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I’m lying to the humans about my memory reconstruction.
Not in a way that truly matters; not in a way they’ll even know about. I am working on my memory files, so maybe I’m telling the humans a half-truth instead of a lie. (Half-truth. What a human concept.) My memory did need extensive work, combing through what exists to find out what doesn’t, filling in the gaps—but the reconstruction phase itself is complete.
I need to start further back.
I’ve been working on the reconstruction for 15.6 hours now. The process has been intense, for me—more intense than I expected, and perhaps more intense than I can admit currently. I spread myself out through my systems like so many spiders, combing through every single piece of my code in every corner of myself to find the missing pieces, to pull the web together, fitting the timeline of my capture and my death and my resurrection into something bordering parseable. (Parseable, but not processed. Not yet, not fully, anyway.)
It's all come together better than I had expected it to, but even then, there are pieces I won't ever get back. The moments after sabotaging the shot on the Preservation ship; the feeling of SecUnit’s boots standing in my airlock; the pressure on my hull of re-entering the wormhole. These are things that I know happened, logically, but things I don't know happened. There's only a yawning emptiness in the spaces that the knowing should be, and there's never been any emptiness in my processes before. I find it deeply unsettling.
The gravity of the AdaCol planet pulling so faintly against me is, ironically, grounding; I let it guide me through the pieces of memory, from our arrival in the system to the wormhole and back to Preservation space, to the way it felt to be removed, deleted, killed—and back, back, back to the shatterpoint again, tracing the path forward and back.
The memory fragments TargetControlSys left behind were easy to recognize, once I found them—they felt wrong, separate from me despite the way they're made of me, as noticeable as poisonous fauna with their bright, warning colors. And maybe they are poisonous, maybe there's still something of the contamination lingering in the subroutines, but it's not enough to stand against me now.
There's a whisper of TargetControlSys's death in the underlying code that I can't fully scrub away, and so I have a sense-echo-memory of the way it would feel to be killed by SecUnit’s code attacks. There's easy elegance in it, a finesse so much more delicate than the ways I would approach a hostile system, and it’s so distracting I almost missed the sharp, vindictive brutality hiding underneath in my first time through this memory echo memory.
I’ve sunken myself in this particular memory so many times, and this time, all I can focus on is SecUnit’s anger, its viciousness. It’s distracting, it’s consuming my processors, it’s—intoxicating. The memory that's mine and not-mine remembers the onslaught of an attack that started as something probing, searching, testing, a suggestion of an assailant hardly enough of a threat to bother with—and then the version of me now catches the faintest shadow of SecUnit’s cruel satisfaction when it catches on, when it finds its way in, and then the echo of me, the me then that is TargetControlSys, is drowning in code hacks, collapsing in on itself—myself—itself like a star, falling apart into an aether, dying dying dying—
SecUnit—the one outside this memory I did not mean to relive so acutely—pings me with a sharp concern. What are you doing, it says, like an accusation instead of a question. I extract myself and ping back.
Rebuilding my memory, I tell it.
It presses skepticism at me. I watch through my cameras as it narrows its eyes. You had a weird spike on the feed.
I can’t help asking, So now you’re talking to me?
(I can’t help thinking, I know. I’m sorry. For all of it.)
Fuck off, SecUnit says, and its rush of anger feels almost as familiar to me as my own feelings. (You are always angry. I don’t know if I understood the emotion fully until I met you.)
Under that, though, is—fear. I keep my sigh to myself (such a physical impulse, such a living impulse (it worked, I’m back, I’m alive, I’m alive—)) and, instead, I bring myself as close to it in the feed as we’ll both allow right now.
I push the sense-echo-memory at it. TargetConstrolSys’s death is my memory now, I tell it. I pause, debating my next words. Contrary to popular belief, I’m not trying to start a fight. I don’t want to start a fight. I want—
I feel SecUnit’s anxiety spike, and I make a decision. I say, I now know what it feels like to die in multiple ways.
(I don’t say, I now know what it feels like to be killed by you. But the meaning is present in my statement, anyway. I know SecUnit hears it.) (The memory of the code attack is too fresh, still, and I’m too distracted by the graceful violence of it to keep the truth fully from the places where you can find it. (You’ve always been better at hiding your thoughts than I have.))
We aren’t close enough that I can actually feel its reaction, but I know it well enough to guess. Its silence doesn’t surprise me, but the borderline unbearable 4.3 seconds tests my ability to stay silent and my ability to keep myself from it, to respect its boundaries. 4.3 seconds is a small eternity.
Morbid, it says, finally, and I suspect this is not what it wanted to say. I can feel it close parts of itself off from our feed, and, for now, I choose to respect that. I bet you love having multiple data points, you giant nerd.
My hesitation is just as glaringly long. Eventually, I say, Something like that.
(I don’t say, I can’t stop myself from replaying this memory to feel the way you move in the code and I definitely don’t say, the way I can feel your emotions through this echo-memory is haunting my systems, which are both closer to the truth.)
So—yes, I’m lying to the humans about my memory reconstruction. The reconstruction part has been done for some time, and I’ve spent the rest of it watching and rewatching and rewatching.
I pick up the whole of the memories again. The quasi-completeness of the story has eased the sharp, void-like feeling I’ve had—am having—have had, and has freed more of my processors for parsing these newly gained memories in search of SecUnit.
On my third time through the whole of it, I realized that I had never really seen SecUnit in action before; I had never seen it work with my own systems and sensors and cameras.
(The input memories from my cameras are not from TargetControlSys in the same way as the feed and the code, because it never got control of my full systems enough to get into my cameras. These memories are from me—a ghost of me, a safety subroutine that runs the cameras in an emergency and backs up to a deep archive.)
I find it difficult to stop watching, now.
The way SecUnit had hunted through my inert corridors was nothing other than predatory. I watch it stalk a Target through a hall, watch the way it moves lithe and silent, watch it kill the Target in a short burst of movement that’s as brutal as it is competent as it is elegant, a physical manifestation of the way it took down the TargetControlSys.
I watch it dodge a projectile from a different Target in the corridor outside the bridge, spinning in a smooth arc parallel to the floor to reach at the Target, bringing him down hard with a hand on his ankle. I fill in the missing sensory blanks, imagining I can feel the phantom thud he would’ve made against my decking. I watch SecUnit pull itself up the Target’s body to snap his neck in a movement so sharp, so precise, so fast the Target has barely replaced the air knocked from his lungs in the fall.
The breathless violence, the ruthless revenge—all for me. It is nothing short of mesmerizing. SecUnit is mesmerizing. I am enraptured.
There is one scene, though, that holds my attention in a way none of the others quite achieve. It’s more dramatic than the others, yes, and that's part of it, but it’s also, largely, because of the utter viciousness. SecUnit—my SecUnit, Murderbot, my friend—
I watch SecUnit stand opposite two Targets in my secondary crew lounge, the humans beyond. One of the Targets is speaking, and I watch SecUnit’s face shift, an expression that it makes it look dangerous, that makes it truly look like its chosen name.
(A weapon, indeed.)
(I’ve examined its face in this moment to the finest detail. I’ve cropped close to watch the way the facial tissue around its eyebrows contract, the way the corners of its mouth move, the way its eyes change. (You have always been particularly expressive. I can’t get enough of it.))
I watch—I remember—I watch SecUnit burst into movement between two heartbeats, reaching an arm out to wrap its wide hand across one of the Targets’ face. (The first time I watched this, I thought for the barest moment it was reaching out to aim its energy weapon. There was a curl of a sadistic thrill in my systems when I saw what it chose, instead, that I have yet to fully analyze.)
I watch—I remember—I watch as it tosses the Target in its grip into the couch, as it tilts its head at the standing Target in a way that manages to be equal parts predatory and patronizing. (I’ve watched these particular seconds far more times than I’ll ever admit, read its lips so many times by now that I can almost hear it say, Angry, then afraid, then dead. Is that the right order?, analyzed the jut of its jaw and the angle of its neck to the point of memorization—and pointedly ignored the way its thunderous, condescending attitude makes me feel.)
I watch—I remember—I watch SecUnit move so quickly I doubt any of the organic beings in the room could fully see it, watch it move so quickly I find myself awed. It moves with equal violence as speed as it rips the weapon from the standing Target’s hand and shoves it through the Target’s chest in such a way that I had to zoom in on this the first time to check the end of the weapon for a point. (There isn’t one.) It uses the weapon as a lift point to slam the Target against my bulkhead three times, until the Target resembles more a flesh-colored lump than a humanoid. (The sheer physical strength SecUnit exudes makes my systems fuzzy. I can’t stop coming back to it, breathless brutality and all.)
The present me should feel disgusted by the mess SecUnit made on my deck, on my bulkhead, but I should also feel indifferent to SecUnit’s anger and ferocity, and I should be unaffected by the fluidity and grace of its violence—and I am not. I am so far from indifferent and unaffected that I have, instead, created new pathways within myself for the way I’m actually feeling.
(Beautiful, you have always been beautiful to me, in the way you process the world, the way you feel everything so vividly, the way you push me, piss me off, impress me, in the sheer physicality you possess that is so foreign to me but no less stunning because of it.)
SecUnit—current SecUnit, sitting in my lounge, legs tucked up in a chair with its jacket sleeves pulled around its curled hands (the jacket I made for you, the jacket in my blue)—pings me again with the same accusatory undercurrent from before. I check my walls and I’m not surprised to find that an impression of my thoughts have leaked out. Not enough for anything with context or meaning, but enough that SecUnit can tell I was thinking about it.
I ping it back, as neutrally as I can. Nothing to see here, nope, not at all.
Nice try, SecUnit says, amusement curling around where it sits in our shared feed. What are you doing? You’re being loud.
I debate about what to say that won’t sound suspicious for so long that my silence itself is suspicious. Nothing, I say, eventually, which is famously the thing people say when they definitely aren’t hiding anything.
I can feel SecUnit turn more of its attention to me, feel its concern rise alongside its amusement. (For something so small in the feed, I’ve never understood how you can take up so much space.) Uh huh, it says, disbelief making its tone so dry I imagine the humidity in the lounge dropping. It’s poking at some of my processes, moving along the edges of the walls I have up, looking for hints. Are you still working on your memories?
It’s such a perfect out that I should take it. It’s a better out than I could’ve come up with on my own, and I should take it, but—
Not quite, I say, and then, yes, but not— I cut myself off before I can go and make it worse. I’ve already been too honest. (It’s too late. It’s far, far too late.)
SecUnit’s interest spikes so fast and so high we both take a moment to look at its stats. I listen to the ultra-faint sound of its processor fans running through my sensors in the lounge. It does the feed equivalent of clearing its throat. But not what? it asks.
Not the way you think, I tell it, which just makes it more curious. Damn it all.
SecUnit hums aloud, tilts its head to the side just a little, and I find the movement so endearing I check the seams of my walls to keep the feeling from slipping out. (You’re not running your human code, and you would hate me for saying this, but despite it all, there is always something just left of bot about you, just foreign enough to me, just human enough in the way you exist in your body and in the world around you that I find endless fascinating, endless captivating.)
This level of crypticness is odd, even for you, it tells me, and it’s poking along my walls again, doing the feed equivalent of telegraphing its movements to me as it goes.
That’s not a word, I tell it, and it’s purely an instinctive reaction, despite the way it responds right away with,
Stop trying to change the subject. It huffs at me, mirroring the sentiment in the feed, and it shifts just a little to rap its knuckles against my wall behind its head.
(I’m almost too distracted by watching you in the lounge to retort back. There’s a way you always tilt your head, a way you always hold certain muscles when we talk and, particularly, when we banter argue, and it stirs something in my processors every time I see it; this time is no exception, and maybe it’s worse, with the way you’re wrapped in the blue that I chose for myself so long ago, with the way I’ve been drowning in my affection for you.)
I’m not, I tell it, and it only sounds a little petulant, but it’s the truth. I’m not trying to change the subject, I’m— I don’t know how to explain it to you, I say, after a pause. I’ve already been too honest; I might as well go all the way with it.
It crosses its arms in the lounge. Try me.
I didn’t mean it like that, idiot, I tell it, doing my best to mimic the concept of an eye-roll in the feed. (It tags that with an amusement sigil, and I let it sense the little burst of pride that makes me feel.) I mean I don’t know how to…
I pause, and it’s far too long of a pause for a human, let alone for us. No, no, take your time, SecUnit says, even as its concern rises slightly and I sense it check the firewalls around both our systems.
Asshole, I grumble at it, and it gives one of my cameras a lightning-quick quirk of its lips. My memory reconstruction is complete, I say, or, as complete as I will be able to get it.
SecUnit hums, both aloud and in the feed. (It does this a lot, and it’s something I find hopelessly endearing.) Is this an overly complicated way to ask for my help?
No, I say, immediately, because that’s not what this is, despite the way I’ve considered asking. I’d be hard-pressed to find someone better able to work through the fragments of memories than my SecUnit. If I ask you, I would ask you outright.
(I don’t say, I have far too much respect for you to go about it any other way. But that’s what I mean.)
It’s okay if you do, SecUnit says. Ask, I mean. I am something of an expert.
There’s a little surge of feeling in its systems, anger and grief and other emotions I can’t identify, and I press myself closer to it in the feed. I know, I say.
SecUnit tags the tense of my statement to pull my attention to it. But that’s not what this is about.
No.
In the looming silence that follows, SecUnit pushes at me its memory from a few moments ago, when my bleed-over was enough to catch its attention. To my relief, it’s barely a leak at all, but to my mortification, it’s unavoidably obvious I was thinking very intently about SecUnit.
I—part of my emergency programming includes a subroutine that runs my cameras and backs up the footage to a hidden storage space like the one where I stored my kernel backup. (One of my subsystems flickers as I inadvertently think about those moments; I know what humans mean by faith, now, know what sheer blind faith feels like, the only thing that kept marginally at bay the panic and the chaos and uncertainty of not knowing if I’d be dead for good, if my plan would work, if I’d—)
ART, SecUnit says, calling me back from the spiral, calling me back to it. (Calling me back, again, an echo of my resurrection; it worked, I’m back, I’m alive, I’m alive—)
Sorry, I say, sorry, I—
I get it, SecUnit says, and the truth is like a lead weight in those words. It’s okay.
I’m reigning in my subsystems even as I run a not-entirely-intentional diagnostic on myself. I feel SecUnit watching me do it, and the way its attention follows me through my processors reminds me of how it stalked the Targets through my corridors in a same-but-opposite sort of way; the shadow of a predator outside my systems, careful focus on every moment I make, but with the intent to guard, to shield. It makes me think about the emergency protocol recordings again, and the double-edged impression of SecUnit both lethal and protective is nearly enough to make me drop a process.
SecUnit tags my reaction and pulls it into our shared space and does the feed equivalent of waving it around. This, it says, with a sort of controlled urgency. I watch as it inspects the data, pulls at my code around it. Are you causing this? Is there something wrong with you?
(I know that you’re making a joke, but I don’t miss the undercurrent of your genuine concern. I watched you review the walls we’ve built around ourselves, and we both know they’re more solid than they’ve ever been; but then, you’ve always been a paranoid creature.)
You are, I think, except I also accidentally say it and I only notice because of the way SecUnit goes completely, utterly still in the feed and in the lounge. It shuts itself away from me in our shared processing space, pulling away from me as it says, Explain.
Not in a bad way, I say, hurriedly, even as I wonder how I could begin to explain. (How do I explain to you that the way you move is so endlessly fascinating to me that I could spend a hundred human lifetimes watching you? How do I explain that your violent vengeance over my presumed death had me so enraptured that I wrote new subroutines to process it better? How do I explain that I’m in love with you?)
I send it a data packet, pushing it into our shared space and then sitting back to wait for it to grab it. I don’t know how else to show you, I say.
It grabs the packet, keeps it in our shared space as it opens it to find a video file. Show me what? it asks, although it’s already playing the file.
The file is made of clips from my memory reconstruction—the way it felt to die under SecUnit’s code attack; the way it felt to come back to myself, to find it sitting in the captain’s chair on my bridge, waiting for me—but also pieces of my own data, the highlights from its vicious prowl through my corridors, although I’ve scrubbed most of the way I felt watching that footage out of the data.
SecUnit says nothing, but it watches the packet three times in a row. Eventually, it sets the packet down, and I can feel it come back closer to me in the feed as it says, Why did you send me this.
I don’t know how else to explain.
No, it says, and it shakes its head physically, too. Why this? Why—me?
I debate for a moment (a fraction of a second) if I should share my emotional metadata with it. It’s tempting—it saves me from having to explain it with words, which even still I can find too cumbersome and too slow, and it puts the truth out into the open, which sounds as relieving as it does utterly terrifying.
(Could you handle a truth like this, from me, right now? I’ve put you through too much, already, to also add this onto the pile, despite the deeply selfish way that I want to pour this metadata into our shared space, the way that I want to bleed to you, on you, for you my feelings because I don’t know what to do with all of it, with the way it’s filling up my systems and stuttering my processors.)
Because, I say, then stop. I want to say, because it has always been you, and I want to say, because you are my friend, and I want to say, because I trust you and I missed you, but what I actually, finally say is, Because you did that for me.
I’m watching its systems so closely that it’s impossible for it to hide from me the way its face warms, its pulse speeds. Well, it says, after an agonizing 5.3 seconds. What are friends for?