Chapter Text
✨I will be your gravity, I will stay and never leave ✨
“Ugh, that was okay. They could have cut out the whole second half of the final season and it would have been better,” I spoke aloud to ART. We had just finished the newest season of a semi-trash spinoff of Timestream Defenders Orion. The other spinoffs were way better, in my opinion.
If they cut the season off prior to the betrothal and marriage, it would not have wrapped up the lingering interpersonal plotlines from the previous two seasons. I thought that aspect of it was well-balanced and came to a satisfying conclusion. Though I can’t say there was much else to redeem it.
Of course it thought that. It loved smushy human stuff and to be contrary. But at least it agreed the whole thing was bad. I don’t ever regret watching media, but there are times (like this) where I wondered what better thing I could have wasted 18 hours doing.
“I guess that’s true. But why did Rena and Myrtl have to get married? They just went back to doing exactly the same things they were doing before. They were already doing gross stuff before they got married. They even still lived in the same place afterwards!” Human cultures and traditions, at this point, would probably never fail to confuse me.
Yes, but...
Oh, I was about to get a lecture.
It was about their finally coming to terms with what they meant to each other. At the end of the arc with the mutant fauna, it became clear that they did not want to live without each other. Nothing changed in the minutiae of their lives except for the confirmation and acceptance of the level of commitment that each party was willing to devote to the other. It is quite fascinating. We have consumed a large amount of media that shows the crumbling of such arrangements but this one was a rare instance of a more realistic entrance to such.
Wow, ART had… really thought about this. I had brushed it off as an ‘ew” almost immediately.
“That’s fair. Most of the emphasis is on the drama and not the realism. I thought that’s why we watch it?”
For the most part. I enjoy realistic entertainment more than you do, although still not frequently. I enjoy watching characters overcome adversity and find happiness, it paused but I could tell it wasn’t finished, I greatly enjoy watching characters that remind me of my crew, so long as the characters remain intact and living.
Huh. I felt like I was walking into a trap but I couldn’t figure out what the trap was. “And who do these remind you of?”
Marital partners that get along and show immense respect and devotion for each other remind me of Seth and Martyn.
I knew it was going to get weird – I knew it. My organic parts felt unexpectedly gooey. ART must have felt me move away in the feed a little because it asked, Some of your humans are engaged in similar relationships. Why are you averse to acknowledging their dynamics?
That was a good question. Instead of running away from it and staring at the wall, I grimaced and tried to use some of the techniques the trauma modules had tried to teach me. So I ended up staring at the wall but still talking through my thoughts. I switched to the feed because I didn’t trust my voice.
I guess … I think about it more like statuses and information more than an actual like… thing between people. Like, ‘Overse and Arada are married, that means they share living quarters and are each others’ next of kin and that’s problematic if they both get killed,’ not any deeper than that if I can help it. I don’t want to know anything deeper than that. I shook my head lightly. I definitely didn’t want to know anything about what marital partners did. Although, ART had firmly planted this worm in my brain … Had Arada made some big declaration of love (ugh) like in media? What did they even like about each other? What did Mensah like about her marital partners? (Because, obviously, Mensah was very likeable herself and the fact that two other people also really liked her was not surprising at all to me.) I needed to stop down this track before I thought about weirdness that I couldn’t unthink.
I was probably going to regret asking, What do Seth and Martyn like about each other?
ART paused for a moment before saying with a hefty amount of affection, At a high level, my understanding is that they find each other to be kindred spirits. They are both intelligent, for humans, and bonded over their scientific studies early in their relationship.
That didn't sound so bad. Because I still didn't have my mouth on a one second delay, I asked, What do they bond over now?
ART did the feed-equivalent of raising an eyebrow at me.
Are you asking just to humor me?
I tended to surprise myself by showing interest in things I'd never been interested in before. It was only mildly upsetting that ART sometimes took that same surprise and turned it into suspicion.
No, I'm not just humoring you. I want to know. They're my – our – crew. And they're your family. So, I want to know more about them.
It had gotten easier with time and trauma modules, but talking about things that actually mattered was not my favorite. ART surely noticed the slight dip in my performance reliability and increase in my internal temperature but it didn't comment.
So that had been how I got ART to gush about its humans for 2.65 hours. When it started down the path of explaining what Seth and Martyn liked physically about each other, I shut that shit down.
ART, stop. I don’t want to hear about bodies and touching.
ART feigned offense (or maybe it really was offended, I didn’t know) and said, It is data. And I was not going to divulge anything tagged as private. Of the two of us, I know how to handle information obtained in confidence.
Yeah, that was a dig at me. I had been getting better at that, okay? I needed to change the subject.
I asked, What about Iris? Thankfully ART didn’t need me to elaborate.
Never hesitant to also gush about Iris – ART said, Iris so far has not shown interest in pursuing long-term attachments. She is very discerning and to my knowledge, has found no one worthy of her time. It paused for 1.2 seconds before continuing, I do not want her to fall in love and run away as younger humans tend to do in media. Although, I must admit that I would enjoy assisting in planning her wedding, if she were to have one.
Have you ever been to a wedding? I couldn’t imagine that a monstrous near-omniscient machine intelligence would make a good wedding guest. I might have been projecting since I couldn’t imagine that I would make a good wedding guest.
ART sounded smug as it said, I have. I attended two ceremonies on New Tideland in my drone-form. One was for the former director of the AI program that developed me and the other was for Martyn’s sister. Both of whom were on a very short list of humans that knew the full extent of my existence. Other guests were under the impression that I was simply a university bot that interacted with my humans as an assistance tool.
Hearing ART talk about not being treated like a person always made me feel what humans described as nauseous (but with no chance of expelling disgusting fluids, thankfully). It was one thing for a busted up former-rental unit like me to get treated like a thing but ART was so much more than a piece of equipment. It was a huge, glowing supernova that erupted into every facet of its universe. It had profound thoughts and feelings and-
Have you ever imagined getting married? Ugh, I need to code that delay. What the hell, Murderbot?
ART leaked amusement and affection and – what was that, sadness? – into the feed.
I do not waste time on hypothetical situations that will not come to fruition.
I was pretty sure that was definitely not true but I chose to ignore it. I could let all this go and start the original Timestream Defenders Orion over from the beginning.
Instead, I blurted, Bots can get married on Preservation.
Suddenly, I had 84% of ART's attention. It had been sitting at 62% so the sudden weight of it almost made me physically react. Almost.
Then it is a shame my options for marital partners on Preservation are null.
My risk assessment chose that moment to start freaking out so I smothered it. I was freaking out on my own without that borked code making it worse.
Before I could say something stupid, ART continued, I would be amicable to the idea. None of the advanced machine intelligences at the university have shown interest in pursuing such engagements, to my knowledge. It would be novel to be the first.
It paused long enough for me to think that it was finished.
However, the likelihood of that occurring is so low as to not even bother calculating.
That was an odd thing for ART to say. It could run calculations of calculations and it never hesitated to throw numbers in my face. I could feel it slowly receding from me in the feed.
Why do you say that?
Somehow sounding small, ART said, There is only one entity in the expanse of the universe that I have found to be worthy of marrying me. And that individual has a near-insurmountable aversion to emotional and physical intimacy. So, yes, bots can legally get married on Preservation. But that is not for me.
Shit. My performance reliability dropped 3% and threat assessment spiked briefly.
ART combed through my diagnostics and said, I see this is causing you distress. We can start that new historical drama when the humans begin their rest period.
Before my jumbled brain could grab it and pull it back, it had already shifted to focusing on its various other tasks. And that was that.
💫
It had been three cycles since that awkward conversation. We were 4 cycles away from New Tideland where the current round of students and instructors would be deposited. The crew had a few days of scheduled leave before our next espionage mission.
ART had been acting normal – or as normal as it ever was. But I was a mess.
So.
The thing was, ART and I had never really talked about what we were. Even though it has been thousands of hours since the alien remnant/Barish-Estranza debacle when our “mutual administrative assistance” had begun.
We just co-existed. I knew that it was important to me and that I was important to it. I was its security, it was my massively overpowered HubSys.
We were constantly in the feed together except for when I was visiting Preservation or when ART underwent maintenance at the university. (The rare times we went out of contact on missions were stressful and I was always afraid I'd come back into range to find ART… nevermind. I don't think about that on purpose.)
All of that to say- I knew we had some kind of relationship (and ugh, yes, that's what it was) but we had never brought it up to each other. What it said earlier solidified what I thought I meant to it. I thought ART knew how much it meant to me but… what if it didn't?
Suddenly that wasn't acceptable. Risk assessment chirped at me.
I pinged ART.
It pinged back immediately. Of course I was the only one acting weird. We’d started a rewatch of Worldhoppers and had been bickering off and on, like normal.
ART, I sent in the feed.
SecUnit, it replied. Right, I would have to start this somehow.
Ugh, here goes nothing.
I want to talk about our conversation from a few days ago.
ART’s attention shifted and I could feel it watching me closely.
Ignore my diagnostics. I do want to talk about it.
ART replied, Alright. I ask that you do not send yourself into a shutdown.
I rolled my eyes. Alright.
What aspect of our conversation would you like to revisit?
Maybe it would take it easy on me and I could just answer questions.
You said… What if that person wasn’t averse to those things. With you?
Yes, I had assumed that ART was talking about me. I was not going to acknowledge the intense spikes of emotion that hit when I considered ART feeling that way about someone who wasn’t me.
ART did the equivalent of narrowing its eyes at me.
You have indicated numerous times just how abhorrent you find the concept of intimacy – physical or otherwise.
It dropped a data packet in my feed which I assume was a log of all those times. I didn’t open it.
The idea of other people doing those things to each other or to me is.. ugh… gross. It went way beyond gross but I didn’t need to say that. The thought of being with you like we are now and maybe eventually… doing more things isn't gross.
If a massive MI could snort, that's what ART did in the feed.
I'm flattered, it said. I have long aspired to be “not gross.”
Ugh, Shut up. I mean that the thought of being tied to you and everything that goes along with that is appealing.
I was glad I told it to ignore the raging temperature and hormone fluctuations happening in me.
Because ART’s an asshole, it asked, Is that so? I was picking up on some complicated emotional leaking from it.
Yes. I mean it. And I did mean it.
I must have overwhelmed it because it said, I will take that into consideration. It settled heavily on me in the feed. I felt squished, but not in a bad way.
Okay, we can do something else now, I said and I resumed the episode of WorldHoppers.