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When I ran away from the Preservation team at Commerce City, I didn't have a direction in mind other than away. I hacked a ticket machine to get passage on the next bus leaving the terminal, and on the long ride I watched media in the background while thinking about what to do next.
When I disembarked at Uplandtown, I studied the little city map posted on a wall, hoping to find a public data repository, otherwise known as a library.
"Need directions?" asked someone I had seen on the bus.
I tried not to flinch. "I'm looking for the library."
"That way," they said. "Three blocks east, and four more north. It'll be closed for the night by the time you get there, though."
I nodded my thanks and followed their directions. Closed was best, anyway. I could do my research without any humans watching or tracking my searches.
Hacking my way into the building was easy, and the LibSys helpfully provided part of what I was looking for: the location of InyanKara. What I didn't find was any information about the incident that had happened there. The incident that I think I caused. Maybe. I was starting to suspect I'd need to go there myself to figure out what really happened.
I'd tried finding the information in the company databases in Commerce City, but they had already deleted most of it. Deleting potentially incriminating information was standard policy, so I was disappointed but not surprised.
Between here and InyanKara there was a university — the University of Mihira and New Tideland — and the library kept pointing me to resources there. It could borrow those resources, but that would require human approval (which I could probably fake). The problem was that it might take a day or more to courier over the books and maps I wanted.
It was tempting to wait in the library, which had a nice media room, but instead I downloaded its most interesting media and left to make my way to UMNT. An hour later I stepped off a light rail train at the station nearest the university campus.
UMNT had multiple libraries. My first choice was their "general" library, which had information on a lot of topics (and the biggest fiction media collection).
But as I got closer, I saw there was a traffic accident in front of it, with a lot of emergency responders trying to figure out if anyone was actually hurt and who was to blame. To avoid that scene, I went to my second choice: the Perihelion Sciences Collection.
I reached out to the LibSys to confirm it was empty of humans, and showed it my card from the Uplandtown library to identify myself as an actual library patron instead of a random person trying to break in. It unlocked a side door and let me in, locking the door again behind me.
First I learned my way around. I never really felt safe unless I knew where all the exits were, and where I could hide if necessary. I soon realized why this place was called a collection, and not just a library. Beyond the bookshelves were rooms with other types of materials. A room of rocks, for some reason. What looked like classrooms or meeting rooms. There was even a garage where a couple of shuttle buses were parked. On the upper level I found an observatory, and next to it was a media room unlike any I'd ever seen before — a large space with seats that reclined under a rounded screen. It was showing the night sky when I entered, and when I sat down a very short movie played, about a nearby galaxy. That was pretty, but I was really in the mood for fiction, so I accessed the video display controls and started watching something new — a show called The Librarians — about people who gathered and protected magical artifacts. It was very unrealistic, which was exactly what I wanted.
Suddenly someone said, You were lucky.
It was in the feed, and it sounded like LibSys, if that makes sense. It was big and authoritative in a way you would expect of a LibSys in a major university library. But it communicated in human language, which systems like that didn't do. The Uplandtown library system spoke in ISBNs and similar search terms in a standard machine language. I paused the show and warily asked, "Why was I lucky?"
That no one on campus recognized what you were. And it showed me images of SecUnits and a list of the signs a SecUnit was rogue. Just as I was starting to wonder if I could delete that information from LibSys, it added, Do not attempt to hack my systems! And for a fraction of a second it revealed how vast it really was — much bigger and more sophisticated than the Uplandtown library had been. It could squash me like a bug.
How was I supposed to know there were libraries intelligent enough to be mean? But it was too late to leave now. I'd been checking its catalog while watching the show, and it had all of the books and maps the Uplandtown library had recommended. It seemed safe to assume that the university's other libraries wouldn't have duplicates.
For a few minutes I huddled in my chair, trying to decide how to placate this asshole library so I could get what I needed. Before I reached a conclusion it said, You can continue to watch the media.
I didn't do that, even though it would reduce my stress, because I was mad and didn't want to do what it told me.
Don't sulk, it added. And that just made me angry.
"SecUnits don't sulk," I said in a totally not-sulky tone. "Sulking would trigger punishment from the governor module." And I sent a random set of memories of what that felt like.
It was quiet for a while, and I decided to watch Sanctuary Moon. That was my comfort show when I was stressed, and I was very stressed right now.
I could tell that ARC (Asshole Research Collection) was watching with me. After I finished the episode, it pinged me, like maybe I hadn't noticed it there, and asked me to return to the show I had been watching earlier. When I asked why it didn't watch the show itself, it explained that it had difficulty understanding fiction in media because it lacked context. My emotional filters made it easier, I guess. And if it needed that from me, it would be less likely to squash my brain, so I agreed. When there were scenes where a librarian was in danger, it got upset, and when one died, ARC had to stop watching for eight minutes. When the characters fixed things so the librarian wasn't dead anymore, we had to watch that scene twice. And when it was implied that the library itself might be destroyed along with all of its artifacts and librarians, we had to watch in two-minute increments because ARC was afraid.
Through all of that, I was reluctantly starting to see ARC's point of view. I hadn't caused any damage at the Uplandtown library, but it didn't know that. The company's propaganda about rogue SecUnits was accepted as fact by pretty much everyone. Even I had believed it. The kind of rogues you heard about on the news could do a lot of damage to a collection like the one ARC managed.
I shared the list of resources the city library had recommended, and even explained why I wanted to know about the InyanKara mining facility. ARC immediately located those resources and more, including a set of maps of the mine that had been published annually for the last decade. Based on reports ARC found, we determined that the incident probably happened at a place called Ganaka Pit.
Now I had a destination I could investigate. I checked the light rail schedules to see when I could leave, and how close the passenger train could take me to InyanKara. Unfortunately there wasn't a direct connection. I'd need to transfer to a bus.
ARC had an alternate suggestion: It could send me in one of its shuttle buses. I use them to send and retrieve borrowed materials, it told me. They were autonomous vehicles, so the fact that I didn't have a driver's license wasn't an issue. ARC even showed me where it kept spare librarian uniforms, so I could pretend to be picking up books ARC ordered (it placed the order right then) from a corporate library at InyanKara. That would get me inside, where I could access local records. ARC also procured a public transit card so that I could travel through the mining facility and get near Ganaka Pit.
It also suggested a change to my configuration. In one of its lab areas, it had the ability to change my hair. That would make most systems that looked for SecUnits not recognize me — while there were thousands of different SecUnit faces that could also match as human faces, we all had hair that was recognizable in two ways. First, the color matched the owning company's corporate branding — for me it was orange with brown highlights — and second, the corporate logo was shaved into each side. I'd grown out my hair to cover the logos during my time with the PresAux Survey, but it was messy and someone who knew what they were looking for would guess what I'd done.
I wasn't thrilled about changing my appearance to the extent that ARC suggested, but I had to admit that it was right. While a human might choose to dye their hair in corporate branded colors and therefore no one on the bus or campus had recognized what I was, that wouldn't be the case at InyanKara, where SecUnits were common. It was also a windy place, and a moderately strong wind could blow my hair aside enough to reveal the logos, which had grown out but were still clearly visible.
ARC's drones wielded scissors to cut all of my hair to the same length. Then it gave me a standard human hair color — a dark brunette which actually looked good with my skin tone. Finally it applied some products to style my hair in a way that was popular among students and made me look like a non-threatening student working my way through school as a library staff member.
When I looked at the results in a mirror, I had to admit why I hadn't wanted to do this. Now I looked even more like a human. But it was literally too late to turn back now. ARC's real librarians would be arriving soon. I needed to get to the shuttle and be gone before anyone showed up who would question my presence in the library.
At least ARC and I could listen to music in the shuttle bus. That was the plus of going along with ARC's plan. The minus was that ARC now considered this to be a joint mission, and it had a lot of opinions to share about what I should do once we reached InyanKara.
Yes, it was right most of the time. No, that didn't make it any easier to deal with its bossiness.