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I came online in a typical fashion, my systems automatically running quick diagnostics as my audial systems focused in on the sounds outside my cubicle. A repeating beat and what sounded like wailing. Confused, I reached out to the static feed between myself and One to find it already online. Technician Darin was also in the feed and sent a greeting as soon as I connected. I relaxed slightly, realizing the sounds were probably coming from the small device he would sometimes bring with him. I had heard music before, on other contracts in crew lounge areas and coming from worker sleeping quarters, but this sounded almost like an angry client. I think, based on the behavior of other technicians we occasionally had, this wasn’t normal or allowed, but I enjoyed it anyway. I acknowledged the greeting, returning one of my own as I waited for the cubicle to disconnect from the ports in my back.
“Good morning, Sinatra,” Technician Darin said to me with a small grin not quite turned in my direction as he scrolled through diagnostics reports on the handheld device he carried. He had very dark skin and dark eyes. His hair was cut short, and he wore the typical white technician lab coat, a collared shirt, and black slacks and shoes.
“Good morning, Technician Darin,” I replied as I climbed off the cubicle bed and moved to a neutral stance at the foot of it - hands clasped behind my back, feet, shoulder width apart. I’m not quite sure why humans have to repeat greetings they’ve already done in the feed in person, but I liked Technician Darin, so I wasn’t as bothered by it.
There was a long silence as the angry music tapered off. I would describe it as comfortable since that was a feeling I was accustomed to when in the mock Security Ready Room. Technician Darin finally set down the handheld and looked up, dark eyes shifting between myself and One. A new song started up that I was familiar with. Through one of the cameras in the room, I noticed One subtly tapping its finger to the beat against the back of its other hand as it stood next to me.
“So, new contract coming up for both of you. I’ve sent the relevant files-” I had backburnered my audio and pulled up the small packet, sifting through the data quickly. This was a large, long-term contract. Normally our contracts lasted a month or two before we were brought back to Ordinary Innovations deployment center. The longest we’ve been contracted was six months. This? This was saying the contract was a minimum of a year with... possible extensions as necessary? Umm, okay. Something must have shown on my face because Technician Darin said, “Yeah, it’s a long time for you. It’ll be okay. Captain Waters seems like a pretty good person. You’ll meet her this week when we go over the initial equipment familiarization with her and a few of the others on this contract.”
Captain Kathryn Waters - She/Her. Captain. Of a ship? Another scan through the files Technician Darin gave us for info on her. Yes, of a ship. The Percheron. Medium-weight cargo hauler. There was a picture attached to her personnel file. Light skin, brown hair pulled back from her face, light brown eyes. She wasn’t smiling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture in one of these files with a client smiling. If I had to guess age, she seemed to be somewhere in between Supervisor Taghavi and Technician Darin’s age.
I continued through the other client personnel files (there were a lot). Dr. David Smith – He/Him. Engineering. Well, that’s vague. The contract had something about a site survey for a potential ore reclamation project, so I assumed geological engineering was his primary function. Slightly darker skin than Captain Waters. Light hair, lighter eyes with square glasses. He was older than Captain Waters for sure. A small footnote signed with Technician Darin’s feed address mentioned open relationship with her. Okay.
Daksha Mathai – She/her. Assistant to Captain Waters. Medium brown skin, dark hair and eyes. She was smiling (a welcome difference.) She looked young compared to the other two. Nothing stood out past that. I’m not sure what “assistant” means. Especially to a captain. There were certifications for medical knowledge attached. A Masters also in the medical field. Useful, if we can’t get to medical quickly. Hopefully that wouldn’t have to be a thing on this contract, but...yeah.
“You look like you have a question, Sin,” Technician Darin said with a small chuckle.
“Not necessarily a question,” I replied, looking directly at him. I wouldn’t have done this with any other human at Ordinary Innovations. I would have schooled my expression a lot better. One also wouldn’t be bobbing its head to the music (which it totally was. I am so giving it shit for that later.) Technician Darin had a habit of treating us with more flexibility than most. A lot more flexibility. Any other technician would have told the limited HubSys connected to this room to hold us in standby, freezing us in place. Technician Darin trusted us. Maybe a bit more than he should, but what do I know. “It’s a survey to see if mining is worth setting up on this planet. This isn’t something we’ve typically been contracted for in the past...and it’s a long-term contract. I suppose I’m confused.”
“Well, they’ve requested equipment and prefabricated buildings for the duration of the contract. You know how the company is about protecting its assets,” he said with a tight smile. Yeah, I know OIC liked to try to keep its equipment in near perfect condition if it could. It’s probably the only reason One and I were still functionable given our ages. The number of upgrades we both had gone through seemed a bit absurd, and it got to the point where Technician Darin had given us files on our own systems, annotated with the changes (though...it didn’t seem like that was the real reason for giving them to us. He kept repeating that if we needed help in a situation to refer to the files. One and I had discussed this during one of our many training sessions together but couldn’t figure it out.) “They needed to cut costs somewhere and your models are much easier to supply parts for than Six and Seven.”
Oh. Well, okay. Six and Seven were the newer units that had been brought online within the last year. Mostly, they did not work together, but the preference was to put them together if one was going on a contract that needed two SecUnits. I don’t understand how the company makes these decisions. I know One and I were intentionally put together to, really, only be contracted out as a pair about 78,840 hours ago. Technician Darin said something about it being an experiment, whatever that meant. I’m definitely not complaining about that decision. One was easy enough to get along with. It didn’t require much conversation. It had a sense of humor, and it complemented me well (and I, it, I guess.)
I had a feeling there was something Technician Darin left unsaid about the contract. Just based on the odd expression that overcame him as he glanced away from me.
“I want you two to know...if you ever need help with anything while you’re out there just... look at the files I sent over a few months ago, okay?” He said softly. I looked at One through one of the room’s camera inputs to see it’s face mirrored my confused one. The cryptic message was one we both agreed to ignore, mainly because we hadn’t felt the need to really figure out what Technician Darin meant.
“Yes, Technician Darin,” One said, schooling its expression after another second. I could feel it making another halfhearted attempt to go through the large bundle of files it had received a while back and felt compelled to do the same. Yet again, nothing stuck out to me with a quick skim though the data. I still don’t understand why Technician Darin sent us these files. We didn’t need to know the specifications of our parts. Our cubicles handled all the repairs and maintenance.
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The first time I had met Captain Waters was at the equipment familiarization training event hosted by my company – Ordinary Innovations. One and I were already in the room when the corporate manager and her assistant brought Dr Smith and Captain Waters in along with Technician Darin and Supervisor Taghavi. They spent a very long time discussing the prefabricated buildings they needed for the extended stay on contract.
Dr Smith, an augmented human (based on my quick scans, probably more augmented than one would willingly do to themselves, too) had eyed us once the company mentioned a security system. Captain Waters started to say she didn’t think it was necessary, but quickly fell silent when Dr Smith began to subvocalize to her in the feed. I image it was something along the lines of “it’s required if we’re renting equipment from a company, unfortunately. Yes, it sucks, but it is what it is.”
I don’t think she realized we were there, considering the introduction had One and I in full SecUnit armor which meant, helmets on and visor opaqued. I also say that because she literally leapt into the air when One had moved as requested by the manager’s assistant. She probably thought we were just armor displays or something. Dr Smith, on the other hand, wasn’t as impressed. I had a feeling he had been near SecUnits before and knew what to expect. I’m more surprised he hadn’t warned Captain Waters ahead of time.
“These are Security Units One and Two. Our oldest, most successful team,” Supervisor Taghavi introduced us calmly. Technician Darin connected to One and my shared feed and requested for us to retract our visors. We did as asked and I noticed Captain Water’s expression change from weary embarrassment to curious concern.
“They’re...not human?” She asked softly, maybe not aware she had spoken out loud. The corporate manager shook her head.
“No, they’re not. They are machines. Equipment to be used. Research has suggested that the human-like features they have is beneficial in case of client retrieval and protection,” she said matter-of-factly.
(What she meant was that humans tended to like to see other humans if they thought they were going to die. And that they were more likely to listen to a human-looking construct as opposed to one that was not, even if the human-like construct would be less efficient in that scenario. I can’t say for sure how true that was. Most of my clients already knew I wasn’t human and disregarded how I looked (sometimes demanding that we stay in our armor for the duration of the contract.) They also tended to selectively listen to our warnings, but that was...another thing entirely.)
Captain Waters looked over at Dr Smith but didn’t say anything.
“I take it Dr Smith has experience with SecUnits?” Supervisor Taghavi asked, breaking the somewhat awkward silence.
“Yes. This isn’t an issue,” Dr Smith replied quickly. Score one for me. Hopefully he would end up being a tolerable client and not one of the assholes that tended to make life difficult for us.
Eventually, the conversation gravitated away from us, and towards more relevant things to the prefabbed buildings – room numbers and sizes, what tier medical system was needed, research and analysis rooms, if vehicles were needed, etc. Captain Waters allowed Dr Smith to take over the conversation while she continued to (uncomfortably) look at One and me. I wish she’d just move on (and that’s saying something considering I typically don’t mind extra attention like One did.) The corporate manager and her assistant exited the mock Ready Room with Dr Smith, moving to another section of the building to look at actual prefab habitats. Captain Waters remained kind of...standing there awkwardly.
“How old are they?” She asked after a moment, nodding her head in my direction to indicate she was talking about One and me.
“Well, Two is twenty, I think,” Technician Darin said with a polite smile. “I’ve been working with them for the last six and a half. SecUnit One is older than Two by about five years, but at this point it doesn’t really matter much.”
One interesting thing about the fact that I’m (supposedly) twenty, is that I don’t remember the first ten years of it. I don’t think I’ve been subjected to a memory wipe, though? Maybe it was just that boring that I... forgot it? I don’t know. Technician Darin said he’s never done a wipe on me, and I believe him. Any time he’s been ordered to do one on One, he would bring me online first so I could be the emotional support One needed when it came online. I’d imagine the level of stress and confusion One always felt when it reinitialized after a memory wipe would be a significant enough event that I wouldn’t forget.
Captain Waters now turned towards us and took a couple of steps forward to look at us better. She still seemed a bit concerned, and Technician Darin seemed to pick up on it.
“Do you have any questions?” He asked, walking over to One and grabbing its armored hand to adjust the fit. One didn’t react, keeping its gaze like mine – the standard neutral, hundred-yard stare we’d been programmed to use. Supervisor Taghavi excused themself as an alert pushed through to their feed about another meeting they were expected to be at in ten minutes. Captain Waters waited until they had left to ask.
“Can they talk?”
“Of course,” to me, Technician Darin said, “Say hello, Two.”
I moved my gaze to Captain Waters, keeping it neutral. I noticed the discomfort resurface in her expression.
“Good afternoon, Captain Waters.” I said softly. To my surprise, she broke eye contact first.
“They’re older units that have shown good reliability in their function. Repairs for them will be cheaper if you need to do so compared to some of the newer units we have available,” Technician Darin said, looking down at the handheld feed device in his hand.
“Is there anything I need to know about them? I’ve...I’ve never dealt with machines like this before.” Captain Waters admitted with an awkward laugh. Audial analysis tagged her as #nervous and #on edge and my Client Communication and Satisfaction Module, not so helpfully, offered suggestions on how to de-escalate the situation. Technician Darin hesitated, glancing at One then me.
“They’re not exactly machines,” he began. In the feed, to One, he sent, Michael, can you secure the recording devices in this room? Cameras can stay on, just pause the recording function for the next ten minutes.
One pinged acknowledgement.
Tech. Darin |> Good. Speak out loud when you have.
“This room is secured,” One said 0.02 seconds after the message in the feed.
Technician Darin gave a small smile to One before turning back to Captain Waters.
“They’re constructs, yes, but I’ve found that...if you treat them right, they’ll treat you well. They’ve got their own quirks. Two doesn’t really like addressing groups, but it will if it needs to. It handles high stress situations better than One, but One is more approachable in that it doesn’t look angry all the time. One is kind of the leader of the two of them. It takes lead in setting up shifts and delegating tasks between them. They both can operate independently but do best when they can work together as a team. They’ve been a part of a test for the past few years of keeping units together to see if performance changed, and...it does seem there are pros to doing it this way,” he said carefully. After a pause, he added, “the con is how interconnected they tend to become after prolonged exposure to one another. Not exactly hivemind like, but the research has shown that their internal systems reach out to one another over just connecting straight to Hub System like originally designed. I guess in layman terms, kind of like… friends.”
“When you talk like that, they almost sound...human.”
“They aren’t. More than half of their makeup is inorganic components. Processors, memory, solid-state storage, metal. Sure, they have human qualities. They have human neural tissue, but they can’t run without the inorganic components and code.”
“I didn’t mean human human...I meant...sapient,” Captain Waters said quickly. Technician Darin gave a smile that I found myself spending a lot of processing space on.
“You didn't hear me say that” he replied, his tone still careful. Whatever he was trying to get across Captain Waters seemed to catch. Maybe he was right about her when he told us she’s a good person.
“Got it,” she said with a nod.
There was a short pause as Captain Waters seemed to gather the courage to approach us. The curiosity in her having won over the fear of the unknown. I felt her hand touch my arm, sliding up to run along the armored cover of my gun port.
“One is a little touch adverse,” Technician Darin said as he watched her. “It is okay with me doing things to it, but it can take a bit to warm up to new people touching it. I say that just in case you notice it tensing out in the field. Two seems okay with just about anything in terms of physical contact, but I will have to politely say they are not ComfortUnits and should not be treated as such.”
A crease formed on Captain Water’s brow as she frowned. She removed her hand from my arm and turned to face Technician Darin.
“No, of course not. I’ll have rules in place to make sure they are treated fairly on my contract,” she said, her tone serious. Technician Darin looked relieved to hear this.
“Thank you. I know the company thinks of them as just equipment, but I’ve been with them so long I…maybe my mind is making me think I see things. They like their function when the clients on a contract are good to them. And I think one of the reasons they do so well is because of how they are treated.” He paused again, took a breath, and added, “I call One Michael or MJ behind closed doors. Two goes by Sinatra or Sin. They’ll respond to either the numerical designation – One and Two – or those names.”
I had never heard Technician Darin tell any of our potential clients our nicknames. I just knew when he did because the clients would start using them. I didn’t care what a client called me (and believe me when I say it, I’ve been called a lot of things) but for some reason, I felt kind of fuzzy when Captain Waters called me Sinatra. One absolutely loved being called Michael. I always felt that rush of warmth over the feed when its nickname left the lips of a client.
“After the King of Pop, huh? And... Frank Sinatra? A bit of an oldies fan, are we?” she said, and I could see Technician Darin dark skin turn a shade darker as blood rushed to the surface of his face. My passive scans tagged him as pleased and maybe a bit embarrassed that she had made the connection so quickly. Captain Waters turned back to me with a smile and said, “well then, good afternoon to you too, Sinatra. Nice to meet you and Michael. I look forward to working with you both.” She held out her hand and I stared at it for 1.5 seconds before I realized she was expecting me to shake her hand.
Hesitantly, I lifted my right arm just enough for my hand to connect with Captain Waters’. Previous recordings on other contracts said this was acceptable (and expected) behavior of humans, and to not exert too much pressure. I had heard humans complain about other humans that used this gesture like a civilized sparring match. An expression of dominance. I had seen humans flinch when shaking hands. I realized I didn’t want that. I’m not sure if she counted as a client yet or just a human in my presence. I didn’t know if I would be punished if I did hurt her, and her hand was...so small in mine. I never really thought about how small and fragile humans were until that moment. I had a thought to mimic the pressure she applied to my gloved hand, then quickly reduced that by two percent before applying it. I don’t want to hurt her, and I had no idea if she was squeezing or gently grasping me.
I assume I did it right since Captain Waters did not wince. Instead, her smile widened as she ended the gesture with me and turned to One to do the same.
Good job, Technician Darin said in the feed to me. I could see him smiling through one of the camera inputs in the room. One hesitated a bit less than I did, if only because it had seen what was expected of it just moments before. I could see it tense up a bit at the contact and I noted the handshake ended 0.23 seconds faster than mine had. I assume this was because of Captain Waters’ consideration of One’s touch avoidance. I felt something swell in my chest that alarmed me at first, but when I felt a similar sensation within the shared feed coming from One, I realized what it was. Through the camera input, I could see One and my face mirroring Technician Darin’s ever so slightly.
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When we arrived on the planet and had the camp site set up, she introduced us to the team. I knew from the client files that there were over twenty individuals on this contract. I had their information all within reach - names, pronouns, job titles, work shifts, age, any medical issues or allergies, etc. A couple thousand hours back I stopped trying to learn the names of all our clients. It had just become a tiring process and Hub System didn’t seem to care if I called a client by their name. I rarely had a reason to address one first, and I always had access to my client files to reference if it was needed anyways.
When Captain Waters introduced us by our nicknames, I saw a few human faces change to shock or amusement. She seemed a bit oblivious to the subtle change in her crowd as she kept talking, laying down rules about interacting with us. That we were, for the most part, to be left alone to do our duties. (Thank you.) That harassment of us was strictly forbidden (also, thank you.) I could tell from her tone that she was hoping she wouldn’t have to deal with anything, and I hoped the team on this contract had enough respect for her to listen.
“So, they’re not sexbots?” Someone asked and a chuckle ran through the crowd.
“No, they aren’t ComfortUnits,” Captain Waters replied firmly. I never quite understood that nickname for ComfortUnits. Sure, sex was one of the things they could provide, but it wasn’t the only thing. We had one on a contract three years back that was basically a therapist for the humans. It’s a good thing Ordinary Innovations doesn’t really mine conversations for sellable information with how much our clients spoke to it at the time.
“Then why do they get human names? None of the SecUnits on my last contract had human names,” The same person asked. My passive audial analysis tagged the human as #agitated #annoyed #angry. Threat Assessment ticked up a few points and I felt my jaw clench slightly. I’m not entirely sure why us having ‘human names’ upset this human so much. It was an odd thing to be agitated by.
Captain Waters glanced at Dr Smith, who up until now had been passively listening while he worked on something with his internal feed interface. His gaze focused on the crowd.
“The company we rented the equipment from had names for these two units. You’d have to take it up with them to find out why. If calling these SecUnits by human names bothers you, just use One and Two. Their uniform shirt sleeve will have the number on it,” Dr Smith said in an almost bored tone. It was a lie, and I found myself a bit surprised at how easily it came out. Maybe Captain Waters had told him that considering he had walked out of the room for the conversation between her and Technician Darin. Either way, that seemed to be the end of it.
One stepped forward and began the introduction speech it had done hundreds of times for other contracts. I backburnered what was going on in front of me as I activated scouting drones remotely and started a perimeter scan. I would send this scan to One so it could generate the most efficient route for our patrols. We would be spending most of the morning touring the site, inspecting equipment and vehicles to ensure they made it through the wormhole safely. This also meant, we were to be left alone to complete the tasks at our own pace.
One delegated the task of checking the vehicles to me while it started the first perimeter walk around our base. It also left me with going out to one of the survey sites should the humans have interest in doing so. I know this was because One liked when I sent it images of things I found and because my checking vehicles task was lower priority than its patrol. We didn’t talk much about anything, per se, but sharing odd rock or clouds formations, our humans doing dumb (safe) things, and flora or fauna helped pass the time. HubSys didn’t seem to care about images and most files being passed back and forth between us, though it did log everything and stored it so it could be viewed by a human supervisor if there was a need to do so. It did seem to care if we spoke in the feed (and out loud). Mostly, I think, there were some specific words it was monitoring for, (I haven’t tried to find out which words, exactly because that might hurt) so I kept most of our conversation about clients and contract specific information.
I had just climbed out of the second Crawler, having checked it started up just fine and no alerts came through to HubSys when One sent an image into the feed of a small, brownish orange scaley fauna sitting on a rock in the sun. Its multifaceted eyes sparkled in the light and, if I magnified the image enough, I could (kind of) make out One’s expression. Of course, I didn’t need to see that in order to know it found this little creature interesting and wanted to share it with me.
In the feed, I said, small fauna, low threat profile. Possible nuisance depending on migration patterns and food source.
Amusement bled into the feed and One pinged in acknowledgement.
An alert from one of my drones outside of the garage caught part of my attention and I pulled the input up. Captain Waters was making her way up to the side door and swiped her access card. I straightened and turned around to see her give me a polite smile as she stepped in, then hesitate.
“Hi, Sin. Michael said I could find you here,” she said, pausing as the awkwardness took hold of the situation. Huh. Why didn’t One send me an alert about this?
I said in the feed to One, did you send Captain Waters to me?
“Good afternoon, Captain,” I replied, stopping short of asking why she needed to see me in person. We have a feed. It’s much easier to use than walking over to where I was (which, granted, was a great way to exercise if that was the point. Looking at geolocation data from HubSys, she had come from the sleeping quarters. Kind of a long walk to talk to a SecUnit. Was One over there?)
More amusement bled into the shared feed and One pinged acknowledgement again. I tried to do a feed equivalent of rolling my eyes at it, but I’m not sure it came out that way.
“We will be having dinner in a few hours, and I wanted to invite you to join us,” Captain Waters said quickly. The slight temperature increase in her face told me she was probably a little nervous about my response. Why? Why does it matter what I think? Something must have shown on my face because she added quickly, “You don’t have to say yes. I just wanted to offer it in case you wanted to eat with the crew.” I really wish this contract wanted us in our SecUnit armor. There’d be less awkwardness from the both of us in a conversation like this. Or, well, less from me since I could make all the expressions I wanted without worry of her seeing them.
“SecUnits don’t eat,” I said, curiously watching as her expression went from nervous to nervous surprised to embarrassed. I’m surprised One didn’t say anything about this. Had she extended the same invite to it? At the very least, Dr Smith should have said something...unless she just came up with this herself. What was that saying Technician Darin always mumbled? Something about the left hand not talking to the right?
I said to One, did you get an invite to the meal period this evening from Captain Waters?
Yes. I will attend and monitor activities, One replied.
Ah, okay. I guess that works, even if watching humans eat was disgusting. Better it than me.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know that,” Captain Waters said, looking away. “I thought that since...”
Yeah, I knew where this was going. We look human. For some reason, humans think that because we have mouths, we must have stomachs. That isn’t the case. See, if you had messaged me in the feed, we wouldn’t be awkwardly standing here wishing we both could make a run for it.
Well... it wasn’t a question, so I technically didn’t have to continue this conversation.
I could make an excuse and just walk out of here.
I’d finished what I was doing with the crawlers in the garage.
I could come up with a perimeter route to intersect One and maybe actually roll my eyes at it.
Instead, I said, “One has informed me it will be at the meal period tonight. I will patrol the exterior of the camp during that time.”
Captain Waters seemed a little disappointed? At that. She did a thing with her face (I’m not sure she knew she did it, but she did) then nodded.
“Okay, that makes sense,” she said softly.
And now I felt bad. Great. Technician Darin would want me to accept the invitation to socialize with the humans. If only for the sake of sparing One from potentially being touched by a client.
But I didn’t want to.
I didn’t.
And One put itself in that situation by agreeing to be there.
Ugh.
“I’ll modify my route to stop by during the meal period. I need to continue equipment checks,” I said, hoping that would be enough to at least cheer her up. A small smile and another nod.
“Okay, thank you, Sinatra. I guess I’ll see you then.”
I turned and walked away from Captain Waters. Through one of my drone inputs, I saw her lean against the Crawler and sigh. She looked as if someone had taken a huge weight off her shoulders. If it's that hard to talk to a SecUnit, why do it? I’ve been on several contracts in the past with minimal conversation with anyone other than HubSys and One. That’s...kind of preferrable to this ‘let’s be nice to the construct and treat it like it wants to be around us’ bullshit. Once outside, I pinged One asking for its location, which it freely provided. I sent my drones ahead, checking to make sure I wouldn’t run into any more overly social humans and started in that direction. I had an eyeroll to deliver in person and I didn’t want to be late.
That evening I spent as much time as I could not going into the direction of the cafeteria where this “dinner” was being held. One had given me one of its done inputs to monitor from a distance (thankfully after the humans finished consuming their meals.) The humans, for the most part, left it alone. Save for Captain Waters asking if One would like to take a seat. I could feel the shock and discomfort coming from it as its buffer supplied a canned statement.
“Please wait while I search for that information,” One had said. Dr Smith, who had been sitting nearby (still working on something in his internal feed interface, I think. Does he ever not work?) huffed a small laugh.
“If you want it to sit, tell it you want it to sit. Don’t offer,” he said, focusing his gaze on Captain Waters.
“I don’t want it to feel like it has to do what I say.” From the sound of her voice, I could tell she was at least a little embarrassed that Dr Smith spoke up. He shifted with a small sigh, looking from the drone input I was riding on to One.
“One, go stand by the entrance, please. Just keep an eye on the guys over there playing cards. They got a little rowdy on the trip through the wormhole,” Dr Smith said, keeping his voice calm.
“Yes, Dr Smith,” One replied, its voice SecUnit neutral. In the feed, I could tell it was relieved to have been given orders instead of acting like it had a choice in the matter. One kept the drone I was riding near the table of Captain Waters and Dr Smith but made its way to the entrance.
“Look, I don’t know what that technician said to you after I left with Faulkner and her assistant, but they’re not humans. They’re here to protect us and Ordinary Innovation’s equipment. They do what they’re told and that’s it. You told the workers to not harass them. Don’t go against your own rules.” Dr Smith said in a hushed tone. He clearly didn’t want the entire room to hear him chastise the captain.
“David- “
“You’re confusing it, Kat. You can’t do that. That’s not fair.”
I mean, yeah, he’s not wrong. One was definitely confused on how to respond. I know we weren’t supposed to sit on human furniture, but I’m also not sure how it worked if we were told to do so. Did that still warrant punishment from the Governor Module? I hope not.
I really hope she doesn’t ask me the same question.
By the time I did make it to the cafeteria, the group that had been playing cards had moved on to watching something on the large display screen on the far wall. It was actiony with lots of explosions and extensive infrastructure damage. I never understood the love for such media, but I could feel One’s own interest in passively watching the film. (The infrastructure damage gave me anxiety about how much it would cost to rebuild (yes, I realize that is a dumb thing for a SecUnit to think about.) This was also an issue for me with the medical shows I’ve seen on our other contracts. Like, at what point is living even worth it if the human is over a million CRs in debt? Unless these shows aren’t taking place in the Corporation Rim and all the medical services are free (yeah, right.) You never see the part where the human is given the bill, anyway. How could they even film that? Congratulations, you’re alive! Now here’s the absurd bill we’ve accumulated during your stay. Good luck paying it. What’s that? You can’t afford it? Well, I guess you’ll just have to be our contracted slave labor for the next twenty years... maybe they should make a show out of this. It’s a horror story that probably hits close to home for most of these humans.) Yeah, we aren’t supposed to watch media, but if you put it on in the same room as us, we’re probably going to watch it. It’s not like we can’t do more than one thing at once.
A few of the humans watching the display screen glanced back when I walked through the cafeteria door (the hydraulics made a whooshing sound), but otherwise, no one paid attention to me. I could feel the tension between my shoulders ease slightly and I sent a few drones out to take position in different parts of the room. One pinged me in greeting which I returned without looking in its direction.
One|> Situation has been calm for the last hour and 47 minutes. Previous activity caused some agitation that needed de-escalation.
Previous activity? The card games? I ran back the video from the drone input I had been riding on before arriving here. Sure enough, one human stood up when another laid down a collection of cards (I assume in a winning pattern? I don’t know anything about cards.) One stepped in when the standing human threw their cards pathetically at the winner and shoved back from the table, talking loudly about cheating. Were they betting real currency in front of the captain and her partner? That’s bold.
Acknowledged, I said in the feed and moved to the opposite exit to stand guard. To my relief, Captain Waters did not try to approach me. She did smile in my direction, which made my organics do something I can’t really describe. Dr Smith reached across the table and grasped her hand, subvocalizing something to her. Judging by the temperature increase in her face and how her eyes darted back to Dr Smith, smile widening, I don’t think I want to know what had been said. I am forever grateful this contract didn’t have a “spy on your clients” clause to it. Most of Ordinary Innovations contracts didn’t, but the few that had, I’ve seen enough things humans do that I’d rather not. I have an idea of what was said, and I wish to remain ignorant of the truth. They left shortly after (together, if that wasn’t obvious.)
One stayed another 10 minutes before it, too, left the cafeteria. I could see in SecSys it was off to start the perimeter patrol I had just completed. I stayed in the building until all the humans left and cleaned up anything left out on the tables. The humans were relatively clean, surprisingly. I wonder if Captain Waters had said something about making us clean up counted for harassment, or if they were really this tidy. Either way, it was a relief. I straightened the seating around the four tables pausing at the last chair. I don’t think the Governor module knows exactly what we’re doing at all times. I think someone has to issue a punishment for it to work. I’ve never really tested this.
I pulled the chair farther back from the table, looking though my drones scattered around the room to ensure I was, indeed, alone. I moved around the chair, standing in front of its white, horizontal ledge and stared. If HubSys could see me, this would hurt, but...I kind of had to know. An alert informed me that I was clenching my jaw too tightly, and I had to consciously make myself stop. I turned and squeezed my eyes shut before dropping into the chair. The shock of my rear hitting the chair seat startled me and my whole body went rigid, my hands clenched into tight fists. I immediately stood back up. I guess I accidentally let my emotions bleed into the shared feed between One and myself since it sent me a confused query. Yeah, this isn’t going to happen. I’m a total chickenshit when it comes to pain. I throttled the connection between One and myself, hoping to cut back on some of the emotional leakage I currently had going. I felt tingly, and yes, I know that’s a bad descriptor. Uncomfortable. Definitely uncomfortable.
Status? One asked in the feed when I didn’t respond to its first inquiry. I knew it was still confused.
I gave it access to one of my drone inputs as a way of reply, but I don’t think it helped much. All One could see was me standing there in front of a chair in the cafeteria. Alone and in the dark. Ugh, I felt stupid. I shared my emotional feedback tags of #embarrassed and #nervous before cycling my systems to clear out the unwanted pseudo-code and return to a more baseline neutral. One sent an acknowledgement ping, either okay with me not elaborating why I was nervous and embarrassed, or fully understanding that I scared the metaphorical shit out of myself doing something dumb.