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It was the middle of the night cycle when ART’s comm went off. That was odd, since I was already aboard ART. (We were currently watching episode 91 of Worldhoppers). I pulled the device out of the compartment under my ribcage and clipped it into my ear. The voice on the other end was garbled by static and background noise, but it was unmistakeably Amena.
Why was she not having a rest period? And why wasn’t she contacting me on the feed? Shit, this couldn’t be good.
Amena had just started her first semester at the PanSystem University of Mihira and New Tideland, at the Mihira Station campus. ART was going to be docked at the station for the next month, until a new crop of students showed up to poke things in ART’s labs and get flown around to look at different space stuff. I was going too, because space stuff is dangerous sometimes. (At least that was ART’s reasoning. I don’t know, I think it just wanted my company).
Giving Amena a comm was ART’s idea. It said that it had given a comm to Iris when she was a student, and many the adolescents it had been in charge of at the university.
“Wait, so when you gave me that comm back at RaviHyral, you were treating me like one of your adolescent students?” I asked in our private channel.
“Yes.” ART replied immediately. “Your interpersonal skills and emotional intellagennce, at the time, necessitated such protocols.”
“Fuck you, ART!” I shot back.
“Now, wouldn’t that be interesting…”
That was it. I got up from the conference call I was having with Amena and Mensah, left ART’s and my feed channel and locked myself in the bathroom. I set a high priority alert to go off in ART’s feed, interrupting its primary processes every 2.3 seconds. It was a drone picture of me sitting with my boots on the bathroom counter, making a rude gesture at the camera. ART would have to manually close the alert every time it popped up. It only took ART eight seconds to disable the alert, but it still made me feel better.
When I came out and reopened our feed channel, ART said that I had only proven its point further. It did apologize for the sex joke though.
What was I saying before? Oh right, Amena.
I put the comm in my ear, “Amena, what’s going on?”
“Heyyyyy, SeccUunit!” Amena’s voice was high pitched and her words were slurring together “can you uhhh… come get me?”
“Where are you? Are you hurt?” My threat assessment module was bouncing all over the place. She sounded like she was definitely intoxicated and maybe upset, and trying to hide it. The fact that she wasn’t messaging me on the feed made me think she was in real trouble.
“Nooo, I’m good! I’m in the club district. I sort of broke my feed interface” she added sheepishly. “I just kinda need some help right now.” She hiccupped.
Well that explained that. My threat assessment module dropped, but only a little. There were still all kinds of problems with this situation.
“Are there hostiles in range?” I was already on my feet and grabbing my projectile weapon.
“What??” Amena blurted. “No—I donno! You’re so weird! Just come find me, okay? …Please?”
“ART, prep the med bay!” I said as I sprinted towards the airlock.
“I doubt it will be necessary,” ART responded.
“What do you mean? She could be injured, or the intoxicants could be at dangerous levels!”
“Yes, those things are possible. My medsystem is on standby. However, this is far more likely a case of an adolescent being overwhelmed on their own and needing an adult,” ART explained, its feed voice equal parts patient and patronizing.
Maybe this sounds bad, but I’d much prefer to be heading to the club district of Mihira Station in order to rescue Amena from hostiles, rather that some sort of intoxicant fueled emotional collapse. In case you hadn’t noticed yet, I’m not great at helping people through emotional collapses, let alone dealing with my own. Adding intoxicants into the mix was going to make things even harder.
Back when I was with the company, I frequently had to supervise intoxicated humans. That was never fun. Usually the people I was supervising were in some sort of shitty indenture situation. Emotions about their terrible circumstances would frequently come to the surface while under the influence, sometimes in violent ways, which sucked for everyone involved. Before I hacked my governor module, I had to physically intervene, regardless of whether it looked like that would actually help deescalate the situation. I also had to file incident reports. I didn’t know what happened to the humans who got reported, often times I would never see them again (and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because they got promoted).
When my humans or ART’s crew ingested intoxicants, there was usually at least one relatively sober person in the group. This was great because it meant that I could go somewhere else to watch media alone. I used to stick around in their vicinity, because I was worried that one of them would hurt themselves. I had since decided against that when I realized that I’d rather shoot myself in the face with my own energy weapon, than listen to Arada and Ratthi’s karaoke routine again.
Anyways, Amena was one of my humans. She was alone and needed my help. Mensah trusted me to protect her. Mihira Station was much safer than anywhere in the Corporation Rim, but it was no Preservation. I had to get to her before someone else could.
By now, I was out in the station docks, slipping into the local systems as I approached the transit pods, ART was behind me in the feed, wiping any evidence of my presence as I went. I grabbed the next pod (which was thankfully empty) and told it to run a test trip at double speed; meaning that it would quickly bypass all the other stations. At this time of the night cycle, it was the fastest way to get to the club district. When I was approaching the correct station, I took the pod off test mode. It slowed down just before getting to the stop; letting me out, and a gaggle of loud disoriented humans on.
I sent three scout drones ahead, to check the various corridors. I also flipped through all the camera views I could get access too through SecSys. This was so frustrating without Amena on the feed.
“I’m in the club district. Tell me what you see around you,” I said on the comm.
“Uhhh.. I’m by the big banana.”
“The what?”
“BIG BANANA!”
“I heard you the first time. That’s just… weird”
Why do humans design places like this. Everywhere I looked there were giant holo sculptures that shimmered and pulsed with colour changing light. The corridors were narrow, with lots of obstacles for distracted humans to dodge or run straight into--like planter boxes, kiosks selling fried foods on a stick, or pointy sculptures that sprayed iridescent powder if you got too close. One of them almost got me while I was trying to step over a group of augmented humans sitting on the ground. (Seriously?? There were benches less than four metres away!) All of this was accompanied by a cacophony of music, where each bar was trying to play their version of deep-space mod-wave-techno-hop the loudest. It sucked because I really did like a few of those songs, but not at this decibel and not mixed with seven other competing genres from their neighbours.
Focus, Murderbot! Look for the big banana. Have I ever even seen a banana? What the hell do they look like?
ART must have sensed my confusion, because it helpfully sent me an image; along with its scientific name, agricultural history and current significance in Mihiran culture. Gee, thanks ART.
The image did help, because ScoutDrone 2 had just picked up something yellow. There it was-- a holo sculpture of a banana with weird veins all over it for some reason. It was out front of a place called THROB--and there was Ameena, sitting on a bench nearby.
Amena stood up when she saw me and immediately started swaying. I quicken my pace and caught her by the shoulders as she began to pitch forward. I wished I could just pick her up and sprint to the pods. I hated this stupid place and wanted to get to the quiet safety of ART as fast as possible, but I had learned by now that retrieving clients due to emotional distress was a much slower, (more annoying) process. Threat assessment had thankfully gone down considerably, now that I saw Amena uninjured and relatively conscious. The area seemed to be clear of potential hostiles and the crowd around us had thinned out somewhat. (That probably had nothing at all to do with the mean looking, super augmented human with a projectile weapon running by).
“Amena, what happened?” I cycled through all the drone and security camera views to watch us, but they were too overstimulating with all the flashing lights and swirling holos. I had to look at her directly.
She looked bad. Her hair was half falling out of an assortment of clips and ties. It had flopped over to one side with little bits frizzing out all over the place. Her eyes were bloodshot and streaked with makeup that left trails down her cheeks. She had definitely been attacked by one or two of those glitter sculptures, and some sticky fluid (likely a spilled drink). The mixture was crusting all over different parts of her dress, which was gross.
She was also barefoot. I could only see one platform sandal under the bench. She must have lost the other one. That made me think of Mensah.
“Nothing, I’m fiiiine!” she said belligerently. I was still holding onto her by her shoulders because I didn’t trust her to stay upright without my help. I knew that if I had her sit down again, we probably wouldn’t get out of here until the day cycle started.
Great, the person who asked to be rescued, now doesn’t want to be rescued. “You are intoxicated and here by yourself,” I said flatly.
“I’m not—I wasn’t—” she shrank a little, probably because I was still looking directly at her. Then came the torrent of words. “I came with a couple friends from student housing. They went off somewhere to have sex or something. Then my feed interface fell out and I stepped on it and I couldn’t buy a new one because I forgot to bring hard currency cards and there aren’t any chaperones anywhere!”
Of course there weren’t. Only a place like Preservation would hire people to hang out at bars to help take care of the intoxicated humans—doing things like getting them water, helping them find a way home or intervening during overdoses. Back when I was trying to work on Preservation, one of the security officers suggested this job for me (once they decided I wasn’t a ruthless killing machine). Pin-Lee had been at that meeting and nearly spit out her drink.
“I can get you a new feed interface,” I said.
Amena shook her head. “That won’t help,” she paused as her eyes began to well up with tears, “because I can’t remember my passwords!!!” She then proceeded to collapse into me, sobbing and burying her face into my chest.
I stiffened on reflex. Amena knew that I didn’t like to be touched and was usually really good about respecting that. This is why I avoid intoxicated humans at all cost.
ART pushed me heavily in the feed before I even had a chance to let my body relax. “For fuck’s sake, calm down!”
“I’m trying! Give me a second, Asshole!” I gritted out.
I put my arms around her, upped my body temperature and took a deep breath to help me relax. This is just a client retrieval, I told myself. I am rendering assistance to in incapacitated client. That helped, which was good because Amena was getting sparkly powder and human facial fluids all over my jacket.
“I feel like I don’t belong here!” she wailed into my chest.
That made sense. Amena hadn’t spent much time outside of the Preservation system and it showed. She didn’t know how to navigate a society that wasn’t founded on non-currency based economics and community togetherness, or whatever wholesome bullshit Preservation values were. She stood out visually too. Her dress was made of natural fibres with vibrant geometric patterns. It was a typical style for a Preservation adolescent, but was a sharp contrast against the backdrop of solid, muted cool tones and metalics that seemed popular in Mihiran fashion.
I felt a pang in my organic parts. I knew what that felt like.
“Tell her you understand this,” ART interjected. I’m not sure if it sensed my affect change in the feed, or was just remembering how ridiculously out of my depth I had been when it and I first med. It was probably both.
I didn’t even bother responding to ART. There are a lot of things I’m willing to do for Amena. Talking about my feelings in the middle of a noisy club district teaming with bright colours and unruly humans was past my limit. Her waves of sobbing seemed to have slowed down, so I took the opportunity before we lost it again.
“We need to go. I’m taking you back to ART.” I said, trying my best to keep my voice firm, but gentle. Why was I getting flashbacks to coaxing Volescu out of that crater with the hostile fauna?
Amena lifted her head to look at me. I let my eyes dart towards the floor. “No, just help me get back to student housing. I’ll be fine!” she protested.
“Amena,” ART piped in on the comm, “This option is unacceptable. You are severely intoxicated and don’t have a working feed interface. I am already preparing a cabin for you. I will repair your interface and reset your login credentials.”
Amena’s eyes widened a little. “Oh, hi ART,” she sniffed. Then after a pause, “thanks”. How did ART get adolescents to do what it wanted so easily?
I reached down to grab Amena’s lone shoe and we set off. I supported her with one arm, matching her slow, lurching pace. I thought about carrying her but something in my organic parts told me I shouldn’t.
That instinct turned out to be correct. We were almost out of the club district when Amena suddenly yelled, “Wait! I’m gonna--”, and projectile vomited on the station floor before she could finish her sentence. Some of it splattered onto my shoes. Gross.
At the same time, another horrible thing was happening. Amena had lurched to the side, in an attempt to avoid puking directly on me. As she did this, I heard a loud pop next to her. I had been actively looking away from the upchucking (I’d even pointed my drones in any other possible direction), which meant that I immediately spun around, energy weapons in my arms deploying on impulse. That’s when a cloud of iridescent dust exploded in my face. We had set off one of those evil fucking glitter bomb sculptures.
I hate this place.
“Oh my deity!” Amena had been doubled over when the glitter projectile went off, so it had mostly missed her. She was upright now and had her hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking with laughter.
ART was doing the equivalent of smirking at me in the feed. "I’m deploying my cleaning drones in preparation for your return. Don’t even think about sitting on anything when you get back. You’ll ruin the upholstery."
“Are you okay?!?” Amena exclaimed, when she had regained a bit more composure.
I definitely wasn’t. My performance reliability had taken as much of a hit as if I’d sustained damage from a high-level energy weapon. Turns out being thrown up on by a client and attacked by a glitter projectile, masquerading as a piece of abstract art, feels about the same. At least Amena was smiling now.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Are you?”
“Yeah, I’m okay I think,” she started snickering again, “I’m sorry, it’s just… your face—you must hate this!”
“I’ve had worse,” I said. At this point I really wasn’t sure I had. This was definitely going in my Top_10_Worst_Client_Retrievals.list.
“Sorry about your shoes,” Amena mumbled.
The rest of the way back was blissfully uneventful. I commandeered another transit pod for a 2x speed test run and we made it back to ART’s dock without incident. Amena was semi-conscious at this point, but was doing her best to stumble along with my assistance.
“Please remove your shoes at the airlock,” ART instructed (not at all passive aggressively) as we came aboard. A squad of cleaning drones was waiting for us on the other side of the airlock, dutifully mopping up the sparkling trail in our wake.
I brought Amena to the cabin that ART had prepared. Its drones had apparently been hard at work. The bed was made, with an extra blanket and a pile of soft clothes folded at the foot. The bedside table was stocked with an array of water bottles, rehydration drinks, snacks and painkillers. I had to hand it to ART--it really knew what it was doing.
My plan was to step right back out of the bunk room, so that Amena could fumble her way through changing clothes, hydrating and maybe completing some basic hygiene tasks before going to bed. (I was really looking forward to getting in the shower and scrubbing every last speck of glitter off my body.) Instead, Amena flopped face down onto the bunk and did not move.
Okay… that’s fine. I think.
Thankfully, ART’s voice came through the intercom, in that longsuffering tone that it reserved for adolescent humans. “Amena, you need to drink water.”
Amena groaned into the pillow and rolled onto her side, propping up on one elbow. I handed her the water bottle and she took several big gulps before dramatically faceplanting again. I saw little bumps appearing on her arms and legs; the kind that humans get when they’re cold. I covered her up with a blanket.
“Thanks, Third Mom,” Amena mumbled into the pillow.
I quietly left the room and went to take a long, long shower.
***
Eight hours later, Amena wandered into the crew lounge. She had washed off the mess of the night before and was wearing the soft clothes that ART had left for her. Despite the rest period, she still looked and moved like a human who needed more sleep. She plopped down into one of the comfortable chairs and took a sip of her rehydration drink.
Last night, ART had fixed Amena’s busted interface, recovered (hacked into) her feed profile and reset her login credentials. It also refused to let me sit on any of its furniture until I let its medsystem scrape and suck every last bit of glitter out of my inorganic parts. After that, ART finally put away its cleaning drones and settled in with me to watch Sanctuary Moon.
Amena had the interface clipped in now. She tapped me in the feed and started eating some ring-shaped crunchy things out of a packet. I tapped back in acknowledgement.
“What happened last night?” Amena demanded aloud. “Why am I aboard ART?”
“You asked me to come get you,” I replied and dropped the drone footage from last night into a shared channel with Amena, ART and myself. She immediately started watching it. I took my attention off of the channel. (I had no desire to see myself get covered in human bodily fluids and iridescent powder). I watched Amena’s face through one of ART’s cameras instead.
Amena burst out laughing when she got to the part where the glitter projectile exploded on me. “Oh deity, I thought I dreamt that!” she shrieked. She finished the video and was quiet for two minutes, absently munching on her ring-shaped snacks. “Sorry I was such a mess. You know, you didn’t have to come,” she added, straightening up a little.
“Of course I did, it’s my Job,” I replied with a shrug.
Amena looked down at the floor. “Oh, yeah. Right,” she said. She seemed so soft and vulnerable all the sudden (like, more than usual).
“What SecUnit means,” ART intoned aloud, “is that it takes its role as a caregiver in your life very seriously. It wanted to help you. Isn’t that right, SecUnit?”
At the same time, ART was talking to me in our private channel, “Keeping humans safe is your function, but it is not your job. Humans consider jobs to be an obligation performed for financial or personal benefit.” As much as I hate it when ART did it smug overexplaining thing (that I had taken to calling ARTsplaining), I did see its point.
Unlike humans, who just sort of are born and exist, bots and constructs are built to serve a function. Since I hacked my governor module, I had continued carrying out my function for the company. First, it was because I didn’t know what else I wanted to do. Then, after Mensah bought me and I left to do things on my own, I realized that I actually liked performing my function. (It took me a while to come to terms with this. (My humans had to repeatedly point out all the times I chose to provide security, even when I didn’t have to, for me to get the idea.) Then I started getting paid for it, (which was weird because I have no use for hard currency (except to buy more drones and maybe season’s tickets to the Mihiran Centre for Performing Arts--I’m getting sidetracked here)). So that meant my function had also become my job--except not right now.
There was no question as to whether I was going to rescue Amena. I would search all the stupid club districts in this system if it meant that Amena would be safe and okay.
“Yes, I wanted to,” I said, looking at Amena’s shoulder. It was the best I could do right now.
There was a two second pause. ART shifted even closer to me in the feed. “Amena is still emotionally compromised. Tell her you understand her struggles with adjusting to a new environment. Adolescents require empathy from their caregivers during difficult situations.” It said all this to me with slightly less derision than its usual ARTsplaining tone, but added for good measure, “I will not have this conversation for you, you little idiot.”
Uuugh, I hate it when ART is right. I really don’t like talking about feelings, particularly my own, but I knew that this time I had to. Mensah and the rest of Amena’s family were back on Preservation, on the other side of the wormhole. ART’s crew were on planetary leave. ART and I were all she had right now and ART had never needed, (or cared) to fit into a society in its whole condescending existence.
Okay Murderbot, here goes nothing.
“Uh, you know I found it difficult adjusting when I went off on my own after your Second Mom bought me,” I offered awkwardly, “I’m glad I did it, but I was freaked out a lot of the time.”
“What?” Amena looked taken aback. She made direct eye contact with me for an instant, before she flicked her gaze to the corner behind me. She had been about to eat one of those crunchy rings, but froze with her hand half way to her mouth. “But you always know what you’re doing and you aren’t scared of anything!”
“Hah!” my act_human.code forced a reflexive laugh out of me. I’d never had that happen before, but then again I don’t think I’d ever heard something so ridiculous said with so much conviction. I felt ART’s amusement seeping into the feed too.
“I rarely know what I’m doing and I’m terrified 98% of the time! I’ve just gotten good at hiding it.”
“There’s no way!” Amena was shaking her head vigorously, like she couldn’t process this information.
“It’s true,” ART helpfully chimed in. “SecUnit is extremely competent, but it performs most tasks with a significant amount of anxiety and self-doubt. It uses a series of code modifications to make it appear more at-ease. I had to provide a great deal of assistance during its first contract as a free unit, in order to prevent it from panicking its way into a mission failure,” it added smugly.
ART tapped me in our private channel with a request to share some drone footage from when we had first met. It was a compilation of me patrolling its halls before it altered my configuration. It also added some clips of me making my way through RaviHyral after the configuration change. Wow, I forgot how bad these were. I really did look like an aquatic fauna out of water.
Amena gasped as she watched the footage. She ran it back and forth a few times, tagging particularly embarrassing sections with amusement sigils. ART enthusiastically joined in. So, *Murderbot-shares-its-feelings time* has now become *Murderbot-gets-made-fun-of time*…this is just great.
“You look like Three; but like ten times more awkward and freaked out!” she exclaimed. “I had no idea you were like this before too.”
“We’re both SecUnits,” I pointed out.
“Yeah I know. I just… never thought about that I guess.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Amena seeing what I used to be like. I honestly didn’t know how I felt about it either. Since then, I’d refined act_human.code a lot (I think I was on v6.2.8. at this point). It was like having armour, except it made people less afraid of me, which felt good. I had also gotten used to being around humans that were okay with mostly leaving me alone, while I silently existed near them. Watching the footage made me realize that I felt more at home around humans than I ever imagined I would.
We had lapsed into silence. I could tell Amena was deep in thought as well. “So, when did it get better?” she suddenly asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Like, when did you get used to feeling scared all the time?”
“I don’t know. It took a while,” I admitted.
I thought of walking through TranRolinHyfa when I came to rescue Mensah. “We can look calm, we’re good at that,” she had said. We’d both been terrified, but at that moment, the cold, jittery feeling in my organic pards had receded. All my untethered fear suddenly had a place to land. We had each other. We believed in each other. I took her hand.
“I think when I realized that being scared together feels better than being scared on your own,” I said.