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No one really cared about how long SecUnits lived. I’d never really considered it until I met my humans and augmented human.
Sure, I’d borked my governor module several years ago, if one was counting. But it was impossible to tell how old I’d been before that. The company had probably scrambled my storage quite a bit between my making and then my becoming a mass murder.
I still didn’t have those memories back.
Having now attended some sort of celebration for all of my humans, I hadn’t expected the attention to turn to me. Not one for the augmented human, but he was an asshole at the best of times.
But Ratthi had turned that attention on me now, and I was left looking away, finding a spot on the wall of the lab we were standing in while I used one of the bots. Better than trying to have a conversation about my supposed age and whatever else. I know how long it’d been since I’d removed the company’s control. The rest didn’t really matter.
“But we need to be able to celebrate your birthday!”
I sighed softly. “We really don’t. It’s fine,” I promised quietly, wishing that he would just let it go. Going to the humans’ celebrations was bad enough.
Ratthi frowned, considering me for a moment before continuing. “I just realized I don’t even know how old you are. We wouldn’t even be able to decorate normally… No cake for you, but still,” he continued like he had only just realized that.
Which made me draw up short. Why would anyone need to know how old a SecUnit was? That wasn’t relevant information.
“Wait, do you not know? Shit, sorry,” Ratthi said, seeming to somehow correctly interpret and misinterpret my facial expression. It was a skill that only someone such as him could have, and I still wasn’t sure how he did it. Nor was I sure how old I was.
It’d never come up before.
I had my logs, of course. But I more than anyone else knew that my logs weren’t accurate. Or, not always accurate. It was better now that I knew how to back things up, but that still meant I was probably missing years’ worth of data. Things it was probably better that I couldn’t recover. I really didn’t want to know how many people I had murdered. I also kind of did.
“It’s at least fifteen, the company hasn’t made that model in years,” Gurathin commented quietly, not looking up from his tablet. “Past expiration for a SecUnit.”
“Gura!”
That got him to raise his gaze, looking at Ratthi. “I told all of you this when it joined the first survey,” he reminded.
I just shrugged, letting myself lean against the wall. ActLikeAHuman.exe had instilled a few habits in me that I hadn’t bothered breaking. Leaning against random surfaces, on occasion, felt like a reminder that I could do whatever I wanted instead of be at attention all the time. “Age is not important to SecUnits,” I added.
Ratthi’s attention seemed to be trying to flick between the fact that Gurathin had called me ‘expired’ and the fact that I didn’t care. “Well. How old do you think you are?”
I couldn’t bite back the sigh, not with his gaze on me, waiting expectantly like Mensah’s juveniles. “I haven’t had a working governor module for over sixty thousand hours” was all I could off in return. I had never kept track of anything else. And those were just functioning hours. I had been offline for several of those, but anything else was worthless. I couldn’t monitor that.
"Seven years," Gurathin supplied, ruining any chance of Ratthi actually doing the math.
It was worth it though when Gurathin paused, eyebrows knitting together to look closer at me. Something he rarely did since neither of us liked eye contact. Which was also the only reason I turned my head to look back at him. "What?" I prompted when he said nothing.
"You had hacked your governor module for almost five years before us?" He questioned finally, seeming to have needed those extra moments to process exactly what that meant.
"Yes. How do you think I got so far into Sanctuary Moon?"
Ratthi seemed to recover quicker, snorting in amusement. "Fair enough! So you're seven years into freedom. Not too long now before you hit a decade," he continued cheerily while Gurathin continued to stare. A feat that I could not keep up with. Not even to annoy my augmented human. "You'll have to let us know when we pass another milestone! Then we can celebrate that like a birthday."
A disgusting idea.
Gurathin finally looked back at his tablet, though he clearly didn’t return to his work. His fingers didn't move, and he didn’t seem to be using any of his implants to search the network. More like he was chewing on some thought while we both let Ratthi prattle on about celebrating the next anniversary I passed of 'freedom'.
A fact I would not be sharing with him or anyone else for that matter. Hopefully ART didn't hear about this and gang up on me. ART would. It was an asshole like that.
“Three would be more accurate,” Gurathin corrected. He wasn’t harsh or angry about it, but was just quietly offering a correction, causing me to zoom in on him closer. Looking for what he was talking about. “Mental independence is not freedom from the company.”
Which seemed to click with Ratthi immediately in a way that didn’t make sense to me. “Then we’re aiming for five years! You have to keep me updated, SecUnit,” he continued, standing up and throwing finger guns at him. A weird habit the doctor had recently picked up that I did not understand even more, but it seemed to be Ratthi’s equivalent of patting me on the shoulder before turning to leave.
Leaving Gurathin and I there in silence, Gurathin still looking at his tablet. Me staring at the wall as I tried to get a better idea how old I was. Even though it was an idiotic train of thought that wouldn’t actually do anything for me.
“You’re no older than thirty,” Gurathin stated 281 seconds later, not looking up from his ‘work’. “Probably closer to twenty-three.”
My eyebrows did that knitting together thing I’d seen some of them do, much like Gurathin had earlier, though my face also smoothed out a moment later. “How do you know that?” I prompted, unsure where all of this was coming from. Making me realize that I knew very little about Gurathin.
“I used to work with SecUnits regularly,” he said with a shrug. “I know the difference in models.”
Which was… interesting. People didn’t usually know that. Especially not the people that I worked with. I began searching through my files to see if I could find any of his background. Had I deleted it? I’d definitely deleted it.
“And in what freedom is.”
“Yes.”
No other information. Asshole.
I stared at him through the cameras. Zooming in, trying to understand. Gurathin wouldn’t tell me anything that he didn’t want to. He was a nuisance like that. An effective nuisance, but that wasn’t helpful in this situation.
“Why?”
Seconds ticked by as I started to search through my other files for information. For an understanding of where the other was coming from while my augmented human was left searching for words. He was annoying, at best, and was dropping my performance reliability two percent at worst. Gurathin was better at speaking his mind than this usually.
Nothing was coming up. There was no record of Gurathin my files dating back more than fifteen years, which was fucking annoying. That meant that he wasn’t part of Preservation before that. Less surprising, he didn’t act like the others from Preservation. But that didn’t give me more information.
“I was raised within the company. I am well aware of what it means to leave,” he finally offered, like it was a solution to it all.
Even as I zeroed in on him, watching each little movement, it made more sense. That one little fact made everything more understandable in a way I didn’t like. In a way that I had to realize how similar we were for a moment. Something I would not being returning to, I didn’t like that emotion.
“Ratthi has been trying to surprise me with a fifteen year party for a month.”
“Disgusting.”
The word slipped out before I could help it. I didn’t like the idea of being the center of attention, but I could see it now. I could understand.
“Quite.”
I would have to do more research to understand just what Gurathin’s past was. Maybe he would have some answers. Maybe he was just an asshole because he had been part of the company a long time ago. I was going to find out.
But here we both were, either way. We’d made it out of the company’s control in a way that very few ever did. Most died, were decommissioned, destroyed internally…
In some ways, we were both past our expiration date.