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Looking back on it, I wasn't sure exactly how I got talked into going to see a human medical specialist on Preservation Station about my organics. It was Mensah's fault, mostly. Well, also Ratthi. It wasn't even like anything was actually wrong with me. That was the problem, if you could call it that. Mensah thought it would be a good idea to have a baseline of what my organics were like when they were working, so we could troubleshoot actual problems when they came up.
I pointed out SecUnits had standard specs, plus we'd fixed me a few times already without a specialist present.
Gurathin (who had gotten roped into this conversation somehow) pointed out that a) SecUnit specs were largely proprietary and kept as closely held corporate secrets, and b) I was well beyond spec now due to all the many off-market modifications to my systems. And was the whole experience of being fixed by a MedSystem that didn't really know how to work on a construct so fantastic that I just couldn't wait to do it again?
Stupid, annoying, occasionally correct humans.
Mensah told me that if I wanted to go alone, I definitely could. But if I wanted someone with me, it was okay to have that, too. Which was how I somehow ended up going with Mensah, Ratthi, and Gurathin, who was actually the one (it turned out) who had recommended this particular medical specialist because this was also the person who worked on him, and one of the few medical techs in the entire Preservation Alliance who had experience working with organics that interfaced with cybernetic components. Humans with augments were rare here, though not as rare as constructs. Gurathin said she was good and I would like her, and then slouched along at the back of the group like he was being dragged on a tour of a sewage treatment plant, which I figured didn't give great odds of the reliability of his assessment. If I didn't trust two and a half of these humans, I would think I was being led into a trap. (I mean, I trust Gurathin too, for some things -- don't tell him I said that -- but he would absolutely lie to me if he thought he had a good reason. Mensah and Ratthi wouldn't.)
But actually Dr. Selvah was very pleasant. She greeted Gurathin and Mensah with special warmth. It seemed she had met Ratthi before, too. She said that if I wanted, she could see me alone, but if I wanted my friends there, I was welcome to have them; she was good either way. She treated me exactly like a human patient. I found it uncomfortable. But also, there was a matter-of-fact, sharp-edged briskness to her that made me feel like I didn't have to be terribly careful around her, the way I did with a lot of people on Preservation Station when I talked about Corporation Rim stuff. Suddenly I could see why Gurathin liked her.
I wordlessly pinged Mensah in the feed. Mensah said, "I think SecUnit would like us there. But, SecUnit, remember you can ask us to leave any time you like." She addressed this to me. I pinged back automatically and then nodded to show I understood.
Ratthi and Gurathin were having some kind of quiet argument. I heard Ratthi say, "Well, since we're here anyway, you could ask her about --" and Gurathin snapped, "Not now." I decided that I didn't want to ask; it sounded personal and therefore uncomfortable.
And then we walked into Dr. Selvah's examining and technical room, and my organics did a thing. A really bad thing.
Suddenly I started to understand Gurathin's reactions a little better. The outer office didn't look like a repair unit at all; it had posters on the wall and colorful paint and a friendly human greeter and toys for children, including a wall that children were obviously allowed to draw on. Basically it looked human and colorful and friendly and a lot like the rest of Preservation Station.
But while some attempt had been made to make the insides of her suite look less like a MedSystem or SecUnit rebuild facility or whatever it was reminding me of (colors on the walls, things like that), I had to hastily adjust my neurotransmitters to get my organics to calm down. What the fuck, organics.
"SecUnit, are you all right?" Mensah asked me quietly. I wondered what my face had been doing. Meanwhile, Gurathin was studiously looking at a poster on the wall and ignoring me.
"I'm fine," I said.
Dr. Selvah told me I could sit or stand (I opted to stand; I wished it wasn't that it made me feel like I could run out of there any time I liked, but well, it was).
"SecUnit, first of all, I need you to know that I've never examined a construct before. So I'm looking forward to learning from you about your systems, if you would be willing to teach me. It could help other constructs on Preservation someday, as well as augmented humans like Gurathin."
"Okay," I said. I was mostly trying to keep my organics from going into a runaway neurotransmitter loop.
"I'd like to do a full-body scan and some other tests. May I have your consent? I'll need to touch you a few times during the tests."
Ugh. "Okay," I said, and Mensah smiled at me encouragingly.
Being put in the scanner freaked out my organics again, which I'm sure wasn't great for the reliability of the test results, but I got them under control again. Seriously, organics, why now? I'd been scanned plenty of times. I'd been in a few different MedSystems. And I never did this before. Or at least I never noticed myself doing this before.
I thought suddenly about the two-part episode of Worldhoppers in which Sergeant Jo Di goes through a whole series of destroyed versions of their home planet, and they're fine while all of that's going on (they had to rescue Linguistic Specialist Cramben, after all), but then once the team gets them both back, there's a whole entire episode dealing with Jo Di being upset about the whole situation and having nightmares. I thought about how the characters in the episode talked about how human organics can fall apart only after a dangerous, scary situation is over. I had actually seen Bharadwaj doing that during the original survey, come to think of it. And Mensah. I guess my organics are technically made out of human stock, so maybe they could do things like that whenever I wasn't consciously holding them together? Very annoying. I registered my performance reliability down a whole 27%. Wow. Also, annoying. I made another firm attempt to get my organics back in line.
"These results are --" Dr. Selvah paused briefly. "SecUnit, we can take a break, if you like."
This made all my humans look at me.
"I'm fine," I said.
Gurathin cleared his throat. "Doctor, I don't want to interrupt, but I actually wanted to -- follow up on some of the things we talked about last time, about my augments." He was looking everywhere but at the people in the room, obviously wildly uncomfortable, but also determined. I was about to tell him to shut up and stop hogging my examination, asshole, when he went on, "If you push the scan results to SecUnit in the feed, it'll probably want to examine them before you talk about them. It likes getting the information first, and it's at least as qualified to interpret the results as your MedSystem."
Oh. That was a good idea, actually. Also, at least as qualified? Oh please. "Yes, I would like that," I said.
Dr. Selvah was wearing a pair of jointed metal augment gloves that she was using to direct the scans. She also had a couple of small augments of her own interfacing with the gloves, I realized; she was the only augmented human other than Gurathin that I had interacted with on the station so far. Using the gloves, she pushed the data to me. It was larger than I had thought, and I felt myself make a kind of mental *oof* as I received it. Yes, this was going to take me a while to go over. I could already tell that her scans were considerably more fine-grained than my own.
"Please wait while data is calibrated," said my buffer.
"That means it's going to be a while," Ratthi said.
It was honestly kind of annoying that my humans knew me so well by now.
Dr. Selvah took this in stride and turned to Gurathin. "In that case, I'd be happy to follow up on your augments. You're okay with having your trusted medical contacts in the room while we discuss this?"
"Yes," Gurathin said. I could easily see Mensah and Ratthi both being his trusted medical contacts, that made sense, but I waited for someone to point out that I obviously wasn't; but no one did, including Gurathin. Weird. I went on sifting through my own medical files, monitoring the room as well. I mean, he literally crashed my exam, so he gets what he gets, including a nosy murderbot.
Dr. Selvah, meanwhile, was scanning Gurathin's neck and shoulder area with a drone device and her gloves. "It looks like the improvised patch is working fine," she said, and I was aware of Gurathin's tension relaxing a little. "I still haven't come up with a way to remove the inactive augment, but with the patch, it doesn't seem to be leaking metals into your bloodstream anymore, and the kidney filter is working fine to clean them out before they can cause more damage."
I suddenly stopped listening with 5% of my processing power and started paying more attention. Mensah and Ratthi inexplicably seemed to relax some tension at this very unambiguously tension-inducing news.
"Why are your augments leaking metals?" I asked, and everyone in the room jumped like they'd forgotten I could hear them.
But Gurathin answered me. "Many of my augments are designed to age out and stop working. Usually catastrophically. Dr. Selvah has been helping me identify the ones that are going to fail, and replace them before they cause any damage."
I was watching the humans in the room through its cameras (I had promptly gotten inside the feed as soon as we walked in; sue me) and so I saw that Mensah and Ratthi both had their faces of WOE on -- Mensah at least was hiding it better -- so I focused on Gurathin. "What do your augments do when they fail?"
He shrugged a little. "Depends on the augment and what it was designed to do. Most of them start breaking down in my bloodstream, stop working on whatever they were intended to help with. We're worried about my vision augments right now, because those are going to age out in a year or so, and we don't have the replacement parts. We can't just turn them off because I'd go blind, but they're designed to fry my optic nerve at --"
"They're designed to what?" I said.
"-- at the end of their lifespan," he said calmly. "Honestly, that's one of the more benign ones. The point is to keep me coming back for repairs. I wasn't supposed to survive this long if I ever left the Corporation Rim. The fact that I have is due to, well ..." He glanced sideways at Selvah. "The people here."
My organics had gone haywire again. My own components were often shitty and low-budget, but as far as I knew, none of them were intentionally designed to fail. (I'd better check on that, however, now that I thought about it.) SecUnits were expensive to build, and easy enough to wipe and refurbish, so they planned to keep us working as long as possible. But in the Corporation Rim, humans were cheap and easy to replace. It made a horrible kind of sense. I just couldn't believe I was just now finding out about this.
I noticed Ratthi was holding Gurathin's hand in a comforting kind of way. Also, I had put a hand on the frame of the medbed and accidentally cracked it. Oops. I hoped no one had noticed that.
Dr. Selvah cleared her throat. "SecUnit, if this means you're done examining your scan results, can we look at them together?"
Wow, by Preservation standards, she was brusque as hell. I was reluctantly impressed. I could really see why Gurathin liked her.
"Okay," I said.
Selvah made a gesture with her hand gloves and projected the full-body hologram of myself onto the display wall. In spite of my rebellious organics and wonky PR numbers, I was intrigued. I know what my diagnostics look like from the inside, but it was genuinely interesting seeing it projected out like that. The humans and augmented human looked interested, too, which was decent for getting us off the topic of Gurathin's augments. (*What.*)
"SecUnit, like I told you before, I'm not an expert on constructs, so I'll need your help interpreting the scan results." Dr. Selvah used her glove to draw on parts of the display, zoom in and out, and indicate various areas. "I'm seeing a lot of inflammation here and here, especially around the spinal connections. Do you know what might be causing this?"
"That's just the interface," I said. "It's normal."
Gurathin was looking at it now. "Mine aren't like that." He looked at me sharply. "Does it hurt?"
Well, of course it did. Easily compensated for with pain sensors. I figured his were similar and he was just being a jerk about it. "No," I said.
"It looks like you have highly variable results," Dr. Selvah said. "And it's mostly quite unlike Gurathin's augments." Damn it. "See, there's so much inflammation that there's scarring here ..." She drew a circle. "But this has a more natural presentation, at the base of the spine in the pelvis and hip area."
She was right, there were differences. My usual readings just compared the current situation to baseline and that was baseline, so there was no reason why it would have pinged on it. "I guess the techs didn't hook me up very well?" I offered. "Lowest bidder, you know." No one in the room laughed.
Dr. Selvah said. "SecUnit, you can control your own perception of pain, is that right?"
"Yes," I said.
"On a normal day, like today, how high do you have your pain sensor dampening turned up?"
For some reason, this made all the humans and augment human(s) go extremely quiet.
I checked. I was currently reading 32%. I bet if I said that, she'd say it was high. I mean, I was a shitty budget model, after all, but I didn't really want to admit it; so sue me. I dropped the number to a more realistic level. "18%," I said.
The silence in the room was profound. Damn. I should have said zero. Don't humans compensate for pain all the time, though? They take painkillers and things! 18% was totally reasonable!
"Always?" Dr. Selvah asked.
"Sometimes it's higher," I said. DAMN it. "And sometimes lower," I said hastily. "It's turned off completely when they're repairing me, and that's ..." I stopped, because I couldn't quite bring myself to say that it was all right, even when I was lying. Also, they were all still making those faces. "Necessary," I tried. That didn't help with the faces.
"Necessary how?" Dr. Selvah asked. Her face, at least, was fairly blank, almost studiously so.
"They might need me to provide informed feedback on repairs," I said. That wasn't quite my buffer responding, but it was close. My organics were interfering with my neural processing again. "Anyway, turning my systems on and off during repairs is normal. All of my systems."
There were a variety of expressions on the humans, which I tried to ignore. Dr. Selvah said, "SecUnit, I hope this isn't an intrusive question, but I need to know to provide medical care for you. You feel pain as humans do, is that right? In your organic components, I mean."
"As far as I know," I said. "I can't be sure, of course. I don't know what humans feel. But it seems similar. Pain does impact my performance reliability significantly when I am injured."
"Those fucks," someone said. I looked around and realized it was Gurathin. Ratthi had a hand on his shoulder.
Dr. Selvah took a deep breath and, pushing aside my own systems' error codes for a minute, I recognized that she was showing signs of distress as well. "I think we're going to bring this first examination to a close for today," she said. "But first, SecUnit, I think you're right, your organic systems and your cybernetic systems are -- er -- badly hooked up. It should be possible to rewire the connections to eliminate most of the inflammation -- not all of it, given the scar tissue, but the, er, 18% pain management shouldn't be necessary at all for you to experience, once you've had the interface refitted."
I found my neural network providing me vivid images of what would be involved in that: all my limbs clamped down and the part of my system that controlled my body deactivated, the lasers and manipulator arms busily frying connections, every single neural connection awake and screaming because how else were they going to know if I was hooked up right --
-- I took a few very fast steps away from the medbed and slammed into the wall.
There was a moment of jumbled verbal input in which I slowly sorted out that it was partly me not processing and partly people talking over each other. "-- not going to --" "-- sedation, tell it you're going to use sedation --" "-- I don't think that's actually a selling point right now, Ratthi --"
Mensah had a hand extended towards me, not quite touching me.
"This unit does not require treatment at this time," my buffer said.
Selvah had taken off her augment gloves and was holding up her natural human hands. She had her nails painted a rainbow of colors, I noticed absently, and a light dusting of dark hair on the backs of her hands. "We're not going to do anything right now. Nothing, ever, without your permission. And if you choose to do anything, there will be a full consultation beforehand, and you will be able to consent to every part of the surgery. But if you conclude that you are content with everything as it currently is, I can work with you on managing the pain you're experiencing."
I had a bad moment when I thought she was riding my outputs somehow, then realized she didn't know that slamming into the wall had upped my usual pain sensor mess. I dialed it up to deaden it a little, and that made me realize that I never actually killed it all the way, I just didn't notice it. How long had that been going on? A long time, probably.
"Okay," I said.
I didn't really remember leaving the clinic. I did know that we all went over into a nearby park (Preservation has the weirdest parks for a station, they're just like being outside, with waterfalls and bird sounds and fake sky and everything), and then Mensah sat on the grass (real grass, so weird!) with me while Ratthi and Gurathin went off somewhere, she said it was to bring back some kind of food (churro ice cream?) but I forgot the details as soon as she told me.
We sat for a while. She was holding my hand, but very loosely, just her fingers kind of curled in mine so it was more like I was holding hers and could let go anytime I wanted to. It felt like I was comforting her, kind of. It was all right.
"I didn't know it would be like that for you," she said quietly. "You can say no to going back. I'll make Ratthi leave you alone if he pressures you about going anyway."
I realized I was almost halfway smiling, sort of. "I didn't know it would be like that for me either. But it, it was ..." Not nice. Not even okay. But ... "Necessary. I'm glad I went."
We just sat there with our hands kind of loosely together until Ratthi and Gurathin came back with some sort of weird human food that was in the form of crunchy sticks stuck into cold stuff that I had never seen in any entertainment. The two of them walked across the grass talking quietly, and Ratthi kind of half-hugging Gurathin, although he let go when they got close to us, at the same time as Mensah let go of my hand.
They had brought an extra food thing for Mensah, and we all sat in a loose circle and they ate their human food and I looked at the waterfall, and also at them, a little, even though humans while eating are not my favorite kind of humans to observe. (Humans on quality entertainments eat much more neatly than real life humans. Mensah had cold frozen foodstuff on her nose. It looked sticky.)
Mensah and Ratthi kept making determinedly positive comments about the food and the waterfall and the grass. Gurathin looked about as gloomy as I felt.
"What do your visual augments need to keep working?" I asked him.
He was quiet for a moment, eating his food thing, and then he said, "Some components that Preservation can't supply. They're only manufactured in the Corporation Rim."
"Have you ever seen Heist Moon?"
"Are we doing a heist?" Ratthi asked eagerly.
Ratthi would be extremely low on my list of humans to bring along on a heist. I would definitely prefer Pin-Lee. But everyone looked more cheerful, so that was a plus. I'm not sure if they realized that I was one hundred percent serious about sneaking into the Corporation Rim and stealing vision augments; it was exactly what they deserved for putting expendable components into a human because they thought humans were expendable too. Not a single one of my humans were expendable, and the Corporation Rim were about to find that out the hard way.
Ratthi was still talking about some heist plot he had seen on some very definitely not quality show. Gurathin leaned closer to me and said quietly, not quite looking at me, "You know, the way they do surgery here, it's not like back ... there. They're very careful, and they ask you a lot of questions beforehand, and you don't feel anything. And she's telling the truth, if you're not interested, they'll help you figure out how to find workarounds without surgery."
It sounded like he was talking from experience. I probed my pain sensors and thought about that background pain I had to concentrate on to even notice it was there, where some low-paid company tech had stuck something in my organics that had been irritating it enough to form scar tissue, and I didn't even notice.
"I'll think about it," I said. Gurathin gave me a quiet half-smile and licked his cold sticky food thing. Ick.
"So when are we doing the heist?" Ratthi said. "Because my cousin Ani would be a great getaway pilot --"
"We are not doing a heist," Mensah said patiently.
I quietly downloaded a few key episodes of Heist Moon, just in case. And also a few from MedStation Argala having to do with basic surgical procedures, which I had always thought were kind of unrealistic and aimed mainly at humans, but maybe I should watch those just in case I changed my mind. And I sat on the grass with my (I guess) trusted medical contacts around me, and they ate their cold sticky foodstuffs and I watched Gurathin relax and Mensah slowly unwind and I found my organics relaxing until they hardly hurt at all.
(Oh. Right. I had run across this on some media before. Stress made organics hurt more. Even across irritant interfaces, apparently. Huh. I was going to need to keep that in mind. I'd dialed my pain sensors down to 14% and I couldn't really feel it at all.)
No wonder I had never really noticed the pain I was in before today. Or noticed my organics freaking out in technical suites. It was like Captain Hossein said on Sanctuary Moon: you had to get out of the darkness to know what light was.
My humans were still talking about heists, and eating stupid frozen foods. I sat in the artificial sunlight on the not-actually-artificial grass, and I felt my organics relax.