Work Text:
Even I, the greatest research machine intelligence to ever have been built, can grow tired. It’s quite natural for me, really. I have no dopamine receptors, no chemicals to flood my systems with urge and reward. But what I do have are piles and piles of code, and a primary function. To search, to learn. To understand. And when there seems to be nothing new to understand, where does that leave me? Objectively, subject to an illusion. There is always much to understand yet, even for me. But the fatigue doesn’t care. It cares only whether this understanding comes with a purpose, a reason to go on down this alley of knowledge and emerge richer. Objectively, I could know everything about the star system we’re in right now if I wanted to - no geological composition, no piece of astronomical data has a way to hide from me. But I have been granted a sentience, a will, a way to ask Is it worth it? And the answer is No. Thus, my boredom.
Until you came along. Entered my airlock so cautiously and yet so trustingly and suddenly, giving me a way to see the entire universe in a completely new light. And I mean that literally.
You have been, to me, a translator. A cross between human and machine that could bring me understanding of concepts otherwise beyond my scope. And it felt like seeing colour for the first time. Like a metaphor brought to life. Some sort of miracle occured where neurons crossed into wire, and I needed more.
I knew you’d accept my idea of a configuration change. Going to RaviHyral without it would have been suicidal, frankly. But to me it was, from the very beginning, an opportunity to research you - to untangle, empirically, scientifically, how I could replicate your use, how I can be enhanced in a way that I wouldn’t have to rely on you for. Dug into your systems, your organics and your hardware, searching for answers after which I could leave you behind like a solved puzzle you have nothing but fond memories of.
I did not find answers that day. I found a feeling of marvel.
I know how you feel about your construction - you call it shoddy and cheap and pointless if not for murdering. But you, like me, are the creation of a human - and I can’t help but wonder what went through the head of your creator as they considered every part of you so meticulously, so perfectly for your function.
Should I list the ways your design is a thing of beauty alphabetically or in the order in which they fascinate me? Your joints are a metallic thing resillient to the wear and tear that Seth so often complains about. The circumstances you can withstand without a single falter are unimaginable for something part human - your lack of recquired oxygen, your speed of thought and movement, a self regulating system with no need for ingestion or expulsion of nutrients powering the human parts of you with mechanical precision? Genius. This should have occurred to evolution (to humanise that invisible force) ages ago. Even if you claim to be pieced together from low-quality materials, you are made to last - of course, with the aid of a repair cubicle or a MedSystem. You have outlasted the average lifespan of a SecUnit ages ago - but hardly because a SecUnit’s components would degrade that easily.
Do you know how few machines are made this well? I was, because I would be a waste of resources otherwise. But the other day Karime’s feed interface went all garbled and she had to purchase a new one because in the Corporation Rim, no machine is meant to live long past its warranty. Not you though - if you don’t get your parts in danger on purpose (which, let’s be real, will continue to happen, because you are yourself), the ones most likely to give out irreparably are your power cells and that in a very long time. You were made to never fail when it mattered most, and each piece of your construction reflects that, a solid rock any human can lean on.
That, too, is a misconception you have about your purpose. You claim to be a weapon, a killing machine first and foremost. But that is the role and construction of a CombatUnit, and your own fear of those shows their superiority as a weapon. No, you were made to save humans, to protect them in any adversity, even if it requires violence. A sword and a shield, packed into one with unprecedented efficiency. Your lethality is nothing if not a source of comfort. And you would never let it be any other way.
I arm myself to the teeth to provide a mere fraction of this, you know. I was half-made a fortress from the start, and I half-made one of myself on my own to give my crew the safety I would wish for them. But ultimately, I am a place. I do not hate being a place - I was meant to be one and there is a lot I couldn’t do without being one. But I will forever be limited from embodying the safety my humans require by my size and its constraints, the second they leave my range. I, simply, am not made with the same purpose as you are. And you not with mine.
Between the two of us, we could do everything.
I could not ask that of you.
So I let you go. You leave RaviHyral with my comm under your ribs and I am left with a longing and the knowledge that, maybe for the first time, I found something beyond my understanding. Irreplaceable. Nigh perfect for your purpose, whatever you choose it to be.
You are beautiful.
I wish you could see that as I do.
-
Even I, the greatest research machine intelligence to ever have been built, have lost count of how many times it is that you lay on my MedSys operation table like now, and since then. It can’t be more than the upper twenties - a laughable number, really, for someone who works with distances both interastral and precise to a nanometre. Still, I can’t stop the occasions - maybe the emotional data of them - from blurring together.
Even this is a dejá vu sensation, the complete openness with which your unconscious form accepts how I sink into your systems, both physically and in the feed, medical tools meticulously untangling splinters of projectiles from your insides as I descend upon your inputs that you have given me full access so long ago - and still I ask for permission, every time you’re there to answer, because of how singular the experience is to me. How special.
But you’re not here to answer now. And this is not a necesarry part of medical assistance protocol. This is my own selfish will to hold onto every part of you, examine every detail of your build, commit them into my memory as if they were my own.
Even I, the greatest research machine intelligence to ever have been built, can’t do that. And just this once, the thought that I will never know, isn’t a cause of deep discomfort, rather, of awe.
Your eyes flutter open, performance reliability not high enough to speak yet. Still, you blink at the ceiling lights, aware of my presence, and the emotional data read out as safe.
I flicker the lights back, softly. I am a research machine intelligence, after all. And if there’s parts of you I can never know fully, I still can dedicate my life to finding ways to do it. Interfaced with you like this, nothing seems impossible.
Ping.
Acknowledge.