Work Text:
I was willing to admit it: this dataset was ass, which meant that my analysis was going to be suboptimal.
You could just ask Amena how she is adjusting to university, ART said. It was butting in on my analysis and had already generated a report highlighting my dataset’s deficiencies. In summary, the report basically said something along the lines of, Your dataset is way too small to generate results within an acceptable margin of error, and it lacks a suitable baseline to identify normal behavior.
Yeah, I didn’t really need ART’s assistance in figuring that one out.
I told ART, I can’t just ask her! That would compromise the mission.
I hadn’t known you could communicate disappointed incredulity over the feed prior to meeting ART, but here we were yet again. It asked, Since when is this a covert mission?
Come on, I said, If Amena knew about the mission she’d get mad at Dr. Mensah. Aren’t you the one that’s supposed to know more about adolescent human behavior?
Still, shitty dataset or not, I wasn’t about to ask Amena how university was going, so that meant I needed to run my analysis.
Dr. Mensah had asked me to “Keep an eye on Amena.” I had asked her what the hell that was supposed to mean, because I was pretty sure that she wasn’t asking me to provide security for Amena at the university for several reasons: (1) it was unnecessary (at least according to the humans); (2) I couldn’t actually do that, because I would be out on missions with ART at least half the time; and (3) it would piss Amena off. A lot.
So Dr. Mensah had clarified, “I mean, just try to make sure she’s settling in at the university. You know, making friends. Not getting homesick.”
I wasn’t sure how exactly Dr. Mensah had intended that I help Amena with these things. Perhaps she was so caught up in her maternal role that she had forgotten that she was talking to her reclusive SecUnit. Or worse, maybe she thought that since I had managed to make friends with ART that I was secretly developing into a social butterfly. But I couldn’t say no to Dr. Mensah sometimes. Perhaps that failure was in some way pathological.
I had kind of hoped that I would figure out how to “keep an eye on Amena” before it became relevant. By the looks of my pathetic dataset, I had not. So here we were.
At least ART was on board with the mission because that had meant that it hacked the university station to get ahold of current data on Amena to compare with the archival data used on my dataset, which meant that it was responsible for the hack rather than me. Plausible deniability was good because if I pissed off the university’s security, they could possibly get me fired. (It was kind of impossible to fire ART, and I was sure that that fact pissed off some human somewhere on this station.)
Analyzing the current data against my archival dataset on Amena’s behavior wasn’t exactly encouraging. Based on my intel and handful of observations of Amena prior to the mission best known as “An Endless Shitshow”, I had gathered that normal, non-school activities for Amena included: (1) spending time with a handful of close friends; (2) playing a weird game with four balls that involved a good deal of kicking (sidenote: ??); (3) playing music on a stringed instrument in the Mensah family’s common space; and (4) generally driving Farai and Tano up the wall by pulling a disappearing act in the name of “urban exploration.”
Amena couldn’t exactly pull a disappearing act on me while living on a station with extensive security like the university, but current data depicted a disturbing lack of any of these activities, or whatever the closest approximation thereto was that was available to Amena. Instead, it suggested that she spent a great deal of her leisure time in her bunkroom alone, and based on her feed activity, watching Preservation serials.
So yeah. It was kind of looking like I had to follow through on my promise to Mensah. Once I figured out how.
Well, fuck.
The next day, when I was taking my rest period after helping Iris out on some mission security assessments, ART struck.
It told me, I have taken some liberties.
That was perhaps one of the most disturbing things it had ever said to me.
Of what kind? I asked, cautiously.
In contacting Amena.
I started looking for the nearest wall, because I felt a sudden urge to slam my head into it. I had been blissfully ignoring the Amena problem all day.
You what!
I asked Amena about activities that she finds stress-relieving. ART said, rather primly. It was the helpful thing to do.
She’s going to be suspicious now, I protested. She’s going to get all mad at me for treating her like a child.
I came up with an excellent cover, ART said, managing to sound wounded somehow that I would assume otherwise. I told her I was collecting survey responses in order to suggest new rest period leisure activities for students aboard.
And she actually answered it? I asked.
She answered it. ART sounded smug.
Well, whether or not she had bought that shitty ploy on ART’s part wasn’t worth focusing on because it wasn’t like I could do anything about it now.
ART pushed me Amena’s survey response through the feed and I looked through it. The first activity that she had submitted was ‘preparing food together.’ Not that one. I dismissed it immediately.
Cooking together forms strong social relationships.
Not when you can’t eat the food.
The second one was ‘playing music together.’ Amena played an instrument, but I didn’t know how to do that, so we couldn’t exactly achieve the ‘together’ part. So that was out.
The last activity was karaoke.
I was horrified. Oh, fuck no.
I hated the university karaoke bar. I had made up my mind on this about 1.9 seconds after I stepped inside. It was loud, bursting with off-key singing. There were also a lot of flashing lights. (I don’t understand why humans like flashing lights so much in places that are supposed to be fun, because I just associate them with emergency lights.) There was also a lot of intoxicated humans. That particular quality never seemed to bode well for me.
The main room of the karaoke bar was large, with a scattering of tables with chairs for two to four humans arranged around a small stage. There was a microphone stand on stage, with a large display surface behind it showing lyrics set over a music video backdrop. Opposite the stage was a small bar, and past the bar was a hallway leading off towards private karaoke rooms.
I spotted Amena standing near the bar. She had been watching the door, I guess, because she was staring at me, holding a glass containing a clear carbonated beverage in her hand. Once I walked over to her she blinked, and said, “You know, I almost didn’t come. I kind of thought you were playing a joke on me.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” I said.
“I know,” she replied, “That’s why I actually came.” She looked around the room anxiously, her eyes flitting toward a human that was singing on stage while loudly stomping their feet, slightly offbeat to the music. “Maybe we should book a private karaoke room.”
“Probably,” I agreed.
I booked us a private room via the feed and shared the room number with Amena. We headed down the narrow hallway, which was decorated with old human analog music storage devices. Amena walked slightly behind me, and with one of my drones I was able to observe that she looked very puzzled. “So like,” she said, biting her lip, “We’ve established that this isn’t a prank, but it’s still very weird.”
I held the door to the private room open for Amena, and said, “ART has been pressuring me to try new things.”
She walked into the room and narrowed her eyes in my general direction, before flopping onto a squishy, chair-like but not chair-shaped object on the floor. “I just find that… a little hard to believe.”
“ART tries to get me to try new things all the time,” I said, which was true.
Amena curled up her lip. “That’s not what I meant. I meant you asking me to go to karaoke… in particular… after I answered ART’s survey and said I liked karaoke.”
Well shit. Amena was smart, I knew she'd be onto me. “It wanted me to collect data on karaoke directly,” I said.
I thought that it was a pretty good lie, but it didn’t seem like Amena was buying it. She crossed her arms over her chest, then said, “Alright, well, since you invited me, how about you pick a song to sing first?”
I did not want to do that. Maybe it was time to lay off the lies and see if telling the truth would get me out of it instead. “I’d like to hear you sing,” I said. I felt so awkward I couldn’t even bear to pay attention to my drone’s camera-view of her face. “I like listening to music. And I know you like making music. But I’ve never heard you do it.”
“Oh,” Amena said, “That… Sure?” She still sounded questioning, but she uncrossed her arms and leaned towards the table in the center of the room to grab one of the microphones before rifling through the karaoke house’s song selection in the feed.
I sat down in the other chair-ish object, on the other side of the table from Amena. It was filled with a pellet-like material and squished around me. I felt ridiculous. It was essentially impossible to maintain good posture and it felt like my lung was getting squished. How was this conducive to singing?
“There’s not really any songs here I know,” Amena said, sounding slightly frustrated. “Oh, I found one. It’s a standard, so I guess it makes sense they’d have this.”
She cued the song, and a soft acoustic guitar track began to play in the room. She fiddled with the microphone before starting to sing when the song cued her in. I knew the song too—it was a work song I had heard before at some mining installations.
It was forbidden at some mining installations.
Amena’s singing voice was high and slightly breathy (I was blaming the seat-things for this), but sweet and pleasant to listen to. The song was steady and tightly structured, meant to help humans keep a rhythm as they worked. When Amena finished singing, I clapped. She made an embarrassed looking face and then thrust the microphone at me. “Now it’s your turn,” she said.
“I thought you were very good,” I told her.
“Your turn,” Amena repeated, insistently.
I looked through the song selection on the feed myself and I also found it rather lacking. Most of the songs in the catalog were local, but I probably knew more of them than Amena from having spent more time with ART and its crew. I chose a song that I knew Iris liked a lot (which seemed to please ART, based on the tiny bit of its attention that was currently following my feed) and started the track.
This was when I discovered that SecUnits can’t sing, really. The human part of my brain seemed to know what to do, instinctively, but my organic parts weren’t really cooperating. My voice came out far breathier than Amena’s, even when I scrambled to sit upright to try to get more air into my lung. When I tried to sing higher to match the pitch of the song, my voice cracked. I found it hard to project my voice at all above the volume of a whisper. Wincing, I turned off the song. “I guess SecUnits can’t sing,” I told Amena, awkwardly. She had a slightly concerned look on her face, like she wasn’t sure how to react. “You can laugh,” I said. I didn’t really care.
Amena choked out half a laugh, but then looked like she felt bad about it. “Have you ever tried to sing before?”
“No,” I admitted.
Amena fidgeted, sitting up in her stupid chair as well. She bent over her knees slightly, her hands grabbing her shins. “SecUnit, why did you ask me to come here? Really?”
“I wanted to make sure you’re doing okay here. At the university, I mean,” I said. I was beginning to consider potential routes of escape. The door was out because it was the obvious option, but perhaps I could break through one of the walls, or crawl into the air duct in the ceiling.
“Did my second mother put you up to this?” Amena asked. She sounded embarrassed and was covering her eyes with her hands, pressing the heels of her palms into her cheekbones.
“Maybe.” Amena knew Dr. Mensah. Amena also knew me. She knew me too well, in my opinion.
“Well, you can tell her I’m fine,” Amena said, sounding not fine at all.
“I’ll tell her that,” I said, “But are you? Really?” I hated asking it, but I was remembering something ART said about how adolescent humans needed emotional support. I didn’t give a shit about the emotional support most adolescent humans needed, but this was Amena. She was different.
“Why do you care?” Amena said. Her voice had gone accusatory and harsh.
I braced myself. “Because I care about you.”
“Oh,” Amena said, flatly. She lowered her hands away from her eyes. The display surface in the room changed to display a slideshow of humans singing and having fun since we weren’t using it. The pictures lit up the dark room in an odd way, casting light blue light over Amena’s face. “Really?” It was hard to parse her expression, but I thought she looked surprised. Not in a bad way.
Contrary to popular belief, I do possess some tact, which is why I didn’t say, ‘Hey, you saw all those ugly fucking targets I killed protecting you,’ or, ‘Hey, I chased off that creep at the festival for you.’ I was suddenly struggling with the fact that because providing security was my function, perhaps it meant that Amena thought I only did it for her because it was my function.
There were lots of humans I protected that I didn’t particularly like, even now. But I wasn’t sure how I could explain that it was a lot more than just me performing my function when I protected my humans, the ones that were special.
I settled on telling Amena, “I wouldn’t have let myself be talked into doing this by ART, or having a conversation like this by Dr. Mensah, if how you were doing wasn’t important to me.”
Amena had unfolded herself a little bit and was looking at me again. She pinched the chair-ish cushion with two of her fingers, seeming to roll the pellets within between them. “That makes sense,” she said. She was quiet for a moment, and I didn’t say anything. It seemed like she was thinking very hard. Finally, she confessed, “It has been hard.” She bit her lip. “I thought I was ready to leave home. I was so excited to see more of the universe and make new friends. But it’s so far from home, and I don’t know anybody, except for you and ART’s crew, but you guys have to go out of your way to hang out with me. It’s not like the survey at all, because even though that was far too, Uncle was there.” She gestured around the room with one of her hands. “Plus, you’re only around part of the time anyways,” she finished.
“When we’re here, you can come around anytime, you know,” I told her. “You don’t have to be invited.”
“I know,” she sighed, “But if I rely on you, then what if I never make any friends with anyone in my program?”
I told her, “In my experience, friends just short of happen whether you want them to or not.” (And usually, I had not.)
Amena snorted. “Yeah, but you make friends because you’re awesome. I’m just another boring first year.”
I found this assessment to be extremely flawed. I countered, “But you’re actually a nice person to be around. I’m an asshole.”
Amena laughed, or maybe it would be more accurate to say she halfway laughed. She said, sounding like she was a little unsure of it, “I guess it would even out. I hope.” I wasn’t sure what to say, so I stayed quiet. After a moment, Amena said, “On Preservation, even when I was meeting new people at school or an event, there was always someone I knew there who would introduce me or involve me in things. I didn’t realize it would be so… hard to make friends without that support system.”
She splayed one of her legs out, unbending her knee. She turned her head away from me, and said, “You know, Preservation is a small polity. It is a whole planet and a station-full of people, but it’s still small. There’s so many people here. I’m pretty sure the university station is like, three times the size of Preservation Station.”
I knew that the university station’s habitable space was actually only 2.86 times the habitable space of Preservation Station, but I also knew that wasn’t an appropriate factoid for the conversation, so I kept it to myself. Instead, I said, “I find it really hard to talk to new people too. Unless it’s about security.”
“But if it’s about security, it doesn’t really matter what they think of you,” Amena said, quietly.
“Except so far as it impacts security,” I said. I asked Amena, “Do you like the students that you’ve met at the university so far?”
Amena shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like I have barely anything in common with most of them.”
“Because you’re from different systems?” I asked.
“I guess a bit of that,” Amena said. She made a bit of a face, sticking out and pursing her lips. “But also… I don’t know. It feels almost like I’m not, I don’t know, enough? Sometimes it feels almost like I’m too old for them even though we’re the same age.”
I was so out of my depth in this conversation that I was pretty sure I had somehow drowned in the shower. “Have you been attending your trauma treatments?” I asked her. ART’s MedSystem had determined that Amena needed to attend trauma treatment after, well, everything that had happened with the alien remnant colony fiasco. (Even I could have diagnosed that one.) It was not the best way I could’ve broached the topic, I admit. Amena frowned instead of answering. I asked again, “Have you?”
Amena swallowed visibly even though she hadn't put anything in her mouth (I hate it a little when humans do that, it’s distracting). She said, “I’ve been meaning to call the treatment center here since I’ve gotten to the university… but I keep forgetting because I’m so busy with my classes.”
I threw my head back, perhaps a bit dramatically. “You are just like your mother,” I complained.
Amena let out a startled laugh. “No one ever compares me to her when I've done something wrong,” she said quietly, “Except my first mom, I guess.”
“Do they compare you to her when you do something right?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“That sucks,” I said decisively. “Your accomplishments are yours, not hers, after all.”
Amena muttered something that I didn’t quite catch, but suspected was along the lines of, “Well, at least someone thinks so.” She pulled her arms in, closing herself off again as her shoulders hunched in a little. “But it’s also weird that no one knows her here, so no one else is around to compare me to her,” she said quietly. “It reminds me how far away from home I am. It feels kind of scary, how far away I am.” Still looking so small, she asked me, “Do SecUnits get homesick?”
I considered the question for a long moment. “I don’t think so. I don’t really have a home to miss.” I thought of the deployment center and felt no attachment to the memory of it. The only emotions I felt toward the deployment center were more along the lines of malicious and vengeful. “I miss Preservation sometimes, though,” I confessed. “I didn’t really expect to miss it when I agreed to stay with ART. It has been strange.”
“I miss it too,” Amena said. It seemed like once she started talking about it, the words began to just tumble out of her mouth. “I miss the food. Especially the spicy and greasy stuff. I miss the music they play on Preservation Station. I miss my little brother.”
“I miss your second mother,” I told her, “My other friends too. I miss the bots.” I looked at her out of the corner of my eye intentionally, for just a flash as I said, “Don’t tell them. The bots, I mean.”
Amena laughed again, this time wholly, her eyes lighting up. She said, “Your secret’s safe with me. I don’t really talk to bots, after all.”
“They’re just so damn happy all the time,” I said, playing up the irritated affect in my voice a little bit for her benefit. She laughed again.
When her laughter stopped, Amena looked thoughtful. “I don’t hate it here or anything,” she told me. “I want to stay. It’s just a little hard right now. I like my classes. The station is very beautiful. It’s not like people are being mean to me or anything. It’s just hard, making friends, I guess. And I have been shy.”
I thought that maybe I should talk to Iris. Maybe some of the crew had younger relatives at the university that could be introduced to Amena. Help her to bridge the gap. Make friends in a more familiar way.
“By my standards, I think you’re adjusting to the change alright,” I told her, truthfully.
“Your standard reaction to a sudden change in a situation is to start hitting stuff or flee the system,” Amena pointed out.
It was not untrue, but I was mildly annoyed. She was sabotaging my helpfulness by pointing that out. I said, “Still.”
“Still,” Amena agreed, sagely, before she giggled again. Her face became abruptly soft, and she smiled a little bit. She said, “Thank you for checking on me, SecUnit.”
“I’m glad you’re okay,” I told her.