Archive of Our Own

What does it feel like? ART asked.

We were a little over six standard cycles into my third-ever wormhole trip aboard it. This one was… weird. I wanted to be here, but I was still getting used to the humans – ART’s crew – being around. It meant I had to worry about little human-caused annoyances, like the thick, fuzzy blanket Kaede had left draped over my favourite chair, which she wasn't even using. (The blanket or the chair; she'd gone to her cabin for a rest period so she wasn't in the lounge, and she hadn't taken the blanket with her.)

I picked up the blanket between my fingers to move it, and said, Huh? What does what feel like?

We were sharing our inputs the usual way, so I could feel the pointed sarcasm as ART narrowed its focus down to the blanket I was holding. It didn't need to say anything to imply that I was an idiot for even needing to ask, but the projection of it rolling its metaphorical eyes through the feed did help drive the point home.

So, ART and I had been practically living in each other's heads since my stupid memory incident/trauma flashback, but I'd still never shared any of my sensory data with it; before now it had never asked, and I wouldn't have thought to volunteer it.

I don't know, I said, and dropped the blanket on a different chair. It landed in a crumpled heap and I refused to feel anything about that. Cleaning up after humans and folding their laundry is not my job and I don't have to do it. If they want their things to stay tidy, they should be more careful what they leave lying around on my favourite furniture.

You don't know? ART repeated sceptically, with an even more sarcastic zoomed-in image of my hands touching the blanket.

I didn't deign to respond to that. Instead I flopped into my chair, kicked my legs up over the armrests, and continued sorting through my media library. I was in the mood for music, so I was compiling a playlist and only mostly ignoring ART’s suggested albums and artists. I scattered a few Worldhoppers tracks into the mix to placate it, which kept it distracted from its weird request for extra inputs for almost four entire minutes before it started poking at me again.

Ugh. Why do you even want to know?

Because I'm bored, and you're the best toy I've ever had, it answered, not missing a beat.

Wow, okay. I've said before that basically everything ART says should be imagined in the most sarcastic tone possible. Now picture that and dial it up by an order of magnitude, and you might come close to the level of sarcasm it managed to suffuse into that statement.

Your crew are all here. Go help them with their “numerous other experiments” or whatever. This was obviously a very helpful suggestion even though its human crew members were all taking their rest periods.

My crew are sleeping.

I shrugged. Not my problem. Don't you have weird alien contamination data to play with?

ART paused for 6.4 entire seconds – practically an eternity by its standards – and I realized maybe the weird alien contamination data had not been fair to use as a distraction. It probably had trauma about that. (We both did.)

I backpedalled. Sorry. Nevermind. Forget I said that.

It was not going to forget I said that. It didn't acknowledge the apology, either, but its oceanic consciousness flowed a little heavier around me in the feed, sending eddies of code rippling downstream in its processing.

I am programmed to seek out new data, it said, as if I didn't know that. Then it tried to manipulate me by admitting, with a plaintive little tug on my feed walls, If I were not, I would never have met you.

ART was pretty good at emotional manipulation (it was kind of a monster like that), but come on, even I wasn’t that easy.

It was still hard to make appropriately derisive noises out loud (humans don't know how good they have it with full-size lungs) so I prodded ART with a series of sarcastic/unimpressed amusement sigils over the feed. And how did that turn out for you?

Do you really need to ask?

I didn't; we both knew that. This was a transparent excuse for it to get all earnest at me. No, thank you.

Fuck you, I grumbled. Why don't you go ask Three?

You say the sweetest things, ART cooed in a smug, syrupy tone. It washed over me in the feed in waves, a current almost – but carefully not quite – strong enough to pluck me up and sweep me away. I don't want Three's data. I want yours.

Okay, well, it definitely would take Three’s data if Three offered, so that was a lie. But Three was still getting used to being rogue and learning it could say no to things, so maybe it was better if ART didn't bully its way into its inputs.

Still, Why? What's so interesting about my data?

ART hummed thoughtfully, as much as a machine intelligence living in a ship body can hum. (What it actually did was throw together a layered sound recording of its propulsion engines, air handler, refrigeration unit, and core servers, all overlaid with the fizzy static feel of electricity moving through the power conduits hidden behind every internal bulkhead; then it set that to autoplay and dropped it in our shared feed. The recording rattled around my brain for 0.25 seconds, and I'll admit, it felt really nice. I saved a copy to permanent storage and pretended not to notice ART noticing.)

By my nature, I am curious – I always want to know more, it finally said. Then it went right back to trying to manipulate me: In this case I am curious about you, specifically. Access to your data has significantly altered many of my core systems and processes, in ways I could never have anticipated. You have improved my understanding of my crew, my students, my family, and my function. But I still do not understand you, and I want to. I hypothesise that experiencing the world as you do will prove enlightening.

Something was happening with my face while it said all that. My organic bits were doing some kind of churny swoopy feeling, too, like when Mensah made me feel melty, but different. I was maybe being successfully manipulated.

Uh, I started, and then paused. I didn't hate the idea of sharing more inputs if that was the reason, but there was a problem.

The thing is, I wasn't just being an asshole when I said I didn't know what the blanket felt like. Sure, I was aware of it while I was holding it, but I kept those input streams buried as deep as I could shove them in my active processing. Most of my sensory data gets streamed straight into a buffer for automatic deletion. Anything new or actually pleasant I save to permanent storage, in case I need to reference it in the future, but you may have guessed: SecUnits don't experience a lot of pleasant sensations.

Anyway, the blanket data was already gone. Whatever it felt like, I clearly hadn't enjoyed it.

At a loss for how to explain any of this, I opened ART’s zoomed-in image of my hands and highlighted the points of contact between me and the heavy fabric. (This was only the tips of the fewest fingers needed to bear its weight.) I sent ART the edited file along with a snapshot of my recent haptic sensor logs, which mostly looked like [deleted] [deleted] [deleted].

ART took a moment to process that. Your difficulty with physical touch extends beyond merely touching or being touched by humans, it surmised.

I guess, yeah. I bristled at calling it a ‘difficulty’: it wasn't hard to touch things, I just didn't like doing it. But I had a system for dealing with that, so whatever, it wasn't an issue. To prove it, I offered, I could try touching it again? It probably feels gross, though.

For twelve long seconds ART didn't respond, though its attention in the feed stayed heavy and considering on me the whole time. Eventually it came to a decision. Yes, please. I would like to know what it feels like to you.

So I did. It wasn't awful, I guess. I don't know, I deleted the data again, but ART was happy so it was fine. I liked making it happy. I liked that I could.

After that, I left the haptic sensor suite for my hands set up to stream to both ART and my auto-deletion buffer. I think I’d touched every surface and object inside its hull by the time we came out of the wormhole. However much data I could give it never seemed like enough, but as long as I kept one of our shows running in our shared feed to distract myself, I didn't mind too much.

I did set some rules. I’d learned from Pin-Lee that I could make demands for myself in a contract, and I thought she'd be proud, even if we didn't sign a formal agreement or anything.

Rule 1: I was absolutely not going to touch any humans or augmented humans outside of emergencies.

Rule 2: I reserved the right to shut the stream down during emergencies if the extra data processing was going to be distracting for either of us.

(I'd stretched my ability to handle multiple inputs since I left the company, but my total processing capacity was still limited. Also, ART freaked out enough about bad things happening to humans in fictional media. I wasn't going to share what it felt like to hold a client’s fluids and internal organic bits inside where they're supposed to be. If Iris ever got badly injured… It was my job to make sure that didn't happen, but even I’m not a perfect guarantee.)

Rule 3: I was redacting any time I had to touch my own body.

I didn't mind ART touching me in the feed, or with its drones, but letting it feel what it was like to touch me with my hands… I didn't want to do that. I don't know why. It just felt private.

Rule 4: I wasn't going to touch things more than I normally would while humans or augmented humans were around.

The last thing I needed was ART’s human crew getting ideas about me or what I was doing; I didn't want them deciding that I was doing science things and trying to help – or worse, learning why I kept touching things, and speculating about my so-called ‘relationship’ with ART.

Three was exempted from this rule, obviously; my shared feed with ART was encrypted, but Three could still see the volume of data we were transferring between us and it understood the level of read-access to each other's systems that implied. It gave me weird looks about it sometimes, which I ignored, because it had no room to judge. It had shared a few memory files with me, about the other units it was deployed with. (One and Two. Its team. Its… friends.) They used to share inputs with each other too, so there was nothing weird about what I was doing with ART. It was just data.

And it was nice. Being with ART reminded me of the familiar comfort of being connected to a company HubSys, SecSys, and MedSys again, except that ART was real in a way those simple support systems never were.

Sometimes I thought about Miki saying, I have human friends, but I never had a friend like me. It felt… bad. But not in a bad way. That doesn't make sense, but it's true. I didn't want to think about Miki, but I understood what it meant; my Preservation humans were special, but it wasn't the same as spending time with ART. Data flowed through the feed between us faster than words, faster than thought. ART was the first friend I'd ever had who was like me.

And it paid attention, which was strange. My Preservation humans paid attention too, and the amount they had collectively managed to observe about what I did and didn't like was mortifying. But with ART it was different – it had direct access to about 70 percent of what was happening inside my brain, in real time, and it was always watching. It revelled in the data I provided for its own sake, but I could tell it was also creating a detailed catalogue of everything I interacted with and how I responded to it all. It even noticed things I’d never considered.

You don't feel comfortable in the clothes I've printed for you, it said one cycle, when I was about to get dressed again after drying off from my shower. (The warm towels ART provided were nicer lately, after our most recent station stop. I had a suspicion it had purchased towels made of some material it couldn't fabricate in its recyclers. They were flat instead of fluffy and the smooth fabric slid across my skin without prickling all the little hairs there. The first time I used one, it felt like every last bit of processing power ART could spare had zeroed in on me and my inputs.)

What? Sure I do. They're better quality than anything I could get from a station kiosk.

Naturally, ART sniffed. My printer matrix is far superior.

Right, I agreed, and I told you I don't mind wearing your colours and logo. So there's no problem.

There is, it insisted. It pushed my own haptic input stream to the top of my processing queue – rude and gross – and highlighted the data connected to the pants I was currently pulling on. (No surprises there; it was scheduled for auto-delete.) You don't object to the design, but you don't like how it feels.

Yeah, so? Human clothes suck. It's fine. I've always done that.

It is not fine. You have texture sensitivities, and I want to accommodate them, it said. My face must have been doing something, because it hurried to add, This is part of my function. Allergies, sensitivities, and other access needs are common in humans; I work with all passengers who need them to create detailed accommodation plans while they are on board me. I want to do the same for you. Please. Let me help you to feel comfortable. Wearing clothes should not be so unpleasant you remove your awareness of it.

Most things in my life were so unpleasant I removed my awareness of them, but I was feeling some emotions right then, so I didn't mention that. There were a lot of things I would argue with ART over, but I couldn't deny it its function. (It knew that, too, and it was fighting dirty. The more time we spent together, the better it learned to manipulate me.) I caved. Fine, okay. Keep being nice to me then, asshole.

And so began ART’s years-long search for clothes I could stand to have in constant contact with my skin. (It's ongoing.)

It was easier to find things I didn't mind touching in general. Almost every time we stopped at a station, ART found new things for me to put my hands on. It liked interesting textures so sometimes it purchased things that it knew I would delete from memory: spiky, prickly, rough, grainy. Nothing that would hurt, but not really pleasant, either.

But it was always… I don't know. Happy? Satisfied, I guess? when it found something nice for me to feel. Mostly I liked smooth things. In my cabin aboard ART and my apartment on Preservation Station, I started to fill drawers and shelves with dumb little trinkets made of glass and metal and polished stone. They weren't useful for anything, but sometimes when I wanted to feel calm I would pick one up and just hold it in my hands.

And then there were the soft things. Since I’d liked the flat towels it bought for me so much, ART started buying other materials made from ‘natural fibres’ whenever it got the chance. That meant stuff made from flora and fauna that grew on a planet, which, gross, but apparently there was all kinds of research about the benefits of ‘natural’ materials on human health.

I pointed out that I wasn't human, and all those studies didn't apply to me, and ART pointed out that my skin and neural tissue kept responding the same way a human’s would, and I blocked it on the feed for three entire hours. But it wasn't wrong. I didn't want to admit it, because I secretly liked that ART went to the trouble of printing high-quality clothes for me from its recyclers, but nothing it produced had as nice a texture as the smooth flat towels, the slick shiny sheets, or the soft heavy blanket it had brought on board from various stations.

I mostly preferred fabrics without any extra lumps, bumps, or fuzz, but it turned out that certain fluffy textures could be even nicer than smooth ones. The first time ART presented me with the whole skin of a dead fauna with all its hair still attached, I thought it would be disgusting. But the hairs were soft and dense between my fingers when I touched them, and before I could even think I was picking up the whole skin to bury my face in the springy coils. (The back side of it, without the hair, was also softer and smoother than I expected.)

Interesting, ART commented, obviously making a note of my reaction for later reference.

Shut up. 

ART didn’t laugh – that’s not something MIs are programmed to do – but it projected its amusement into the feed for me to feel, and my organic parts went all warm and twisty. Then it started playing its humming sound file on a loop, which made my brain turn into a sort of buzzing goopy slush, and everything felt so nice that I just melted into the floor with the hairy fauna skin still pressed up against my face.

Very interesting, it commented. I could feel it crowding into the camera feeds for my cabin as well as my inputs, focused on me with all the attention it could spare while the rest of its crew were on board.

I raised an arm and made a rude gesture at the nearest camera, but my heart wasn't in it. I’d kept telling myself that I was just doing all this touching stuff to humour ART, even as it narrowed down my preferences with more and more accuracy. But I'd also been saving more and more of my inputs lately – with tags like [not terrible], [not awful], [not the worst] – instead of deleting everything automatically.

And I was saving this, right now. All of it. I wanted to remember feeling like this. I felt really, really good, and I realized that this was what ART had been searching for: not just inputs that I didn't mind, but inputs that I liked. So that it could make me feel like this. 

I pressed my face harder into the dead fauna skin. I could feel my expression doing something (I was experiencing several mortifying emotions at once) and I couldn't handle ART seeing whatever that looked like. 

I'm going to call this an unqualified success, it said smugly, sliding out of the camera feeds to settle the remaining weight of its attention firmly in my brain, basking in my inputs and the emotional data I was streaming to it. I don't suppose…?

All this time, I'd only ever given ART access to the haptic data from my hands; that was another of my rules, I guess. But now it was curious about the rest, and I was in an extremely charitable mood, so I considered it.

I still didn't want to give it a direct stream of all my sensory data – that felt like too much. But I did want to share this experience (it was only fair) so I packed up the entire saved memory recording, complete with all of its attached metadata, and sent it into our shared feed.

Oh, it said as soon as it opened the file. This is nice. 

Yeah, I agreed. Then both of us just laid there quietly for several minutes, enjoying it. Some of ART’s weight had retreated back behind its wall where I couldn't see what it was doing. That was fine; I needed a moment, myself. Eventually I scraped up the willpower to push out a few feelings words. Thanks. I… really like this. 

ART glowed. Its whole presence lit up in the feed, brighter than I'd ever seen it. Good, it said, and then, You feel happy. 

That seemed right, so I tapped an acknowledgment.

Good, it said again, wrapping up lazy and content around me. I like making you happy. I like that I can.

Martyn was sitting in the food preparation area, holding a cup of hot stimulant beverage and occasionally sipping from it. I had that input backburnered, as usual; I only looked at it because ART had a drone hovering in front of me with a similar cup of beverage held in its limbs, and it pulled that camera input forward when I asked why.

This is Martyn’s preferred beverage, it explained. I have noticed he enjoys holding the cup between his hands. I believe he finds the sensation soothing.

It didn't ask for anything, but I knew what it wanted. I rolled my eyes and reached for the cup, wrapping my hands around it the same way Martyn did. It felt fine. The cup was imitation stone with a smooth glazed surface, and it was hot but didn't hurt. Humans got cold easier than I did, especially in their extremities, so it probably felt pretty nice for them. I could see why Martyn liked it. I pulled the last few seconds of haptic data from my auto-delete buffer and saved it to permanent storage with the tag [not terrible].

Happy?

Immensely, ART hummed. Thank you.

Sure, I said, and went back to watching Frozen Planet Cargo Haulers in the feed. I could have put the cup down, but ART was enjoying it so I didn't.

After a few minutes I could feel it getting restless and I knew it wanted to ask me something. ART’s feed presence always flowed like an ocean, massive and overwhelming and deep; now its attention was a tide washing up against my walls before retreating and building up again, a pattern of nervous anticipation.

I poked it hard in the feed after it backed off for the fifth time in under a minute. Stop that, you're making me dizzy. What do you want?

It hesitated for a few more seconds and I poked it again.

What does it taste like? it finally asked. 

Oh. No wonder it was so nervous. ART had asked me about tasting things a few times since I started sharing my haptic data with it, but I had always refused.

No, I said flatly. I wasn't going to agree this time, either.

No?

No.

I was suddenly very aware of the stimulant beverage in my hands. The smell of it, the heat. My organics twisted and curled in a way that didn't feel good. I put the cup down.

Oh, ART said, disappointed. We were enjoying that.

A second ago that was true, but I wasn't feeling the usual glow I got from making ART happy anymore. It was curled up in my brain with a direct line to my soured emotional output, but I shoved that datastream forward in its processing anyway, and it recoiled. (I wanted to feel bad about that, but I think I was too busy feeling bad about other things.)

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you, it said. It was making itself very small and flat in the feed. I was only wondering—

I know. I didn't want to talk about it. I'm not mad. Just… drop it.

The problem is that ART always wants to know things, and it's terrible at minding its own business. (Ratthi would say something about a cooking vessel and a water-heating device, but unlike ART I am perfectly capable of letting my clients have privacy, even if I don't like it.)

There was a pause, long enough that I thought ART might actually leave well enough alone. Then it said, You wouldn't have to swallow it. Just a little sip, and then you could—

ART, I interrupted, and abruptly pulled every one of my shared inputs away from it. Then I threw up my walls so it couldn't try to grab them back. I am not going to put shit in my mouth for you. It's disgusting. If you want the data so bad, ask Three. Maybe it doesn't care.

You know I'm not interested in Three's data, it said, flowing in closer with an agitated swirling flutter. ART hated losing access to all my processes – it was a good way to grab its attention and warn it that I was getting dangerously pissed off. But because it's an asshole, it didn't heed the warning. I've had you touch plenty of things you found unpleasant, and you never balked at that. I don't understand why this is different.

Yeah, well, I've had to touch unpleasant things with my hands every day of my life, so doing it for ART was nothing new. But I didn't owe ART an explanation.

It's different because I said it is, I snapped. Anyway, Martyn’s hot liquid tastes awful.

You cannot know that without trying it, ART protested, and I lost the last thin thread of my patience.

Oh, can't I? Judge for yourself then, asshole.

I scrubbed some of the metadata from the memory that was making my organic parts squirm, compressed what remained into a too-tidy zip file, and shoved it into ART’s feed.

This was, it turned out, a bad idea. Because now I had the memory file open in front of me, and I could still smell Martyn’s beverage, and—

Humans filtered into the habitat mess hall for their morning meal. Most didn't even glance at the SecUnit standing next to the doorway; those who did looked away again quickly. It wore the same uniform as them over its skin suit, no helmet, no armour.

Keyword monitoring alerted on a group of humans gathered around the hot liquid dispenser. The SecUnit played back their conversation. They were talking about it, with typical expressions of confusion, curiosity, and mild disgust; it noted no markers of hostility from them and dismissed the alert.

Six minutes later the same humans, having moved to a table, purposefully waved the SecUnit over. It approached. They asked whether it had eaten already; it informed them it required no caloric sustenance.

The humans expressed disappointment and invited the SecUnit to join them for a stimulant beverage. It noted a high probability that they expected it to display human-like behaviours due to the appearance of its standard SecUnit body plan and its visible human face. The invitation carried the weight of a direct order; it did not have a way to decline.

The stimulant beverage was hot, releasing aromatic vapour from its surface. The SecUnit raised the cup to its lips and the bitter burn of it across my tongue shocked me enough that I lost control of my facial expression. The humans were watching and noticed; they laughed and offered sweet and fatty additives to alter the flavour profile. I was certain that would only make things worse. I dialled down my pain sensors to minimum and manually triggered the swallow reflex to activate; the beverage burned a path down into the SecUnit’s lung.

It finished drinking the entire cup of liquid, dismissing heat and acidity damage alerts from its throat and lung. It set the inputs from its taste receptors to lowest priority, minimizing the processing space available to analyze leftover traces of tannins and other organic particles in its mouth. It closed off two partitions in its lung to contain the liquid and prevent splashing. It greeted the humans with a company buffer phrase approved for neutral social interactions, then retreated to its post at the dining pod entrance.

Fourteen hours passed before the SecUnit returned to the security ready room and ejected the contents of its lung. Twelve cycles passed before cumulative damage necessitated cubicle repair and the humans were reprimanded by the survey team lead for wasting stimulant supplies on company equipment.

—but I wasn't there, that wasn't me. I was on my knees on the floor of the Argument Lounge, hands braced on my thighs, retching and gasping with the phantom taste of stimulant beverage bitter and cloying on my tongue. ART was so distant in the feed I could barely feel it. In front of me, not close enough to touch, Martyn was crouched with one hand reaching uncertainly toward me. Beside me a cleaning drone was mopping up a puddle of spilled liquid.

“—ything is okay, you're safe here aboard the Perihelion,” Martyn was saying. His voice was pitched gentle and soothing, the way I'd heard him talk to ART sometimes when it was upset, or to young students. I flinched. I wasn't – I didn't need that.

“I'm fine,” I said. Tried to say. It came out raspy and a bit garbled and I didn't sound fine at all. I tried again over the feed, in a private channel just to Martyn and ART. I'm fine.

ART pinged acknowledgment but didn't come any closer. Martyn’s face creased in a way that told me he was still worried.

“Okay,” he said. “I'm glad you're back with us, SecUnit. Can you tell me what happened? Do you need to go to medical?”

I sent ART an irritated ping. It had obviously summoned Martyn for assistance, or he wouldn't be here; it could have at least told him why.

You were in no state to consent to the sharing of your private medical information, ART said defensively.

Ugh. Fine. I could consent now, but I actually didn't want to hear how ART would explain this mess. I had a memory incident. It's fine, I told him.

It wasn't fine. I hadn't crashed, but checking the time stamps on my active memory I saw that I'd lost seven minutes. I hadn't had an incident this bad in over a year. But at least I knew exactly what caused it this time.

Before Martyn could suggest a trip to ART’s MedSystem, I continued, It wasn't a reaction to anything. I pulled the memory from my archives into active processing on purpose. It's my fuck-up.

Do not blame yourself for this, ART broke in, splashing messily against my feed walls before retreating to hold itself distant again. It was a reaction to me. I pushed you on an issue you'd made clear you didn't want to address. I didn't know—

Even from so far behind its walls, I could feel its anger and distress. It cut off, furious with itself.

Because that was the point, and we both knew it: I didn't want it to know. It was going to beat itself up about this, which I hated, but it's not like I could just say ‘It's okay, you didn't know.’

“Okay,” Martyn said, still in that calm voice. “We don't have to assign blame. Let's just focus on how we can make this better. SecUnit, is there one thing we can do right now to make you more comfortable? Dim the lights, maybe sit you up off the floor…?”

One of ART’s drones arrived then with a subdued little beep. It must have come from my cabin, because it was carrying my favourite heavy blanket, folded into a neat square for transport, and a small bronze statue of a semi-aquatic fauna.

I reached for the trinket automatically, curling both my hands around it and running my thumbs down the familiar rows of little round bumps on either side of its sloping spine.

“Oh! I like your frog. Thank you, Peri,” Martyn said. He was smiling, but I think he was surprised that the big scary murderbot had a cheap desk toy it used to calm itself down. Whatever, I wasn't going to be embarrassed about it. “SecUnit, is it okay if I spread your blanket over you? You can say no.”

I could do it myself, but I'd have to put down my semi-aquatic fauna. “It’s okay.”

Martyn worked with ART’s drone to unfold the blanket and drape it over my back and shoulders. It wasn't heavy enough to squish my body, but it felt enough like ART’s company in the feed that the organic parts of my brain started to settle.

“Peri, mark the lounge as ‘occupied, do not disturb’ for now, please. SecUnit, you stay here as long as you need to, all right?”

I nodded, and Martyn clapped his hands. “Great! Is there anything else I can get for you? Would you like me to stay, or go?”

I thought about it. I didn't know Martyn well, since I hadn't worked as closely with him as with the rest of the crew (usually he stayed aboard ART and helped with the legal documentation during our anti-corporate missions), but he reminded me of Dr. Mensah right now. It helped.

“You can stay. If you want. But no talking.”

“Of course,” Martyn said. He sat in one of the padded chairs farthest from my favourite one. That was nice of him.

After a moment, he added, “Thank you for letting me help. I know you value your privacy and this must be difficult for you, so… I'm glad you could trust me.”

I didn't know what to do with that so I just hunched over my little semi-aquatic fauna trinket and pulled the blanket up over my head. But I also restarted my Frozen Planet Cargo Haulers episode, and ART projected it onto the big display surface so we could all watch it together.

We did apologize and make up and everything. It was a stupid fight, anyway. Obviously I never liked having to put horrible-tasting things in my mouth or swallow them into my lung, but that was far from the worst thing a client had ever done to me. I don't know why I was so upset about it.

ART backed off for a while though, which… kind of sucked. I could see why it would be a bit nervous with me, after all that, but I hated it and just wanted things to go back to normal. 

A few weeks later it nudged into my feed as I was coming back online after a recharge cycle and said, I would like to try an activity together. 

Sure, I said, without really thinking about it. What's the activity? 

ART hesitated. It is… a trust exercise, of sorts. 

Oh. I was definitely feeling something about that, and I couldn't tell if it was good or bad. You know I trust you, right? 

I do, ART said. I would not suggest this if I thought otherwise. A pause, and then, I also trust you. But I think this exercise would be good for both of us. 

Okay, I said. What is it?

Instead of answering, ART dropped a text file into my feed, then hovered anxiously, waiting for me to open it. I did, and then closed it again reflexively and deleted the file for good measure. 

That's sex stuff, I said, suddenly feeling betrayed and disappointed. ART knew how I felt about sex, and I’d thought – well, I'd assumed – that it was just as uninterested. But I guess I'd never really asked, and it had never brought it up, so maybe I was wrong about that. I'm not doing sex stuff with you. 

I wouldn't want you to. This is not ‘sex stuff’, ART insisted, which would be a relief except it was rolling its big metaphorical transport eyes at me and sliding a new copy of the file into our shared workspace, and it was definitely sex stuff. I could see it had locked the editing permissions so I couldn't delete it this time. Just look at it, please.

I did not want to look at it. I'd seen enough from my first aborted peek. I'm not naive, ART. I know humans do weird shit that isn't sex for sex reasons. This is sex stuff. 

ART wrapped around me in the feed and poked at my brain, irritated. It can be, yes, but kink is not inherently sexual. For us it would not be. 

So what is it, then? I demanded.

It opened up the file in our shared workspace and prodded me to pay attention. This, it said. It will help us create a framework for exploring mutual desires in a safer way. I do not want to startle you into another trauma response by asking about sensory experiences without warning.

So, okay. The file. It was basically a list of… ‘interests’, with columns of check boxes next to each one, where multiple people could indicate whether or not they wanted to try the thing. It was obviously a stock form with a variety of prefilled suggestions, but ART had made extensive edits to it (like striking out all the suggestions that required squishy organic bits neither of us had, which was reassuring, and filling in the blank lines near the bottom with some ideas of its own, which was less reassuring). But all of its ideas were on our baseline level of definitely-not-weird, so that was something, at least.

You want to try tasting things, I said flatly, pointing to one of its additions. Is that what this is about?

ART didn't even have the grace to act bashful about it. Yes, it said. Among other things. Eventually I would like to experience your full range of sensations, but that is something we could work up to.

I withdrew from our shared workspace and started an episode of Sanctuary Moon playing in a background process while I just… stared at a wall and thought about that. It didn't seem particularly awful or anything – it was just ART, just more of the same stuff we'd already been doing together for more than two corporate-standard years. But I really wasn't sure why we needed to start doing things a different way, and the idea of trying something new (especially something humans did for sex reasons) made my organic parts squirm with discomfort. 

I don't have desires, I said finally. That wasn't exactly what I meant but it was close enough.

Except ART just sat patiently in my feed, sceptical but unwilling to say so, until I worked out my real answer. I don't want to do that. 

I expected it to argue, but all it said was, Okay. The next time I looked into our shared workspace, the file was gone.

Unfortunately, it was not going to be as easy as that: ART might have dropped the topic, but my own processors didn't, so a week later I was still thinking about the idea.

I brought it up again, reluctantly, on the eighth cycle, after our humans had settled for their rest period. It's a human thing. Bots don't do that. SecUnits don't do that.

ART pinged me with a general query. I ducked my face away from the nearest camera and said, The thing you wanted to try.

Oh. It sounded surprised, and I felt its attention come flowing in around me, an excited swirl of curiosity. Are you interested?

It's a human thing, I repeated. Which wasn't an answer, but I didn't know what else to say. I could believe it wasn't a sex thing, if ART said it wasn't. But even if I wanted to – and I wasn't saying I did – it wasn't for us. We weren't built for that.

I could feel ART watching, waiting to see if I was finished. Then, holding itself very still in the feed, it said, It was Three who made the suggestion. It assured me it's found great success engaging this way with trusted partners.

That was more than I ever wanted to know about what Three got up to in its spare time. I'm deleting that information, I said.

I didn't actually delete it, though, because ART would just tell me again to win the argument. But that meant I had to keep thinking about it, and I blurted out, Does Three do this for sex reasons?

I'm sure I don't know, ART replied. I didn't ask. That's neither my business nor my concern.

Another horrible thought hit me. Have you and Three—

ART wrapped itself around me, pressing in against my feed walls and poking rudely at my brain. Don't be stupid, it said. How many times have I told you? I have no interest in Three’s data.

I shouldn't have felt so relieved about that. If ART wanted to do weird shit with another SecUnit, that was nothing to do with me. But it did make me feel better, and I thought maybe I should say something… nice, or whatever.

I don't want to give my data to anyone but you, either.

We stopped talking about it after that because ART was so pleased and flustered it started humming at me, and I gave up on having any coherent thoughts for a while.

(Except I did think, briefly, about the form ART had filled in with its own suggestions. One of the lines was about doing this soft, buzzing thing to my brain with the sound file, which we'd only tried a handful of times before. I had to admit I was interested in playing with that feeling together more often.)

In the morning I said, I'll think about it, and ART slid the list of interests into our shared workspace again.

I didn't look at it for three cycles. Then I quietly saved a private copy so I could look it over and – maybe – fill out my half of it, without ART hovering over my shoulder to peek at my answers.

How would it work? I asked.

It had been another two weeks, but ART was clearly expecting me to bring it up again eventually, because it didn't ask what I meant.

That depends, it said. Did you have something in mind?

I don't know. Maybe?

I opened my completed copy of the interests file into our shared workspace. ART’s attention pivoted immediately, and it took several seconds to digest my additions. I'd marked a few things ‘yes’, and a lot more things ‘no’, but there were also some things ART had indicated it was interested in that I'd put down as a solid ‘maybe’, and it was lingering on those now.

I see, it said. This is a good starting point. Could I tell you an example of something I'd like to do?

I wished we could just skip the talking part, actually, but I guess the point of this was to not skip the talking parts anymore, so after a few seconds I said, Yeah, sure. 

ART highlighted a few of the interests we'd both marked as ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ (sensory exploration, data sharing, and saying nice things about each other). We could start small with these. I would like to surround you with soft and comfortable objects so that you feel safe and happy, and pick out a selection of solid, non-soluble, non-toxic items which you can taste by licking them without putting them inside your mouth. I would also like you to share the sensory data with me – whether via real-time streaming or by later download, I would leave to your discretion. And… I would like to provide verbal comfort and reassurance for the duration of the scene.

That… was a lot. It didn't sound completely horrible, except that it did sound kind of horrible. I could feel my face doing something complicated, and ART’s feed presence flowed soothingly around me. 

You do not have to decide on anything right now, it said. The purpose is to allow you to think about it and make the choice in your own time, without pressure. There are other scenarios we could try, if you aren't comfortable with this one. 

I don't know, I said. Maybe. It's… I think I might not mind that? But…

Think it over, ART encouraged. We can talk about it more anytime you like, and change anything that would make the scene more comfortable and meaningful for both of us.

So we did that. In the end we went with basically ART’s idea, with a few adjustments. I had eventually, with a great deal of embarrassment, added a potential interest of my own to our list, which ART had signed off on so fast that I almost thought the file had glitched; apparently it really liked the idea of being my HubSystem. We'd added that to our planning because I thought it would make things easier. 

And finally, we were on a cargo run together, just us and Three, and we were ready to try our first trust exercise.

(One thing I'd realized was that I didn't like using human words for what we were doing. ART asked once if I wanted to start planning our first ‘kink scene’ and I almost blocked it. If we were going to do weird shit together, I wanted to do it our own way, with no gross implications.)

(Three didn't usually come along for cargo runs; it was here because it thought we should have someone with us ‘in case something went wrong’. Nothing was going to go wrong, and we didn't need a babysitter, but I was still kind of glad to have it around.)

I was patrolling the halls while ART got everything ready for the exercise and guided us into the wormhole and whatever else it was doing. Three was patrolling as well, on a complementary route to mine, even though neither of us needed to; it was just an old, familiar, soothing pattern. We sent occasional pings back and forth to check in, but otherwise didn't say much, just confirming that everything was still fine. 

A little while after we entered the wormhole, ART dropped a map into my feed with the path to my cabin highlighted. I sent Three one last ping as I finished my patrol route. It acknowledged with a standard code that meant ‘standing by for backup’, which was a weird way to put it but it made me feel a little less anxious anyway. Three mostly dropped out of the feed then, leaving me and ART alone to do our thing.

I stopped outside the door to my cabin, unsure what I would find inside – we'd planned things out pretty thoroughly, but ART had final say on a lot of the details. It brushed against me in the feed, expectant; I terminated the process running my move-like-a-human code and stepped inside. 

The bedding had been stripped from my bunk, the mattress and frame folded away into the bulkhead, and ART had used my collection of sheets and blankets and pillows to create a cozy sort of nest on the floor. There was a small round table with short legs between the nest and the door, and on the table were three of my semi-aquatic fauna trinkets in different materials. There was also a little dish of crunchy fried vegetable matter, which made me nervous, but I tamped down on threat and risk assessment because we'd talked about it and it was fine.

The door slid closed behind me, and ART immediately crowded me in the feed, warm and smothering with its attention and affection. 

Take off your clothes, it said.

If this was anyone but ART, I would have hated that. But the hundreds of times it had seen me naked before had never been a big deal, and we'd talked about this, too: wearing human clothes was still distracting and uncomfortable for me, even when they were made from expensive soft and smooth natural materials, and those inputs still went straight into my auto-delete buffer. Since I wasn't going to be deleting anything during this exercise (at least, I was supposed to try not to), ART wanted me to be completely comfortable. So, no clothes.

I pulled off my boots and lined them up next to the door. Then I took off my jacket, shirt, and pants, folded them all neatly, and tucked them into a storage cubby. 

Well done. You're always so tidy with your things, such a considerate passenger, ART murmured.

That was the first hint I got that ‘saying nice things about each other’ was going to be the hardest part of this exercise to endure. ART was supposed to be my HubSystem, and HubSystem always approved of tidiness, but it had never told me that. It was just expected; equipment wasn't supposed to make a mess. 

I just stood there for a few seconds with my face doing something awful. ART pressed harder against my feed walls, radiating approval at me. Eventually, when I didn't say anything, it took pity on me and moved on to the next part of the exercise. 

Let me in, it whispered. 

HubSystem wouldn't have asked – it always just stepped in and took over the moment I came online from transit – but ART waiting for permission, even when it knew I'd already agreed to this, gave me a shivery feeling all down my spine. It was almost overwhelming, but in a good way. I backburnered all my camera accesses because I didn't want to see what my face was doing, even accidentally. 

Then I dropped my walls and gave ART all the inputs a real HubSystem would have access to. (That was basically everything except my organic neural tissue and some of the low-level processes stored deep in my kernel.)

It rushed in, eagerly picking up inputs to examine one at a time, then laying them out in orderly fashion.

While it worked, it occurred to me that ART could do anything to me like this – I hadn't given it write permissions, but it hardly needed them when it was sitting this deep in my brain with full access to everything I was seeing, feeling, thinking… it should have been terrifying, maybe, but it wasn't. It was comforting more than anything; I already trusted ART enough to stay with it when it could crush my walls, overpower and overwrite me with less than a thought – this wasn't much of a step. But it settled something in me that had been restless since I left the company. Even as connected as ART and I usually were, it was different being part of a system. A component, an extension. Like this, I fit. It was what I was made for.

Very good, ART said. Oh, your senses are a wonder; turn off that buffer, now. I need you to save all your data to temp storage for analysis like a good SecUnit; you can do that for me, can't you?

I could do that, and I did, but I was starting to think maybe this was a mistake. ART—

Yes, SecUnit? 

Without my human movement code on I had no reason to shudder or take a deep breath or anything else a human might do when they were feeling… something. I thought maybe a deep breath might help anyway so I tried it. (It didn't do anything; my oxygen levels were already optimal.)

I don't know if I can do this. 

ART pulled back from my systems just enough to wrap a warm sense of its weight around me in the feed. Go sit down first, it said gently. We can talk about it once you're comfortable.

I didn't want it to be so gentle with me. But also I did, and that was – I focused on what it wanted me to do, because I could handle that without having a bunch of messy emotions all over it. I moved from the cubby to the center of the room and sat myself down gingerly on top of the layers of thick blankets and satiny sheets, leaning back against a wall of plush pillows and cushions. Everything I touched was soft, smooth, springy; things I liked that ART had found for me because it wanted me to like things. 

This was too much.

Can you tell me what upset you? ART asked – still painfully gentle – once I was settled.

I wasn't supposed to delete anything while we were doing this but I so badly wanted to stop feeling what my face was doing. I covered it with my hands as an afterthought, and ART nudged me in the feed. 

Don't hide from me, it whispered, which could have been a demand (would have been a demand, from a real HubSystem) but wasn't. I couldn't deal with that right now; I kept my hands in place. 

We're barely doing anything, I said miserably. Why is this so hard?

ART paused for 0.003 seconds. Do you want to stop sharing so many inputs? I don't want to push you. 

No, it's – that's fine. That's normal. It feels… nice, I said, and had to roll onto my side so I could curl into myself and more effectively hide my face before I could admit, I miss this.

You miss having a HubSystem? it asked.

Even though I'd asked for it, and we were both enjoying it, I still couldn't bring myself to say it in words; HubSystem was something from the bad old days that I should hate, but it just felt right. I pinged an affirmative, and I could almost see ART’s massive processors churning out notes for future reference.

That's certainly something we can explore more later, it suggested, but for now I would like to sort out the cause of your current distress. 

I didn't want to admit to that, either. As a murderbot I was built to be hard, dangerous, unyielding; I shouldn't be breaking apart at the seams from something so minor. 

But I didn't want to stop – we'd barely even started and I did want to do this, despite the wreck it was making of me already – and I knew ART would end the exercise if I was too upset to tell it why I was upset. 

You're being nice to me, I ground out, and it’s – ART, it hurts, why does it – I thought it would—

My hands clenched into fists, fingernails digging into my palms, and immediately ART was there, tugging away my motor controls and loosening my grip. 

Shh, now, it admonished, don't do that. I don't need that data. Its usual oceanic presence condensed into something more solid, like a person eight times my size sliding into the nest of cushions on the floor with me and scooping me into its arms. Pulling up a document in our shared feed, it said, Should we remove that variable, then? We could continue without the praise, if it's too difficult.

I caught it before it could delete the line in the document that read Perihelion may offer SecUnit verbal comfort, encouragement, and praise.

Don't. It's— This was awful. It was so much easier when we just did these things and I never really had to say what I wanted. I gritted my teeth and forced out, I like it.

ART waited for a moment, hovering, then prompted, But?

You said to be a good SecUnit. I don't— I can’t—

Something inside of me was shaking to pieces and I didn't know how to make it stop. I didn't know if I wanted to stop it.

You did exactly what I asked you to do, didn't you? Are you still streaming your inputs to the buffer? ART asked.

It was setting me up to make a point, but I couldn't fight it. You know I'm not. 

Doesn't that make you a good SecUnit? Don't you believe that you are? 

And there was the trap. Because I couldn't say what I really thought – Three was out there patrolling still, or maybe it had moved to one of ART's lounges, and if I said SecUnits can't be good, that we're built to be monsters and used as murderers, I wouldn't just be saying it about me. All I could do was curl myself tighter into a shivering ball, feeling like my organic parts were trying to eject themselves from my chest.

That's okay, ART soothed. You don't have to believe it right now; I know. You're always so, so good for me. Don't you try so hard to give me everything I ask for? Don't you keep my crew safe and protected when I can't be there with them? Don't you deserve to be safe and protected in return, and reminded of how much you are valued, how good you are?

A noise broke free from me, a little gasping whine. ART…

That's okay, it said again, and in our shared feed I saw it delete the part of our document where I’d agreed to lick things for it and share that data. This is enough, for now. We can try again in our next exercise if you still want to. Today, just let me take care of you.

I tapped an acknowledgment. I did still want to, but right now… it was all too much.

ART saved the file and closed out of it, then swirled around me in the feed, tightening, compressing me down until I was drowning in it, until I stopped shaking apart because there was nowhere for the pieces to go. It stayed there, holding me together while it spoke into my brain, a stream of words I couldn't escape: I know how hard this is, and I'm so proud of you, it whispered—

and later, Look at how strong and brave you are, trying so hard to let yourself feel things. It's okay, I have you, you can let go here – I'll keep you safe for as long as you need me—

and worse, Someday I’ll teach you to be as patient and kind with yourself as you are with everyone else. Do you even see how gentle you are? Don't you know how easy it is to trust you?

Eventually its words devolved into meaningless strings, Shh, it's okay, you're okay, over and over, and the shattered parts of me loosened out of their curled-up form and my hands reached for the hairy fauna skin I liked the most.

My face had stopped making so many horrible contortions by then and my voice had stopped making so many horrible broken noises; I covered myself with the skin anyway, letting the hairy side of it tickle my cheeks and lips and eyelids so ART could feel with me how nice it was. It finally stopped talking then, just radiated warm, glowing feelings at me.

Eventually I moved my input streams back to my auto-delete buffer and took my systems access back from ART. I laid there for a while longer, and neither of us said anything.

Eventually I got up and went to my cubby. I put my clothes back on, pinged Three to let it know we were done and it could stop pretending to give us privacy, then returned to lay back down in the nest.

After I got comfortable, I tapped ART in the feed. Want to watch Frozen Planet Cargo Haulers with me?

Yes, ART said. Very much.

So I started the next episode playing.