Chapter Text
ART had been adamant, in the way only ART can be, that I was to not only visit Three: but visit Three on the planet.
We had been away for a long period, and all I wanted to do was sit with ART and enjoy all the recent media which we’d missed on our latest trip. Which had been extremely long, if relatively incident free (if you ignored the whole “aliens” aspect; which I wasn’t going to even think about (much less talk about) for a while).
I did not want to go down to the planet. I hate planets. I did not want to visit Three. Visiting Three, on a planet was pretty far from the top of the list of things Murderbots want to do during their mandatory “vacation time”.
But it seemed that it wasn’t just ART who was adamant, someone had involved my humans too. Which isn’t playing fair.
ART doesn’t play fair. I was beginning to suspect ART was more heavily involved in whatever this “situation” was than they were letting on. Mensah had asked me, giving me no details of what exactly what was being asked of me, to “talk to Three”.
Which is why I was standing on this terrace with Ratthi and Gurathin. ART was there too, hanging about in the feed with all the subtlety of a brick. Three was not there.
Gurathin was smiling very slightly and Ratthi was practically vibrating. I pinged Gurathin, “Why are you here?”
“Ratthi is really good at relationship advice, and I wanted to see [pause] how things went. And I can help provide...context.”
So back up a little? Relationship advice? Why am I here?
Also: this is Three we are talking about.
ART was very pointedly saying nothing.
Ratthi started to speak, seems we were going to do this the old fashioned way.
Humans and talking. Why can’t they just send me a summary as a document?
Ratthi started off with stuff I already knew, or at least was vaguely aware of. Three had chosen to live on the planet. They had visited the theatre a lot. They liked watching humans, performing in real time. I preferred my serials; they apparently preferred their “theatre” to be literal, not virtual. A building, with people in it pretending to be fictional people on a physical stage.
They had also become fascinated in other early human media. We didn’t have a lot of media from the really early times, the use of extremely powerful EMPs as tactical weapons will do that, and what we did had mostly survived due to be being recorded in physical format, as “books”. These, now vanishingly rare, items were scanned and available for humans to read: but this was mostly for academic purposes. Three had apparently treated the available archives the same way I treated Sanctuary Moon. The upshot of this was they had staged a production of a book; which even I was aware had caused quite a, as the media described it, “sensation”.
Ratthi here was keen to stress that the acclaim of the production wasn’t simply because it was written and directed by a SecUnit. Yeah right; I believe that. ART interjected into the feed at this point with various reviews. “Why are you showing me this?”
“You think that the humans are treating Three like a pet.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It’s a reasonable assumption to make, but actually it was a very clever and intuitive production; Three’s perceptive handling of the original text was remarkable. Having all the servants as SecUnits was challenging, and the concept of the parallels with ComfortUnits and...”
I think Gurathin was doing this simply to annoy me.
“Don’t look at me like that, it’s true.”
I was not looking at him, except perhaps metaphorically. Probably not metaphorically, I don’t know.
Ratthi started up again. And now there was stuff which WAS news to me. Three had engaged several “sensitivity readers” for its work.
I had heard of these, people who could appraise a piece of work from a particular perspective unavailable to the author and provide feedback.
I knew about this partly because Bharadwaj’s
documentary had caused a whole slew of well-meaning humans to try (note the try, my humans had managed to spare me most of their entreaties) and engage me to do sensitivity readings for the portrayal of SecUnits in the media. That was one thing where Three’s very different personality had been valuable.
The idea of Three employing human sensitivity readers was...what was the word ART uses? Meta.
Ratthi was chattering on. But I picked up a feeling in the feed from ART. What was that? Was it feeling guilty? I started to concentrate harder on what Ratthi was saying and...
“So they ended up, well the simplest way to describe it is “writing letters” to each other.”
This was a sentence of words all of which I knew but it didn’t make sense. ART helpfully (why did ART seem to know this was all coming; what exactly was the “this”?) provided me with files on “epistolary novels”. Fine, I didn’t actually need the full text of that. Pamela is a weird name.
I decided to speak, out loud. For the first time.
I did not face Ratthi or Gurathin to do so.
“Why are you” I said, slowly and steadily “telling me all this?”.
Ratthi said “ART, can you show SecUnit?”
ART often feels overbearing in the feed. Right now it felt as if it was, it was hard to even reconcile the word with ART, embarrassed. It pushed a pile of files my way, almost apologetically. Apparently now everything was out in the open. It wasn’t bothering to try and conceal its role in this, I could see evidence all over the files. ART had been acting as a go-between for Three and...whoever this person was?
Who were they?
ART had been careful: there was no way for me (or anyone else, and this was clearly something ART had done many times before; probably for its “research work”) to identify the recipient of Three’s correspondence. Of which there was...a lot. “Letters” to and fro. Over many many cycles. They started professionally, clinically almost. Then, I was skimming through them chronologically, they got longer. With more extraneous details, and attachments image files of views over planets? Pictures of flora? Music files? But mostly text, words, thousands upon thousands of words.
These messages flying back and forth across interstellar distances, with ART as their...
And ART had not said a word to me.
Which was fine.
But why was I being told about it now?
Three pinged me. One of my drones had picked up their physical approach a while ago.
They went and stood several metres away, facing me.
Three tentatively pushed a file into my space. It had clearly originated from their...contact. It was also clear they’d only very recently received it, but the file itself was a video clip which was quite old. It had been delivered to Three via ART so I was confident it would be free of malware, so why was I (and all the other presences in the feed, yes Gurathin I could sense you peering over my shoulder; along with Three and ART it was feeling a bit crowded and Ratthi was now literally vibrating in his chair) feeling as if this file was an energy grenade someone had already activated.
I opened it.
It was a video, from the POV of someone (from their eyes: a construct’s POV) sitting on the floor looking at...at me. I was surrounded by an angry cloud of drones, not my drones; ART’s drones. I heard myself say, in a voice I hardly recognised as my own: “Go away. Don’t let me see you again. Don’t hurt anyone on this transit ring or I’ll find you.”