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Since I'd agreed to go to Ratthi's musical theater thing, I wouldn't be able to avoid him, and I knew he'd ask about how the whole thing with Station Security went the moment he saw me, so I figured it would be easier to head that off early and went to find him and Gurathin. Not that I particularly cared about telling Gurathin the whole story, but I knew Ratthi would tell him if I didn't, and I didn't fully trust Ratthi to tell it correctly. (Ratthi could be… imaginative, sometimes, in his retellings.) Besides, they were still spending time together in one of Preservation Station's many cafés, so Gurathin would hear it whether I wanted to tell him or not.
Gurathin noticed me first when I started heading over to them, and he nudged Ratthi and pointed in my direction. Ratthi's face lit up when he saw me. I noticed that Gurathin also relaxed a little, but I figured that was probably because finding out that I was okay would make Ratthi happy, and no one liked it when Ratthi was upset. Even Gurathin's natural asshole-ness faltered in the face of a sad Ratthi.
"SecUnit!" Ratthi cried, waving me over as if I wasn't already heading his way. He pulled a chair over from another table and patted it for me. "How did things go?"
"Did you use the life tender?" Gurathin asked. "Did it actually work?"
"Fuck you, it worked perfectly," I told Gurathin, because something about his skepticism made me feel irrationally defensive of the little blorping thing. Gurathin raised his hands in bemused surrender. "And we solved the murder," I told Ratthi. "So the station is safe now, or whatever."
Ratthi leaned forward, eyes bright. "How did you solve it? Or can you not tell me? How confidential is our Station Security?"
Honestly, I wasn't sure either. Ratthi was trustworthy, though, and Gurathin was probably fine, so I said, "It was one of the Port Authority bots. It's a long story, but basically, it was trying to return a group of corporate refugees to their mining colony."
And that was when things got weird.
Gurathin dropped his spoon into his cup with an unexpected clatter, and Ratthi and I both turned to face him. Except, no, Ratthi turned to Gurathin before he dropped his spoon, so it must have only been unexpected to me. And then Ratthi reached out to put his hand next to Gurathin's, palm up so Gurathin could take it if he wanted, and he tentatively asked, "Gura?"
I'd never heard anyone call Gurathin by a nickname before.
Gurathin stared at him blankly for a moment, then he blinked and seemed to come back to himself. "Sorry," he said, taking Ratthi's hand and giving it a squeeze before letting go. "Sorry, that was just… unexpected."
"You're unexpected," I retorted, which sounded like a bad adolescent comeback but was just a statement of fact. "What the fuck was that?"
Ratthi and Gurathin shared a quick look. "SecUnit," Ratthi began slowly, "remember how I told you that Gurathin's grandparents didn't come here onboard Pressy like the rest of us? That he came later-"
"I was smuggled onto Preservation from a corporate planet," Gurathin interrupted. "Sorry, Ratthi."
I shook my head. "Bullshit."
Both Ratthi and Gurathin turned to me, and even though neither of them looked directly at me, I could tell they both wanted to. "What?" Ratthi asked, looking confused, as Gurathin crossed his arms tightly over his chest.
"You're augmented," I said to him. "You couldn't escape like that. They would have tracked you through your augments."
"Unless," Gurathin countered, "I manually deactivated them, recoded them, and turned them back on."
I shook my head. "That would have killed you."
"Well, it certainly wasn't pleasant."
"It's why Gurathin ended up staying on Preservation," Ratthi added, a bit tentatively. "The others were just going to stop here and move on, but Gurathin was in… really bad shape. So the others moved on, and he stayed here."
I gave Gurathin a suspicious look. "So you turned off your augments, which are hooked up to your brain, recoded them yourself, and then turned them back on?"
"Obviously I didn't recode them while they were off," Gurathin replied, some of his usual asshole self reappearing in his tone. "I set up the program beforehand, and then I set it to run while my augments were deactivated. It automatically turned them back on when it was done."
Okay, so that was technically possible. Not easy, and definitely not a good idea, but the chances of it killing you were only sixty-three percent. Which would have looked bad, except the other option was staying in whatever fucked-up corporate holding Gurathin had escaped from (and if he'd been willing to do this to escape, it must have been really fucked up).
"Why did the others agree to let you do it?" I asked, still a bit suspicious. "You could have put the whole transport at risk if it didn't work."
"I'd been helping smuggle people out for a few years at that point," Gurathin said, as if that was a normal thing he could say without further elaboration. "So they trusted me, and they owed me."
"You were a smuggler?"
"I didn't do the direct smuggling, but I was part of the process." Gurathin frowned. "I hadn't heard about this group. I thought I knew about all of the refugee routes that went through Preservation."
So apparently there were other refugee routes that went through Preservation. Great. I'd have to keep that in mind for future threat assessments.
"When we got him back on his feet, Gurathin helped out with some of the refugee groups on this end," Ratthi added.
Gurathin snorted. "You let me think I was helping."
"You were!"
"Don't think I don't know that no one wanted to leave me alone with the refugee groups to do the introductions."
Ratthi laughed. "Okay, but in our defense, you were still so paranoid back then, and we didn't want you to make the new refugees paranoid."
"He's still paranoid now," I said mulishly.
Both Ratthi and Gurathin laughed. "If you think I'm paranoid now, you should have seen me when I first got to Preservation," Gurathin said. "Take how paranoid I was on the survey and multiply it by five."
"Only five?" Ratthi asked. "You weren't that paranoid on the survey. Other than the whole…" He gestured vaguely at me. "Thing."
"You just didn't see how paranoid I was," Gurathin countered.
"He started trying to hack HubSys before you even had it fully set up," I agreed. "And he tried to filter all of the monitoring through his augments so he could erase footage he didn't want being shared with the company."
Ratthi raised an eyebrow. Gurathin shrugged. "Corporates make me feel on edge."
"You've got reason for that," Ratthi allowed. "But you really started hacking that early?"
"Oh, I was planning how to best hack HubSys from the moment we decided we were going on the survey," Gurathin replied easily. "And I started putting together more concrete plans once we knew the specs. Even if we hadn't had a rogue SecUnit running around, I still would have been a mess."
I made a rude gesture at him. Both he and Ratthi ignored me with practiced ease.
"What's going to happen to the refugees you saved?" Ratthi asked me. "And how was the dead person involved?"
"He was the contact for the smuggling process on Preservation," I replied. "And I assume the refugees are going to either settle here or move on wherever they want to go. I'm staying out of it."
"Oh, don't you want to help?" Ratthi asked. "If you saved them, I bet they'd appreciate it."
I tried snorting in amusement/disbelief, like Gurathin had. It was weird. "One of them shot me, so they probably wouldn't."
And that had the tension racketing back up at the table. Both Ratthi and Gurathin stared at me, and Ratthi reached out before pulling his hand back. Gurathin sent a diagnostic request over the feed, which I batted aside.
"It's fine. I'm fine. They realized I was a SecUnit and panicked. It's not a big deal. But they're probably not going to want to spend any more time with me than they have to."
Ratthi looked upset. Gurathin was scowling. I shouldn't have told them.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Ratthi asked. "Mensah said you agreed to go to the opening night with us, but if you're not feeling up to it…"
"I agreed after I got shot," I told him. "It's fine."
Gurathin stood suddenly. "I'm going to check in with Refugee Assistance."
"It's fine," I said again.
Gurathin's scowl deepened. "Not just about you. I want to help with these people. And I want to make sure that the education modules about Preservation make the legal status of bots and constructs very clear."
"I'm the one who got shot," I protested. "If I'm fine with this, you should be fine with it too."
Gurathin just rolled his eyes and left. "Don't forget to meet us at Makeba Hall after dinner!" Ratthi called after him, then shrugged at me. "He's going to be stubborn about this, and I don't really disagree with him."
"It was just a regular projectile," I said. "Not even a big one."
Ratthi's face did something weird that was definitely not reassured. Yeah, I should have seen that coming. My humans all get weirdly upset whenever I get hurt, even when it's not a big deal. (I could imagine one of them telling me, very earnestly, that it is a big deal when I get hurt because I'm a person and I deserve to feel safe and whatever, and my performance reliability went down half a point at the mere thought of it, so I was definitely going to avoid having that conversation in real life for as long as I could.)
"What's the musical about," I said flatly. It was supposed to sound like more of a question than it did, but I hoped it would still work to change the subject.
Ratthi blinked. "The, uh, the one tonight? I can, uh, send you the program information?"
I nodded. "And…" I continued slowly. My act-like-a-human code helpfully told me that a human in my position would likely be gritting their teeth, but I didn't want to look like this made me feel like gritting my teeth. I could manage a little small-talk with Ratthi if it would get him off my back about the whole being-shot thing.
"Is there something about this musical that particularly interests you?" I asked, through metaphorically gritted teeth.
"There is, actually!" Ratthi said brightly, looking pleased I'd asked. That made one of us, at least. "Do you remember that show we saw a month ago, where the whole thing was told in verse? The actress who played the lead's best friend in that is starring in this musical. After the last show, I reached out to tell her she was really good, and she replied to tell me…"
Ratthi told me all about how he'd managed to make friends with an actress after seeing her once, and I backburnered the conversation with only a little guilt, setting up an alert to tell me if he paused long enough that it seemed like he wanted my input on something. I kinda felt like watching Sanctuary Moon, but doing that while Ratthi was talking to me somehow felt ruder than sitting here and ignoring him without watching media. Instead, I started analyzing all the data I could access about refugee routes that went through Preservation. I probably could have found more if I didn't follow the stupid no-hacking rule, but I'd only just managed to make things not-bad with Indah, so I decided against it. I could ask Gurathin, after he got back from probably going off to be an asshole at people because I'd gotten myself a little bit shot.
My thought processes kept going back to Gurathin. I didn't like it. And I really didn't like the story he'd told me about coming to Preservation, especially the part where he'd done something that had a sixty-three percent chance of killing him.
Whatever. It had happened a long time ago, and there was nothing I could do about it now, so I backburnered those processes instead and focused on Ratthi's conversation again.
"…Apparently he's been sleeping with them, and te's been-" Whatever expression I was making, it made Ratthi burst out laughing. "I figured you weren't paying attention! I was pretty sure you would have told me to stop talking about relationship drama already if you were."
"I have to go," I said, and I got up and left a still-chuckling Ratthi behind me.
"Don't forget to meet us all at Makeba Hall!" he called after me. "We're all meeting up half an hour before the show starts!"
That gave me almost four hours to hide in my room and watch Sanctuary Moon. Good. I needed it.
The musical was good, and I recorded it with one of my drones so I could watch it again if I wanted to. I also managed to avoid getting introduced to Ratthi's actress friend by fleeing after it was done, so that was another bonus. My humans all went home, and I did too, but I felt… restless. Seeing Gurathin at the musical had brought the whole refugee thing back to the front of my brain, and I didn't want it there. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be going anywhere.
I checked the feed. Gurathin was still awake, reading something that sounded boring based on the name. Before I could second-guess myself, I sent to him, Give me access to your augments.
Gurathin opened the message, then waited long enough to read it at least three times before sending back, Why?
Asshole. Why did he think I wanted access to his stupid augments? So I can check them over and make sure you didn't fuck them up too badly when you recoded them.
Faint disbelief leaked into the feed. It was a long time ago.
So? You could still have given yourself brain damage.
It was only a little brain damage.
If any of my clients were going to have brain damage, it would be fucking Gurathin. (I didn't like the idea of any of my clients having brain damage.)
Just give me the stupid access to your stupid augments, I snapped. My tone probably wouldn't come across properly in the feed to an augmented human, but I was pretty sure Gurathin would still get the idea. I hesitated, then added, Your vision augments need adjusting anyway. I can do that easier than you can.
Gurathin hesitated for another 5.7 seconds, then he sent, Don't adjust anything without checking with me first, and he opened up access to his augments.
I didn't dive into them particularly quickly by my standards, but I could feel Gurathin jump a little, so I probably was surprisingly fast by human standards. He didn't try to kick me out, though, so I manually slowed myself down and started exploring. Gurathin had "helpfully" highlighted where he'd recoded his augments, which was completely unnecessary because I would have been able to find it myself anyway, but having it highlighted would mean I could get in and out marginally quicker. That was probably why he'd done it. I set a background scan on the other elements of his augments, then I delved into the recoding.
It was annoyingly well done. In places, it was almost elegant. Gurathin couldn't keep his augments from creating the sort of signal that the corporation could track, not without shutting them down entirely, so he'd woven a sort of net with the code so that the signal wouldn't be able to get out. He'd also disguised the augments' identification so that even if something did manage to escape his net and get out, it wouldn't be recognizable as him. There were a few things I would have done slightly differently, and one place where I was pretty sure I could tighten the efficiency of the net, but otherwise, it actually pissed me off a bit how good it was.
It was also incredibly tailored, I could tell that immediately. This wasn't the sort of thing that Gurathin could share with other augmented humans so they could use it and get the same results; he'd written the code around his own specific augments and how he used them. He'd put a lot of effort into it, and it had clearly worked well. He'd even managed to implement it in a way that minimized the amount of long-term damage that deactivating his implants had done. I was pretty sure there had been a lot of short-term damage, especially given what Ratthi had said about Gurathin being in bad enough shape when he arrived to need immediate medical treatment, but Gurathin was right; there was only a little brain damage.
Are you satisfied? Gurathin asked after letting me poke around for a few minutes. I was pretty sure he wanted me out of his systems, and I wondered if he was just generally being a grumpy asshole or if the difference in our respective processing capacities meant this was uncomfortable for him. I remembered how it felt when ART had poked around in my head. I also remembered how ART had leaned on me in the feed, and for half a second, I considered trying it with Gurathin. That half a second was all I needed to remember it was really bad idea, so thankfully, I didn't even try.
I still need to adjust your vision augments, I said. And I can make your coding more efficient.
I could feel that Gurathin was grumpy and also curious and also grumpy with himself for being curious. Don't make any changes, but you can send me the code patch. And I can adjust my own vision augments.
I can do it faster and easier.
Irritation bled through into the feed. I don't like people messing around in my augments. I'll do it myself.
Objectively, that was stupid, but I kind of understood. If I were an augmented human, I wouldn't want anyone else messing around in my augments either. I didn't like people poking around in my code, which I guess was sort of the same thing. Of course, Gurathin had done that multiple times before, mostly without my permission, but whatever.
Fine. Here. I passed him the code patch for his net, and then also passed on the parameters I thought he should set for his vision augments. I didn't have a drone on him, and physical movements didn't pass through the feed, but I was pretty sure he was rolling his eyes at me.
Are you done, then? Gurathin asked. It's late.
Gurathin was a total insomniac, so I was pretty sure he wasn't actually planning on going to sleep yet anyway, but I wasn't offended that he wanted to end the conversation. I did too, except there was one more thing I wanted to say.
Don't ever pull this sort of shit again.
I could feel surprise, then offense. I didn't have another choice. It's not like I did it for fun.
Okay, so I had worded that poorly. The emotionally mature thing to do would be to apologize, take it back, and reword it more gently, but no one had ever said I was emotionally mature (like, ever). I don't care. Don't do it again. You'll fuck up your brain, and it's already fucked up enough.
More offense, but I could feel that it was tempered with something I couldn't quite identify. Are you worried about me, SecUnit?
Oh fuck no, I was not having this conversation. You are my client. If you do something stupid and fry your own brain, then it fucks with my statistics.
I'm not actually your client anymore. And I can write up something with Pin-Lee that makes it clear that you bear no responsibility if I adjust something in my augments and it goes wrong.
Okay, now Gurathin was just pissing me off, even more than usual. Why the fuck are you fighting with me about this? Do you want to fry your own brain?
There was a pause before his response. I liked to think he was reconsidering all his life choices and realizing he should just shut up and listen to me, but I wasn't optimistic.
I won't do anything reckless, he finally said. Is that enough for you?
I'd spent enough time with humans and augmented humans, both in general and specifically my Preservation ones, to know that their definition of "reckless" didn't always line up with mine. It was still probably the best I was going to get.
Fine. After a moment, I added, But I want that document from Pin-Lee.
Of course you do. Gurathin was silent for a moment, then he forwarded me an appointment confirmation for his meeting with Pin-Lee the next day. I didn't actually care about the document itself, but I was hoping that Pin-Lee would take my side and tell Gurathin he was being an idiot. I thought she probably would; Pin-Lee was generally one of my more sensible humans.
Satisfied? Gurathin asked.
Never, I replied. Fix your fucking vision augments.
Then I disconnected myself from the conversation, thoroughly done with humans and augmented humans as a whole. I was going to curl up in a chair and watch Sanctuary Moon until someone forced me to move, and even then, I'd probably only let myself be forced if it was Mensah or maybe one of my other humans. Fuck humans, I was fucking done.
I made a note, though, to ask Gurathin about the refugees in a few days. It wouldn't be the worst thing ever to check in on how everything was going. For security reasons, of course.
And if Gurathin ever pulled any augment-deactivating shit again, I was going to kill him.