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Gurathin messaged me in the feed three times before I answered, and when I did, he said, I need your help.
That sounds ominous. Are we killing someone?
Don't joke about that.
I wasn't joking.
There was a pause, in which I could visualize him rubbing his face. Then he said, I need you to go shopping with me.
Well, that was new.
***
It turned out he needed to pick out a gift for Pin-Lee, because on Preservation it was a thing to give people gifts on the anniversary of their birth, like their literal, actual birthing into the world -- which seemed like a pretty random occasion to commemorate to me, but I'm just a murderbot who rolled off a factory assembly line, what do I know? Anyway, the way this was handled among PreservationAux was that they all got together at the start of each year and did a random name swap, and then on your natal day you got one gift from the person who had your name.
This was unusually sensible for Preservation, I mean if they had to do it at all. "Isn't it hard to stop Ratthi from giving people things all the time?" I asked.
"Yeah, he does it anyway, we just roll with it."
I had no desire to do any kind of shopping, but I was entirely willing to spend the afternoon following Gurathin around Preservation Station watching him be uncomfortable. My drones were keeping me informed of the whereabouts of my other humans, all of whom were currently on the station except Dr. Mensah (down on Preservation at her family farm).
"Why me, though?" I had to ask. "I would think Ratthi would be better at this. Or Bharadwaj. Or literally anybody."
"They would," he said promptly. Which, thanks a lot, augmented asshole. "But that would involve admitting that I didn't buy anything until the afternoon of Pin-Lee's party."
"Why not?"
"Because I forgot. We didn't do this in the part of the Corporation Rim I'm from, and I'm still not used to it. Shut up and help."
I hadn't been to any shops on Preservation Station yet, except as necessary while doing my duty as a SecUnit (following my clients around) or my very vaguely prescribed duties for Station Security (whatever they wanted me to do that was interesting enough for me to want to do it, basically). But it was no surprise that, Preservation being Preservation, their shops were confusing and weird.
I liked shops in the Corporation Rim. They were very simple. I saw people using them in dozens of serials and understood how they worked. You went into the booth, you put in your credit stick, you picked your design and it printed the thing for you.
Preservation shops first of all used their complicated barter/payment system, and also were full of real objects and strange smells and annoying, chatty shop owners who owned or made or whatever the things they were selling, and wanted to show them to you and tell you about them. Gurathin clearly hated this as much as I did, and in the first two shops, he fled the first time someone approached us to try to sell us something. Even I could tell this was no way to end up buying anything, so in the third shop I blocked his escape and he ran into me with a faint "Oof" followed by a mumbled apology.
"I'm helping," I said.
"I see that," Gurathin said between his teeth, and turned to have a deeply awkward and uncomfortable conversation with the shop owner.
I was starting to enjoy shopping.
But we didn't buy anything, here or in any of the other eleven shops we visited at the Preservation station mall. I was starting to see why he wanted help, beyond just being hopeless at this. Not that I was an expert on choosing gifts for people either (to say the least), but I could imagine Ratthi might enjoy one of the handmade musical instruments in one shop we went into, or Dr. Mensah would probably like the beautiful, flowing caftans in another shop that looked like some items I had seen her wearing in her office.
Fuck, now I was getting infected by ... whatever this was. Next I would be wanting to give people things, and I'm a SecUnit and it would be uncomfortable for everyone.
Anyway, I could understand enough of the situation to recognize that Pin-Lee was really hard to shop for.
"You see the problem," Gurathin said. He had stopped to get himself a cold beverage and was sitting on a bench in a biome in the mall while he drank it. I sat beside him because I could.
"Does it have to be a thing?" I asked. "The gift?"
"What do you mean?" he asked, but he seemed interested, not just humoring me.
"Pin-Lee doesn't really seem like a things person."
"Oh," he said thoughtfully. "Huh. You're right."
Which was how we ended up using one of my hard currency cards to make a large donation to a fund for paying off refugees' indenture contracts in Pin-Lee's name. We got a printed certificate, so we did have something physical to give them. I mean, Gurathin did. Even though he insisted on putting both of our names on the small, cylindrical package that the certificate made when it was rolled up and wrapped in paper in the booth where we made the donation.
(Yes, Preservation does have shopping booths for some things.)
"This isn't necessary," I said as he pressed the little gold sticker with both our names on the printed paper wrapped around the cylinder, which was decorated with stars and unrealistic moons.
"Yeah, it is. You're coming to their party, right? It starts in twenty minutes."
At the word "party" my performance reliability took a 22% plunge. I already knew Preservation parties weren't like the ones back on the mining installations where I used to be assigned, with intoxicated humans being loud and messy and assaulting each other. I just didn't like them.
"Who else is going to be there?" I asked.
"Nobody else. Just us, that is, PreservationAux, or those of us who are here, anyway. Ratthi might bring his latest partner, and Mensah will probably call in for a few minutes since she's down on the planet."
I could probably deal with that, at least for a little while. My humans knew me. They would let me sit in a corner and watch media and talk to people only if I wanted to.
"Okay," I said, and Gurathin gave one of those quiet little lopsided smiles and pushed the cylinder into my hands.
"Here, you can give it to them."
I didn't like the way this was headed. Next year, if I was still here, there was a distinct risk they were going to make me participate in the name-choosing at the start of the year, which meant both giving and receiving a gift. I would have to pick a natal day for myself, but technically I already had one, sort of, because Mensah's offspring had asked me about mine (apparently this is important to small humans on Preservation, I don't know why either) and I had panicked and given them the date I arrived on Preservation Station.
I couldn't figure out why I didn't mind that more than I did.
(And yes, I had fun at the party, shut up. Everyone said hi and then mostly left me alone. Pin-Lee was delighted with their gift and hugged Gurathin and gave me a positive emotive sigil in the feed - and also exclaimed with at least reasonably convincing happiness over the handmade bracelet Ratthi gave them - and Ratthi talked to me for 2.8 minutes about the latest Sanctuary Moon episode, and Dr. Mensah said hi on her laggy, glitchy planetside feed. Otherwise I got to sit in the corner and watch media and also watch my humans enjoying each other's company. It didn't even really feel like a party, just my humans being around each other, and me, and having fun. Which I guess is mostly what I want from parties, as it turns out.)
(I started thinking I might not mind having a party like that, and then put that thought firmly in a folder labeled TO DEAL WITH NEVER. Yes, that is an actual folder I have.)
(But I still might not mind it.)