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“So, what did you think?” Dr. Mensah said.
We’d just left Preservation’s largest performance hall after two and a half hours of watching live musical theater. It had been dark enough that I’d felt the need to come here two hours before the performance to scope out security holes and patch them. But it had also been dark enough that my drones hadn’t had trouble blending in with the ceiling panels when the opening song started playing. And it was dark enough that I’d been able to privately have all the emotions I’d had about seeing live music and acting for the first time. All in all, it had been…
“Good,” I responded awkwardly.
Dr. Mensah waited patiently as I directed my drones back into their regular Preservation rotations, then smiled. “That’s all? You usually have more opinions on the media you watch. If you didn’t like it, that’s okay.”
“I liked it,” I said. The crowd was thinning now, everyone streaming back towards their homes, which made it easier to talk. “Wait for Me was really- I liked it.”
“Really?” Dr. Mensah said gently, teasingly. “You like the song about a character running off to save someone they care about?”
I looked away, face flushing. “What was your favorite, then?”
I was already sure I knew. I’d noticed which one she’d watched most closely, which one had set her heart rate beating faster.
“If It’s True,” she said, like I expected.
“Ah,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “The one about a leader making the decision to fight against the injustice of the allegorical Corporation Rim.”
She laughed. “Fine, fine. You really liked it then? I thought you might not have, from how you looked when it ended.”
Oh. “Yeah.”
There was a pause as Dr. Mensah waited for me to continue. I didn’t. Then she didn’t say anything else, which forced me to keep talking. She was good at weaponizing silence. It could be very irritating.
“It wasn’t that it had a bad ending,” I said. “Or… a hopeful one?” Whatever. One of the main characters basically died at the end, but I didn’t mind. I wasn’t ART. I could handle upsetting media without getting upset about it. “The main character was just so stupid.”
Suddenly, Dr. Mensah looked upset and a little angry. I’d never seen that look directed at me when I hadn’t done something colossally stupid and/or self-sacrificial immediately beforehand. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those ‘Orpheus shouldn’t have looked back’ types.”
“Well,” I started, and Dr. Mensah rolled her eyes. I’d never seen her do that before. Threat assessment told me to shut up so I did. Then I took 0.15 seconds to freak out at how Dr. Mensah had been flagged by my threat assessment module for the first time over something as stupid as an argument over an unrealistic protagonist in a stage musical.
“Don’t start,” she groaned. Threat assessment was still active, calculating a 18% chance of a minor physical threat and 76% chance of an order issuing that the governor module would force me to comply with. Not that the governor module was working, though. I double checked.
Over the past few weeks on Preservation, I’d mostly managed to stop feeling anxious about construct guardianship basically being ownership with more steps. Suddenly, all those worries came back. I stepped back before I could stop myself.
Dr. Mensah caught the movement. Her eyes narrowed. My risk assessment module screamed.
“What is it? Changing your mind?” she asked, cocking a sharp eyebrow and frowning. My memory archives told me she’d done the same when I told her my plan to beat DeltFall during the PresAux survey, and when I first suggested taking over the company gunship. And now she was doing it when I just, what, disagreed with her? About a dumb piece of media?
So I got angry.
“No,” I shot back. “He shouldn’t have looked back.”
“If you were Orpheus, you would’ve done the exact-”
“No, I wouldn’t have,” I snapped, stepping forward and jabbing a finger in her chest. I ignored the weird expression on Dr. Mensah’s face. “It’s a stupid risk. She was either behind him or not, right? If she was, he had to make it out. If she wasn’t, he could always try again, do something again. He shouldn’t have given up the one chance he had to save her and get out.”
“He couldn’t risk leaving her behind-”
“She told him to leave her!” I cried. “And she was the one who left him in the first place!”
Dr. Mensah flushed, looking angrier. “That doesn’t mean he should have done the same thing!”
I gritted my teeth. “She obviously knew what she was doing.”
“Oh, and you’d know!”
This was infuriating. “Yes! I know!”
“Obviously, since you have a buffer response telling us to leave you to die!”
I stopped.
Dr. Mensah clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes very wide. For a long moment, no one spoke.
“Dr. Mensah-”
“I’m sorry,” she interrupted immediately. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just- I was thinking about it, that’s all. I’m sorry.”
It had been three weeks and two days since I’d come to Preservation. It had been two weeks and six days since I’d completely recovered from taking over the company gunship and nearly deleting my brain in the process.
I was over it, mostly. I’d nearly died before. At least this time, I’d stayed alive and managed to save a few of my humans along the way. As painful as it’d been in the moment - and as terrifying as the Combat SecUnit had been earlier - I counted the whole thing as a success.
Dr. Mensah, with her eyes still uncomfortably fixed on me and her chest still heaving slightly with emotion, seemed to disagree.
“I’m fine,” I reminded her.
“I know that,” she said, but her gaze skipped across my body as if to confirm before she remembered to look away. “You’re fine. I- I’m fine. We’re all fine.”
Well, if fine meant a bad liar, then sure, she was fine. I let it slide, only because I was trying to sound sincere with my next words. “I’m sorry I worried you.”
Her smile looked a little sad. “No, you’re not.”
Well, that was only half fair. I was sorry. I just didn’t regret what I’d done. “I’m a SecUnit. You don’t need to worry about me.”
She gave me a look that communicated what exactly she thought of that line of reasoning. “You’ve asked me to leave you behind too many times. When you asked me to kill you during the survey, when you sent me through the gate, all the times your buffer’s said that it’s recommended to discard you-” Her voice had been level, but it wavered now. “I wish you’d stop.”
The thing was, I couldn’t really stop. I wasn’t going to be able to protect her if I didn’t have the ability to yell at her to run and trust her to listen, and protecting her was the whole reason I was on Preservation in the first place.
But- well, I understood what she meant. I still had a blurry memory of her fury during the survey, when I was dying and my stupid buffer wouldn’t stop talking: Shut up. Shut the fuck up. We’re not leaving you.
I knew I didn’t want to be abandoned. For the first time, I had a group of humans that felt the same way.
For them - for her - I could stop trying to be left behind.
“I’ll try,” I told Dr. Mensah.
She smiled. “Thank you. I hope you know how much I appreciate you watching my back.”
I snorted.
She gave me a questioning look.
This was a serious emotional moment, and it was probably rude to turn what she’d said into a joke. But I think we were both ready to move on to something lighter. “Like Eurydice?”
It took a second for it to click, and then suddenly Dr. Mensah was laughing. I hadn’t heard her do that since the PresAux survey, and now she was doing it because of me. That felt… weird. Good.
“Seriously, though,” I said, once her giggles had tapered off. “Orpheus was an idiot.”
The corners of Dr. Mensah’s eyes crinkled. “I’m not going to change your mind, am I?”
“They barely knew each other!”
“And Orpheus was still willing to venture into hell to save her,” Dr. Mensah said, a smile in her voice. “Reminds me of someone.”
I looked away, feeling embarrassed. “I’m still right. He shouldn’t have turned back.”
“Do you regret it?”
“No,” I said, too quickly. Dr. Mensah smiled wide at that, though. All the warnings from threat assessment had faded completely. “But he was still stupid.”
“Agree to disagree,” she said companionably. We walked on.