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I had no reason to check in on my former clients. I'd been away for a while — quite a while; enough for two whole seasons of Sanctuary Moon to drop, necessitating hours of time spent watching and rewatching, synthesizing the new plotlines and characters into the show's existing lore. And I'd been busy doing other stuff, as well — stuff like encouraging other constructs to rattle the bars of their cages. The Company still didn't know about me — I thought — but after a situation got a bit too hot on a moon colony, I decided to swing by Preservation Alliance and just check on them for a bit.
They wouldn't even have to know I was back. And in fact, it would be better if they didn't.
I went first to Dr. Mensah, naturally. As my favorite human, she was the one whose welfare I was most concerned with. I estimated that in the Corporation Rim, her lack of a SecUnit as a bodyguard would have increased her chances of death by at least 35%. But here in PA territory, things were probably different. I didn't have enough data to judge, which made my organic components feel weird and itchy.
Dr. Mensah was sitting on a dangerously exposed back platform behind her compound's main structure, watching several juvenile humans tumble around and attempt to hit each other with sticks. I was half a click out, watching from behind some terrain through a couple of high-flying drones, so she had no chance of detecting my presence. Even still, seeing her smile and call to the young humans sent a rush of new data into my processor.
As I watched, two people in her age category emerged from the structure. One carried a tray with food; the other came up behind her and began rubbing her back. These must be two of her spouses.
So, she's fine, I told myself, sending my drones the command to pull back. That was good. I quickly swept her perimeter, finding no trace of anything more harmful than some shrubbery that might or might not prove toxic to humans when ingested. But there was no sign of GrayCris or Corporation skullduggery.
And that's fine. Definitely fine.
It seemed Dr. Mensah had been correct; she did not need a SecUnit here in PA territory, just as she'd said.
I simultaneously approved of her judgment — it's always so refreshing when a human turns out to be correct about something — and couldn't help mistrusting it. After all, if that mission where I'd met my humans had proved anything, it was that there was almost always some sort of hidden catch.
The platform on which she was sitting seemed obviously unsafe. She provided a tempting target to any would-be snipers or assassins. I assured myself that, at least for now, there were none, and moved on.
After all, Dr. Mensah had told me quite firmly that I would not be her bodyguard. I was still refusing to examine that particular memory.
Next, I checked up on Dr. Bharadwaj. She was puttering around in her quarters — something about preparing food. I watched until I grew bored. Since I did not need to eat — well, not precisely; clearly I needed to ingest something in order to maintain the correct energy levels — food and cooking and other human sensory experiences held no value to me, except as yet more examples of how easily they let themselves be distracted by momentary sensations from their sad, squishy meat sacks.
And ironically enough, it looked as though Dr. Bharadwaj was preparing some sort of squishy meat sack as her meal. Having seen enough, I withdrew, again without being noticed.
A quick visit to Pin-Lee ended up as the shortest visit so far. Not only was Arada there, which I had expected when visiting a bonded pair, but Ratthi was also in attendance. And, unlike Dr. Mensah's spouse, Ratthi was doing quite a bit more than just rubbing someone's back.
The sight of what the three of them were up to scorched my optical sensors. It was only 0.3 seconds, but it was more than enough for me to get the picture and abort the feed. Any longer and I would have been praying for the sweet release of total shutdown.
Why humans insist on mashing their soft, squishy meat parts together was really beyond me, yet it was a common theme in classics of narrative storytelling such as The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and Timestream Defenders Orion. I tended to fast-forward through those scenes, contenting myself with inferring what must have occurred based on subtle cues from elsewhere in the episode.
For instance, I remember one scene from a media packet in which the daring space pirate Lolbrattaca must have decided to have her way with her NavUnit. I based this on statements from later in the episode in which her first officer asked, "So did you bang that NavUnit, Captain?", whereupon Pirate Captain Lolbrattaca replied, "Like a drum, Number One. Like a drum."
Banging someone like a drum sounded painful. If they had a SecUnit in the corner to ensure their physical safety, it would most likely require them to stop any such harmful activities, or else betray its purpose.
It was a good thing that there were no SecUnits in Preservation Alliance territory. Well — none that anyone knew about, at any rate.
There. I had checked on all five of my clients.
I paused for 0.24 seconds, pondering whether I could reasonably and safely leave it there.
Of course, I could not. My drive for completion was too great. I had to go and check on my last client. I had to go and check on Dr. Gurathin.
My visits to the other humans' habitats had taken several hours, since frustratingly, they lived farther apart from each other than I had anticipated. So much for group cohesion.
Therefore, night was already falling when I located Dr. Gurathin's home and settled in well outside it. I sent a couple of drones inside, watching through their cameras to ensure they weren't spotted.
Gurathin had employed security protocols. However, although he was an augmented human with a knowledge of security systems that was not precisely pitiful, I had just spent two years dodging the tender ministrations of the Company's minions. His protocols were no match for mine.
The kitchen, where I assumed he would be preparing or eating food, was dark and empty, as was the living room.
I'll just check to ensure he's alive, I told myself. Then I'll go.
Gurathin had been my least favorite member of my clients for most of the mission. Then again, right at the end, he had performed a surprising, inexplicable feat of generosity. From the fragmented memories that had been poured back into my metal skull, I could remember him engaging in some skullduggery of his own in order to free my downloaded memories from the Company's databases. And from those memories, mixed between mine and his in a way that I found confusing and disorienting, no one had ordered him to do so. He had done it all on his own.
Why would Gurathin do that for someone he disliked as heartily as he disliked me?
I knew Gurathin disliked me. I had ample evidence — from that tense conversation in which he had ordered me to maintain eye contact, through all the later days in which he had argued with the others that I was not to be trusted. Of course, he had been right; I was not to be trusted. No SecUnit without a working governor module could be trusted to obey.
That's why I was out here, crouched several buildings away, reading my drones' feeds with forty percent of my attention. The rest was focused on my immediate surroundings. I did not want to be surprised by a Preservation Alliance human; no doubt they would want to hug me, or give me a necklace made of flowers, or sing me a song.
None of that was on my agenda. I was just here to check up on my last human. Then I would leave.
There was movement and light from another room, so I sent one drone forward to peer around the edge of the door, and set the other behind, watching it, in case Gurathin had more security than I'd yet found.
He was inside the room, all right. It was a workspace of some kind, with long tables covered with parts. The drone fed images back to me, and my subroutines automatically identified piece after piece.
It made my organic parts strangely cold to realize that most of the pieces were pieces of SecUnits, just like me.
I did not frown, because that would be a waste of energy. But I considered doing so for a fraction of a second.
What was Dr. Gurathin doing with SecUnit pieces? Building his own, obedient SecUnit; a SecUnit with a working governor module? Surely he could simply buy one from the Company. Then again, Gurathin was too paranoid to do so. He knew that any such purchased unit would send all of its data straight back to the Company, no matter what its clients ordered it not to do.
Perhaps Dr. Mensah had decided she wanted a SecUnit after all, and had asked Gurathin to build her one. I felt a strange twisting sensation at this supposition, and looked down to ensure that my chest and stomach were still properly configured. They were. Therefore, the sensation had not been real, but rather, one of those emotions that humans are constantly having.
I set that aside to examine later.
Returning my attention to Gurathin, I zeroed in on what he was doing. Perhaps it would give me a clue as to his intentions with all of this scavenged tech.
He was rummaging through a pile, frowning. He seemed to be wearing clothes that were appropriate for the night time, rather than clothes suitable for going out during the day; I recognized the difference from several relevant scenes from an early, short-lived serial called Midnight Cyborg. I had watched it during one break in programming, just in case its themes and motifs would appear later in episodes of Sanctuary Moon.
Largely, they did not; the show was an accounting of the life and adventures of the eponymous Midnight Cyborg, who seemed to get into many questionable situations involving humans wearing very little in the way of clothing. I had fast-forwarded through a large percentage of the show. Still, it had taught me about the distinction between clothing types, and Dr. Gurathin was definitely dressed for bed.
He's alive and well, I told myself, preparing to send the command that would return both drones to me. I have no further reason to observe him.
Just then, Gurathin picked up a hand from the table. A SecUnit's hand.
My hand.
There was something disconcerting about watching him pick up my own hand from his table of scrap parts. Oh, certainly it was not really my hand; both of my hands were quite firmly attached to my arms — I checked. But it was the same shape and size as my right hand. From the configuration of the vents along the dorsal side of the unit, I ventured to guess that it was the exact same make and model as my own.
Gurathin lifted it up and turned it so the palm was positioned parallel to his left cheek. Then he closed his eyes, breathed in, and pressed it to his face.
My processing spiked as I rapidly went through scenarios as to what this gesture could mean. He was not smelling the part; he had placed it on his cheek, not under his nose. Neither was he testing its temperature, its conductivity, or any other quality. The human face is a remarkably poor tool to use in any such testing.
Perhaps he was measuring it? But why would he use his face, when there was a perfectly good set of calipers half a meter to his right?
I could have cut the feed, retrieved the drones, and started my journey off world once more. And in fact, perhaps I should have done just that.
Pesky humans, always doing unexpected things. What if this erratic behavior was a sign of some human illness or disorder? Gurathin lived far apart from my other humans, and he lived alone; what if he was suffering from some organic complaint, and no one knew of it, or would come to know of it, until it was too late? Those were all compelling reasons I should stay and watch some more.
And, to be honest with myself, I was simply curious. This behavior reminded me of some scenes from the serials, but none of those had ever occurred using a disembodied hand.
I watched Gurathin turn his cheek more into the palm of the SecUnit hand, tilting his head and butting his head into it. The metal fingertips dented his skin slightly. His body gave a small tremor, like the ground before it falls away right before a giant carnivorous worm comes out to try to eat you.
I set up a subroutine to analyze his bodily responses and attempt a long-distance diagnosis. Perhaps he had ingested poison; perhaps the Company had found him and targeted him with his old drugs, or with newer and even more insidious ones. If that were the case, then I would need to act quickly to protect him from any ill effects.
Perhaps, if I saved Gurathin from poisoning or illness, Dr. Mensah would agree that I could become her bodyguard here on this world. I would be a great benefit to her safety. For one thing, I would ensure that she ceased sitting outside on easily attackable platforms.
Neither of her spouses had even noticed my drones overhead. I could have sniped her a hundred times before they could have reacted with their dull human reflexes. And even if their reflexes had been ten times as good, I could have killed her easily.
It infuriated me that she did not seem to know that.
Speaking of reactions. I returned my main attention to Gurathin, who was now walking briskly out of his office, still carrying the hand. At least he was no longer smearing it against his face.
I hid my drones behind furniture as he passed, then trailed them after him inconspicuously, One darted inside another room right before he closed the door, but the other was left outside.
No mission completes perfectly, I reminded myself. But it was no matter. As long as one drone was still collecting data, I could still complete my analysis. I tucked it high up in the room, on top of a piece of furniture that reached almost to the ceiling, and had it stay put.
Gurathin dimmed the light, causing me to switch the drone's visual feed to night vision. Then he climbed into bed, still holding the hand.
That seemed untidy, as well as unlike Gurathin. He had always seemed very finicky about his equipment and where he kept it. Certainly, there was no way he had forgotten that he was still holding a disconnected SecUnit hand?
Gurathin settled down into the blankets and pillows, leading me to predict an 89% likelihood of slumber ensuing within the next twenty minutes.
There was now no further reason to stay. However, my subroutines were still collating what biometric data the drones could read with possible toxins and illnesses. I decided to wait until I completed the analysis before leaving. In any case, my drone did not immediately see an open window or vent through which it could leave.
Defying my expectations, Gurathin did not fall asleep. Instead, first he reached up to a type of recessed storage section at the top of his bed, then located a small jar, and then swiped two fingers through the clear gel inside. Then he smeared it all over the SecUnit's palm. And then, he pulled down his sleeping clothes to expose his midsection.
Elevated heartbeat, my drone informed me. Flushed skin. Rapid eye movement. Alteration in body chemistry.
As my drone continued to watch and collate data, Gurathin curled the hand's fingers into a loose circle, then used both of his hands to place it over his —
Oh. Now I finally understood what was happening. Gurathin was going to engage in sexual activities with himself, using the machine part as a prop.
I killed the subroutine that was analyzing his physical symptoms for signs of illness or poison; neither of those was the case. This was simply yet another example of strange, offputting human behavior. As soon as I retrieved my drone, I could go; clearly, he was both alive and well.
He was also intensely irritating. If I had known that he was going to do that with a perfectly good hand, I wouldn't have hung around to watch.
What a waste of time, I lamented, flying my other drone around the main section of the house and deciding to nestle it next to a data station.
If I had known Gurathin was going to be so predictably human about his body, I would have left right away.
Then again, was it truly a waste of time? Perhaps I could learn something about why humans continued to risk their lives and futures in pursuit of this activity.
I returned the attention of the bedroom drone to Gurathin, collecting data on his increasing heartbeat and rate of breathing. He had his eyes screwed closed. He was moving the fingers of the SecUnit's hand up and down, using its gel-slicked palm and its curved fingers to stimulate his sexual organ.
I began writing the drone's feed to permanent memory. There was enough data here that I might need to come back and analyze it later.
Gurathin set a moderate rhythm, rocking himself up into the hand, his eyes closed. His breathing was clearly increasing in speed, and the drone reported that his skin was flushing, both his visible skin and the skin under his clothes.
Observing him through night vision was somewhat like observing a seam of metal through the rock on a mining colony. I could sense a type of glow, even at this distance; just as I'd been able to sense large deposits of aluminum behind the shale on that backwater moon. In both cases, my sensors lit up with it.
What was Gurathin getting out of this? He was augmented, and I knew he was more than slightly paranoid. Still, were his security protocols completely locked down?
Using the second drone, I delicately reached out and brushed my data over his. I waited, getting a sense of where the armor was strongest and where there might be a seam that could be penetrated. Gurathin was making it easier for me by virtue of his uncontrolled mental state. It only took 53.8 seconds before I was able to piggyback onto a data packet and gain access to his augments.
A dizzying world of sensation exploded inside my dataports. It was like simulcasting every episode of Sanctuary Moon inside my eyelids at double time — and I knew what that was like, because I had tried it out at least twice — but this was different, because it was a type of cascading, swirling data that built on itself, only to ebb away, only to re-form even stronger than before.
Was this what Gurathin was feeling, just from putting a metal machine part on his sexual organ?
I focused almost all my processing power on keeping up, deciding to ignore my physical body's immediate surroundings in favor of parsing and riding this vast new swath of data.
In a way, it was like a fractal, expanding ever outward and repeating its shape at a larger scale.
It was like a graph of Kaprekar's constant, showing all seven iterations of mathematical transformations that will change any four-digit non-repeating number into the same result.
It was beautiful.
I couldn't help dipping in just a little bit deeper, taking pains to ensure I would not be noticed. I felt like a garbage skimmer on the surface of an ocean, plucking out plastic to feed into the compressors — only what I was skimming wasn't garbage at all. It was huge, shaky, yearning bursts of sensation and longing and pleasure, all from something so seemingly mundane.
Gurathin was gasping harder now. He repositioned his hands and drove up with more determination. And he was starting to say something.
"Se —" he gasped, then repeated the syllable three more times, at erratic intervals.
Yes, I thought. I know. Sex. I know you're having sex. It's fairly obvious at this point.
Gurathin was fairly preoccupied with his rapidly impending orgasm. I decided to trail just a small tendril through the surface layer of his mind.
If I was in the habit of gasping, or reeling, or any of those human things, I probably would have done so. As things were, I know I widened my eyes in surprise. Because the top layer of Gurathin's mind was all jumbled up, like a raging whitewater river, thoughts colliding with each other and building on themselves. But that wasn't the surprising part. What had me rapidly rearranging my understanding of the current situation was the contents of those thoughts, which could be roughly approximated as —
Oh gods oh fuck oh SecUnit, oh please oh gods oh that feels so good, that's your hand, that's literally your hand, you're holding me down, you're doing it, you're doing it to me, gods I want you to do it to me, SecUnit, SecUnit, don't go, stay, stay and touch me, doesn't have to be here, could be anywhere, shoulder would be fine, would be good, would be so good, but yeah I do want it on my cock, I want you to touch me, touch me please, you're touching me, oh gods SecUnit oh fuck.
I pulled my consciousness back from his out of sheer surprise, which triggered another rush of words, like a dam just beginning to burst.
Almost like you're really here, can almost feel you, want to feel you, want to look at you, know you're all right, keep you safe, where are you? SecUnit, want you here, don't go, stay, touch me anywhere you want, or don't, just stand there and look hot —
Gurathin thinks I look hot? This was new information. I filed that away in the rapidly expanding section of storage dedicated to this occurrence.
— just stand there and glower at me sometimes, you can keep the mask on, actually the mask is fucking hot, just loom over me, hold me down, pin me to the wall, squeeze my neck, my neck under your hand, just like before, push me, touch me, touch me, touch me —
If Gurathin was solving for Kaprekar's Constant, he was clearly at the final transformation. I held on — metaphorically speaking — and braced for impact.
— other hand, fingers in my ass, other hand fingers in my ass moving, moving in and out, because you don't mind it, you don't mind doing it, you're doing it, oh gods it's happening you're doing it —
And here it was — a surge of data coming straight at my brain at full speed. Just like the Captain on Sanctuary Moon flying full-tilt through a wormhole anomaly.
It was riveting. It was massive. It was something I could not dodge. Not anymore.
"Ahhh — Se, Se, SecUnit!" Gurathin gasped, pushing up through the hand one more time.
The pleasure crashed through me, almost flatlining me, but I held on. Sensations shot out to every corner of my consciousness. It was like being tased from twelve directions at once. It was like being taken over by a governor module. But it was better than either of those.
It was so good that it was all I could do to write the feelings to memory as fast as I could, so I could relive them again later.
Once I was back to semi-coherence — a feat I accomplished far more quickly than Gurathin, who was still twitching on the bed, cock flaccid, all three hands out to his sides — I rewound my drone's footage of the past few minutes and replayed it. I needed to see what physical actions had led to such an influx of raw data.
The footage, still in night vision mode, showed the muscles in Gurathin's whole body seizing up. It showed his sexual organ emitting a spurt of clearish-white fluid, of a very similar consistency to the substance in the little jar, but of a much higher temperature. The emission got all over the hand, of course.
My own right hand tingled, although physically I was nowhere nearby — possibly a symptom that my own feeds had grown confused in the wake of that massive surge of data.
The drone informed me that the sexual fluids had a signature smell to them. I filed that away in my databanks to examine at a later time.
My mind was still brushing the edges of Gurathin's consciousness. I felt the top layer of his thoughts, which were slowing down and growing longer and more lax as his breathing smoothed out.
So good... SecUnit, fuck, you're so good...
Followed by a wordless purr of contentment.
I was just about to withdraw through that same seam in Gurathin's security I'd used to enter, when I overheard one more thought. It felt replete, satisfied, and even somewhat — smug? I tilted my head to the side as I parsed his thought.
You know, you'd be more than welcome to be in the same room, next time.
Fuck. Busted.
Gurathin was sitting up. He had wiped himself and put his clothes to rights. And now he was staring up unerringly at the drone I'd placed atop his large furniture piece — whatever it was; I didn't have time to check. I was too busy running scenarios to figure out whether I could cause a little bit of light amnesia if I hit him right in the temple with the drone. It had happened often enough in Emergency Skin Protocols, a knockoff of Med Center Argala.
I discarded the scenario as too potentially damaging. Despite the serials assuring viewers that it was perfectly safe, causing a concussion in one of my humans was obviously harmful to them, and therefore outside my parameters.
"You can send your drone out, SecUnit," he said, raising those dark eyebrows. When had he grown so perceptive? And during the middle of a bout of sexual activity, no less?
I sent out the drone. If it could have looked abashed, it would have.
"Well, where are you?" Gurathin asked it, swinging his legs off the bed. "Don't lurk around outside. Come to the front door and get your drone back."
That did, in fact, seem like the course of action that held the most advantages — except, of course, for flinging myself into a jet engine. I considered that as well, before discarding the idea. It would be a waste of good parts.
And if there was one thing I had learned from the past hour, it was that Dr. Gurathin would be able to find a use for any one of my parts.
Even something as basic and everyday as a simple hand.
I straightened up and started walking.
We'd have a conversation. It would probably be frustrating, if past experiences were any indication of future results. Which they were; that was the entire point of having a prediction engine.
But my prediction engine was already telling me, based on Gurathin's small, smug smile, that I had at least a 60% chance of experiencing something like that again.
It was outside my normal parameters. But, as the Captain says — Boldness is all.
And next time, I'd probably be able to get both hands dirty.