds, they’ll seal the level.”
So that was what the device was for. “You need to get out of here.”
He rolled his eyes. “Peri will do much worse to me if I come back without you.”
That was not — okay, maybe that was true, but that didn’t mean I had to listen to him. “Well, work it out with Peri then,” I told him. I was maybe panicking. “I don’t want to be the one to kill you.”
This made him finally look up. But then I remembered something else.
“MedBay,” I said, because that was where we were. “Petra went to the MedBay.” And it was also where other people could be, or whatever someone who didn’t play favourites would say.
Tarik shook his head. “No one’s here, I checked.”
Well. Good planning on his part, faulty as it was, because Petra didn’t come back to the student quarters so she had to be here. “Are you sure?”
“The sensors report no living presence — oh, holy mother.” He sighed as I pushed past him, because of course I was going to check. “There is no one — “
I pushed the MedBay door open, and he went quiet.
Yeah, so there was a problem.
My hand had touched something wet. I wiped it off on my leg without thinking, and then the visual input kicked in and I realized what I was looking at.
“I see why sensors weren’t detecting a living presence,” I said, because Tarik was already reporting this on the feed. The two bodies of MedBay attendants laid sprawled out before us, and only one of them still had its head.
(Oh, the second head was in the corner.
I considered going over to pick it up, but was scared I’d shut down if I did.)
“This wasn’t me,” I added, just in case Tarik was getting ideas. He seemed to be too deep in thought to react, though, as he pulled out his weapon and continued muttering religious-sounding curse words. The head of the second worker didn’t have a jaw, I realized, and I let my eyes unfocus.
I had a train of thought to explore. I couldn’t be gawking.
I considered asking Tarik, but he was busy, and I doubted he’d know either. I was just putting pieces together, though, about the strength needed to do this to a body, combined with the glaring absence of a certain teenager. I needed to check something real fast.
I tapped the SecSystem. It responded within a second.
It sounded almost relieved that I was asking. I was happy for it, because it sure as fuck didn’t bring me any relief.
(So. Petra wasn’t here, right. This meant that either she had lied about where she was going (stupid behavior, but honestly preferable right now) or that she was shoved in one of these storage departments. So I did the normal thing, and asked SecSystem if it would show me where she was.
It would, and it did.)
(I know you probably worked it out already. I don’t want to hear it.)
The good news was that she wasn’t dead. The bad news was that she was stalking the halls above us, covered in bits of dead human skin and blood.
“Hey,” I told Tarik. “You have a problem.”
#
The other good news, I guess, was that this meant I definitely didn’t do the murder without realizing. I hated that it actually made me feel better, but then it also gave me an idea, so.
(There was a solid thirty second period there where I was convinced I’d snap awake just to realize Tarik was dead in my hands. But that didn’t happen yet. I had to stop freaking myself out.)
Petra had a weird amount of augments for a random teenager, and a cleaning bot was weirdly fancy for a barely-surviving colony. (An agriculture bot? Sure. But humans could more or less clean up after themselves, no supervisor was spending funding to make that easier for them.) Somewhere between calling all the teens into the dorm, making sure no one in there had any implants, and doing a headcount to see how many of them I still had to track down, I realized this was probably connected.
Regular humans with CEO-level equipment meant dodgy business. Dodgy business meant flawed products, and flawed products meant humans dying.
I asked SecSystem which company provided the cleaning bot, and lo and behold, I had a trail.
(Okay, so it wasn’t the same company. But the company behind Petra’s augments, FierCo, did also refurbish an old cleaning bot for this colony as a sign of philanthropist good will. FierCo also appeared to be a newish startup, already pissing off the competitors with how dirt cheap but still somehow functional their equipment was.
(They could afford to do that because the founder’s mother owned 32 different hospital chains in the CR territory, and because the profits would more than — shit, reminder to ask ART for the word for multiply by 30 million — once they ran all the competitors out of business. The competitors were not out of business yet, though, and I was willing to bet at least two of my drones that one of them was to blame for this.)
(And I wasn’t just saying this because the same thing happened to me while I was equipment. This was just what corporate sabotage looked like, and I was just mad at myself for not planning better for it.
I was mad at a lot of things. I was also still a little scared I was hallucinating.)
I located two of my teenagers inside a toilet stall. Neither of them was even using it, and when I slapped my hand against the door, they both started buttoning up their clothes.
“There’s an emergency,” I said, because I was so tired of them already. “Out, now.”
They listened to me. That was a first.
“We…” One of them started saying. Their shirt was buttoned up wrong. “We didn’t…”
I did not care. “You need to get back to the dorm.”
One of them — the less undressed one — was staring at my lower body. She tugged the other one's sleeve, and then they were both gawking.
I looked down. Oh, right, the human blood.
“No one you know died,” I said, though technically I couldn’t be sure. “Yet.” Shit, that sounded threatening. “I didn’t kill anyone.” No, bad. Also a lie, but whatever.
They blinked in unison. For a second I was scared they’d start screaming, but they just got quiet, and then they were following.
#
We almost made it to the dorm without an incident.
Fuck this whole contract, honestly.
The drone I had left with Tarik trailed after him as he rounded a corner, mouthing along to whatever he was saying on the feed. (I couldn’t be backseat safety consulting too, I’d have a rage attack.) The three drones looking for rogue teenagers reported five more in different bathroom stalls (what was with teenager and public toilets) and the one I had on Amena confirmed there was still no sign of Petra, or anything else, near the desk I made her squat under.
(Yeah, so Amena was not among the teenagers following my rules and staying safe inside the dorm.) (I wasn’t surprised, and I couldn’t afford to be mad, so I was just working on it.) (She was alone, too, and on a level she was not supposed to be on, surrounded by archival files and employee-only physical feeds.)
I wanted to go straight to her, but there were ten other humans I was responsible for on this floor. So here I was, gathering up stupid humans from their stupid locations, and still worried I’d malfunction any second now.
Then Petra did a U-turn on the corridor two rows down from us, and started heading our way.
Shit. Shit, okay, okay.
“Behind me,” I hissed at the teenagers (one had forgotten her feed interface, and the other’s was out of power, so this is what we were working with). They complied without a word.
Petra paused, as if listening. I tried to get a better look at her face, but she had her head angled down, and the lights weren’t great.
Then she zapped in our direction, and my organics nearly gave way.
“Run,” I said — the teens took too long to process — and then she was there, and shit, shit, shit.
I grabbed the teen nearer to her around the waist, flipped us around, and tried to kick Petra’s leg out from under her.
Tried being the key word. She took it like — like a human whose neural implant had taken over her body, I guess, and barely buckled. I had succeeded in getting a body between her and the other humans, though (and when was that body ever not mine) so now I gave the teen a semi-gentle push, and the two started scrambling down the hallway and away from certain death.
Then Petra elbowed me in the back of my head, and I nearly blacked out.
(Shit, she was strong. I assumed her remaining organics weren’t doing too well, what with the strain of using force like this, but the malware probably didn’t care about what this would do to the host.
She tried to get me again, but this time I dodged out of the way.)
I remembered her being slower than me on the court, and decided to use that to my advantage. I kicked her leg one more time, just to make sure her attention was on me (and, right, this was definitely bad chaperoning now) then slid between her legs, and ran down the hall.
I turned around five seconds later to see that she wasn’t even looking my way.
Great. Okay, new plan.
The dorm was safe. I hoped. (The door could only be opened with a code, and to avoid some stupid serial plot moment, I had a teen stationed at the door to start unlocking it as soon as I was close.) That meant I needed to buy the two kids time enough to get there, keep Petra from getting them and/or getting inside the dorm, find the remaining teens, and make sure no one died in the process.
Easy enough. I rolled my sleeve up, and powered up my weapon.
“Hey!” I yelled at Petra. (I couldn’t tell if she was conscious in there, or if it’d even help me if she was. I couldn’t remember if I was conscious during the Ganaka Pit incident. I wasn’t sure which option was worse.) She didn’t pay me any mind, which was okay. I took aim, and fired at her leg.
It hit, because I never miss. Petra was still wearing the robe humans give you for the MedBay, so I could see in great detail as the bullet lodged itself in her inorganics, shoved something hopefully important out of place, and made her whole leg buckle.
She stopped, then crashed to the floor to land on all fours.
I wasn’t even surprised when she spun around, and proved to be even faster quadrupedal.
I hoped the teens were working the dorm doors all right, and started running.
Tarik was on the top level, shoving projectiles into a weapon. I could see on the feed (they let me hang out on the feed now) that an armed shuttle was about to land right above the dorm, and find a way to get the kids out. (I let them know about the window over my bed, and asked if they wanted to open it. Tarik agreed. I pretended this wasn’t an embarrassing oversight.)
Okay. I just needed to gather up everyone now. Okay.
(Petra chased after me, then stopped to pull a unit of storage cabinets off the wall and swing them at me. I dodged at the last second, and fired blindly at her other leg.
Okay, so I just needed to get everyone and not get myself killed.)
Two more teenagers were to our right. I told Tarik to go get them, then told SecSystem to let me through to the lower levels.
It unsealed a door just ahead of me. I threw myself down another ramp, and landed on my hands in wastewater.
It was immediately clear why they sealed the level off. I knew the murders had happened recently, but what with the plan to convince a bunch of academics that nothing had gone wrong, I sort of assumed they’d at least managed to cart the bodies out.
They were all still here, though. Still here, in the semi-drained room, arranged in a way that made it obvious no one had even tried to move them. I stepped past someone floating face-down (the waste water was up to my knees) and checked everyone's location.
Amena was still upstairs, though no longer under the desk. (Because why would anyone ever listen to me.) Tarik had four teens with him, and was leading them towards the exit route. The final three teens had established a communication channel, and were trying to get out themselves.
Petra was in the doorway behind me. I didn’t want to get too optimistic, but SecSystem did start lowering the gates after me, and successfully trapped her half-way through.
(For now. Let’s not let our guard down here, Murderbot.)
The room I was in must have been the common area. I could see a couch (ten bodies there, one thrown over the backrest), a small fridge, and what was once probably a table but was now broken wet plastic.
Then I saw the cleaning bot, and my organics nearly gave out again.
It was still alive. It wasn’t moving (a cleaning bot was more water resistant than the average house bot, but even they couldn’t survive a week in a flooded basement), but I could tell it was aware of me.
I pinged it. It pinged me back, and tried to flash its error light.
There were still bodies impaled on its plunger.
I took that off first. The whole thing, since there were too many bodies to get them individually. Then I gently pushed at its controls, and it put up no fight as I let myself in.
I set it to deep sleep, and watched the light fizzle out.
I was not having a great time.
That, of course, was when Amena tried to message me.
SecUnit! She was still in the archives, and nowhere near Tarik. I fought the urge to sigh. It’s not Petra!
Oh, great. She was doing detective work. Go downstairs, I told her. I can’t keep her distracted for much longer. As I spoke, the hole at the door cracked under the force of Petra’s body. Find Tarik, and get on that chopper.
What? she asked, even though I was perfectly clear. I’m not leaving you here.
Okay, this caring-about-murderbots thing was getting on my nerves now. I’ll be right behind you, just go.
She didn’t seem convinced. I wasn’t convincing, so that was fair.
It’s not Petra, though. She was now saying. It’s her augments. For fuck’s sake. The same company that made them refurbished this bot, and I think the viral attack was meant to sabotage FierCo by making their equipment incompatible with this SecSystem but they just made the mechanics go insane and —
Amena, I said, because I knew all of this and was tired of hearing about it. If you want to help her, help her not have to kill you.
I was sounding too emotional on the feed again. I hated when that happened.
It barely threw Amena off for a second. But I know how to fix it!
Oh, kill me now. You are a STUDENT. I didn’t mean to yell, but, fuck.
She sounded petulant. Iris has been teaching me.
Iris was seven human years older. Great arguments all around. Petra is not going to sit still while you fuck with her augments.
My drone caught her pout. What do you suggest then? She didn’t even let me finish. Killing her? Even though you know it’s not her fault?
Sure, make me the villain.
I considered telling her this wasn’t what I wanted either. That there wasn’t much else I could do. That maybe some of us would have preferred it if someone had been there to stop us before we unwillingly caused a bloodshed.
But I could tell she wouldn’t budge, and also, I really didn’t want Petra to die.
No, I ended up saying. I’m going to stop the attack.
I had no idea how to even begin doing that. But Amena seemed appeased by that answer, so go me.
The doors behind me snapped open with a loud crack. I tensed, and readied my weapon.
I had a bad feeling FierCo augments were fully waterproof.
#
Everything that happened later felt like one long blur, and I no longer trusted my organic parts not to infect the memory with personal baggage. I trusted only the scenes I could cross-check with Tarik’s helmet camera, drone footage, and the safety cameras in the subterranean level that were somehow, through it all, still running.
I didn’t disable the viral attack. (I was fighting for my life down there, I didn’t have time to focus on a code.) (I mean, I tried, but I failed, so it doesn’t matter.) What I did do was lead Petra out to the surface, once Tarik told me the colony was evacuated, and then someone from the shuttle got her with a long distance hook and zapped her up into the cargo department.
(They told me later that the attack worked through a code that needed the SecSystem to self-replicate. (The SecSystem was, of course, made unable to alert anyone to it. It also made it unable to heat water properly, but apparently, that happened all the time anyways so no one noticed.) Once they got Petra too far away for a stable connection, someone was able to isolate and disable the code, and then she was okay again.
Well. She was in charge of herself again. She’d need medical assistance, and a new leg.
I could not afford to hold back by the end.)
One part only I could remember was from just before the rescue, when Petra had me pinned down and I had one of Tarik’s projectiles pressed up under her chin.
“You’re a SecurityUnit,” she said (she had been conscious the whole time). She was crying. “Holy shit. You’re a SecurityUnit, aren’t you?”
By that point, I had fired at her up to a hundred times, scaled a number of walls, and suffered a hit that would have decimated my bowels, if I had any. So I couldn’t exactly lie. “Yes.”
She cry-laughed. “Wow.” She was sort of cry-laughing through most of it, now. “I beat a SecurityUnit at volleyball. No one is going to believe me.”
Then the hook came down from above us, and I never had to decide if I was really going to fire.
#
Tarik had to come get me, because I also forgot how to decide if I wanted to get up or not.
“Come on,” he said. Then he paused. “Can you get up?”
I couldn’t, but that wasn’t any of his business.
He sighed, and left. For some ten minutes or so, I laid there convinced I’d finally sulked my way into being abandoned on a planet.
Then he came back with a drone, and the drone hauled my entire body up. I suffered a catastrophic failure before I could process the relief.
#
I woke up back on the University shuttle, and wished I could turn myself off again.
I was in MedBay. (When was I not, these days.) There was a privacy screen around me, but Tarik was right outside, and he only flinched a little when my drone flew up to him.
“It’s awake,” he spoke into his interface.
(On the other end of the feed, Ratthi sent an enthusiastic reply.)
I quickly checked for everything else I had missed. The contract was over early. There were no new casualties. Petra was alive, and the University was buying her new augments.
(Not FierCo this time. FierCo did seem to be mid-legal battle with Pin-Lee, of all people, though, but I was too tired to even try and process that.
I confirmed Tarik looked more or less normal (he didn’t seem thrilled about my drone in his face, but sat still through it), then put myself offline again.
We were on ART thirty minutes later.
#
You did a great job disabling her attack power, ART said, as I continued staring at my copy of Petra’s medical file.
“What a funny way to say I ripped two of her limbs off.”
ART did the feed-equivalent of sighing at me. The limbs were trying to kill you.
I bit the inside of my mouth, and said nothing.
ART then said, Do you want to rewatch episode 218? This was how you knew it thought I was having a breakdown.
“No,” I said, then realized I actually really wanted that. “No, actually, yes, okay.”
You don’t need to be so contrary all the time, ART said. I would have protested this (the gall of ART to say that to anyone ) but then I received a message request.
It was from Petra.
I sent it over for a scan. ART confirmed it wasn’t an attack.
I approached it like it was hostile fauna.
Is this you? it read. There was an old newsburst title attached, and I was not at all surprised to see it was about the Ganaka Pit.
(It really wasn’t weird that she’d found out. It turned out that Pin-Lee’s lawsuit against FierCo was a move designed to force them to prove someone was sabotaging their products, and now the media was pulling up old stories of potential corporate sabotage that resulted in death counts. Ganaka Pit was one of the most prominent stories there, though I was far from the only piece of equipment to tear through a bunch of humans.
The poor cleaning bot still had the highest kill count. I wondered where it was now. I hoped whoever bought it next knew how to protect a feed.)
I was procrastinating again. I made myself stop. Yes.
She took a while to respond. Then, she sent, Finally you beat me at something.
I wasn’t expecting that. In the moment I took to stare (and, like, come on ) she had already named the conversation bots that murder.
Adolescents like naming private conversations, ART was telling me. They name the ones with me all the time.
I was still in shock. I think only one of us is a bot, I told Petra, and she responded with a string of letters ART explained youths used instead of amusement sigils.
The conversation was now called human-bot alliance for murdering people. I wondered if it would be a breach of my contract to block her.
“You have a similar sense of humour,” ART was telling me. “What with what you like to call yourself, and — “
I wondered if it would be a breach of my contract to block ART.
Whatever. Whatever.
I took another look at Petra’s medical file, and winced. Not even bothering to provide more context, I sent, Sorry.
She barely hesitated before responding, It wasn’t your fault.
Maybe I should have provided more context.
ART poked me through the feed. You are being unreasonable again.
Here we go again. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t bring my knowledge bases into this,” it said. “You won’t win that argument. And anyways — “ I slumped back, and it pushed up my bedrest to make me sit up again. “I know you don’t blame anyone who tried to stop you back then. So.”
I didn’t have a response to that. I realized I was pouting.
“Play that episode,” I said, and tried to act less like a teenager.
ART poked me through the feed again, but it did press play.