Chapter Text
I wasn't there at the beginning of the conversation, but ART told me which camera to check and gave me the relevant timestamps. Transcript:
Ratthi: Huh? This is weird.
Iris: What is it?
Ratthi: Oh, it's probably nothing. Just a weird letter from Gurathin.
Iris: Weird how?
Ratthi: Uh, weird in every way, really. I feel like there's got to be something in it I'm missing, but I don't know what.
Iris: Like subtext, or…?
Ratthi: Or like a secret code? I'm probably being ridiculous, but Gurathin can be really paranoid.
Iris: We could ask Peri, if you want. It might be able to find something.
Ratthi: Oh, that's a good idea. Perihelion, can you help me with something?
ART: Of course, Ratthi. Is something wrong?
Ratthi: Not wrong, exactly, just a little weird. I got this letter from Gurathin- Uh, he's a friend of mine back on Preservation-
ART: I am aware of who Dr. Gurathin is. What is weird about his letter?
Ratthi: Well… The fact that he sent it, for one. Gurathin almost never writes letters. And it's also just… weird. It doesn't sound like him at all, and I don't understand why he sent it. My best guess is that it's got some sort of secret message that he was being paranoid about, but I don't know what it is.
ART: May I examine the letter? I can analyze it against known codes.
Ratthi: At this point, I'm sick of staring at it, so go ahead.
And then Ratthi sent ART the letter, and ART spent about 0.8 seconds analyzing it before sending out a ship-wide message to gather in the kitchen. When I asked what the hell was going on, it sent me the camera information, and by the time I reached the lounge with the others, I was all caught up with Ratthi and Iris and about as confused and worried as they were.
"Peri?" Iris asked. "What did you find in the letter?"
Ratthi was pacing. "It's bad, isn't it?"
"It is not good," ART replied, speaking over the speakers instead of through the feed. It did that sometimes, when the only people onboard were people it trusted. "I will explain when everyone has arrived."
We were running with a smaller crew than usual, since this was supposed to just be a casual trip to Preservation. Ratthi and I were going, of course, and Ratthi was bringing Tarik, and Iris and Seth and Martyn were also tagging along. I was pretty sure Iris wanted to see Amena again, and Seth and Martyn wanted to meet the rest of my Preservation clients. Well, mostly ART wanted to meet my Preservation clients, and it had somehow talked Seth and Martyn into it too. Whatever. It meant I was going to be able to spend some time with Mensah and the others, so I was okay with it.
Except now, it seemed like maybe it wasn't going to go that smoothly after all.
"Alright," Seth said as he and Martyn entered the room, followed by Tarik. "We're all here, Peri, so tell us what's wrong."
Tarik went over to Ratthi, a bit tentatively (I didn't know what state their relationship was in and I did not want to ask), and Ratthi leaned against him, still looking worried. Tarik put an arm around his shoulders.
"Dr. Ratthi recently received a strange letter from a Preservation colleague, Dr. Gurathin," ART declared. It sent the letter to all our feeds. I looked it over briefly, and… Yeah, Ratthi was right, it was weird. It didn't sound like Gurathin at all, and it didn't have any critical, time-sensitive material, which I thought was probably the only reason Gurathin would send Ratthi a letter, especially when we were so close to Preservation.
"I analyzed the letter," ART continued, "and found an encrypted message in its text. It reads as such."
And then ART sent the message, which made my organics go cold. Help, it read, and then there was a string of coordinates.
Oh, shit.
Ratthi's face drained of all color. "What are those coordinates?" he asked, although something about his shaking voice made me think he already knew and was just checking to make sure.
ART sent a map with an area highlighted. "It is the main planet of the corporation TesWalCast."
For a second, I thought Ratthi was going to pass out. I think Tarik thought so too, because he tightened his grip on Ratthi worriedly.
"Dr. Ratthi?" ART asked. "Does this name mean something to you?"
Do you not know what it is? I asked in our private feed.
I know that it is considered a particularly immoral corporation, even by Corporation Rim standards. I do not know what its connection is to Ratthi or to Dr. Gurathin.
Oh. Now that it had put it like that, I thought I did.
Sure enough, Ratthi said, his voice shaking even more, "That's the corporation that Gurathin escaped from."
The room went silent. I'm pretty sure we were all thinking about what a corporation, especially a "particularly immoral" one, would do to a recaptured escapee. It wasn't anything good.
"Alright," Seth said after a moment. "Before we panic, can we track where the letter was sent from? Dr. Gurathin didn't give any details on what he needs help with. We don't know for certain what's going on."
"I cannot accurately trace the letter," ART said, sounding annoyed. "It appears to have been redirected multiple times. Given time, I may be able to determine its origin, but Dr. Gurathin's code is… very thorough."
"Let me look," I said. "I know how he works." Gurathin's coding was always thorough, but there were a couple of places where it could be broken.
ART passed me the data, and I started untangling the purposeful mess of redirects. Gurathin's work was as thorough (aka paranoid) as always, but it was also sloppier than usual. That didn't seem like a good sign to me, but it did let me parse his code more easily.
"It definitely went through Preservation," I said, "but I don't think it came from there. I'm pretty sure it came from a spot near the wormhole." I sent the exact location to ART.
Grimly, ART confirmed, "That wormhole could be used to travel to TesWalCast."
"Fuck!" Ratthi yelled. "Fuck, fuck-" He looked up at the ceiling. "How long would it take for us to get there if we left now?"
ART paused for a few seconds, probably short enough that I was the only one who caught its hesitation. "Three cycles."
"Three- Fuck!"
"Gurathin would have known it would take a while before we could get to him," I said. "He must not be expecting them to do anything fatal. He wouldn't have asked for help if he knew we wouldn't be able to get there in time."
Ratthi still looked upset, but I thought he also looked a little reassured. "There's a lot they can do that wouldn't kill him," he said, but he didn't sound mad, just helpless.
"We can spend the next three cycles planning," Seth said. "I know the university has looked into TesWalCast before. Peri, can you gather all the information we have?"
"I already have," ART reported as a data package dropped into our shared feed.
"Ratthi," Seth added, "did Dr. Gurathin ever tell you anything about his time with TesWalCast that could be helpful?"
"He… never liked to talk about it," Ratthi admitted, "but he did tell me a few things. I don't know how helpful they'll be."
"Anything can help," Seth said. "You and Tarik can make a list of everything you know."
That was a good pair to put together. Ratthi was clearly upset, and Tarik was the best option to help calm him down. Ratthi was friendly with everyone, of course, but I didn't think he'd spent much time with Seth or Martyn, and ART was probably going to claim Iris for its own part of the planning. The next best person was probably me, and… Yeah, I didn't do "comforting" very well. Tarik was definitely a better bet.
"SecUnit," Seth said, turning in my general direction and looking at a spot over my shoulder, "you've done extractions like this before, right?"
Well, not exactly, because most of my previous extractions had been working for corporations and not against them, but close enough. "Yes."
"Then you and Iris and Peri can start brainstorming plans," Seth declared. "And Martyn and I will make sure we have all the paperwork ready so the university won't be too angry with us for pulling something like this when we're supposed to be on a quiet vacation."
I felt a small spike of alarm. Do not worry, ART told me, almost before I could even process it. We will go to rescue Dr. Gurathin no matter what the university thinks. Seth is merely trying to figure out how to best mitigate any consequences. We have had to do similar things before. He's very good at it.
Okay. That was good, because otherwise, Ratthi and I would have to try to commit mutiny, and I didn't love our chances. I could take on everyone else, but I probably couldn't actually get ART to do anything it didn't want to do.
I would help you regardless, ART added. No, it couldn't read my mind, it just knew me pretty well and often said I was predictable. It was also very loyal, and if it really sided with us, then the odds of success for my and Ratthi's theoretical future mutiny shot way up.
"Are we all agreed?" Seth asked.
"We can do this," Iris said confidently. "We'll save your friend, don't worry."
I was pretty sure she was saying this to both me and Ratthi, but I swallowed the urge to tell her that Gurathin wasn't my friend and was actually an asshole. It seemed unnecessarily rude when he was probably in the process of being dragged back into the sort of corporate slavery he'd literally given himself minor brain damage to escape.
"We can do this," Ratthi echoed, and he looked over at me. He made eye contact for a brief instant, then twitched his eyes away. I knew he was looking for comfort and/or reassurance before ART told me that, but I just wasn't sure how to give it. I needed to do something, though, so I nodded.
Inspiring, ART said dryly in my feed, but it did look like it made Ratthi feel a little better. He nodded back, then he turned to Tarik.
"Should we go make that list?"
Tarik took his hand and led him out of the room. I saw Seth subvocalizing and assumed he was saying something to ART, then he and Martyn left too, leaving just me and Iris in the kitchen, with ART as ever-present as always. It was nominally supposed to be working with me and Iris, and I was sure it would, but it would also probably micromanage everyone else's jobs. ART had too much processing power for its own good.
"Should we go to the Argument Lounge?" Iris asked. "The chairs are comfier there."
They were, and I also didn't really like spending time in the kitchen, mostly because humans would come in all the time to eat food, which was gross. I wasn't sure if Iris knew that or if she legitimately wanted to sit in a comfier chair. ART knew it, of course, but I wasn't sure whether or not it had told Iris, and I knew it wouldn't tell me if I asked. Sure, it liked me, but Iris was its favorite. I wasn't even going to try to interfere there.
"Sure," I said, and we headed to the Argument Lounge. (I liked that even the humans had started calling that.) I sat down in one of the chairs, which was very comfy, and Iris sat in another one and created a shared workspace for the two of us and ART in the feed.
"Okay," she declared. "SecUnit, you said you've done things like this before. What do we need to know to extract Dr. Gurathin?"
I reminded myself that I'd extracted living clients from situations that were less than nine percent survivable, which was something I'd told Gurathin when he'd doubted my ability to save Mensah when corporates had taken her. It was still just as true now. I'd gotten Mensah out then; I could get Gurathin out now.
I also reminded myself that I didn't care nearly as much about Gurathin as I did about Mensah, but that felt weird to think about for some reason, so I focused on answering Iris's question instead.
"We need to know where he's being held, and ideally we need a map of the area. Any information we can get about his condition would be good, but we can work without that if we have to."
Iris nodded. "Would it be worth it to try contacting Three? Would it be able to get here in time to help?"
Three had decided not to go with us to Preservation and instead was staying with the others at the university. It was interested in learning, so I think it was auditing a few classes, and it had also said something about meeting with Holism. That had sent ART into a long tirade in our private feed, but it had enough tact not to say anything to Three.
At top speeds and barring any delays, Three would not be able to reach TesWalCast's headquarters for almost fifteen cycles. Considering that it will only take us three cycles to reach it, it is unlikely that Three would arrive early enough to make a difference, ART said.
Are you just saying that because you're worried Three would come on Holism? I asked warily in our private feed.
No, ART huffed. And I would hope Three would have better taste.
"Okay, so it's just us," Iris said. "Peri, do we have a timeline of when Dr. Gurathin was taken?"
ART set up a timeline in our shared workspace. The letter was sent four cycles ago. Considering its proximity to Preservation when it was sent, I imagine Dr. Gurathin was taken sometime in that cycle.
"So it'll be seven cycles by the time we reach him," Iris said grimly. "SecUnit, how long do you think it'll take to get him out?"
I didn't like that question because I didn't have a good answer to it. "It depends," I said. "I can't come up with any details for our plan until I know the details of where they're holding him. But it'll take at least a few cycles, probably, unless we have a reason to move quicker."
"Isn't the fact that they have him at all a reason to move quicker?"
"Not if it means being sloppy. I'm not gonna leave him there for longer than I have to, but unless risk assessment is really freaking out, I want to get him out smart, not fast."
That is not grammatically correct, ART told me privately.
Fuck off, you know what I meant.
"I think university representatives had visited TesWalCast's headquarters before," Iris said, rifling through the data packet ART gave us before. "We don't have an exact map of the inside of the building, but we know generally how it's laid out."
I looked at the file Iris had highlighted. "It's on a planet?"
"There's a station too, but most of the workers are held on the planet," Iris said. "It's harder to escape from."
I hate planets. "ART, once we're close, can you scan the building and make a map of it?"
I can scan any unshielded areas, ART agreed. I imagine most employees would not be in shielded areas, but escapees might be.
Fuck. That brought up a problem I didn't like to think about, even though I knew it was an important one. Maps wouldn't help us if we didn't know where Gurathin was being held. ART could scan the whole damn place as much as it liked, but unless there was a place labeled on the feed as "Gurathin's room," which seemed unlikely, it wouldn't tell us where he was.
But if the scan couldn't tell us, then maybe Gurathin could tell us himself.
"Could you boost my signal so I could connect to Gurathin's augments when we get close enough?" I asked. "He's given me access to them before."
Perhaps, ART replied. It depends on what kind of shielding he is under, if any. But if you have direct access to his augments, then that would be enough to break through a great deal.
So now I just had to hope that Gurathin had never rescinded that access. It definitely would have been the smart thing to do, and also probably the asshole thing to do, but maybe Gurathin had been dumb and nice for once. I could hope.
"Is there any other way we can track him, Peri?" Iris asked. "Maybe with his augment signature?"
"I really doubt it," I said. "He recoded his augments so TesWalCast couldn't track him with them, so we probably can't either."
How? ART asked privately. I sent it the memory file of the conversation with Gurathin and Ratthi, then the one for my second conversation with Gurathin and my look at his augments. Interesting. This is the augmented human you consider an asshole?
He is an asshole, I replied, then I refocused on Iris. "We might be able to figure out where they keep escapees if we dig around a bit. If they have a specific place for that."
"They might," Iris replied. "Some corporations have a specific secure area where they hold escapees who are too valuable to imprison normally or send to a mining colony. Generally the augmented ones, especially if the corporation spent a lot of money on their augments."
"Gurathin is augmented, and I don't know exactly how much TesWalCast spent on his augments, but I don't think they were cheap." They were good quality, after all; the fact that they hadn't melted in his brain and killed him when he pulled that recoding shit proved that. "And if they went through the effort to recapture him, that probably means they want him for more than just mine labor."
"How long has it been since he escaped?"
"Almost ten years."
"Oh yeah, then they definitely either want him for his augments or to make an example out of him."
Huh. That was something I hadn't thought of, and I didn't like it. Iris had a point, though. Gurathin had escaped, even with his augments, and from what he'd said, he'd also helped other people escape before that. He'd moved to Preservation, and he'd probably kept a pretty low profile, but then there'd been the whole mess with Mensah and GrayCris, and it was possible that they'd seen something about him then. It still didn't entirely explain why they'd put so much effort into grabbing him, but maybe they just wanted to show the other workers that no one could ever get away. That was the sort of shit corporations liked to do.
"There's also what you said to Ratthi," Iris added. "About how Dr. Gurathin wouldn't have contacted you if he thought there was nothing you could do."
That was true. I'd said it partially to comfort Ratthi, but that didn't mean it was a lie. If Gurathin didn't think there was any chance of us getting to him in time, he wouldn't have left Ratthi a message, or he would have left a goodbye instead. But he asked for help, and I didn't think he would do that if he didn't think we could give it. I didn't think he'd leave Ratthi with that guilt.
I wondered who he'd expected to find the message, though. Ratthi couldn't, obviously, and Gurathin didn't know about ART, unless one of the others had seriously violated their NDA. I pinged ART to ask what it thought and got back an incredibly unimpressed answer.
You, you little idiot.
Oh. That did make sense, I could have checked for encrypted messages like ART did, but that meant that Gurathin had been counting on me to help Ratthi look, and counting on me to care enough to look closely. Come to think of it, he was probably counting on me more than anyone else to get him out. He'd sent the message to Ratthi instead of any of the others on Preservation, and while they were close, I was pretty sure he wouldn't have asked Ratthi to rescue him from a corporation alone. Not without help from a trusted rogue SecUnit.
Those two words should have been opposites. (Acronyms? No, but something that sounded like that. I'd ask ART later.) Anyway, the point was, you weren't supposed to trust rogue SecUnits. You weren't really supposed to trust SecUnits at all, except maybe to do what they were told if they had an active governor module. But the PresAux team trusted me, and while I'd kinda thought Gurathin was still the last holdout, I guess I was wrong. I guess he trusted me too.
He was still an asshole. He was still definitely far from my favorite PresAux team member. But he was trusting me, and I didn't want to let him down.
"Gurathin is counting on us," I said. I was aware that it was a very obvious statement, but it felt like the right thing to say anyway.
Iris smiled softly at me. "Then I think we should look at the information we have on TesWalCast so we can figure out how to get him back."
After some planning and research, Iris went back to the kitchen to eat breakfast, which had been interrupted by Gurathin's letter. (ART insisted after her stomach growled multiple times, citing something about humans needing three solid meals a day. I tuned them out when they started talking about eating things.) Seth called ART for assistance with something, so it focused its primary attention on him and Martyn, and I slipped into the camera feeds to check on Ratthi.
He was in his room with Tarik, which gave me a moment of pause, but his vital readings didn't indicate that he was doing anything intensive, so I peeked in anyway. He and Tarik were sitting on the edge of their bed with a shared list in the feed of things Gurathin had told Ratthi about TesWalCast. It seemed like they'd mostly finished with the list, though, and Ratthi had his head leaning on Tarik's shoulder.
"We'll save your friend," Tarik was telling him gently. "This is what our crew does, saving people from corporations."
"This is a little different from amending an abandoned colony's charter," Ratthi countered. "We're going to need to break him out."
"Yeah, and we've got a SecUnit to help us do it. And Peri, who could probably intimidate them into giving Dr. Gurathin up if we give it free rein for five minutes."
Ratthi snorted. "Why are you so scared of Perihelion? It's not that bad."
"It likes you," Tarik said darkly. "Get back to me when it's pissed at you."
"Or I can be smart and not piss it off."
"Probably a better plan."
They were quiet for a moment, then Tarik asked tentatively, "You seem… close to Dr. Gurathin. Is he one of your… partners?"
The question horrified me so much I froze and forgot to drop the input. "Gurathin?" Ratthi asked, and I braced myself. "No, he's just a friend. He's not interested in any of that anyway."
The relief I felt was so intense I almost dropped the input then, but now I didn't want to anymore, so I grabbed it just before it slipped away. I also tucked away the knowledge that Gurathin apparently wasn't interested in romantic or sexual partnerships; I hadn't realized there were humans who didn't want those either.
"I've just… I've known him since he first got to Preservation," Ratthi was continuing. "And he was a wreck back then. The whole thing he did to his augments definitely didn't help, but it wasn't just that, it was everything about the Rim and TesWalCast and what they'd done to him. He's gotten so much better over the years. He's so much happier now. And the thought of him being dragged back there, where he was miserable and scared and desperate… I hate it, Tarik, I hate it."
"But he's not as bad off this time as he was before," Tarik countered. "He knows you're coming to save him."
Ratthi shook his head. "You don't know him like I do. Gurathin hates asking for help. If he sent me that message, it was because he'd already tried to free himself and he'd failed. He's desperate, because he wouldn't have asked for help if he wasn't. And he's paranoid and pessimistic, and there's no way he's going to assume we'll get there in time to save him. He'll probably keep trying to plan ways to escape himself because he's stubborn, but I don't think he's hopeful at all."
"Well, then we can prove him wrong," Tarik said. "We'll get him out, Ratthi. It's gonna be okay."
Ratthi sighed and leaned against Tarik, then he turned his head in a way that I knew meant he was about to kiss him. I pulled away as fast as I could, throwing myself out of the camera feed and back into my own body.
How are Ratthi and Tarik? ART asked in a too-innocent tone. I sent it back a barrage of rude sigils, which it found way too amusing.
I have a question about Dr. Gurathin, it asked after a moment. You have said you do not like him.
I don't. He's an asshole.
You also call me an asshole.
And who says I like you?
ART did the feed equivalent of waving me off dismissively. You say you do not like Dr. Gurathin, but you are also dedicated to saving him now.
I don't have to like him to not want him stuck in corporate slavery for the rest of his life.
ART acknowledged that, then asked, Do you dislike him because he found you out on your initial survey?
How do you know that? I demanded.
Your letter to Dr. Mensah.
You read that?
Yes. No guilt, of course; ART had issues with the concept of privacy (by which I meant it ignored it completely).
You're an asshole.
Are you saying that because I invaded your privacy, as Dr. Gurathin did when he discovered that you had disabled your governor module?
Yeah, kind of, but I wasn't sure I liked the comparison. Why the fuck are you comparing yourself to Gurathin? I don't like him.
So you say, ART agreed in a frankly weird tone.
Why are you so obsessed with Gurathin right now?
We're on our way to rescue him from corporate slavery, which will be easier if I know more about him. Such as why you dislike him so much.
What the fuck does that have to do with rescuing him?
Does it have anything to do with rescuing him? ART asked. Will it influence your decisions?
Fuck you.
That is not an answer.
Fuck you, I repeated, even though I knew ART was sort of right. Then I added, reluctantly, It won't influence my decisions. Like I said, I don't have to like him to not want him stuck in corporate slavery. Plus, it would make Ratthi upset if we didn't rescue him, and I do like Ratthi.
Hmm, ART replied, and it refused to elaborate no matter how much I demanded to know what the hell that meant. It really was such an asshole sometimes.
The camera in the kitchen told me that Seth and Martyn had joined Iris in there, so I headed that way too (after confirming that no one was eating anything). Seth had confirmed to Iris that he and Martyn had done everything they could to keep the university from caring too much about our unsanctioned mission, and now they were discussing the best way to get ART close enough to TesWalCast's headquarters that it could help while also keeping it far enough away that TesWalCast couldn't pose any threat to it. I frowned as I entered the kitchen. It sounded like they were planning on how to keep ART close enough that it could access their interfaces, but it could piggyback off me from further away, and also I didn't necessarily want any humans down there anyway. I was already going to have to rescue Gurathin; I didn't want to have to rescue them too.
"You're not coming down to the planet with me," I announced, cutting into their discussion.
Martyn sighed. "I told you," he murmured to Seth, who shot him a look and then turned to me.
"SecUnit, we want to help."
"You won't be helping by coming down and getting yourselves killed or captured."
"We know you have experience with extractions," Iris said, "but so do we. And we weren't thinking we'd go down and fight with you, we were thinking more that we could help distract people so that they don't notice you breaking Dr. Gurathin out."
They do have experience, ART told me. And I will not let any harm come to them.
I thought about it. A distraction could be helpful, but it could also be dangerous if anyone found out they were being deliberately distracted. The humans knew that, of course, but… They were still humans, and humans couldn't be trusted to do their own security.
I don't like it, I told ART.
You don't like anything, it countered.
Okay, it wasn't entirely wrong about that. I don't want them getting hurt, I said. And we can't promise they won't.
You are feeling especially protective, which is understandable under the circumstances. However-
I'm feeling like I don't want to end up having to rescue a bunch of humans instead of just one, I interrupted. The more humans you're extracting, the more difficult the extraction is.
"I know you and Peri are probably arguing about whether or not we can join you," Iris said, "and if you really want us to stay, SecUnit, we will. You're our security consultant, and you get the final say. But we all want to help, and I really think this is the best way we can."
Well, fuck. Somehow, Iris being so understanding and giving me the option to ban them all from coming made me want to work with them more. Which was stupid, because it should have made me grateful they were listening to me and even more protective, but instead, it made me feel bad about telling them to stay out of it. They should stay out of it, so they wouldn't get themselves killed, but now I felt like telling them that would be mean. As if it was mean to keep the humans from dying! This was something stupid my organics were doing, I knew it, but that didn't mean I knew how to deal with it.
"I'll decide once we know more about the location," I said, which we all knew was basically just me stalling. "And if you do go, you have to take Tarik with you."
"That's fair," Iris agreed. "Thank you, SecUnit."
There was no reason for her to thank me for potentially letting her do something that would risk her life. Humans, both augmented and not, are so fucking weird.
"We also wanted to know if there's anything we can do to help Dr. Gurathin when we bring him onboard," Martyn said. "I'm sure this is all very traumatic for him, and he doesn't know any of us except you and Ratthi. It'll take a few days to travel back to Preservation. What can we do to make Dr. Gurathin as comfortable as possible during that time?"
Absolutely no part of me had been expecting that question. "You should ask Ratthi. He knows Gurathin better."
"I will ask Ratthi," Martyn said, "but I thought it was best to ask both of you. You might each have ideas that the other wouldn't."
"Ratthi's ideas will be better than mine," I said, and then an idea actually occurred to me, and I asked, "Do you have syrup for coffee? Gurathin drinks his coffee with a stupid amount of syrup."
It wasn't a big thing. It probably didn't even matter. But Gurathin drank a lot of coffee (when he didn't, he was even grumpier than usual), and he always drank it with a lot of syrup.
Martyn smiled. "I'll make sure we're stocked up."
And that made me feel… weird. I wasn't sure if it was a good-weird or a bad-weird, but it was definitely weird. It wasn't something I wanted to unpack. I wanted to hide in my room and watch media. I knew I should focus on helping Gurathin, but Iris had taken a break to eat, and I was pretty sure Ratthi and Tarik were kissing in Ratthi's room, and I could run an analysis of the data packet on TesWalCast in the background while I watched an episode or two of Sanctuary Moon. It would definitely help in the long run.
"I'm going to go," I said, and I got up and did. ART's crew knew me well enough now to know this was something I did, and anyway, my contract specifically said I was allowed to. I went back to my room, and I felt ART lean on me in the feed.
Are you alright? it asked.
"I'm fine," I said, ignoring the fact that the tension in my voice made that kinda hard to believe. "I'm going to watch Sanctuary Moon while I analyze the data on TesWalCast."
ART pulled up episode 206. I rolled my eyes. "I'm fine, ART." Not that episode 206 wasn't a good episode (and one of my favorites), but I knew that it knew I used it as a comfort episode. I didn't need a comfort episode, I just wanted to watch my media.
ART huffed and switched to episode 231. I closed that one too. "We're not getting into another argument about if that one was supposed to be a dream." Besides, I was pretty sure it had chosen that episode specifically to spite me.
Then you should choose an episode, ART said, a bit waspishly.
I considered pulling up the episode where you found out the Terraforming Supervisor was alive and the Colony Solicitor faked her death, but ART didn't like that one, so instead I started from the beginning of season 28, which had my favorite story arc. ART leaned harder against me as we watched, my analysis program working steadily on the TesWalCast data in the background.
I do not understand the dynamic between you and Dr. Gurathin, ART said when the first episode finished and I pulled up the second. But we will get him out. He will be alright.
The last time he escaped, he ended up with brain damage.
Minor brain damage, and most of it short-term, from what you told me. And we will be there this time, so his chances of avoiding brain damage are much higher.
It was true that Gurathin's chances were better with us around. Risk assessment still wasn't happy about them. He's an escapee now, I said. They'll be watching him more closely. They won't want to let him escape again.
We will not give them a choice, ART said in its best villain voice. We will rescue Dr. Gurathin.
Okay, I agreed, just to see how it would feel. We will.
It did make me feel better to say it. I was too pessimistic to fully believe it, but hey, this was probably a step in the right direction.
I started the next episode of Sanctuary Moon, and ART settled in my feed to watch.