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The grey clouds should have been its sign that something was up. It didn’t even know why it humored its humans with these planet visits. But it was at Mensah’s farm, because it actually liked to be there sometimes. (Yeah, it was also surprised by this.) And the rest of its humans were here as well as Mensah, so it was easier to keep an eye on them.
(Thinking back on it, a random organised visit to Mensah’s place should have been its first sign, but what did it know? And the humans liked to just get together sometimes. And it didn’t mind tagging along.)
It was cold, which should have been its next clue that weather was, in fact, happening.
Then the snow started falling in big fluffy clumps.
Mensah’s children made a high-pitched noise, and they dragged their chosen parents further out onto the yard. It didn’t know why they would bother; it could see the snow just fine from where it stood.
“Aren’t they pretty?” Arada asked, looking up at the sky.
She was asking in general. Murderbot even glanced in her direction to be sure. But the others were glancing in its vague direction.
“First snow of the cycle,” Ratthi said with a wide smile.
“It’s prettier than it was last year,” Bharadwaj added. “I was worried that it won’t get cold enough.”
Ratthi laughed. “I was worried that the snow was going to be those little specks. Especially with Sec-”
At that, Pin-Lee elbowed him on his side, and Ratthi shut up.
“Sorry.”
That’s when it realized that this was the whole point of the visit. And that it had been tricked into coming down to the planet to experience weather. (Well played, humans, well played.)
This realization did wonders to it’s performance reliability. Which meant it fluctuated, like every time its humans wanted to do something nice for it.
Then it got an unexpected ping from Gurathin, followed by a message.
They did the same thing for me as well. He sent. Preservation likes to appreciate everything, first snowfall included.
Did they tell you?
His next message came back with some amusement leaking through. No, they wanted to make it a surprise.
I have seen snow before. It sent, because it didn’t know what else to say. (It could have stopped, but whatever.)
Me too, Gurathin sent. Just not in person.
That made it have an emotion that it wasn’t going to think about anymore.
It had been in the snow before. It had even been in a snowstorm before. It experienced all sorts of horrible weather on all sorts of horrible planets, usually having to look after all sorts of idiotic humans. No wonder it hated all of it. But it guessed, this wasn’t so bad. It certainly had worse, and if this is how humans and augmented humans wanted to spend time with it. Then who was it to stop them?
Its expression didn’t give anything away.
“It is nice,” it said.