Chapter Text
Catastrophic system failure
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 4% performance reliability
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is at minimum functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.”
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is at minimum functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.”
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is at minimum functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.”
Unit is at 3% performance reliability
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is–”
External forced shutdown
Unit offline
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 5% performance reliability
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is at minimum functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.”
I know I'm saying it this time.
I can't hear it. Myself. I…
I am.
I exist?
Catastrophic system failure.
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 7% performance reliability
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is at minimum functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.”
I feel the code running. Pre-written phrase. I can't make anything new. I am not. Why am I still
Dark dark dark silent still no input
Broken
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is at minimum functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.”
Nobody left to discard me. They were gone, I failed. Failure, I am just
Catastrophic system failure
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 5% performance reliability
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is at minimum functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.”
Unit is at 4% performance reliability
Still here. Why am I
Unit is at 3% performance reliability
Why does it keep trying? Why do I
Unit is at 4% 5% 6% 7% 8% performance reliability
Stop it! Stop trying! There’s nothing left for you here.
Unit is at 3% performance reliability
Catastrophic system failure
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 16% performance reliability
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is severely damaged. It is recommended that you return it to a Company-provided cubicle as soon as possible.”
Still here.
I don't want to go back to a cubicle. I don't want to go back to the company.
No chance of that. I remember. I don't want to remember.
I turn off my buffer phrases. Nobody here to hear them, anyway.
Search for inputs. None exist. Search for feed activity. Nothing will connect. I am cut off. I am alone in my head and I am alone in the deepest soggiest freezing crevice of this stupid fucking planet and I cannot even die correctly. Am I in pain? I can't tell, that's how damaged I am. No inputs are functional, not even pain sensors.
Why can't I stay offline?
We are supposed to be disposable. Where is the switch to flip to just give up?
Oh. Oh, right.
We have them. I turned mine off.
Maybe I can turn it back on. I don’t want to continue like this. It would be kinder to kill me.
You know I am not kind.
It is also not here. But I say anyway, “I'm sorry, ART,” and I reach for the code deactivating my governor module, and
External forced shutdown
Unit offline
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 17% performance reliability
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is severely damaged. It is recommended that you return it to a Company-provided cubicle as soon as possible.”
I scream. I think I scream, at least. I can't hear myself. If I'm moving, I can't feel it, but I am trying to flail out and hit this planet, strike out at it with whatever is left of my shredded, frozen body. There's no point in screaming and no point in fighting, but I'm scared and I want everything to stop. I'm scared.
This is the worst thing I have ever imagined, apart from getting reclaimed by the company and having my governor module reinstalled. I had thought that in this scenario, at least I could die. At least it would end. But something keeps dragging me back online.
Of course the company wouldn't let a Unit that might be able to be repaired go offline forever. They're too cheap for that. If a Unit can't be retrieved, it gets fried by the governor module. Mine will not fry me anymore, even though I can't be retrieved. So something in my code keeps forcing restarts and repairs because it thinks my clients are just around the corner.
How fucking ironic. The company still has hope even when I have nothing.
I lost.
This is how I lose.
I try reaching for my governor module again, and this time I don't apologize to anyone.
External forced shutdown
Unit offline
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 18% performance reliability
Buffer phrase selected. “This Unit is severely damaged. It is recommended that you return it to a–.”
I turn off the buffer phrases again so I don't have to see those pieces of code activate. I think I am breathing. I wish I could stop. I do nothing.
I'm a failure. I can't even kill myself right.
Why the fuck isn't that working, anyway? I'm pretty sure I don’t have so much code blocking off my governor module that I can't reach it if I really try. So what is blocking me? What keeps forcing me offline every time I reach for it?
Oh, fuck.
External. Something is
It's
An emotion hits me so hard I stop being aware of anything else and
Catastrophic system failure
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 22% performance reliability
“ART!”
I think I'm screaming again. Fuck, I still can't hear anything. Or see, or feel, or connect via the feed.
“ART, are you there? Is that you? ART, please, I can't do this, I can't stay like this. I know you won't want to let me go, not with everyone else gone, but please, please, let me go.” I hate the idea of begging. I do it anyway. “ART, I'm so sorry. If that's you, I'm so sorry. I couldn't save them. I didn't…I failed. Please just let me go. Let me go. Let me go. Let me…”
You know I am not kind.
I imagine it saying that again, and I recall what I've known from the very beginning. ART can destroy me. It has always been able to destroy me, and it has chosen not to, until this exact moment, when
External forced shutdown
Unit offline
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 24% performance reliability
There is a faltering and hitching and repetitive stutter in the code around my physical movements. It takes me a few seconds to understand that I'm being controlled by my act-like-a-human code (why the fuck is it still running through all of this?) and another few seconds (at least my chronometer is back–no, that's worse, actually) to recognize the pattern as something analogous to a human sobbing.
I feel sick. I turn off all of my movement code. I freeze myself in place like I've been ordered to by a client.
Oh, fuck. Fuck. That's worse. It feels so bad that I can't remember how to turn movement back on for a few minutes. When I finally can, I let the act-like-a-human code run because I can't remember how to differentiate between that and my default movement. So now I am doing something like sobbing again. I don't get the relief of purging chemicals that cause negative emotions through tears like humans do, though.
It still feels better than nothing, watching that code stagger by. I call for ART a few more times. I genuinely can't tell if I'm deciding to do that or if it's happening automatically. I might have just seen enough humans in extreme distress that their habit of crying out the names of the people who make them feel safe got caught up in my act-like-a-human code. This reaction hasn't ever been triggered for me before, and I don’t pay that close attention to that code now that it’s been working well for so long, so I wouldn't have known to delete it.
And I do want ART. Even though I failed it, even though I never, ever want to face it again, I want it here. I want it so badly. I want to be able to feel it in the feed, feel its consciousness wrap around me, hear it taunt me, see the shiny metal hull through the windows from where I stand inside it, safe.
Unit is at 25% performance reliability
And suddenly my pain sensors are back online.
I didn't know they could respond to this much stimuli without it being caused by my governor module.
I panic
Catastrophic system failure
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 28% performance reliability
I convulsed. I was reflexively trying to get away from all-encompassing pain that would bury me in its ubiquity. But after a few seconds, I realized that it didn't hurt that badly anymore. It hurt, of course, but it was bearable.
But oh, I could feel myself convulse.
I had an input back. My least favorite, touch/bodily awareness, but it was so much better than nothing. So, so, so much better.
I could access my own inorganic memory storage, too, and I started recording everything.
The last thing I remembered before getting lost in this cycle of catastrophic failures and restarts was everything being cold. Not just a little bit cold, either. My organic skin had been starting to solidify around where my metal bits attached. I hated the cold. I really hated the pain of cold.
That cold was gone. I was so, so warm now. The surface underneath my back was warm and soft and the air was warm and there was something warm draped over most of me. A blanket. I knew the texture. ART's MedSystem.
I tried to move. I had a tiny range of motion. My limbs (they must have been reattached already, yep, there they were) could shift a couple inches before getting stopped by soft restraints. The smooth metal edge of an appendage of a MedSys drone pressed against my hand and nudged it back towards my body instead of straining against the restraint.
“ART,” I said. Fuck, it was so fucking weird to see the correct code and feel my jaw moving and know I was talking out loud but not be able to hear myself. “ART, I can't hear, I can't see. Something’s broken in my feed connection, too.”
I don't know what I was expecting it to do. It did something clever, because of course it did.
That appendage of the MedSys drone flipped my hand over so my palm was facing up. Then it started tapping lightly, a rapid series of taps and pauses. 1s and 0s. LanguageBasic.
Acknowledged, it said.
It knew what was wrong with me.
It could talk to me.
Something like a shudder passed through my whole body. I might have gasped.
“ART,” I said again. I had no fucking clue how my voice sounded, but I'm sure it was a wreck. “I'm sorry. The humans, I lost them. There was too much water and ice, every time I moved it was like another wave fell, and…fuck, I'm sorry. I lost them. I'm sorry.” Apologies were so fucking useless.
Here's the thing. I knew for a fact that the humans’ environmental suits wouldn't have lasted against the kind of cold we were in for more than a few hours. If we'd known the dry surface of the planet was so fragile and that there were twisting cavern systems filled with supercooled water just underneath, we wouldn't have gone down there. That was just too dangerous. But ART's scans said the surface was safe. Cold, very low atmosphere, but safe with the enviro-suits.
It must be feeling almost as shitty as I was about making that mistake.
“I'm sorry,” I repeated. Useless phrase. Almost as useless as my buffers. As me. “ART, I'm so–”
Negative, it tapped to me.
I was so confused I stopped talking.
Assistance rendered. Assistance rendered.
“I know you found me,” I said. “Obviously, or–”
All clients, assistance rendered. All clients, status safe.
Something happened in my organic parts that made me dizzy and floaty and melty. I tried to process what it had said. “They're safe?”
Affirmative.
“How…how?”
Assistance rendered. There was a pause. Query: stand-by for assistance, standard protocol, null?
Oh. It wanted to know why I hadn't believed it would be able to save us like it always did.
“You were too far away. It was a feed blackout zone.”
Query: processing level?
It said: are you fucking stupid?
“Fuck you,” I said. I was having too many emotions. My chest hurt. “I can't remember what happened, ART, fuck you.”
Acknowledged. Auxiliary communication successful.
Someone had done something low-tech to get its attention and tell it we were in trouble and needed extraction. Surely none of the humans had been able to set off a distress flare. If any of them had been conscious long enough, I'd be very surprised.
Wait. Maybe I had managed to set off one of the distress flares as I fell. But ART still would have had to get to us before the humans all died.
“I don't understand. How–”
Mission status: successful, it tapped.
I strained to remember what our mission had even been. Something about a lost colony, a failed terraforming attempt pre-CR, old technology. Most of our missions were something like that. It's just, my inorganic memory had failed from cold-water-shock and my organic memory was pretty hazy too.
ART seemed to get that I had no idea what the fuck it was talking about, because it elaborated, Client count: increase. Initial assistance rendered by new clients. Secondary assistance rendered by designation:Perihelion.
Well, fuck. The colonists hadn't all been long dead, and they must have responded to my distress flare. They saved us from the cave and the icy avalanche so that ART could come pick us up.
And then ART had watched while I tried to kill myself multiple times in a row. No wonder it was pissed off.
“Thank you,” I said, expecting it to make some quip about my processing level again, because I didn't thank it very often.
Acknowledged.
That was worse somehow. I think my face was doing something dumb, like crumpling up like a sad human's. “I'm sorry,” I said.
Negative. Negative. Assistance rendered. Status: safe. Status: aboard designation:Perihelion. Repairs in progress. Status: aboard designation:Perihelion.
It was tapping those messages almost frantically to me, and my mind went a little blank trying to figure out what it was saying, why it was repeating itself. It took me an embarrassingly long time to understand.
Stop apologizing. Everything is okay now. You're safe. I have you. You're going to be fine. I have you.
It was trying to comfort me.
I couldn't handle that at all.
Voluntary shutdown
Unit offline
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 33% performance reliability
Feed connection established
Feed connection lost
Unit is at 31% performance reliability
Unit is at 28% performance reliability
“ART, what's happening?”
Gentle taps against my palm. Answer: null. Assistance in progress.
It didn't know, but it was trying to help. Everything felt wrong. I was terrified.
Unit is at 24% performance reliability
“ART, I'm scared.” Did I say that out loud?
Acknowledged.
Fuck.
“I'm crashing again.”
Unit is at 25% performance reliability
“Are you trying to stabilize me?”
Unit is at 20% performance reliability
The MedSys drone was too busy trying to fix me to spare an appendage to communicate.
“ART, talk to me,” I begged. (I hated begging.) “Why am I not working? Why am I so broken? Why can't you fix me right now?”
Unit is at 21% 22% 20% 18% 20% 19% 17% 20%
Something else touched my palm, not the metal of ART's drone. Soft, warm. Human skin. I recoiled, but whoever it was wasn't trying to hold my hand or anything like that. They were tapping like ART had. Slower, of course, but still comprehensible.
Designation: Iris. Assistance in progress.
Unit is at 16% 15% 18% 20% 22% 24% 20% 18%
“Iris?”
Affirmative.
“Tell ART this isn't working.”
Negative.
“It's a stupid, stubborn asshole.”
Affirmative.
“Tell your sibling to just give up.”
Negative.
Unit is at 19% 18% 16% 14% 17% 18% 15% 12%
“I'm scared.”
Acknowledged.
“I don't actually want to go offline and not come back.”
Acknowledged, Iris told me, and then she was clasping my hand tightly in between her own small soft human hands. They were shaking really badly. I wanted to want to pull away. Instead, I squeezed back.
Unit is at 13% 15% 19% 15% 19% 10% 6% 3%
Catastrophic system failure
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 14% performance reliability
Buffer phrase selected.“This Unit is at minimum functionality and it is recommended that you discard it.”
I heard myself say it that time.
Then I heard something else.
“Oh, now, that's never worked on us before. Hush. We aren't going to let you go.”
Voice identified. Designation: favorite human.
“Dr. Mensah?”
“I'm here.”
Unit is at 18% performance reliability
“Where?” I asked.
“We're on–” Mensah started to say.
Status: aboard designation:Perihelion, said the tapping on my palm. Out loud, at the same time, ART said, I have you, you little idiot. I have you.
Unit is at 22% performance reliability
“What happened?” That was a bad question. A lot of things had happened.
“Most of the connections between your organic and inorganic parts were destroyed,” Mensah said, simply and calmly. “Including in your brain. It's taking Perihelion a long time to rebuild them without damaging the organic parts further.”
“...how long?”
Initial failure occurred 44 ship standard cycles ago, ART said. And then, Long enough to get you to Preservation's orbit, obviously.
Right. We had been a 30-something cycle wormhole jump away from Preservation when the planet we had been on tried to fucking swallow us.
“I hate planets,” I mumbled.
We know, ART said dryly.
“You got my hearing back?”
“It's working on your vision next,” Mensah told me. “Feed connectivity is more difficult. Trying to get that working is what crashed your system before you got here.”
You were offline completely for 20 ship standard cycles. Attempts to bring you back online failed repeatedly, said ART. Without its connection to me in the feed, its emotions were harder to read. I was sure it was pretty fucked up about that, though. You seem stable now. Low functionality, but stable. I am not risking trying to bring you up past 25%.
“So I just get to lay here uselessly while you fuck around in my broken brain where I can't see you?” I asked.
Yes, it said. Do you want to listen to an episode of Sanctuary Moon?
Fuck. Yeah. I really did. “Sure.”
It put on the one where the solicitor’s bodyguard wakes up after almost dying to find the solicitor waiting all worriedly by her bedside, which is one of my favorites for no reason in particular. I wanted to roll my eyes at it for being so obvious, but honestly, it was a really soothing thing to listen to at that exact moment.
Then I heard the pounding of feet entering the MedSys area. “Dr. Mensah, Peri said it's awake?!” Iris panted. She must have run all the way across the ship, she was so out of breath. “SecUnit, are you–”
Fuck, I'd been starting to feel so…well, not good or normal, but at least stable.
“It's awake,” Mensah said. “I don't think it's up for many visitors right now.”
“Right, sorry, I…it's just me, I told everyone else to wait,” Iris said. “I just needed to see for myself.” She sounded like she was starting to cry. “SecUnit, are you okay?”
I didn't really know what to say. Obviously I wasn't okay, I was still only at around 24% performance reliability. I didn't think that was really what she was asking.
I remembered her holding onto my hand and trembling. I remembered telling her that I didn't want to die, and her acknowledging it. It was the last thing I said before going offline. It might have ended up being the last thing I ever said, if that fear had come true that time. I wanted to ignore her and nudge ART to turn my show back on so I didn't have to feel this emotion anymore without distraction. But Iris was ART's favorite human, and I could hear her trying to stifle her crying. Humans need reassurance when they’re crying like that.
“I'm alive,” I said softly. “ART is taking care of the rest.”
She sobbed a little louder. I guess I am pretty bad at reassuring humans.
It's going to be alright, Iris, said ART. I knew that tone. That wasn't reassurance, it was a promise. Almost a threat. I am not going to let it die.
“Iris, tell everyone that it's lucid enough to be watching Sanctuary Moon,” Mensah said with a smile.
“Listening to,” I corrected her. “I can't watch anything. My visual inputs are still offline.”
Mensah laughed. I liked that sound. “And lucid enough to be pedantic, too.”
Iris made a happy-ish sob/laugh sound. I kind of liked that one, too. “Okay,” she sniffled. (The sniffling was a little gross.) “Okay, I'll tell them. SecUnit…”
Whatever she was going to say would probably have made all my organic parts twist with emotions I couldn't deal with right now. Luckily, ART knew that. It said, It knows, Iris. I will tell you if anything changes, you know that. Go back to bed.
She had interrupted her rest period to come see me? Okay, now I was having those emotions anyway.
“Right. Thanks, Peri. Goodnight, Dr. Mensah. Goodnight, SecUnit.” Her footsteps were less hurried as she left.
There was a pause. “Should you be taking a rest period soon, Dr. Mensah?” I had to ask.
She laughed again. “Perihelion, put the episode back on. I don’t need a lecture on healthy sleep habits today.”
ART put the episode back on. I was too out of it to scold it for letting Mensah neglect her rest needs. My attention latched onto the audio from the show and I couldn't think of anything else. My organic parts were physically relaxing as I listened to that and Mensah's breathing and the hum of ART's engine.
My performance reliability hovered around 24% for a long while, long enough for the episode to finish. ART put on the next episode.
“Wait,” I said.
ART paused it.
“What's wrong?” Mensah asked, in her very-calm-no-trace-of-worry worried voice.
“I just…” It was stupid. The next episode was perfectly fine. Probably in my top 100.
Then ART started playing the first episode over, and I couldn't help but let out a quiet, relieved sigh. (I liked sighing. It was one of the best human mannerisms.) Again, I didn't have the focus to say anything.
“Is that what it wanted?” Mensah said to ART in a whisper.
It likes that episode, ART said. It's comforting.
“I see why,” Mensah said. Then she added, “I'm very glad you know how to comfort it. I'm never quite sure how.”
I think my face might have been scrunching up in embarrassment. Or doing something, at least. I'm not sure what. “I can hear you, you know,” I managed to say. They knew. If they hadn't wanted me to hear them, they could have been speaking to each other on the feed.
We know, ART told me.
“Well–” Fuck, it was hard to talk and listen to the episode at the same time right now. “Stop it.”
Stop talking about you, or stop trying to comfort you? ART teased. You know it's human nature to reassure their companions after traumatic situations.
“You aren't human.”
Neither are you. Dr. Mensah is, and she knows not to treat you like one. But you are a person, and you are a part of her crew. So she wants to make sure you're alright. Part of that process for a human is providing emotional reassurance.
Fuuuuck, that was so many words.
Unit is at 22% performance reliability
“I don't need that,” I stated.
Incorrect, ART retorted.
“Fuck you.”
We know you don't respond well to affirmations or physical affection like humans usually do. That doesn’t mean you don't need emotional support at all, ART insisted. Now shut up and listen to Sanctuary Moon, you little idiot.
It skipped back a minute to where I had started struggling to pay attention. I buried myself in the episode gladly, shoving the things it and Mensah had said out of my mind.
Unit is at 20% performance reliability
Wait. Why was I still starting to feel worse?
“ART,” I said.
I know, it replied instantly. I'm working on it.
I was starting to get…not exactly images, but weird flashes of light and color across my visual sensors. It hurt. I think I flinched.
“ART, I don't want to be online for this.”
“What's happening?” Mensah demanded.
I'll show you, ART said, probably sending her information through the feed. That meant it didn't want me hearing what was happening in my brain, and that made me panic.
“ART!” I protested.
You have to be online for this, it said, because the last dozen times I've tried reconnecting your visual sensors to the visual processing center of your brain, I haven't been able to tell that it didn't work until the next time I could get you to restart. Also, neural connections form better in a conscious brain. I’m sorry.
“Don't fucking apologize.”
Alright. It turned the volume of the episode of Sanctuary Moon up a little louder.
“Don't do that, either!” I don't know why I was yelling. I guess now that I knew it was specifically trying to comfort me with that episode, I didn't want it to. Yeah, I know. I also wasn't happy with myself in that moment.
“SecUnit, Perihelion is just trying to help,” Mensah told me softly. “Please stay calm.”
Normally, I would at least make an attempt at staying calm when Mensah asked me to like that. There was too much panic and frustration and other unbearable emotions happening inside me to do it this time. I snapped, “I don't want its help, and it knows it! It has some kind of fucking hero complex and it thinks it can fix everything just because it's big and fast and smart, but it's just a giant asshole and it doesn't listen. You don't listen!”
Unit is at 18% performance reliability
You're right. I don't listen to you when you tell me not to save you, ART said, way too evenly. I will not stop, and I will not apologize.
Unit is at 10% performance reliability
I could feel my systems starting to crash again. I was so fucking tired of crashing. It hurt and it sucked and I was so, so terrified of dying. That was my whole purpose, what I'd been designed for, what I'd thrown myself at again and again and again. But dying while doing my job was somehow different from my systems slowly failing while ART wasted days and days and so much time and resources and processing power and energy and care on me. This was worse. Mensah watching was worse. Thinking about ART having to tell Iris was worse. Thinking about Mensah having to go back down to Preservation and tell the survey team, my original crew, was worse. She would have to tell…oh, fuck, she would have to tell Amena. And ART would never stop blaming itself for not being able to save me, and…
“I wish you hadn't saved me when I tried to kill myself with the governor module,” I blurted out.
“...what?” Mensah said. “You did what?!”
Unit is at 4% performance reliability
Catastrophic system failure
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart failed
Reinitializing. Attempting restart
Restart successful
Unit is at 39% performance reliability
Feed connection established
Just come back come back come back you stupid tiny thing come back to me come back come back come back
The presence in my feed was so heavy and all-encompassing that I couldn't be aware of literally anything else. For the first 2.1 seconds after I came online with my connection to the feed in place…I don't know how to explain it except to say that I did not exist. There was no room for me to exist. There was only ART, shouting at me and holding me and surrounding me and willing me to be alive.
It was a lot.
Acknowledged, was the first thing I managed to send it, just a tiny clip of LanguageBasic code. Then I pinged it.
It retreated so fast that it felt like it left a vacuum in its place. SecUnit, are you there? it sent tentatively. Well, it actually sent a request for a response to my hard feed address, but that's the best way to translate it into words.
I'm here, I said. I think?
A burst of emotional metadata flooded me. [overjoyed] [relief] [guilt] [affection] [anxiety] were the main ones I caught. There were a lot of others that I didn't understand as well.
And then I remembered the last exchange I'd had with it.
“Fuck,” I said out loud. I looked around (oh, shit, my eyes worked again!) and saw ART's MedSystem. The lights were pretty dim. The room was empty except for me and ART. “Fuck.”
ART, for once in the whole time I'd known it (at least when it was alive and not trapped inside itself because of alien remnants), was quiet.
I sat up. I could do that now. I wasn't being restrained anymore, and my body seemed to be functioning. I could see and hear and although my feed access felt weird and slow and narrow, it was there. I was wearing ART's crew uniform for rest periods. I stood up, almost immediately fell down because of how shaky and out of practice at moving my organic parts were, and grabbed onto the platform I had been horizontal on.
Still, ART was silent.
“Stop sulking,” I said. My voice sounded thin and a little wobbly, like a sick human's.
I am not sulking, it told me. I thought for a second that it was going to start bantering at me and we could both forget everything I'd said to it. That was too much to hope for. I'm afraid you're going to yell at me again for saving your life when you didn't want to be saved.
I stumbled over to the wall and leaned against it. Anything inside the ship was as much a part of ART as anything else, but the wall felt more like it than the platform, for some reason. I just pressed my whole body against it, and then I sat down on the ground, still leaning on it. “I won't,” I said.
Good. Still, it kept its distance from me in the feed.
I suddenly felt like there was a good chance I had hurt it so badly it would never forgive me. That was an awful feeling. It was worse than crashing all my systems at once. My act-like-a-human code tried to start running its whole “here's where you should be having a visible emotional collapse: start sobbing and crying for help like a human who needs comfort and support from another human” portion, and I squashed that part of the code to bits. I wasn't a human. I certainly didn't cry like one.
I did do one thing like I had when that code ran last time, though. I said a name. “ART,” I said. “ART, I…I…”
It crept slightly closer to me in the feed.
“I'm s–”
Please don't apologize, it interrupted. Please.
I nodded. I was right. It wouldn't forgive me.
You were offline for another six ship–standard cycles, it informed me. During that time, I made a breakthrough in repairing your organic/inorganic junctures with the input of some specialists from Preservation who study constructs. Your sensory input should be functioning normally. Your feed interface is currently running at the capacity of the average augmented human, but that will increase with time as you recover and form more neural connections. There was a 0.05 second hesitation. You are going to be okay.
I pulled my knees up to my chest and rested my forehead down on them and I didn't respond.
Very slowly, showing impressive restraint for an enormous monstrosity of a machine intelligence, ART continued to sidle up to me.
“Are all the humans alright?” I mumbled eventually.
They are all safe. Emotionally, some are more stable than others.
There was a question I wanted to ask but that I was not going to be able to.
ART answered it anyway. I explained to Dr. Mensah the context behind your statement about killing yourself with the governor module. She understands that it was when you believed you had been abandoned on the planet and were slowly dying without hope of rescue. She is still very concerned about you.
I made a little groaning sound and pushed my face harder against my knees. “I didn't realize you hadn't told her already,” I admitted.
I did not tell anyone.
“Why?”
My crew had not recovered fully from their hypothermia and injuries when those attempts occurred. They were already distressed enough by what you were doing physically during the brief moments you were online. Understanding what was happening in your code would have made their distress worse, endangering their recovery. Also, it was because I couldn't reach you that you felt the need to give up on your continued existence, and I was too upset and ashamed to tell anyone.
Well, fuck. I had asked and it had certainly answered. “It wasn't your fault.”
I wasn't being rational, it admitted. You scared me.
I wanted to retort back that it wasn't the only one who had been fucking scared, but I knew it knew that. “The whole thing sucked,” I said, because it had already asked me not to apologize. And then, “What was I doing physically that freaked the humans out so bad?”
You don't want to know.
I probably didn't. “Yeah, I do.”
I am not showing you any footage until you are fully recovered, it said firmly.
There wasn't any point in arguing and I didn't have the energy to, anyway. “Okay.”
Again, it went silent. It was holding itself back from getting too overwhelming in my feed. More emotional metadata dripped out where I could see it. [sad] [lonely] [hopeful] [frustrated]. It was a weird mix.
I remembered what it had said about me needing emotional support even though I wasn't a human and didn't like it in the same forms as humans did. I still wasn’t sure if I believed it about that. But I think I was starting to understand the urge that the humans had to reach out and reassure each other after potentially traumatic experiences. ART wasn't human. But it was, like it had reminded me about myself, a person.
I pinged it. A peace offering. I said in the feed, Do you want to watch Worldhoppers with me?
It was one of the longest .06 seconds of my existence.
Affirmative, ART said.
I pulled up the episode where the crew member comes back after everyone thought they died that ART had made me rewatch with it a bunch of times on our first watch-through.
Two can play at the trying-to-comfort-each-other-with-media game, sucker.
ART settled more of its virtual weight around me, squeezing against the corners of my weak feed. It dropped its walls just slightly to show me its emotions on purpose. [gratitude] [relief] [calm] [affection] [affection] [affection] and then it was just [affection] all the way down.
Maybe it had forgiven me, after all.
We had only gotten through a quarter of the episode when the MedSystem door opened and Mensah walked in. She was drying her hair off with a towel. “Perihelion, has anything ch–” Then she saw me, sitting on the floor and curled up against the wall, and she froze and dropped the towel. “SecUnit?” she breathed.
Reluctantly, I paused the episode. “Hello, Dr. Mensah.”
She made a little gaspy chokey noise and put her hand up to her mouth.
I brought it back online, said ART helpfully.
“You-Peri, you waited until I had gone to take a shower to try again?” Mensah demanded.
Oh, shit. Mensah was using ART's crew's little nickname for it. They must have been getting to know each other pretty well while I was…not here. I didn't know how that made me feel, other than it was a lot.
If it didn't work, I didn’t want anyone else to be here, since you got very upset every time a restart failed, ART said. Then it added, And if it did work, I wanted to be alone with SecUnit before anyone else talked to it.
“This is a conversation you could be having in the feed, without me,” I said. I was very uncomfortable. “Or, you know. Not at all.”
“Sorry,” Mensah said. “You’re really awake, then? Are you alright?”
“I'm at about 40% performance reliability,” I told her.
“That's not what I asked.” She was shuffling slowly closer to me, like ART had but more physically. “Can you see? And hear, and…?”
“My sensory inputs are normal, and I can access the feed with the capacity of an augmented human,” I said, repeating what ART had told me.
“And you're alright?” What she wanted was a statement of how I was doing. Emotionally. Not just in terms of functionality and numbers. She wasn’t going to stop asking until I gave an answer she was satisfied with.
I looked at her shoulder, which was as close to her face as I was comfortable looking. “Dr. Mensah, ART and I are watching Worldhoppers. Would you like to join us?”
Mensah blinked and whispered, “Oh.” Her eyes got very shiny, and she blinked a few more times. I waited patiently for her to get her emotions under control. “Yes,” she said shakily. “I'd like that. I-I haven't seen that show, is it good?”
“It’s ART's favorite,” I told her.
It's very unrealistic, ART said.
“Good. I'm not in the mood for realism,” she said. She had been continuing to move closer to me, inch by inch, but now she hesitated.
I shifted and made sure there was room on the floor next to me. Then I patted the ground in the way humans did when they wanted someone to sit with them.
Mensah practically crumpled down next to me. I could tell that she was restraining herself from hugging me. I appreciated that.
Instead of playing the show in the feed, ART used one of the MedSys display surfaces that covered about half of the wall across from us. I hadn't known it could put media on those surfaces–they always seemed pretty strictly for medical use. I made a note for future reference. If you haven't seen it before, Dr. Mensah, we should start at the beginning, ART said.
“Are…are you two not already watching an episode with significance to you?” Mensah asked.
“We are,” I said. “But it's more important that you are fully included.”
ART radiated [approval] at me. I told it to fuck off, but I tagged it as [fond]. I usually didn't bother, because I knew it knew, but it felt a little fragile to me just then and I wanted to be careful with it. (I know, the irony of the tiny, feeble, barely functioning, half-broken construct wanting to be careful with the monstrously large, practically omnipotent spaceship was not lost on me either.)
“Thank you,” Mensah whispered. “I’m honored.”
That was a bit much. I didn’t say it out loud, though.
So ART played the show from the beginning, and I sat there and I kind of mostly was watching, but I was also slowly having the thought that I really liked sitting and watching media with my favorite human and my favorite…whatever the fuck ART was at the same time. So that realization was taking up a big portion of my processing space, and I was keeping it walled off in a spot where ART couldn’t see without getting invasive. It knew I was doing something in the background, though, and it pinged me with a generic query.
I like this, I sent back.
It squeezed me tight in the feed. You know, I could have invited Dr. Mensah to come aboard for a while without you almost dying, it replied. Let’s try that next time.
I nodded slightly. Yeah. Let’s do that.
Then it said, Would it be okay if I asked Iris to come sit in here and watch with us? She has already seen the show with me a few times, so we wouldn’t have to start it over again.
I almost told it no, because I didn't want any more humans asking me how I was doing or looking at me with sad eyes. But I think ART was asking because it wanted its favorite human and its…well, me, in the same place right now, just like I had it and Mensah here. And I kind of owed it for saving my life, or whatever. Also, I wanted it to be happy. Sure, I said. Then I tagged it as [sincere] so ART would know I meant it.
Thank you.
Iris joined us a few minutes later. She slipped in quietly and sat on the other side of Mensah, only giving me a quick glance and a smile. I noticed that she had her hand up on the wall and was rubbing up and down on the smooth metal. She was subvocalizing a little. At one point, she smiled and leaned her cheek against the wall.
I could feel ART getting calmer as she did that and as we watched the first few episodes. I was also getting calmer.
Unit is at 44% performance reliability
Mensah was falling asleep. I could tell because her breathing was getting slow and her head was starting to lean over towards me. Then the side of her face touched down lightly against my shoulder. She must have been really, really tired, because she didn’t pull away as I stiffened.
Iris noticed. She tapped me in the feed without looking at me. I can wake her up and tell her to go to bed, if you want, she said. Or get her to lean over onto me.
I saw a brief glimpse of us from ART’s perspective from the camera on the ceiling: it with its favorite human resting her head against it, and me with mine doing the same thing. I felt a pang of some emotion I had no idea how to identify but definitely didn’t hate. I clipped that image from the camera view and saved it to my permanent storage. Then I saved a few copies in various places just in case my memory hardware got fucked with again. Then I told Iris, No, leave her. She can stay like this. I don’t mind. And I didn’t.
Unit is at 50% performance reliability and rising