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With only one cycle till the shuttle reached the terraforming facility, I settled in and started up an episode of Sanctuary Moon. I was keeping an eye on Miki's feed too, just in case anything went awry, or the humans started asking questions that Miki would have to answer, but there wasn't much activity, since most of the humans were on their sleep cycle. I had gotten used to this kind of sneaking around, but that didn't mean I was necessarily good at it. Acting as an augmented human required a very different skill set, and the shift wasn't as easy as I had thought. Any forewarning of impending doom would be appreciated, but things had been pretty quiet.
The humans (and Miki, but I was starting to count it in with them), were excited to actually be getting their assessment underway, and their nervous energy was exhausting to watch. I expected the transport to be relatively quiet, which so far it had been. Then of course, everything to go wrong once we arrived, because that's usually how these things worked. Transport itself was usually safe. Except when it wasn't, but I'd deal with that if I needed to. It's always easier to just assume everything will go wrong.
I wanted to get in as much of my media as possible before that inevitably happened.
I'd found myself watching a lot of Sanctuary Moon lately, mostly because it was comfortable and familiar, but also because I hadn't been able to bring myself to watch anything with research transports in them. I just wasn't in the mood for something new that I might not like.
I was halfway through an episode, when Miki pinged me through our private feed. What are you doing, Rin?
I wondered for .08 seconds if I'd subconsciously sent something through the feed, and Miki had picked up on it, or if it just had annoying timing. I was right in the middle of an action scene.
I paused the episode, and considered my options. If I didn't answer Miki's question, it would probably just ask again until it got an answer. Miki was used to having it's questions answered, and didn't respond well when they were ignored. For some reason, I didn't really want to share my serials with Miki, which was kinda weird. I usually shared them with other bots, but other bots weren't nearly as loose lipped as Miki was. I didn't want to give it any excuse to rat me out. Besides, why was it even asking? That in and of itself was suspicious, I decided.
Why do you ask?
Miki sent me a smile sigil. If you are not busy, do you want to play Mus with me? It is very boring to sit and wait, but Mus is a fun game. If you don't know the rules, I can teach you.
Oh. The response caught me by surprise, and I found myself sharing the episode on the feed instead of actually talking, cause words. They're hard sometimes. Now why were my words hard? Who knew. Miki was an anomaly, and brought out things in me I didn't really understand.
Sanctuary Moon! Miki exclaimed in excitement, recognizing the show imediately. Hirune likes Sanctuary Moon. We have watched it together, we are both excited for when the new episodes come out in 14 cycles. I had just enough time to have a minor short circuit, before Miki was talking again. May I watch it with you, Rin? Shows are very fun when you watch them with friends!
Instead of saying anything -cause Miki has a way of making my emotions do irritating things, which also affects my words- I started the episode. Miki sent me another smile sigil. I wasn't actually sure how I felt about this, but I didn't foresee it being a problem. Since Miki had seen Sanctuary Moon already, anything it mentioned about the show wouldn't seem weird to the humans. It wasn't my paranoia acting up that was making me feel weird, it was those emotions again. They were annoying things, being human sounded exhausting. At least they made good media.
I wasn't sure how I felt about Miki, or any bot, watching serials with a human. I'd watched shows with ART, so watching it together wasn't the thing bugging me. The thought of humans and bots enjoying the same things together, was just weird. It made my skin tingly in a way that I wasn't sure was bad or good. I wondered if Dr. Mensah liked media.
When the episode ended, Miki sent another smile sigil. It was exhausting to spend time with. Between Miki's incessant comments about the show, and the occasional question, it was much more work than I'd expected. Pet robots were a handful.
Thank you, Rin! This is fun! Miki said, as the show ended.
Instead of saying anything, I started up the next episode. I could feel a purr of approval from Miki's side of the feed. We'd only have one cycle till we arrived at the terraforming facility. I'd definitely have to boot Miki from the stream before then, but I figured I could stand a few more episodes.