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I was in my hotel room on Preservation Station when I got a ping from Three. That wasn’t unusual, Three usually pinged me when it wanted something and waited for me to respond before it actually used words. This was different. This was an Assistance Needed ping. The only reason I didn’t immediately panic about it (even my organics decided to stay calm which was a surprise) was because it was very thoroughly tagged as a drill. Three even used a bunch of other tags that all meant the same thing, like ‘fake’ and ‘mockup’, so there was no way this was a real emergency unless Three had been hacked to the point of not being Three anymore.
…yeah, I wasn’t going to think about that.
All I had been doing was rewatching Sanctuary Moon, because it was something I didn’t have to focus on while I decided to stare at the ceiling and do nothing. It was annoying, because I wanted to do something but I didn’t know what and everything sounded like a bad idea when I went through my limited options for activities aside from watching media. So I pinged Three back, asking for the situation and what I could do to help, because what else was I going to do? I could keep watching Sanctuary Moon in the background anyway if this wasn’t too complicated of a drill, so overall I was losing nothing.
Three responded in a way that made me wonder if this was its idea in the first place, or if some human had dragged it into this. It said, Unit compromised [drill], humans in need of rescue [drill], Assistance Needed [drill].
I was beginning to understand what the humans meant when they said a word started to not look like a word. Drill was rapidly becoming a string of nonsense with how often Three was using it.
If Three really had been dragged into this by some over-eager human it couldn’t say no to, then I felt at least some obligation to save it. It was still getting used to saying no when it didn’t want to do something. At least me showing up and going through this drill would save it from more than just its fake injuries. The worst that could happen (even according to my threat and risk assessments) was that I’d hate the experience and not do it again in the future, so all in all I still had nothing to lose because that was a low bar.
I sent back [Support Pending] and asked for an update on the humans’ current locations and possible injuries. Three shared its drone inputs with me, with six being marked as destroyed (also tagged as [drill]) and the other eight in high positions over what looked like a collapsed building. That was when my organics began to sweat, because that didn’t look like a fake building collapse, but Three started to explain what was going on.
A newly built [drill] structure for human entertainment collapsed under the weight of 5 humans [drill]. Air is compromised with dust [drill] from the collapse. (Three included an actual analysis of the air quality, which read as normal for Preservation Station. I wasn’t about to thank it for that, but it helped keep my organics from freaking out more.) 3 out of 5 humans visible [drill], remaining 2 assumed to be buried under the rubble [drill].
Then it included a material breakdown of the collapsed structure, and it was 80% lightweight organic material and 20% soft foam, completely hollow. I was so surprised by that that even my organics stopped freaking out.
I said, Three, what exactly is going on?
Three didn’t respond for 2 whole seconds, and when it did it sounded embarrassed. Dr. Bharadwaj suggested that an emergency drill might help with our boredom.
Our boredom, it said. Our boredom. I didn’t know what to say to that, so I ignored it, but the thought that Bharadwaj was trying to give us something to do made me melt a little because (and I don’t want to admit this to any of my humans ever) it was working. I no longer felt like my entire body was vibrating and my neural tissue was stretching and squeezing, and my risk and threat assessment modules were both giving me mock-up percentages about the situation Three was part of. I felt like I had more energy than I had in weeks.
Instead of saying any of this, I searched through Three’s drone cams for the three humans it said were visible. The first one I saw was Bharadwaj, which made me melt even more. She was on her back, half buried under the fake rubble and scrolling through a handheld feed device. What information I could get from it told me she was looking for more of the same material that the fake rubble was made of.
The next human I saw was Pin-Lee, also half buried. She was on her stomach, her arms folded under her head, and she was talking to Mensah, who was on top of the rubble but with a few marks on her that I couldn’t see the details of from the drone’s angle. They were both smiling and laughing about something, and their body language read as calm and happy.
So three of the five humans were all my humans. I knew Volescu was still with his family and Arada and Overse were visiting their own, all on the planet, so the last two humans under the fake rubble were most likely going to be Ratthi and Gurathin.
I pinged Three that I was actually on my way this time. It supplied its location and gave me an access code, and in return I gave an ETA. It took me 5 minutes to get there, it was a large enclosed area closer to the maintenance levels than the public rings, and the access code opened the door. I immediately sent my own drones in to scan the area and I looked down at Three, who was sitting just inside on the right and who looked up at me when I stepped inside. On its right leg and arm were stickers in compressed machine language that told me its leg was broken off at the thigh and its entire arm was missing. All three visible humans perked up when they saw my drones, and Bharadwaj waved at one with a lot of energy and a big smile.
Now that I could get a better angle, I saw that Bharadwaj, Mensah and Pin-Lee all had similar stickers on them with medical information. Mensah and Bharadwaj had one on their foreheads that detailed head injuries they had, and Mensah had two more on her left arm and left side saying she had two broken ribs and a fractured ulna. MedSys, which connected to me once I stepped into the room, told me an ulna was one of the bones in her forearm. Pin-Lee’s sticker was between her shoulders and said that she most likely had two broken legs and a shattered pelvis. MedSys started listing what I needed to bring with me and what I needed to do to keep everyone alive.
Every part of me, organic and inorganic, was vibrating again but it wasn’t like before when I was staring at the ceiling and watching Sanctuary Moon. This was like that energy now had a place it wanted to go, and I actually wanted to do this.
I flew the drone that Bharadwaj was looking at in a circle around her, and her smile somehow got bigger.
There was a medstation in this room on the left side of the door, along with a few cabinets of other materials that I didn’t care about. I grabbed what MedSys recommended for the injuries everyone had and started with Three, who wouldn’t die but was the closest. I gave it what it needed and then moved to Pin-Lee, who was marked as the most likely to die if not treated immediately. (Even MedSys was tagging all of this as a drill.)
Mensah waved at me with her good arm and looked at the drone I had above her while I started moving the fake rubble to get to Pin-Lee, who was grinning. Their good moods were out of place with the details of the drill but I couldn’t bring myself to care that much. Pin-Lee made overdramatic injured noises as I got her out, and started quoting one of Preservation’s plays, a monologue about being too young to die with too much to live for, and laughed when I used the (also fake, everything about this was fake, but somehow that didn’t bother me) medicine to keep her from bleeding out internally. She dutifully laid still as I supported her legs and lower back, following MedSys’s instructions, and then said, “Glad you decided to show up.”
She sounded amused and teasing, and also genuine. I ignored that last part and said, “Someone had to save you idiots.”
She laughed more and let me carry her back to Three’s location, which was now marked as a safe zone.
When I returned to Mensah she smiled again, staring off to the side instead of at me or my drone, which I was thankful for. I didn’t think I could handle her looking at me like that, even if it was just at my drones. She held out her injured arm when I motioned to it and watched me follow more instructions to support it and her broken ribs before she finally said anything. “Hello, SecUnit. How are you doing?”
This was not what people talked about in disaster situations, but I still couldn’t bring myself to care about that. I said, “Fine.” and then sent off the drone I had watching her to search for a way to get into the biggest part of the collapsed building.
“I can walk,” Mensah said when I started to help her stand. She hesitated in touching me, which I knew was because she was very determined not to touch me without permission, but right now was different.
“You have a concussion,” I said, and held my hands out to her for her to grab herself. “MedSys recommends I escort you to the safe zone.”
She glanced at my face and then stared at my hands for several long seconds before she grabbed them and let me help her to the designated safe area, where Three was now following more instructions to stabilize Pin-Lee.
Then I went to Bharadwaj. She waved at me again while I got closer, me and not my drone, and helpfully said, “I think my leg is broken.”
MedSys updated its instructions. While I started digging her out too, finding another sticker that said yes she definitely had a broken leg, I said, “So this was your idea.” The rubble was unstable so that gave me another excuse not to look at her aside from my usual reason, but I kept my drone pointed at her anyway.
Bharadwaj’s heart accelerated and blood rushed to her face, which MedSys still detailed to me without the drill tags. “I did,” she said, and her chin tilted up even if she was lying on her back. “I know you’ve been bored.”
I finished extracting her from the fake rubble with no further injury and started stabilizing her broken leg. I didn’t say anything for a few seconds, long enough for even a human to notice, and then I said, “I was.”
Bharadwaj was the second closest human to me, so I knew she picked up on how I said that. She grinned and her body relaxed, and she said, “Maybe we can do this more often.”
She helped me lift her off the ground in a way that was comfortable for her, and I started carrying her to the others. I said, “Maybe. But not too often.”
Bharadwaj nodded. “Not too often, then. Just often enough. I’ll see what I can do.”
Neither of us said anything else as I brought her over and left her with Three. My risk assessment module started giving me different estimations for moving different parts of the rubble as I walked back to the collapsed structure to try digging out Ratthi and Gurathin. It took 5 minutes to do it in such a way that didn’t result in the collapse of the rest of the building and the death of my remaining two humans.
The fact that it was a drill, and that that was repeated so often, kept me from actually panicking about the possibility.
I moved one last piece of debris and then I saw Ratthi squinting up at me. He grinned and said, “SecUnit! Excellent timing.” He didn’t move because I was still digging them out, but he did turn to Gurathin and said, “See.”
Gurathin, from out of sight, said, “Fine. This weekend, then.”
I didn’t know what they were talking about and I didn’t care. I sent a drone into the small space with the two of them to make sure there were no weak sections at risk of collapsing, and I reached in to help Gurathin out of the hole they managed to find themselves in. Gurathin had a sticker on his forehead that told me he had inhaled a lot of dust but was otherwise uninjured, so I gave him the MedSys prescribed medication to help with that and instructed him on how to get down the structure safely. I knew he’d follow my directions exactly, so I turned to Ratthi to help him out too.
Ratthi grinned at me again, but turned to my drone before he said, “I’m glad you decided to come!” He was as energetic as always, and the sticker on his forehead also said he was otherwise uninjured aside from dust inhalation.
I said the same thing to him that I said to Pin-Lee, “Someone had to save you idiots.”
Ratthi’s face softened and I looked away as I helped him out.
Gurathin was waiting at the bottom with his hands on his hips and the usual sour expression on his face, and he helped Ratthi the last few feet to safety. Then Ratthi turned to one of my drones and said, “Gurathin bet you were going to leave us to die.”
Gurathin snorted and crossed his arms. “Only because this isn’t a real emergency,” he said, and bumped into Ratthi with his shoulder as they started walking to the safe area. I followed behind them and did my best not to think about what Gurathin meant.
“SecUnit would never leave us to die, even in a fake emergency!” Ratthi bumped into Gurathin in the same way.
I watched Gurathin grab a smaller piece of the fake rubble and hit Ratthi’s chest with it. It was too soft and too lightweight to do any kind of damage like that, but Ratthi still made a surprised noise and feigned injury.
“SecUnit! Gurathin is hurting me!”
I didn’t want to get between them or get involved in this, so I said, “You’ll live.”
Gurathin laughed, loud and echoing in the room.
Everyone greeted us when we made it back to the safe zone, and the humans started talking about the exercise. Bharadwaj asked me if the compressed machine language stickers were good for conveying information in a situation like this, and I said yes. It gave me the details that I would have at a glance if the situation was a real emergency in a way that was fast and efficient. She thanked Three for putting those together.
When I pinged it, Three said, She asked for a way to quickly convey information. Her previous idea was feed tags.
The compressed machine language was definitely better.
Bharadwaj then asked the humans how the exercise felt. Even though most of them were apparently just sitting there waiting for me to show up, they all rated it highly. A few even described it as fun, which didn’t make sense to me. They were sitting there or laying there doing nothing. I didn’t understand how that was fun to them.
When she turned to me and Three, looking at Three, she said, “Did you two enjoy this?” Three smiled and nodded. I couldn’t bring myself to nod so I sent her an affirmative over the feed. Even if I wanted to lie about it I knew they’d all know, since I wasn’t one to do something like this without reason. She smiled, still looking at Three but I knew it was for both of us, and said, “Is this something you’d want to do again?”
Three nodded and smiled again. I sent another affirmative message and ignored how warm I felt. I was melting again. Bharadwaj went through the trouble of doing all of this, roped my other humans into it, and she wanted to do it again and do it better.
After that she thanked everyone for showing up and sent everyone on their way, including me and Three. None of the humans stopped to talk to me or Three on their way out, which I was grateful for, but Bharadwaj did send me a message.
Be honest with me. Did you actually have fun?
At least this was happening over the feed. I didn’t have to worry about what my expression was doing or how my voice sounded. I was already on my way back to my hotel room and no other human was in sight, given the location of the drill.
I did.
Almost immediately (for a human) after I responded, she said, Is this something you’d want to do again?
This was the same question she’d asked at the end of the drill. I don’t know why she was asking me again, but my answer wasn’t changing.
It is, I said. My organics were acting weird, but that wasn’t anything new. Bharadwaj was one of the few humans I didn’t have as much trouble being honest with, but that doesn’t mean I still didn’t feel weird about it.
Bharadwaj didn’t say anything else until I was back in my room. If you get bored again, I can organize this with some variations, she said. It’ll be good for you and Three to have some nonviolent and not life threatening enrichment.
I had to look up what enrichment was, but there was no way I could argue with that.
Then she added, the message purposefully tagged as teasing and amused, Even humans need to play. I don’t see how SecUnits are different there.
I sat down on the couch. I didn’t feel like I was vibrating anymore, my organic neural tissue was quiet, and when I turned on Sanctuary Moon again I felt calmer than I had in a while.
I guess so.