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It's obviously love.
What I wanted to do was call the commenter a fucking idiot and disable their account. That wouldn't solve this. For one thing, I didn't think Aysword4lyfe was the only one. For another thing, it was customary on Preservation for creators not to lurk around discussions of their work, and I didn't want anyone to realize that I could crash their system if I didn't like them, because that would narrow down my identity quite a bit…
I should back up.
I like writing in my diary. (I like re-reading it less, because every now and then I stumble across a stupid thing I said. There's a number of them. I checked.) And sometimes I like to be able to just send an excerpt to a person rather than spending time (ugh) talking about it. Sometimes it works better than talking about it, too. Writing, where you can go back and make sure your words are saying what you actually wanted them to say—it's almost like having that one second delay I keep talking about. (Yes, I know, I need to get on that—I actually did try to code it once, but it made me feel like everything I said was a buffer phrase, so I dummied it out and resolved to keep working on it, and then I got caught up in the whole Freedom Flagship Station siege and "followed a worrying personal pattern" according to ART, which is just judgmental bullshit. So I sometimes get hit by bullets—I would like to point out that I did not put the bullets there, and in fact, tried to deescalate the situation, so why are we blaming me for the fact that there were bullets present, and that they happened to damage my torso (and mostly total my leg)? Blame the shooters for a change? Anyway, I didn't work on coding for a while because I was extremely distracted and after that I had other things to do.) Writing is actually a surprisingly good form of communication. I especially noticed that after Dr. Mensah shared some of the bits of my first diary that I sent her, people tended to give me more space—which made me feel weird, because I don't like asking for help, but I finally decided it was more or less all right.
But there are a lot of things that I can't share, or only share with a few people. Like, the Freedom Flagship Station siege—it's all over the news, and I suppose I could talk about my very small part in it, but in order to protect [redacted], we had to sign a non-disclosure agreement to say that we wouldn't point out that [redacted] was a bunch of assholes and were just as much at fault as the raiders, who were in fact a bunch of mercenaries and [redacted] working for [redacted], and if the universe was fair they would all [redacted] on some stinging [redacted] and die of their own [redacted]. You see what I mean, there's too much context missing, and if it mysteriously got out—well, the suspicion would probably fall on Captain Seth, I'm not going to do that.
So—it wasn't that I actually wanted to talk to anyone. But I sort of wanted to write to someone. And Doctor Mensah was being very encouraging about it, telling me that I had a good sense of story and a good sense of timing and I should publish something—apparently she thought that the diary parts she read were, not just informative, but actually really good.
I wasn't sure how to deal with that. It's not my function. People keep telling me that I'm good at things which aren't my function, like calming down miniature Mensahs, and—thank you I guess?? Please ignore the part of my brain that is still screaming that it's going to be zapped for not doing what it's supposed to be doing.
I was pretty sure I didn't want much of my diaries publicly available, even on Preservation. It would feel like people looking at me. And besides, we're working on the "full rights" thing for machines, and do they really need to know that their local Murderbot is a grumpy asshole who does in fact have a body count (not that way) (humans are disgusting) (I mean actual dead bodies). But there was an easy solution to that. Nobody ever said that I had to write only true things.
The company says that SecUnits have no capacity for creativity and imagination. The company also says that the benefit of renting a SecUnit is that our human tissue allows us to solve crises using humanlike creativity and imagination. From this, you can tell that the company knows perfectly well that it's lying, and also they don't care that much if someone else catches them lying so long as they stay within the letter of the law, and have enough money to make sure that the judges agree with them on what the letter of the law is.
Anyway, creativity and imagination—I probably had enough, anyway. Fuck knows there are writers out there that even I can tell are pretty bad.
The first few tries were dire (do not ever let a giant insufferable machine intelligence offer you a thesaurus module, there is a profound danger that you may use it) but eventually I settled into a weird version of writing what I knew. The universe I used was made up, far more fantastic and whiz-bang and interesting than the real one, but I generally relied on behavior observations that I had made, and to get around the human things I didn't understand, I—well, I cheated. But it was a good cheat, and people seemed to like it, so it didn't count.
So that you understand, let me tell you about the serial. I don't like summaries because I already wrote the thing, writing it again with all the good sentences left out seems personally insulting somehow, but I'll do my best.
The Aethiéri Galaxy is older and probably was once better explored than ours, but after various collapsed empires and wars and monsters and things far enough in the past that I conveniently don't have to explain them until they become plot points, a vast amount of history is lost. Ships don't use wormhole travel, they use a fantasy star flight thing called the Aethiérian Wind, which is emitted from the center of the galaxy through physics that, ooh, look, a gunfight, I don't have to go into that because there's something actually interesting happening.
(I did, in a truly idiotic attempt to make the Aéthierian Wind more realistic, get on a small sailboat with Ratthi to figure out how a craft can go towards the wind that's powering it. Never. Fucking. Again. I learned (a) sailboats zig-zag a lot, (b) there is a part of a sailboat called "the boom," because it is evil and its purpose is to induce concussion, (c) it is bad when a human looks alarmed and yells something about "going to jibe," and (d) my best friend is idiot enough to dive in after me when he knows I can swim, thereby creating a situation where I had to rescue us both and the boat had to be chased down by Public Safety. I hate planets. I really hate boats. I don't hate Ratthi but I could swear that my performance reliability dips a point every time he says something is going to be "fun.")
Anyway. In the Aethiéri Galaxy, there are exploration ships that go out and try to map a universe that has been made mysterious by living aliens, dead aliens, mysterious monsters, and time. The captain of one of these ships, the Intrepid, is Captain Aysana, who was in line for the throne of her home planet but decided that a better way to serve her people was to find out what was out there, because that might help avert the disaster that befalls them every thousand years (have not completely decided if the disaster is a memory plague like that one episode of Time Defenders Orion or something a little bit like the macrobiotics from The Doom Planet, because the main point is to get her out into space). The amount of family dynamics and sense of duty and general what-makes-a-brave-and-good-human stuff is a bit more than I wanted to work out, so—well, I gave her homeworld a sister planet full of aliens on the other side of their two stars.
When she saved the alien royalty from the much worse alien royalty, they gave her a gift. Which she didn't want at first, but was more or less obliged to keep.
I named it Scimitar, which is a very ancient weapon that I thought looked interesting. It's a genetically engineered, vat-grown alien that is simultaneously considered high enough to guard their royalty (who are the ones who reproduce) and completely casteless, making it, paradoxically, simultaneously elite and untouchable. No gender, no weird human stuff, even some cool spiky insectoid armor—in other words, a person I could absolutely use for a viewpoint character, because every time a human character does something strange (either because of the plot or because it feels right but I can't explain why) I could just have Scimitar think, "No, I don't get it either," and move on with my life, and also the story.
Like I said. Cheating. But a good cheat.
So. Captain Aysana, exploring the universe in a sailing starship with her crew, many of them human, some of them more danger-oblivious than others—always with Scimitar by her side, because despite both of them being initially suspicious, once your Captain sails her ship around the rim of a black hole so that you can catch the anchor and get pulled out (yes, I know, it's fantasy with different physical laws, roll with it) you kind of realize that she's telling the truth—she does think you're a person, she does value you, and she will come back for you.
I was having a lot of fun, actually, thinking up weird sorts of planets and space anomalies for them to face up to , because planets are a lot more fun when you don't have to actually set foot on them. Once there was an abandoned machine deep in the planet that was meant to drag outsiders into a battle arena for the pleasure of the planet's cruel aristocrats—who were long dead, so Scimitar had to defend Captain Aysana from various alien robots in front of an audience of richly dressed skeletons while Counselor Tasiir convinced the rock age descendents of the alien workers to help him into the arena (they thought it was cursed ground, which was actually a reasonable conclusion given the facts they had) and the spider-alien crew member who weaves the ship's computers figured out how to crash the arena's automated systems for good. Alternating plot threads, good for cliffhangers! There was also a story where a planet phased out of normal space for days at a time and elements from the crew's imagination started manifesting (the computer spider-alien nearly got them all killed that time, they're a bit of an asshole—absolutely loyal to Captain Aysana, but still sour and antisocial and, significant in this story line, an extreme pessimist). (Fortunately I am somewhat good at writing pessimists. Wonder why.) There was an adventure where…well, you get the picture.
I have to admit, I was mostly amusing myself, and I didn't expect to start getting clicks. Let alone that many. I think it's because Preservation is a small place. There's a lot of historical entertainment, but if you want new stuff, you either get it from the Corporation Rim (frequently after it's been out for nearly a decade) or you make it yourself. And I was, I don't know. New and interesting.
There were clicks. There were pleasant comments. There was a fan forum.
I probably shouldn't have stalked the fan forum. But—part of this was to see how well I was communicating.
At first, I thought I was doing wonderfully.
And then came people—Aysword4lyfe was just the loudest—who started reading things that I absolutely did not write, and did not mean—like the idea of Captain Aysana and Scimitar being in love with each other.
(It doesn't have human genitalia! It doesn't even have bug genitalia! It was designed without them! It doesn't want something from her, it doesn't want to do things to her, it just trusts her and wants to help her and wants to stay with her wherever she goes! Where was I not clear!)
It wasn't the sort of problem I felt completely comfortable asking Doctor Mensah about. No particular reason. Just—needing help is humiliating, even if it's for things I was never designed to deal with, like humans being stupid. (I mean, I was designed to deal with humans being stupid, but in concrete ways like, "Remove human from carnivorous mud puddle," or, "Stop drunk human from hitting other drunk human with the bottle they got drunk from," not—whatever the fuck this was.)
I couldn't think of anyone else to ask, though. Just because I occasionally ask ART to proofread doesn't mean I'm willing to put up with its color commentary all the time. Besides, it wants the grammar correct. I don't give a fuck about the grammar, I care about whether the words go together right. Those are not the same thing. And besides, Doctor Mensah got me into this. All that talk about how I had talent. So I asked her for help.
The first time I talked to her, she couldn't help much, because she needed to read the stories—which was fair, I hadn't told her what I was up to. I was still jittery, so I watched some Sanctuary Moon, and tried to settle in to write a story about that, only I couldn't, quite. What if I put too many emotions in that one, too? What if people started thinking that the bodyguard wasn't helping the solicitor because he wanted to, but because he was playing the long game to get something from her? Fuck, what was I missing in my own words?
Doctor Mensah dropped me a quiet note late that night, saying that she was in her station quarters and she had finished the serial, and I could talk to her before bed or in the morning, whichever worked.
I don't sleep, and she should have realized. Also I know she is usually up for another hour, because I do have a drone on her, because—it just makes me feel better. So I walked down to the little apartment.
She was looking at something on her display when I came in, and I realized that it was the comment section below the serial—not the forum, where they actually talk about the stories in detail, but the little spot where people find different ways to say, "This was good, I liked it," and also sometimes, "Update please please please!" (If they are pushy about this they almost always get told to back off by other commenters. I have rarely had to get involved with the comments. I did block the person who kept trying to tell me that the Aethiérian Wind would destroy all life as we know it by messing up the background whatever and changing the thing I don't care about and basically making the universe hotter than it should be. But that was mostly because they kept responding to other people with long posts about math and was a jerk to the readers.) (Also ART said their math was wrong.) (So there.)
Doctor Mensah looked up as I came in, and said, "You have a real talent for this," so I found a spot on the wall and looked at it. I'd rather people write that down so I can cope in private. Also, it wasn't exactly what I wanted to know.
"I notice you've based some of the characters on real people." She sounded as if she was approaching the subject delicately. "For instance, Counselor Tasiir has a lot in common with Ratthi. He's friendly and outgoing and often the first to realize that the crew is dealing with people rather than monsters. He was the one who realized that the Time Leeches were just draining everyone of speed because their pilot was in stasis and they wanted to restore her, for instance."
ART had a problem with that one, because there are about five hundred reasons time doesn't work that way, and sucking the time out of someone should not put them in a state of extreme slowness because time is not actually science words science words science words I don't care. I liked that story because it gave Counselor Tasiir a turn in the spotlight.
"I think his number of offscreen romances with alien royalty would be a little high for real life," Doctor Mensah added judiciously, "but it fits into the genre well. I notice that the times you've written an actual romantic encounter, it's often the weakest part of the story."
"I don't like them," I said, "but they're—I mean. Entertainment does that."
"Often," Doctor Mensah acknowledged, "but that's because a lot of it is written by humans who like those parts. I think you should write what you like, not what appeals to someone else."
I shook my head. "I don't mind them that much. They're—supposed to be there. I'm worried about the people putting in things that aren't supposed to be there."
"In a practical sense," Doctor Mensah pointed out, "there's no real way to stop them."
Which wasn't true. I could delete their comments. I could delete their stories. I could probably crash the entire archive where they kept their stories.
That would be property damage, and probably get people mad at me. Whether Doctor Mensah would be one of them…
I didn't really want to start a huge thing about this, I just wanted them to stop thinking those things. I didn't write it like that. I told Doctor Mensah that.
She tilted her head. "What do you mean by, 'like that?'"
I looked at her with another of my drones.
"Because from my perspective, you wrote a close and loving relationship."
The last thing I expected from this conversation was the be backstabbed by Doctor Mensah. "I did not! Scimitar doesn't want any sort of—biological—thing!"
"I didn't say sexual, I said loving." She could apparently see that I didn't know what she was getting at. "They help each other, they comfort each other, given a choice they would rather spend time in each other's presence—their relationship shows that they care for each other deeply."
"They don't have a relationship."
"Connection, then. The point is that your readers start from exactly the emotions you intended to write. They perceive care. A lot of it."
"Why do they have to make that into a—sex thing?"
"Maybe they're writing what they, personally, want in life. Maybe they're looking for a romantic or sexual relationship that includes a bond that deep. Maybe they have a deep and caring relationship, and thinking of that sort of thing being found in a distant, different place, across the stars…makes them feel better about the universe. Maybe it's a little different for each of them."
I couldn't argue with that. Which didn't mean I agreed with it or liked it, just that I didn't know how to argue with it. "Humans used to get into relationships," I said. "In the mines." I wasn't sure why I said that.
"Humans do," Doctor Mensah said. "Some of us for good reasons. Some of us just because we don't like being alone."
"Some of them wanted someone to blame for everything." The patch on the wall wasn't working for me, so I turned all the way away from her and stared at the beaded thing above her armchair. It didn't look like anything, really. Pointy zigzag patterns. "Some of them wanted discounts from their drug dealers, which almost always ended with me carrying someone off for starting a fist fight. And it wasn't always the worse human. It's surprisingly easy to goad some humans into throwing a punch…" Information that I'd used only once in my life, to goad a known irritant into attacking at me in public rather than jumping me in the hall, where I might have to worry about backup and knives and end up hurting someone more than I meant to. "Some of them agreed to exclusive relationships and then broke their word, and then fought about it. I hated having to watch all of it. Not just the physical parts, which were disgusting enough, but all the—wanting and taking and hating each other afterwards."
"Hating each other afterwards isn't supposed to be part of the process." Doctor Mensah sighed. "A brutal environment makes humans worse. And whatever the environment, humans can have a lot of different sorts of broken relationships. But I don't think it's that unusual for humans to use fantasy to imagine an ideal one. One that's not about taking, as you put it, but about mutual liking. Humans tell stories about all sorts of relationships—good, bad, unlikely, unrealistic, complicated—but deep, loyal friendship is a common place for the dream to start."
"Why do they have to do it with my fantasy, though?" Didn't mean to say that, it just burst out.
"Because you already wrote the most important ingredient. Care. It all starts with care." Mensah's face looked soft and relaxed, which I liked even though I didn't exactly like what she was saying. "You're right. You didn't write romance, or sexuality. But nobody reads the same story, SecUnit. Every person comes to it with their own unique past, their own wants and needs, their own connections, and their own unique future. The story that they read might have seeds of a romance, because they were also reading themself."
Too much philosophy at one time. "You're saying I just have to live with it."
"I'm saying that nobody can tell another person how to feel—but if I were in your place, I think I would be proud. For writing characters that people care about enough to take them into their own mental landscape, and create different stories about." She saw that I was doubtful, and added, "You don't have to look at it. Or acknowledge it. But you've created someone's Sanctuary Moon, and I think that's wonderful."
Oh.
Hmm.
I hadn't thought of it that way.
It seems stupid, but it hadn't actually occurred to me—at some point, some human read or watched some media and thought, I'd like to do that, I'd like people to see this, and wrote down the basics of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Whatever media got them started, it was written by someone other human, who decided for whatever reason that they'd like to create a story. It was a long chain of, this makes me care about something, this will be part of my brain now, and I couldn't see how far it extended. In either direction.
"I don't know," I said. "I have to think about it."
It still came down to me just having to live with it. But somehow I felt better about it.