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ART and I watched eleven and a half episodes of Nebula Knights of Avalon III before giving up on it.
The show was set very far in the past—it was Pre-CR, which had made me nervous, but ART assured me it had screened it to make sure there were no storylines about aliens or alien contamination. There wasn’t even any technology to get infected, which was one of the reasons ART had chosen it.
Still, I didn’t like thinking about all those squishy humans running around without communication devices and climate controls and things like that. They didn’t even have MedSystems back then—just humans who knew slightly more than the other humans and did their best to not let them lose so many fluids that they died. Just thinking about how many humans have existed and lived their entire lives without bots to keep them from killing themselves sets off all sorts of alerts for me.
The only thing that made it at all bearable were the knights. Apparently, knights were a kind of pre-technological SecUnit. They wore armour, were trained to fight with weapons, and protected people. They didn’t have governor modules, but they could be punished or executed later if they screwed up or fell into the hands of hostiles, so I guess some things never fucking change. The big difference was that they got to choose who they looked after. I liked that.
On the other hand, they rode around on large, easily frightened fauna, and even my worthless risk assessment module knows that’s a bad idea.
Anyway, Nebula Knights of Avalon III sucked, so ART and I had to find something else to do.
We patrolled a lot. Before I hacked my governor module I’d patrolled places without media, too, and I hadn’t had anyone to talk to back then. I had mostly spent the time thinking about getting shot or blown up or committing an infraction and getting my brain fried.
ART didn’t like me thinking about getting blown up or having a governor module, though. And walking around ART without feeling it in the feed was—okay, it was weird. Even with it running on my hardware, the silence in the feed reminded me unpleasantly of what it had been like to walk through Perihelion’s corridors when I thought it was gone forever.
We needed media.
Next time we can plan ahead and choose the media together, said ART, after it had run out of stories about Iris as a small human to tell me. I’d heard most of them before, anyway; ART loves talking about its crew, and Iris especially.
My act-like-a-human code made me scoff out loud, which wasn’t quite correct for the situation. I’d have to patch that. There’s not going to be a next time.
I felt ART’s distress immediately, [guilt] and [sadness] spreading through my systems. I’m sorry, it said. I understand that this is an imposition for you—
Fuck, no. I scrabbled to collect my thoughts. ART, that’s not what I meant. It turns out that my organic neural pathways do a lot of the processing related to my emotions, which is what makes them so annoyingly hard to control. But even running on my hardware, ART couldn’t read those feelings unless I appended them to the readable-code thoughts in my inorganic systems as metadata.
I meant that after this, we’re going to Preservation to talk to Pin-Lee and Bharadwaj so they can make sure the University is never allowed to do this to you again.
Letting Seth schedule a visit to Preservation as ART’s next mission had been the PSUMNT board of directors’ other concession, along with letting me be present during the minimal functionality exercise. (I’m not going to explain their reasoning for that, because it’s gross.) They thought we were going so ART could talk to Bharadwaj for trauma reasons, though. Technically that was true—we were just also going to start planning a legal attack that would mean ART didn’t have to rely on me being available to act as a run box.
I had given this a lot of thought. Even though not having my media was difficult, I wouldn’t hesitate to volunteer my systems again, and like ART said, we could plan better next time. And five years would probably be enough for my humans to carve out a legal exception for ART anyway.
But I thought ART should talk to Three about the possibility of using its systems, too, in case something happened to me. Three’s hardware is newer than mine, and Barish-Estranza didn’t cheap out on it as much as the company did on me. It would be good for Three to be prepared to act as backup in case a CombatUnit fucks me up or something. By all metrics the one on TranRollinHyfa should have absolutely wrecked me, and it would have, if the humans hadn’t managed to manually open the barrier in time.
Stop that, said ART.
Stop what?
Thinking about dying, it said. It upsets me. I’m already very upset.
I wished we had just saved World Hoppers. ‘I bet some of the students have media saved,’ I said out loud. Sometimes it was easier to make it clear which of my thought processes I wanted to talk about that way.
I’d noticed that a few of the engineering students had the kind of augments that were often used for data storage. With ART in my head, I couldn’t just quietly hack into their augments and scan for stored media, though. That would be unethical, it said, and apparently the University suddenly cared about that when the people affected had legal rights.
Yeah, I wasn’t going to stop being salty about that any time soon.
ART shifted awkwardly, like it was embarrassed about picking a bad serial. That was stupid—I was the one who’d downloaded it in the first place, and I showed it the record of me doing so. This was both our faults. It accepted that reasoning, and agreed to let me ask the students if they’d share any of their saved media.
Most of the crew were taking a rest period, but I scanned the camera inputs and found a student monitoring flight data in the control room. Te was alone, and te had the slightly glazed look augmented humans get when they’re watching media in the feed. Te might also just have been tired, though. It was hard to tell when te was staring at the data on one of the screens. I adjusted my patrol route.
Make sure te knows you’re here, said ART as we reached the entrance to the control room. It could have used my act-like-a-human code to make me clear my throat or tread more loudly, but it was being polite.
It’s fine. Te’s supposed to be alert for the exercise, isn’t te? I didn’t want to announce myself. That just felt awkward. I could just ask for what I wanted, like I would with a bot, and the young human would give it to me and it would be fine.
Out loud, I said, ‘Are you watching media?’
‘DEITY FUCK!’ exclaimed the student, jerking away from the console. Okay, maybe ART had had a point. Why are humans so jumpy? I stepped back and turned to stare at the wall.
‘I wasn’t, I swear,’ babbled the student. ART tagged ter vocal output as [lying]. Te did have media. ‘Am I in trouble?’
I remembered that no-one was supposed to be having fun during the stupid minimal functionality protocol exercise, and considered threatening to tell Seth if the student didn’t hand the files over. ART didn’t like that, though, and tweaked my code in warning. Okay, maybe if the human could just stop panicking for a moment, I could offer to swap whatever te had for Nebula Knights of Avalon III. I didn’t have to tell ter it was a bad show.
Then everything got worse. One of my camera inputs caught Iris leaving her room and stomping down the hallway. She was wearing the sort of soft, short-sleeved clothing humans like to wear when they sleep, but there was a tension in her facial muscles that suggested she had been holding her eyes open for longer than was optimal.
‘What the fuck are you two doing?’ she demanded, appearing behind me.
‘Nothing!’ wailed the student, even though Iris was really talking to me and ART. ‘I was keeping an eye on the velocity logs and then Security Consultant Rin asked—’
‘Senti, go to bed,’ instructed Iris, rubbing a hand over her eyes. ‘I’ll take over here.’
The student grabbed ter things and practically launched terself out the door. Iris watched ter scurry off down the hallway
I was still facing the wall, but Iris stared directly into a drone I had hovering over my shoulder. She looked furious. ‘Explain. Are you trying to get Peri put back in the run box?’
I felt ART compress itself slightly, making itself smaller in my systems, and I glared at Iris. Well, at the wall, but it’s the thought that counts. ‘We just want something to watch.’
‘Watch the students,’ said Iris dismissively.
‘I’m on holiday,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to watch real humans.’
Iris pinched the bridge of her nose. I don’t know why humans do that, but I do know it means they’re pissed off and frustrated.
‘Iris, I know you downloaded the new season of Cruel Romance Personage before we left,’ said ART, using my vocal processors. ‘Send it to SecUnit.’
‘Shut up, Peri,’ she said. It was actually quite impressive how she could tell who was talking even though we were both speaking with my voice. I wondered whether she recognised me, or only ART, and knew that whenever it wasn’t ART it had to be me.
Oh wait, ART had actually used my name that time.
‘Why not?’ I could feel ART bristling in my systems. It felt like messy code, and I wanted to fix it, but I let ART be frustrated without trying to smooth out the errors.
‘You know why not. I’m not allowed to use the feed for non-critical purposes while we’re at minimal functionality.’ She raised a warning finger at my drone. ‘Watching media is not a critical purpose, SecUnit.’
Okay, maybe she did know me. I hadn’t even said anything that time.
She sighed. ‘Anyway, I couldn’t even if I was allowed to. I deleted it.’
ART and I did the systems equivalent of looking at each other in confusion. ART recovered first. ‘Why?’
The temperature of Iris' cheeks increased by 0.2 °C. ‘Because I knew you wouldn’t be able to watch any in the run box, so I didn’t want to be able to either.’
I know I’m weird about media, but humans definitely like to watch their favourite shows when they’re sad. Was Iris not expecting to be sad about ART being in a run box? That didn’t make sense. ‘Why—’ I started, but ART interrupted me.
Shut up, SecUnit, it said, loud as a station security announcement right in my noise receptors. Wow, rude. But something weird was happening to my systems on ART’s side of the partition, so I let it use my vocal processors again.
‘Iris,’ it said, out loud. ‘You did not need to do that.’ My voice sounded oddly thick. Fuck, does it do that when I’m talking sometimes? I’ll need to code a patch for that.
‘I know.’ Iris’ voice wavered. ‘But it just felt so unfair. The idea of watching Cruel Romance Personage—of watching anything—when you didn’t even have your inputs felt like betraying you. I didn’t even want the option.’
Guilt spiked through my systems. I hadn’t thought of it that way. I had planned to hole up in my bunk and sulk and watch media until ART was out of the run box again. Fuck. I was a bad friend. I was a really bad friend.
ART gave my processors a gentle nudge. Iris’s feelings are touching but illogical. You should not feel bad about reacting differently. I knew it was right, but I still felt bad, so I did something stupid.
‘Would you two like to hug?’ I offered, regretting it instantly. I sort of hoped ART wouldn’t take me up on it, but Iris said, ‘Yes please,’ and before I knew it I had turned around and ART had my arms around her.
Eugh. The skin on my organic parts crawled and I had to turn down my proximity sensors so they didn’t set off an alert, but inside me, ART bloomed through my systems. It was registering the pressure of Iris’s bare arms around my upper body as all sorts of positive things, like [reassurance] and [safety] and [family] and [love].
I was registering it mostly as a couple of degrees too warm and slightly damp.
ART tapped my code gratefully and let go, and mercifully, so did Iris. The whole thing had lasted an excruciating 2.3 seconds.
Iris’ eyes were wet. No wonder she’d felt damp. ‘Thank you, SecUnit,’ she said. ‘That was really nice.’
‘I’m not doing it again,’ I said, and turned back to face the wall. My organic parts felt weird, so I ran a diagnostic on my hormone levels, and the oxytocin and dopamine were much higher than I’d ever seen them for myself. The cortisol was about where I’d expect it, though.
That was very meaningful to me, and I am grateful, said ART. Regardless of what you may tell yourself, you are a good friend, SecUnit.
Stupid organic parts doing stupid organic things.
Iris wiped her eyes with her sleeve, and I could feel ART reaching for one of its recyclers to replicate a handkerchief for her and finding it powered down for the exercise. (A handkerchief is a square of absorbent material that humans sometimes discharge their various disgusting face fluids into. Most are single-use and can be tossed into a recycler once they’ve served their purpose, but some humans use fabric ones that they carry around with them until they can be washed and reused, which is so revolting I don’t want to think about it. I once saw my least favourite member of the PSUMNT board of directors [a highly competitive category] scrunch up one of the fabric ones and tuck it in her sleeve, so now I also have to worry about humans carrying around disease vectors on their wrists for fun, apparently.)
Fortunately, Iris’ eyes stopped leaking without requiring further blotting. She gave my shoulder-drone a watery smile, and said, ‘Let me see what I can do about the media.’
Over the next shift rotation, by implying that the students might get extra credit for sharing their media and getting them to copy the files onto an external drive, Iris managed to obtain:
– two seasons of Medcenter Argala (not my favourite, but familiar and reliable);
– six audio recordings of translated Vrinian operas (I would have liked it better if there was video too, but figuring out the lyrics was a fun challenge);
– eight corporate feature films absolutely riddled with advertisements and spyware, which ART and I neutralised easily but the student would be getting a serious lecture about; and
– a recording of one of the students’ younger siblings in their school play.
The school play was surprisingly good, even though most of the humans playing the parts were only about as old as Amena’s closest sibling in age. We watched that five times.
By the time the bell indicating the end of the minimal functionality exercise sounded, though, we were both ready to have our own bodies back. My systems felt oddly empty with ART gone, but it was a relief too, especially when ART returned my media and I felt the reassuring weight of the data on my hard drives.
I noticed there was a new file in the bundle, and I opened it curiously. As soon as it was back in its ship body, ART had compiled a selection of scenes of characters from our favourite media helping each other out. It was set to a song about being there for each other and was horribly embarrassing, but I saved it to permanent storage anyway.
Thank you for the mutual administrative assistance, SecUnit, said ART on the feed. Then, oddly formally, it added: Please do not hesitate to request assistance in return, should you require it.
I sent it a long list of all the repairs and improvements it had made to my systems. You patch me up all the time, I said. Don’t be weird about it.
Very well, said ART. Which episode of Sanctuary Moon would you like to watch?
I thought for 0.12 seconds. The one where the hauler bot captain discovers she has a secret twin, I said. 614.
ART had already queued it up.