Chapter Text
I don’t normally watch political news. It’s boring. It’s depressing. It’s none of my business what humans are doing to each other in their awful little governments.
Today, though, I had six different Preservation newsfeeds pulled up, and I was even more or less paying attention to them. Worldhoppers was on in the background, but I told myself that was mostly for ART.
Mensah had already resigned as planetary admin, but a policy she had proposed while still in post, setting out a plan over five Preservation standard years to eliminate human guardianship requirements for bots and constructs, was being voted on today. (All laws and policies on Preservation had to be voted on directly by the whole population. Yes, I’m amazed their society hasn’t collapsed by now, too.)
Mensah had talked about me in the speech she made when she submitted the proposal. She had asked me for permission, and I had said yes, but I kind of regretted it afterwards. Now sometimes when people recognized me around Preservation station they tried to talk to me about politics, so that was an obvious downside. Sometimes they wanted to do things like shake my hand and thank me for opening their eyes, which was completely horrific. Sometimes they yelled at me and called me a danger to society or whatever; at least that was kind of nostalgic. Most of the time they just stared at me.
The day of the policy proposal, the PreservationAux team had come to my hotel room so we could all watch Mensah’s speech together on my big display surface. I didn’t mind having them there too much, but as they all vocalized loudly, congratulating each other and expressing admiration for Mensah’s big move, I couldn’t think of anything to say. I focused on running my best smiling and nodding behaviour code until they left to have dinner with Mensah. Of course they asked me to join, but I told them I didn’t feel like watching humans eat, and they knew better than to prod.
The crew had wanted me to be on Preservation on voting day, too. I could vote remotely, but they thought it was important to have the ‘full experience’.
“It’ll be a historic moment,” Ratthi had said. “It’ll make Mensah happy to have you there. You’re, like, her inspiration.” The way he said it made it sound like being an inspiration was a really good thing that I should be happy about.
I had pointed out that there would be crowds, and shouting, and so on.
Ratthi had done something with his face which according to my media archives might have meant I see your point. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. I’m just saying.”
So here I was, watching Preservation newsfeeds in ART’s crew lounge.
By now it was confirmed that the vote had passed, though by a smaller margin than Mensah and her team of aides had predicted. The footage now was mostly of crowds celebrating, occasionally interspersed with interviews of citizens talking about their voting choices, a few bots or constructs talking about how the new policy would affect them, political analyst talking heads nodding seriously about the campaign and results.
I noticed that there were more bots and constructs in the crowd than I was used to seeing. I felt a twinge of something about that.
ART nudged me in the feed. Your humans did a good job, it said.
They’re not my humans, I snapped back, and immediately regretted it. It wasn’t even really true, since I did think of them as my humans most of the time. Stupid impulse control issues, giving ART all this free emotional data to bug me about.
Are you upset because you’re not with them, or are you not with them because you’re upset?
See what I mean?
It was true that I was feeling unsettled. I kept opening and closing my chest compartment in a way that was distinctly agitated. (Before that, I had been deploying and concealing my energy weapons over and over, but ART grumbled at me that I was making its safety systems alert every time I did that, so I stopped, though not before making a note of it as an effective irritation tactic the next time the situation called for it.)
I thought it over. Did I wish I were with Mensah and the team? They were probably gathered in one of their houses, or out on the streets celebrating like the people on the newsfeed. I tried to imagine myself with them, maybe making small talk or waving a banner. But for some reason all I could imagine was them celebrating while I sat very still in the middle of it all, feeling weird and not saying anything, like I was doing now. Maybe they would look over at me every once in a while, smile pityingly, and shrug at each other: “It’s a big moment for constructs like SecUnit. It probably needs some time to process.”
No, I didn’t want that.
Which left the second possibility, and as much as I hated to admit it, it was pretty accurate.
They expected me to be happy and I’m not, I said, trying to make it sound matter-of-fact. Kind of like when they bought me in the first place.
It is an ethically fraught topic which affects you personally. To have complex feelings about it is entirely rational, ART said.
It’s a good thing, I know that, I said, and flicked my attention from one newsfeed to the next, trying to figure out what I was trying to say. But it’s like… they keep trying to flip the magic switch that’ll make me feel safe on Preservation. It’s like I’m a locked hatch they just need to find the right tool to open, and there’ll be some big important thing on the other side. I don’t know how to tell them there’s no hatch, there’s just a blank wall between them and the emptiness of space, and they’re wrecking all these tools ramming them into the wall over and over.
Why would they mistake a wall for a hatch?
Oops. ART is a terrifyingly powerful superintelligence, but it doesn’t always do great with metaphors. Or maybe it understands them better than anyone, it’s hard to tell. I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t tell if it was joking or not, so I tried a different reference point.
Remember when I told you constructs and bots couldn’t trust each other, because a human might order them to do something they didn’t really mean to do?
My memory is intact, yes.
You said there were no humans around. You said that to get me to trust you, and it worked. My humans trust me, even though I’m an unstable killing machine with guns in my arms. They’ve been nothing but nice to me, at least most of them have, and I still act like they’re plotting to sell me back to the company any minute now.
Your situations are different.
I scrunched up my face but didn’t reply, which, of course, ART took as permission to start a lecture.
In your position, it is reasonable to be resistant to taking concessions from humans. It would also be understandable to resent them for celebrating their own freedom to make decisions about your rights. Your extensive experience of human contempt, cruelty, and condescension may naturally lend itself to skepticism of humans who claim to respect constructs as equals. Mistrust of the Preservation political system’s ability to fully resolve the issue of bot and construct autonomy, and doubts about how fully this new policy will be applied under current leadership, are entirely justified. The new planetary admin has been broadly supportive, but Prof. Phillipsdóttir, another member of the steering committee who is slated to take over the admin director role in due course, has expressed reservations regarding complete bot and construct autonomy in no less than four official communications, including as recently as —
I poked ART in the feed: Look.
I’d been mostly paying attention to the newsfeeds, watching people cry and hug each other and getting angry at myself for making this all about me, when in the corner of one of the broadcasts I saw something else. I showed ART the one I meant: a counter-protest group had snuck into the frame.
I couldn’t hear what they were saying between the droning voice of the presenter and the jumbled shouts of the crowd, but several of them were holding signs, and I zoomed in to read them.
HUMAN TEACHERS FOR HUMAN CHILDREN, read a flimsy piece of yellow paper decorated with multicoloured letters and what looked like young children’s drawings. The human holding it up was carrying a very young juvenile in a sling on her back, another juvenile tugging at her trouser leg. The young child was holding another piece of paper, this one pink, limply in one hand by its side. The text was cut off in some places on the drone footage, but I was pretty sure it said KEEP SEXBOTS AWAY FROM KIDS.
I’M A FREE CONSTRUCT AND I LOVE MY GUARDIAN, declaimed a neatly printed board cut out of some kind of organic material, held up by what I could tell was a ComfortUnit, although its configuration had clearly been customized. A human — presumably its guardian — was holding it around the waist and grinning. I saved every angle I could get of that human’s self-satisfied face, even as I tried to convince myself that now wasn’t the time to start a new career as a vigilante killer. (Note to self: look up definition of vigilante.)
NO AUGMENTS, NO CONSTRUCTS, NO MORE MUTILATION read another sign, this one attached to a long pole so the bearer could hoist it above the crowd. As I watched, they turned it around and I saw the text on the other side: KEEP CORPORATE CULTURE OFF PRESERVATION. I wondered briefly if Gurathin had seen it, and considered asking him about it the next time I was there, but decided against it. What would I say, anyway? “Sorry people are evil assholes, I can kill them for you if you want”? Best to spare us both the awkwardness of that particular moment of solidarity.
One sign was just two printed-out pictures, one of Balin the Port Authority Bot, and one of Lutran with his head smashed open in the corridor junction where we’d found him, with the caption: WHO IS NEXT? Yeah, I could see how that whole mess wouldn’t exactly improve public perceptions of Preservation’s bot asylum policy.
There were others. You get the idea.
Fringe political groups tend to see more success when their slogans are not mutually contradictory, ART quipped.
If you’re trying to make me feel better, it’s not working, I sent back.
I am perfectly capable of mocking idiotic behaviour for my own benefit. Well, that was true enough.
Of course I knew that not all the citizens of Preservation were open-minded, generous, only-sometimes-condescending construct rights advocates like Mensah and the team were. Sure, I tuned out most conversations about politics I happened to witness, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew Mensah and her policy proposal had opponents. I knew people were scared of me, hated me, wished I didn't exist. It was kind of hard to forget.
Still, I’d never really looked into it very much. I didn’t know the talking points these people used. I didn’t know what their faces looked like. The difference between knowing something and seeing the reality of it… you know.
I couldn’t explain to myself why I cared. They were humans. They were stupid. What else is new? It wasn’t as if they had anything to do with me. Things had been so much worse on the Corporation Rim, still were so much worse there, and sure, I got angry about it sometimes, especially when we went there for surveys. But this felt different.
I looked at the ComfortUnit again, at the human’s possessive grip on its waist.
I wanted to do horrible things to that human. I wanted to prove them all right, and watch their faces change when I did. I wanted —
“I want nobody to look at me ever again,” I said out loud.
Shit. Of all the thoughts I was having, I really had to pick that one? I didn't even know I was thinking it until I said it.
Does that include me? ART asked, and I couldn’t tell if it was being sarcastic or not. In fact, I was leaning toward not, which was kind of freaking me out. I must be acting really pathetic. I put my head in my hands.
I didn’t mean that. Ignore me.
I will be sure to recall your direct request to ignore you in any relevant future scenario, it said, but then added: Why don’t you want them to look at you?
Because they shouldn’t have the fucking right, I thought. Because I knew when they were looking at me they were turning me into something else in their disgusting little organic brains, turning me into their fantasy of what they thought I was. Because when they looked at me, I felt like I had to do something about it, move differently, change my expression, cover my data port. I felt like I had to hide.
Wasn’t that ironic; I was the one who could rip their spines out without breaking a sweat, and I was the one who had to hide.
I didn't say any of that. Instead I just said, Everything was so much easier when I still had my armor.
Was it easier, or was it just easier not to think about it?
Oh, great, ART was doing that thing again. That thing where it tries to trick me into saying the thing it thinks I really mean, instead of the thing I say to get it to leave me alone.
It would be less annoying if it weren’t usually right.