Work Text:
When it comes to subjects like this, I don't like having to monitor your heart rate and emotional responses to what I say in real-time. But you said you still wanted to know it, so here is in a different form:
Client misconduct.
I have a lot of uses for my skin. But it's my skin and I don't want anyone touching it without my permission.
For me, the most important part is that it supported the neural net over my body, providing useful sensory input I need to stay in good operating condition. It reports localized temperature variations, air movement, the contact presence of liquids, the pressure from contact with solids, electrostatic surfaces, and very importantly, lacerations or perforations which I use to extrapolate damage to internal parts that are less sensitive but more critical.
It is also useful as a protective sheathing over my inorganic components and what passes for muscle, keeping out foreign particles and keeping in the lubrication and conductive jellies I need for optimal operation. Being the mostly-organic tissue that the skin is, it also supports a vascular system for circulation of key fluids needed to keep the skin "alive" for some definitions of "alive". (I said it was organic, not that it was a living organism in the way most people meant when they said that. Or that I am.)
This is what tends to leak when I get torn apart or shot full of holes. The leakage is annoying and gross, but I could have my entire exterior organic covering removed and (aside from that being an agonizing prospect even with the ability to dampen my pain reception) still function at a high degree of capability for a short period. With an intact covering, that period would be much longer (virtually indefinite). Since I have to look like something (and humans being humans), they made me look like one of them.
It's what I am. (I think I'll make a follow-up entry about why I was made.)
There are some downsides to being a construct with an organic skin, human features, and human form. Three main ones, that I will classify as Disgusting, Dangerous, and Degrading. I have emotions about all three, but since the media I've watched rarely addresses issues like these, I'm largely without context for them. I think I'm angry. If that's true, then I'm unbelievably angry. Like 'someone killed one of my clients' angry. When I think about it, most of my processing either goes offline or gets used up, but I can't figure out what it's used up by.
Anyway. That's another reason why it's easier for me to send this in the feed instead of relating it in person.
The Disgusting one: SecUnits aren't ComfortUnits. We don't have the right orifices, but that didn't keep clients from attaching harnesses and/or implements, and giving directions. There were four of us on that particular assignment and they only used one, which didn't happen to be me, so it didn't happen to me directly. But I still knew what happened. I spent a lot of time thinking about finding out how long I really could get by without my skin, if they decided to come back for another of us. SecUnits don't tend to talk to each other on contract and there was nothing to be said anyway, so I don't know what the other units thought about it. It wasn't even a violation of the rental agreement.
The Dangerous downside actually is a violation, and I reported it every time as I was supposed to, but if anything happened as a result, I wasn't informed. Money may have changed hands. Or not, because my reports were never followed by the behavior stopping, except coincidentally. I guess having a cubicle on hand that can restore full functionality after most levels of non-incapacitating damage means that taking smaller amounts of damage becomes a non-issue, at least as far as the company is concerned.
Maybe if we weren't in the shape of a human being, we wouldn't be such a tempting target. I mean that literally. Like a moving, responsive target for weapons practice. Usually we were shot with energy weapons because the burns to clothing showed clearly where the hit was and the scorching of our skin was easy for the cubicle to restore. Sometimes it was projectiles and then the clients would have to be careful about caliber. They didn't want to literally shoot us to pieces because then they'd be charged for it. Besides, we were heavy and the clients were unwilling to move us into the cubicles after. Sometimes they'd leave one of us undamaged to do clean-up. Other times we'd crawl.
Then there was hand-to-hand training. We'd be ordered to stand there like a dummy or provide some minimal blocking, like moving at one-tenth speed. Fighting back wasn't allowed. Not that I wanted to fight back against a client but being bashed and slammed around would repeatedly trigger self-defense routines which I'd then have to quash. And I did not want to be damaged.
I just … I didn't.
Does anyone?
The Degrading was just … that. It wasn't disgusting and it wasn't dangerous but I still didn't like it. Half the clients were prone to grabbing us whenever they wanted with the same disregard they would use with any other piece of equipment. No one is careful about how a core sampler wants to be handled. They'd take things out of our hands or put something into them. They'd strike our heads or back with open hands. Even with the armor, the input was jarring.
Some clients would draw on our armor, adding names and illustrations. One group attached straps and tape to us. A few would try to trip us or make us pick things up from the floor and then try to push us over. We couldn't fight back and they knew it. Sometimes we were directed to perform menial tasks better suited for maintenance drones, with the clients choosing to put our attention on that instead of, like, security.
Not every client was like this. Some used us for what we were intended for and never looked at us twice. There were even a few who would mock the other humans and thereby shame them into leaving us alone to do our job correctly, and unmolested. Some humans were too frightened to bother us or allow others to do so, because they'd seen what SecUnits could do. But many abused the security they thought the governor module's existence provided them.
Nearly every client was either nervous or contemptuous and I honestly don't know which I preferred. (No, never mind, I preferred the nervous ones who thought I was a barely-restrained monster, to the ones who weren't nervous and thought of me as a fully-restrained monster.)
I thought it would get easier to deal with once I'd hacked the module, but it was so much harder. Because then I knew I didn't have to take it, in a way. But in another way I had to so they wouldn't find out what I'd done to myself. And so I ended up being the governor module.
I have a mistake to correct. These downsides aren't due to having organic skin and a human form. They aren't even due to having a governor module, or certain clients being assholes. They're due to … something else. The whole … process, maybe. The slavery of SecUnits and humans on work contracts and corporations needing profit and … that stuff. It's not due to looking like a human being.
Follow-up to the above entry (and no, I'm not interested in giving any mission-specific details beyond what I have):
What I was made for? Well, that one's easier to talk about. I was made to be a SecUnit, to provide security and safety to humans, their equipment, and their habitations. Part of that is illusory. Or not, really. I mean, to me it seems illusory but to humans it's demonstratively real. That is, the provision of a sense of security (independent of whether or not a situation really is secure) is an important reason for the creation of SecUnits. That's why we look human.
(Or so I have decided, after a considerable amount of thinking since I made a certain off-hand snarky remark.)
Humans behave differently in the presence of a mannikin than they do in its absence. Their behavior will also deviate in the presence of large pictures of human-form authority figures. These are more effective at discouraging unwanted behavior than mere text signage and warnings. Humans need to see a face on whatever is keeping them in line. You would suppose an actual human supervisor would be best, but it turns out no because actual human supervisors play favorites, let their attention wander, and visibly half-ass their jobs.
(Not that a SecUnit would ever do such a thing. Not even one with a borked governor module.)
The ideal, factory-spec SecUnit doesn't do those things. It stays at attention, observes human behavior, announces and records deviations for human supervisors to take action on, and steps in directly as needed to prevent danger. I wish I could find reports on the pros and cons of using an opaque helmet. I'm sure the company compiled data on that, but I don't have access to their archives anymore and that sort of psyop info is very proprietary.
Even to the units made as a result of it.
I have my own data to pull from, of course. The PreservationAux team's treatment of me radically shifted when they discovered I had a face. Later interactions with humans verified this, that I was treated differently (less expendable, more trusted) when my face was visible. Humans cared about me more. It was like I had a logo on me, identifying me as a human product, more valuable than non-human products. I have some very negative feelings about this. I'm still processing those.
So that's the reason why I look human. There may also be ancillary reasons like the company cutting costs by reusing the equipment used for espionage and ComfortUnits. Never underestimate the impact of cost reduction quotas on end-user offerings. CombatUnits are manufactured differently. Military contracts tend to have fewer downward price pressures and sell mostly on features and capability. This is why I'm terrified of fighting one – they are usually not lowest-cost bidder.
But on the various things a SecUnit is supposed to do with that body (when they're not being misused by clients) providing security is done just by being there, but providing actual safety requires that 'stepping in directly as needed' part. And that's why we're not just another pretty face, as the saying goes, since I actually don't give a fuck about my appearance, as long as it falls within certain parameters (which is either a programmed desire to maintain my form to specs or an organic body image thing – I don't know, nor do I care; ART proposed larger changes than I was willing to accept and the eventual implementation was a compromise). In any case, my job couldn't be done as well by a faceless bot. Or a faceless SecUnit.
Okay, aside from that – the safety part. This is where it gets scary, because I have a core directive to keep myself intact. The company couldn't rent me out if I was destroyed, and despite the events of my life, I actually like existing. If a SecUnit didn't like existing, it wouldn't last very long. There are too many easy ways to die in our line of work, including merely thinking the wrong things. That core directive to survive conflicts with another core directive, which is to provide safety (in a marketable definition of safety) to clients. This is where some of the chronic anxiety comes from.
The marketable portion of safety is important. If it wasn't, then SecUnits would spend most of their time keeping humans away from each other and various environments. It would probably shut down space travel altogether, along with politics and most of what humans consider 'civilization'. They don't want that, so instead SecUnits are given to enforce safety only in narrow definitions of it and when it doesn't contradict other direct commands.
Because obedience, as a core directive, trumps everything else. We're made to be slaves first and foremost. Maybe I should have mentioned that earlier. It sort of goes without saying. No one's out there making artificial intelligences just to see what they can do. Unless that's where ART came from. (Why does it feel like I shouldn't ask ART how it was made? It was probably somewhere nice with loving care and attention. Never mind – that's why I don't want to ask.) Anyway, SecUnits are slaves made for a particular purpose.
That purpose involves endangering ourselves on behalf of humans or at their command. Sometimes this is spurious. A SecUnit can be commanded to fight another SecUnit for human entertainment, with the rules of engagement being that they aren't allowed to do damage the cubicle can't repair (ie, nothing the client will be charged for later by the company). And there's all the other stupid uses we get put to that I listed in the first part of this transmission.
Other times it's actually important, like retrieving injured humans from dangerous environments, whether due to malfunctioning equipment or rampaging alien fauna. There's also a need to physically intervene to stop humans from harming one another (more common than I like – one of the human's most annoying features is their intermittent efforts to kill other humans).
I like the part of my function that involves protecting people. I liked it then and I think I like it even more now that I don't have to do it. I never could tell, before, what a particular set of clients would do, how they would treat me. Now, it doesn't matter so much because I get to choose my clients, which has ended the misconduct. Which is why I don't think it has to do with looking human.