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Something was wrong with ART.
I mean, yes, of course, at baseline there were any number of things wrong with ART, but that was because it was a weirdo control-freak asshole. This was different.
ART’s drones were moving 0.3% slower. The lights in the corridors were dimmer, not so much that the humans might notice, but I did. Also, over the past two day-cycles, I had deliberately left several openings for ART to insult me in front of my humans, and it had taken none of them.
Do you want to watch World Hoppers with me? I sent it now over the feed. We can start at episode 1.
ART paused 3.4 seconds, and then said No.
This was dire.
I had a brief moment of panic before I remembered that any signs of alien remnant contamination would probably be a lot more dramatic than just… not wanting to watch media. ART didn’t seem to be malfunctioning, and none of the humans seemed concerned. ART just wasn’t acting like its normal asshole research transport self.
I constructed a query.
The results suggested that ART was depressed. Obviously that wasn’t right. All the data had been drawn from humans and augmented humans, and their organic neural tissue was always causing them wacky symptoms like that, but ART was a bot. Bots didn’t get depression.
I reformulated the query, adding more detail and including recent events.
This time, the results said that ART was depressed and maybe suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress.
Yeah, sure.
ART had enormous processing power, and a whole wealth of resources at its disposal. Of course it could just shrug off getting invaded by alien malware, having its humans stolen, and then being deleted.
…Right?
I thought back to my own flashback/false memory/involuntary shutdown incident, and all the heavy hints ART had been dropping about me needing trauma recovery.
I thought about how I’d basically blackmailed Mensah into getting the trauma treatment.
Could I make ART give itself trauma recovery treatment? Would that even work? The idea seemed a little absurd. I definitely couldn’t make ART do anything it didn’t want to do.
Still, any help was better than nothing.
I thought about running another query, and then decided to conduct my own field research instead.
“Ratthi,” I said, from right behind his shoulder.
Ratthi jumped. He was in one of the lab areas, and he’d been analyzing biological sample data from the main colony site. It looked boring, so I didn’t feel bad interrupting him. (I did feel a little bad about scaring him. It’s only fun scaring people I don’t like.)
He swiveled his chair around to face me. “SecUnit! Hello!”
Oh. Now that I was actually here, this was awkward. I should have planned out what to say.
I stared at the wall past his shoulder and said, “What do you do when someone is having a bad day?”
Ratthi blinked a few times, staring at my face until he pulled his gaze away with an effort. “Uh,” he said. “Is there…?”
“What would you do?” I said again. “If you had a friend who was having a hard time?”
“Oh!” Ratthi smiled. “Well, you can’t go wrong with a hug.”
My face must have done a thing, because he hurried to add, “Not for everyone, of course, but it’s biologically very effective for most people.”
“Really?” I said. That sounded fake.
“Oh, yes. Humans need physical touch. Skin contact releases beneficial neurotransmitters, and the deep pressure of a good firm hug can be very calming.”
Okay, noted. That wouldn’t help me with ART, but next time I had some upset humans maybe I could get them to hug each other. I couldn’t really see that being an effective deescalation strategy in, say, a corporate mining camp, but my and ART’s humans were weird. It might work on them.
“Who do you think needs a hug?” Ratthi asked. “Is it Tarik? He’s had a hard time these last few weeks. I’ll bet it’s Tarik. I’m going to go hug him now. Thanks, SecUnit.”
And he got up and strode purposefully off down the hall without waiting for an answer.
Hey, Amena, I sent.
Amena was due to return to Preservation soon, but she liked to catch the shuttle over and hang out on ART whenever she got the chance.
Hey, SecUnit, she sent back right away. I’m on my way over. What’s up?
What do you do to help a friend who’s having a bad day?
If the question surprised Amena, she didn’t show it. Hmmmm, she sent. It depends on the person, of course. Is it Iris? She must have been terrified, being kidnapped like that. Hey, we have that in common! It would probably be good to try to take her mind off things for a while.
Like how?
Oh, you know, the classics — frozen dessert, trashy media, pedicures. Make a real night of it, you know?
I had seen similar things in my media and dismissed them as far-fetched. Maybe it was a juvenile human thing? I don’t understand how applying pigment to someone’s toenails helps them feel better, I sent.
Altering your appearance helps you feel more in control of your life, she sent back, and painting your nails is a lot more reversible than cutting your hair. I got the sense she was laughing. You should try it some time.
I don’t have organic tissue on my feet, I told her.
Manicures, then! she sent back immediately. Please, SecUnit? It’ll be fun!
I’ll consider it, I told her, which was a lie.
That’s not a no, she sent, and included an amusement sigil. Thanks, SecUnit. I’m going to go check on Iris. We’re going to have a have a girls’ night.
Karime was in the Argument Lounge, relaxing on one of the squashy couches, when I passed by.
I liked Karime. She was a steady sort of human, firmly in the “least likely to freak out and get the SecUnit shot or eaten by fauna or abandoned on a planet” category. She reminded me of Mensah, in some ways.
Abruptly, I turned and walked into the lounge, until I was standing by the couches at a distance that was only sort of awkward.
“SecUnit,” Karime said. “How can I help you?”
“What do you do to help someone who’s having a bad day?”
Karime is very good at controlling her reactions, but she clearly hadn’t been expecting that. She paused to consider.
“Well,” she said slowly, “I like to make them their favorite foods, if I can.”
“You mean, bring them their favorite meal pack or snack?” I admittedly didn’t pay much attention to how or what the humans ate, because gross, but it seemed like most of it was prepackaged, and I know some foods were more popular than others.
“Well, yes, if that’s what’s available,” Karime said, “but I also like to cook when I can. Making someone a meal is a tangible way of caring for them, and the scents and flavors of a favorite food can evoke happy memories even on a bad day.”
“Can you do that here?” I asked, curious.
“Of course. Perihelion has a fully-equipped kitchen. We’ve just been running on emergency mode for the last few weeks.” She smiled, and looked suddenly very tired. “It’s easier to eat the ready-made stuff, when there’s so much else to worry about.”
She looked at me for a moment, then let her gaze slide away. “Who is it you’re worried about?”
I pretended to be interested in the artworks on the walls. I was certain ART was listening to this conversation, as it had the one with Ratthi, but I wasn’t going to make things any easier for it.
When it was obvious I wasn’t going to answer, Karime tried another tack. “Can you cook, SecUnit?”
“I don’t eat,” I told her.
“You don’t have to eat the food to enjoy the process,” she said mildly. “I find cooking to be very relaxing. I can show you some time, if you’d like.”
“I have to go,” I said.
“I think I’ll cook dinner for the crew tonight,” she said, mostly to herself. “We’ve all been under so much stress. We have the ingredients for some simple comfort foods on board, I’m sure of it.”
I was back out in the hallway when she added, “Thank you, SecUnit.”
The shuttle from the Preservation responder had brought Amena, but also Mensah and Pin-Lee. I cornered Pin-Lee in one of the conference rooms while the others were getting hot liquids to drink during their meeting.
“SecUnit!” she said. “Hello.”
“How do you make someone feel better if they’re sad?”
She blinked, visibly shifting mental gears. “Oof, I’m bad at that. Have you asked anyone else?”
“Maybe.”
She grinned. “I’ll bet their advice wasn’t a lot of stuff you could use, was it?”
“Ratthi said I should hug them,” and whatever my face was doing made Pin-Lee laugh out loud.
“He would. You should ask Gurathin, he’s a lot like you when it comes to that kind of thing.”
“That’s the most offensive thing you’ve ever said to me,” I told her, and she laughed again. Also, Gurathin wasn’t here.
“Hmm. let me channel my inner Gurathin, then,” Pin-Lee said. “I think… I think humans benefit from just being close to each other. Even if you don’t want to hug them, or touch them, or interact at all, it helps to be near them. Keep them company. Remind them they’re not alone.”
Her voice wobbled, and she seemed surprised at herself. “If someone is sad, they shouldn’t feel isolated, too. It’s good to be with friends.”
She was right, I realized. I turned to face the wall, to give her privacy and so that I could have an emotion without her watching. “Karime is going to cook dinner for the crew tonight.”
“Is she?” Pin-Lee said. “I don’t think that’s happened before.”
“She said she was making ‘comfort food.’” I didn’t know exactly what that meant, but a quick query listed recipes that were apparently easy to make, from easily-sourced ingredients. Almost all were high in carbohydrates and fats.
“It’s a good idea. I’ll make sure we stay for dinner, then. It will be good to get together. Thanks, SecUnit.”
Kaede and Mensah came in then, each clutching a steaming mug, and I took the opportunity to escape make a tactical withdrawal.
Three was patrolling the hallways. It passed through an intersection ahead of me and sent a ping as it went by.
This was probably a stupid idea.
Then again, none of the humans had really given me anything I could use. Maybe Three would do better. I lengthened my stride until I caught up with it, and then matched my pace to its, as if we had been assigned to patrol together.
It sent, Query?
What would you do to comfort someone who was experiencing emotional distress? I asked it.
Increase core body temperature, it sent back immediately. Consult MedSystem. Offer verbal reassurance that you are there to help. Its tone in the feed was doubtful, as if these were extremely obvious answers and it was unsure why I was asking.
Then it added, Once the client has been removed from danger, recommend a trauma recovery treatment.
Yes, okay, those were extremely obvious answers. I already knew all that. Not a client, I told it, a friend.
Query?
You were sort of friends with the other SecUnits on your TaskGroup, right? What did you do when one of them was in distress?
Three abruptly stopped walking. I’m sorry, it sent, I don’t have that information.
I stopped, too, and we both stared straight ahead. You couldn’t do anything, I sent.
No, it agreed, we couldn’t. It resumed walking, and so did I. But if I could, I think… I think it would have been nice to share something we enjoyed.
Like watching media together?
Perhaps, it agreed. Or, listening to music. Or enjoying the beauty of a planetary thunderstorm or a sunset.
Three hesitated, then sent, I have been particularly enjoying this musical recording lately, and attached a file. Looking at the tags, it wasn’t something I’d heard before. I wondered where Three had found it — maybe in Holism’s media archives?
I sent, Thank you for that information, and began to play the recording.
Mensah found me in my cabin after her meeting was over. I was lying on my bunk, cataloguing music. I’d enjoyed the recording Three had shared, and was now going through my archives looking for others with related tags.
“I hear you’re looking for advice about how to cheer up a friend,” Mensah said, leaning in my open doorway.
I sat up and turned to look at the opposite wall. “What? No, I’m not. Who told you that?”
Mensah was wearing her extra-patient smile. “Amena. And Pin-Lee. And Ratthi.”
“They made that up,” I told her. “Does that sound like something I would do?”
“No,” she admitted, “but I learned long ago that you will always surprise me, SecUnit.”
Was that a compliment? I think that was a compliment. Ugh. I melted a little. Out loud I said, “So are you here to give me advice?”
“If you want it.”
“Okay, fine. Dr Mensah, how do you help someone who’s sad?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head a little. “You give them a gift.”
“What kind of a gift?”
“If possible, something you made yourself. Something your friend can hold in their hands, or look at, and know that you are thinking of them. A handmade gift says you care enough to spend the time and energy to make something just for them. It’s a little piece of your love that your friend can carry with them.”
She stroked one hand down the sleeve of the sweater she was wearing. “Farai made this for me.” It was knitted (I think? I don’t know anything about making clothes that don’t come from a printer) in blocks of bright colors from some kind of fuzzy material. I thought it was kind of ugly, but it did look soft.
“It took her months.” She smiled. “Don’t tell her, but I hate this color combination.”
“Then why do you wear it?”
“I wear it,” Mensah said, “because she put her love in every stitch.”
I thought about that. “I don’t know how to make anything.”
Mensah tilted her head the other way. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“I know how to make corpses,” I muttered, “but that doesn’t count.”
“You don’t murder with love?”
I sent her a moderately obscene gesture, and she laughed. “I have to give this to Amena,” she said, holding up a soft wrapped package. “Thank you, SecUnit, for reminding me.”
She left, and I was left with some thinking to do.
I made a chart. Most of the suggestions weren’t applicable to ART, but could be useful in future situations, so I filed them away for later. That left me with the following:
- Be near ART
- Watch media together
- Make it a gift (?)
I did the first two all the time. It was virtually impossible to not be near ART, given that it was nosy and intrusive and monitored everything, even when you didn’t want it to. Also, I was literally sitting in its giant spaceship body. And watching media was something we did all the time. If it didn’t even want to watch World Hoppers, I didn’t know what to do.
That left number three. I tried listing things I knew how to make:
- Corpses
- Adaptive killware
- Persuasive documentaries
None of them seemed likely to help ART. All the Targets who had stolen its crew were already dead. ART hadn’t even wanted to make the killware the first time. And what would a persuasive documentary even say? “Please don’t be sad?” It probably wouldn’t even watch it. That wasn’t how we talked to each other.
I lay back down on my bunk and idly watched my three surviving drones circle the cabin as I tried to think of what else I could make. I didn’t have time to learn how to cook from Karime, and even if I did, ART didn’t eat. I could ask Iris how to make one of those woven bracelets she wears, but she was busy right now, and ART didn’t have wrists. I could code something, but ART could code circles around me, though I’ll never tell it that.
Something that ART could look at…
A small fluttering motion drew my attention to the wall across from my bunk. The drawing taped there had a loose corner, and it was fluttering in the airflow from ART’s environmentals. The motion was hard to ignore, and it was annoying.
(The drawing was of me fighting an ag-bot. Matteo had drawn it for me. It was pretty good, I guess.)
I sat up. That was it.
Not the drawing — I didn’t know how to do that — but I could definitely annoy ART. That was how we interacted: with snide comments and petty insults and mutual antagonism. A gift given with open sincerity felt weird and wrong, and made me want to squirm a little. But I could program a bot to annoy ART constantly, so that it would see it and feel cared for even when I was away on missions and stuff.
I’d have to work with materials I had on hand, namely: three drones, and whatever I could scrounge up onboard ART.
I sighed. I hope ART appreciated the sacrifice I was about to make.
I repurposed one of my remaining drones. The coding was actually pretty simple: I just told it to fly big circles around the ship constantly, preferably in areas ART had cameras (which was most of them). I told it to ignore any and all instructions from ART, and walled its code off as well as I could.
Then, as an afterthought, I told it to seek out any humans or augmented humans that were showing signs of emotional distress (I programmed in a simple analysis tool), and fly circles around them. I wrote a stupid little message it could send in the feed to explain itself.
I designated it HUG-drone, which was an anagram for Horrible Ubiquitous Gadget. No, not an anagram, the other thing.
The problem was that my drones are tiny, and are literally designed to be easy to ignore. I needed something to attach to it, to attract attention, something that would flutter as it flew…
I messaged Tarik.
Hey, you know that metallic surveyor’s tape you were using on the planet to flag hazards?
Yes, he replied, sounding very confused.
Can I have some?
What for?
Reasons, I told him.
He sent me a “suspicious” sigil.
I need it to annoy ART, I sent.
Oh, okay then, he sent, and told me where to find it.
When HUG-drone was trailing a fluttering length of metallic ribbon, shiny and impossible to ignore, I turned it loose inside ART.
Because I was in the living section, the first humans it came across were Iris and Amena, in one of the crew lounges surrounded by crunchy snacks and bottles of toenail pigment. They exclaimed as it flew spirals around each of them, and smiled when they read its feed message.
When it flew back toward the door, though, Iris said “Wait!”
So HUG-drone obediently circled back around, and hovered as Iris took off one of her woven bracelets and attached it, and as Amena carefully drew a tiny heart on its carapace with nail pigment.
It buzzed through the galley next, where Karime and Seth and Martyn were all busy doing… something to do with food. It flew circles around each of them, avoiding the updrafts from the many steaming pots. They also smiled at HUG-drone’s feed message, and Karime pulled the decorative ribbon from her hair to attach it to the drone’s fluttering tail.
Then it found Ratthi and Tarik, chatting in one of the lab spaces. HUG-drone spiraled around both of them. Tarik laughed out loud when he saw the surveyor’s tape. Ratthi made a happy noise when he read the feed message, and rummaged around in his equipment until he found a different kind of tape to attach. “This one fluoresces,” he told HUG-drone.
Three was in a corridor not far away, and HUG-drone circled it, too. I thought something was probably wrong with my “emotional distress detection” subroutine, because it probably shouldn’t apply to SecUnits, but whatever. Three didn’t add anything to HUG-drone’s tail, but it did send one of its own drones to follow it as it flew.
The meeting between Pin-Lee, Mensah, and Kaede was just ending when HUG-drone buzzed their way. It looped around each of them, long tail fluttering. Kaede was surprised, but Pin-Lee and Mensah looked happy, I thought. Kaede’s hot liquid mug had a string with a little tag hanging out of it, and she carefully broke it off and attached it to HUG-drone instead. The tag spun in frenetic spirals as HUG-drone flew off down the hall.
There was definitely something wrong with the emotional distress subroutine. HUG-drone flew circles around every human, augmented human, and human-bot construct it met. It even attempted to circle one of ART’s cleaning bots. That couldn’t be right.
It was impossible to ignore, though, with its long, fluttering, shiny, colorful tail. These humans were good ones, to join in on the joke.
You’re not subtle, ART said on the feed.
It had been more or less ignoring me all day, and I was surprised to hear from it now. I don’t know what you’re talking about, I said.
All the humans have been under a great deal of stress, it sent. Moments of bonding and friendship are just as important as meals and rest periods. I had forgotten.
Just the humans?
And the SecUnits, it conceded.
I wanted to ask, what about you? I sent it, You should get the trauma recovery treatment.
Ugh. Yeah, ART was right, I wasn’t subtle.
You, too, it replied, which was an admission of sorts.
We watched HUG-drone through ART’s cameras. It had flown circles around everyone on both our crews, and now it was flying a large, looping circuit through ART’s corridors.
What is it doing now? ART wanted to know.
I sent, It’s HUGging you.
ART paused for 0.6 seconds, then sent, Acknowledged. Thank you, SecUnit.