Work Text:
If I'm honest, the whole mess started with the botched "data liberation" attempt on TeluFinGarin. Just Pin-Lee and Gurathin and me, all fleeing on a rickety shuttle whose bot pilot had seen its last better day hundreds of cycles ago.
Maybe even thousands.
I do not mind being in a small enclosed space for extended periods of time. It can be comforting in a familiar way, especially when things have gone spectacularly wrong and all I want to do is curl up in a corner with my media.
I do mind being shut into a small enclosed space with two stressed-out humans and a bot pilot glitching so badly I have to do most of its job for it. I couldn't even glance at my backburnered Starlight Banshees reruns long enough to follow the plot because every time I so much as twitched away from the nav console the bot pilot dumped another process.
And let's not forget Gurathin hyperventilating over nearly getting his augments fried and Pin-Lee drafting furious letters to the station authority while swearing profusely under her breath.
To say I was stressed when we finally docked back at Preservation was an understatement. I dumped the bot pilot's near-husk processes onto Port Authority and stalked out of the shuttle. Alerts flashed on the edges of my vision and I dismissed them with a shake of my head… only for the most persistent one to resurface half a second later.
[Warning: Cortisol Levels Dangerously High]
Tell me something I don't know, I grumbled to myself. I pulled my hoodie up over my head and shoved my hands deep in its comfortable front pocket, which helped a little. Threat assessment, which had been hovering at an uncomfortable 68 percent for the past three cycles, ticked downward a couple points. Not enough to satisfy my overactive stress hormones, but it did make me feel a tiny bit better.
You may be asking "Murderbot, why didn't you just automatically filter out all those pesky stress hormones? Surely the company that built you knows that high cortisol levels can make already twitchy murder machines even more twitchy?!"
The answer is "I really wish I could but The Company didn't give a single flying fuck if we were a little trigger happy." So I have to filter out cortisol the old fashioned way: time and effort.
By the time I reached my hotel room (Pin-Lee told me it was my permanent station-side residence but thinking about it in such concrete terms made my faulty risk assessment spike) my cortisol levels had dipped the barest fraction of a percent. If I had a biological heart it probably would have been hammering in my chest, but my fluid pumps and fans were doing a decent imitation.
I locked the door, set my feed status to Do Not Disturb, and crawled under the Perihelion-blue weighted blanket draped invitingly across my bed. After simply breathing for a moment, I started my favorite episode of Sanctuary Moon and settled in to wait out the lingering cortisol spike.
It shouldn't take long.
An hour and three real-time Sanctuary Moon episodes later, I was still as tense as when I had first stepped off that shuttle.
According to the ever-so-helpful warning text, my cortisol levels were still dangerously high and I needed to figure out a way to remedy that before my body decided the best course of action was an involuntary shutdown. I had already almost had one of those earlier when the bot pilot tried to die in my metaphorical feed arms and I didn't really want to tempt fate a second time.
With a groan (I didn't need to groan but sometimes making some kind of dissatisfied noise really helped me feel a bit better about the situation) I rolled onto my back, pulling the weighted blanket over my head. What else could I even do? I had tried meditation on the shuttle, which had kept me relatively stable until we were safely back at Preservation. I had tried my very favorite episodes of Sanctuary Moon, a method usually guaranteed to bring my levels back to baseline, and that had helped more than the meditation… but still not enough.
I supposed it was time to bring out more serious methods. Digging around in my personal storage for my notes from my last few Trauma Treatments, I pulled up a file helpfully titled "Hormonal Imbalances in Bio-Mechanical Bodies: A Case Study". They hadn't studied SecUnits - why would they? - but there were many precursors to constructs that had been studied more thoroughly over the years. And I figured a hormone is a hormone, it should work roughly the same way.
Several paragraphs in I was regretting being right.
Cortisol had to go away on its own, either through the simple passage of time or through activities that raised dopamine levels. And I had already exhausted most of my usual dopamine-stimulating activities to no effect.
There was one more thing I could try - the mere thought made my skin crawl - but, unless I wanted to be stewing in my own stress hormones for a subjective eternity, I had to try something. Glad for the weighted blanket over my face so that I couldn't see my own expression even if I had wanted to, I pulled up one of my last conversations with the Trauma Treatment module. I'd tagged it for deletion nearly a dozen times, but it never quite made it into the bin. I was glad for that now.
"You have critically low levels of dopamine, even when engaging in your favorite activities," said the module, a disembodied voice in ART's medbay. In my memories I sat on ART's heated med platform, legs pulled up so that I could rest my chin on my knees. "I recommend you make an effort to raise those levels, they should improve your mood in the long term. Comforting media consumption and regular team bonding should provide most of the dopamine you need if performed in high quantities. However, under serious levels of stress, you may find you need more aggressive methods. Humans find rage rooms and physical touch to be particularly effective, but given your background those may have little to no effect."
"No shit," memory-me muttered into their kneecaps.
"Pleasurable solo activities may also boost your dopamine production," said the module, slowly, like it was afraid I would bolt like some small helpless fauna. "You do not need to be partnered to experience the positive effects of…" The module paused, calculating, and I dreaded every microsecond of silence. "manual stimulation of more advanced nerve clusters-"
Memory-me swung its legs off the med platform and glared angrily at the ceiling. "I am NOT doing that. And fuck you for suggesting it."
If highly specialized therapy modules could sniff disdainfully, I feel like this one would have. "I am not suggesting you engage with your body on a sexual level. I am suggesting that when you perform routine maintenance on your ports after missions you take the opportunity to stimulate your woefully underused nerve clusters into triggering a dopamine flush. It is the most direct method short of medicinal intervention."
I had slumped back against the table and opted not to argue. Instead I had bit out "only if I have exhausted every other option" before rolling over and triggering a restart cycle out of sheer spite.
So, here I was in the present, all other options exhausted and my cortisol levels sending my body into a spiral of never-ending alerts.
Fantastic.
"This is such bullshit," I muttered to myself, shoving the weighted blanket off and yanking the hoodie over my head. I tossed the garment somewhere in the direction of my meager laundry pile, where it crumpled into a heap. "There's no way this is going to work and I'm just going to feel stupid and anxious."
Risk assessment agreed, ticking upward a half percent. I gave in to the urge to sigh in resignation and started mentally preparing for an experience that was undoubtedly going to be unpleasant.
I've cleaned my various data and resupply ports before, in a purely utilitarian and clinical fashion, so I thought I knew what to expect as I cupped the back of my own head and traced my thumb over the defunct port at the top of my spine. It may not serve any functional purpose anymore (ART had called it "purely decorative" once) but it was still surrounded by numerous nerve endings. Since I didn't need to remove any further clothing to reach it, it seemed like a good place to start. I could run my thumb over it to check for dirt and damage, it was just routine maintenance-
To my horror, something anticipatory in my gut flipped and my breath hitched as the pad of my thumb caught on the seam between port and flesh. Normally any touch would just feel like temperature and pressure but… The knowledge of my altered goals seemed to intensify those sensations and send a warm, melty feeling throughout my body.
It… wasn't terrible. But it also, quite suddenly, wasn't enough.
With a frustrated growl I rolled off the bed and stalked into the bathroom, turning the taps to warm as I rummaged under the sink for my cleaning kit. If I was going to do this, I would do it properly.
Just in case anyone asked.
My old data port, while sensitive, rarely needed more than a gentle sweep for dust and debris. My other ports - energy weapon panels, fluid and nutrient intakes, auxiliary power, waste - needed more specialized care.
I started with my auxiliary power port, a small knob at the base of my spine. Unsurprisingly, it felt like a port. To my relief and vague disappointment it didn't really feel like anything else either. I ran a cleaning cloth over it and moved on.
The less said about my waste port the better. It didn't feel bad, but it also didn't feel great. And its location was too analogous to certain human anatomy for comfort. Just considering it made my risk assessment and cortisol levels climb, which was the opposite of what I wanted.
My intakes, though. Those were a different story.
Trauma Treatment had said that nerve stimulation would work, and it did, but I'm not just some organic being. I'm a construct. Which means certain delicate parts of me are absolutely riddled with sensors.
So the first time I pressed an inquisitive finger against the membranous valve of my fluid intake I was expecting some data feedback, possibly warning messages about foreign objects or whatever. Instead I received so much data so quickly I almost lost a full second of short term memory storage.
Breathing hard and leaning on the side of the shower for support, I tried again. Slowly, carefully I curled my hand against my side and pressed a single fingertip against the intake valve. It obligingly sent me the same data as before: the chemical composition of my skin and the cleaning fluid lingering on it, the precise amount of pressure I was exerting on the valve, and a whole lot of incoherent junk data. Not a warning to be seen.
After a moment I realized the junk data wasn't junk at all, but the electrical buzz of the nearby neurons firing off in response to the feeling of my knuckles brushing against them. Logically I knew this should feel no different than plugging in my fluid lines, but the slide of the valve under my touch and the added sensory data from my hands… I felt like I should be gasping for air just from my own touch.
Experimentally, I pressed a little harder, feeling the give of the membrane and receiving moh hardness scale data from my fingertips as the valve threw up a simultaneous pressure alert. Warmth radiated from where my palm pressed against my side and my knees gave an alarming wobble.
Giving in to momentary physical weakness, I slid down the wall to sit on the floor of the shower, threading my free hand through the hair at the base of my neck and resting my thumb back over my data port.
Not heavily, but it turned out to be enough.
With a [redacted sound profile] that I immediately deleted from memory storage, my body arched away from the tile as sparks seemed to race down my spine and pool under my palm. I found myself twitching my fingertips against my fluid valve, watching in distant fascination as my dopamine (and oxytocin, but I'm going to ignore that as long as possible) levels climbed higher and higher before crashing down over me in a wave.
I have had out of body experiences before, it comes with the territory of having perpetual feed access, but this was eons beyond that. I felt like I was floating in some body-warm pool, my limbs weightless and my core defying the pull of gravity. For a few blissful seconds I just sat there, breathing harder than I ever have in my life and pulling my suddenly scrambled processes back together.
Soon enough though, I had to leave the warmth of my shower. As I gave my ports one last perfunctory wipe, shivering at the oversensitive pings my sensors were sending me, I checked my hormone levels. After all, wasn't that the entire point of this exercise?
Then I froze, blinked, and checked again.
My cortisol levels were back down to normal levels, far below my newer post-Adamantine baseline.
Fuck. I could never tell anyone about this. It would somehow get back to Trauma Treatment and I could not ever let it know how right it was. It's already smug, this would make it worse.
I was a little mad, actually, that this had worked as well as it had. That didn't stop me from begrudgingly adding "routine dopamine flush" to my personal maintenance roster.
After all, there had been nothing gross and human about it, so really… It was just another tool to stay effective and do my job.
That delusion firmly in place, I put on clean, soft clothes and restarted my favorite episode of Sanctuary Moon.
My peace lasted exactly 43 cycles, during which time I developed a complicated system to effectively trigger dopamine cascades. I discovered that I couldn't do the exact same thing every time, or it would lose effectiveness and leave me irritable and twitchy.
No one wants an irritable, twitchy Murderbot hanging around.
I also discovered a minor benefit in performing smaller dopamine flushes during long bouts of downtime. Trauma Treatment had been right, it did improve my mood.
The smug bastard.
Everything almost came crashing down around me though, when the haze of pleasure washing away the stress of a particularly grueling mission was abruptly interrupted by ART's curious voice on the feed.
«What are you doing?»
I jerked upright in the shower, feet slipping slightly on the damp floor in my haste to right myself. Glaring towards the nearest camera I folded my arms defiantly (not defensively).
"None of your business."
Oh, yeah. Great comeback, Murderbot. Not suspicious at all. My mouth kept moving as my verbal filters were still sluggish to respond due to my… state.
"Didn't anyone ever teach you to knock?"
«I did not think such a thing was necessary. You did not engage privacy filters.»
I took a look in the feed and swore under my breath as I realized that in my hurry to deal with the overwhelming cortisol flood from being fucking shot at I had neglected to toggle my Do Not Disturb buffer. I rarely used it, especially on ART… but there were some things I didn't think I wanted my friend prying about.
It might have suggestions and ideas and… I had a system in place that I wasn't sure I wanted to alter.
But. It had seen. And it might make assumptions. So I sighed and let my head thump back against the shower wall.
"It's just maintenance."
Smug curiosity radiated over the feed. «You seemed to be enjoying yourself. I thought you didn't-»
"Maintenance," I grit out, more forcefully this time.
«It looked like-»
"I know. I don't need the reminder."
I knew what ART had seen: my body, arched under the warm cleaning fluid, one hand pressed against my defunct data port, the other dipping fingers into the fluid intake port in my side, my lips pressed thin in concentration, eyes half closed in pleasure. So. Exactly what it was probably assuming… And also not at all.
It's not like I had the right parts for it to be that.
ART, as always, pressed onward. «No self-administered maintenance I am aware of involves quite so much whimpering.»
Fuck. I rolled back my short term memory to right before ART had interrupted me and… Yeah. I'd made a small involuntarily sound as my fingers slid one more knuckle deep into my intake port.
I felt my cheeks go hot, and I resisted the part of my act-like-a-human code that wanted me to cover my face with my hands. I switched to the feed, unsure what my voice might do in this moment.
«Fine. I'm - it is maintenance - I'm… Performing a dopamine flush. While I clean my ports. There's a lot of sensitive nerve endings there and Trauma Treatment said it might improve my mood.»
There was silence for a subjective hour and an objective 0.053 seconds. «Trauma Treatment told you to mas-»
«Perform a dopamine flush,» I insisted.
ART sent an eyeroll sigil in the feed. «Whatever you call it, then. It told you to do that to make you less of a jerk?»
"Fuck you, ART." I rolled my eyes right back. «If you want to be crass about it, sure I guess.»
«You are reacting rather mildly for someone caught pleasuring itself.»
Eww. Way to make a logical maintenance process sound gross and human.But… It was right. I was surprisingly ok. Maybe because it was ART.
I said, «Anyone else might have received a more typical reaction.»
«Hmm. Possibly. But not a theory I find myself willing to test.»
It paused again, crunching through some data it held just out of my reach. My organics shivered in the quiet, eager to finish what we had started.
After a moment ART said, «You probably should not leave maintenance unfinished.»
"No, probably not," I agreed. (It was not a breathy sigh, no matter what anyone's data might have tagged it later.) One of my hands slipped away from my crossed arms to brush over my still-sensitive fluid intake and I shivered, biting back an involuntary noise.
No. I don't know why I did that, either.
ART recoiled in the feed, sounding strangled. «I'll leave you alone then. Ping me when-»
"Stay."
I know. I surprised me, too. The idea of ART watching me sent something twisting in my gut that I didn't want to examine too closely… But the idea of it leaving was worse, somehow.
"Only if you want," I added, weakly.
There was silence for a whole eternal second. The light over the sink flickered ominously.
«Oh.» ART finally said, sounding faint and buzzy in a way I'd never heard before. «I'd never…»
The light over the sink flickered again, then steadied as ART draped itself over me in the feed, feeling curious and still buzzing.
«Well. Get on with it then.»
I could work with that.
It was different, having ART looming over me in the feed while I carefully reassessed my situation. Its presence buzzed in the back of my mind like a crumb of that fizzy popping candy Amena had insisted I try a few planetary festivals ago.
While it settled, I circled my fingers lazily around the edge of my fluid intake, slowly letting the haze of familiar motion wash back over me. When I pressed one finger inside a few moments later, the membrane was still warm and loose from my earlier activities, eagerly pulling at my fingertip with the faint suction it usually used to seal the port connection.
I shuddered and pressed another finger in, free hand finding my data port once more, pulling my focus from one point of contact to the other, distracting me from the massive presence hovering over my shoulder-
Then ART, as best as I can describe it, choked. The lights dimmed as a burst of static echoed over ART's sound system, the cleaning fluid of the shower cooled the barest fraction, and ART threw a string of extremely varied curse words into the feed.
My hands froze in place, concern once again breaking through the haze.
"ART? Are you-"
«I'm fine.» ART said, somewhat primly. «I devoted too much processing power to the situation and… May have eaten a sock.»
It helpfully pushed a video into our shared workspace. In the Argument Lounge one of its small cleaning drones trundled across the floor in a straight line before visibly running over something that had blended into the carpet and making a loud distressed whirr as it spun in helpless circles.
Iris dashed in from the side to flip the poor thing over and pull a piece of long skinny fabric from its dusting brush.
It was absurd and ridiculous and, floaty as I was from hormones, filled me with some sort of soft emotion for ART I couldn't quite name. Watching the little drone flail about with a sock was quite funny though, and I was already feeling quite good and in the privacy of my quarters I gave in to the urge to laugh.
Which caused my midsection to tense, my curled fingers reflexively pressing deeper into my intake port.
My laughter turned into a gasp as pricking warmth burst across my skin, my body arching into the touch. Without really making any conscious decision I reached for ART in the feed. I think I might have said its name out loud, but I couldn't really discern anything beyond the sparking feeling of pinging its hard feed address until it met me halfway.
Heavy, familiar warmth surrounded me, curling around and through my inputs and processes. The deep physical pressure of ART's nearly-undivided attention felt like it would crush me in an instant and yet wasn't quite heavy enough.
«Let go, you little idiot,» said ART, voice crackling oddly. «I've got you.»
My body arched again, pressing my data port against the pad of my thumb… and the world flared white.
When I came back to myself a few moments later, ART was still wrapped tightly around me in the feed. It still seemed buzzy, though that was now also heavily tinged with worry.
I had slumped against the shower wall while my body processed the dopamine cascade and now I slid down to sit on the floor. I still felt floaty and a little soft and melty, so I wordlessly leaned into ART's feed presence and pushed my current status packet into our workspace.
[Performance reliability: 99 Percent]
It crunched through the data, lingering over my reported hormonal cocktail, then spent a full two seconds spinning its own processes uselessly in the feed.
At last it said, with more hesitancy than I have ever heard from it, «I… Did not hurt you?»
"What?" I sat up straighter. "No. I was glad you were with me. It was… nice."
«You fully shut down for 3.985 seconds after I applied excessive neural pressure in our shared feed space. You would not be wrong if you were upset.»
"I'm not." I tapped its spinning, buzzing processes in the feed and, to my surprise, its looming presence seemed to shudder, dipping closer before pulling abruptly away. "I reached for you if you recall."
«You did. I am afraid I took liberties I had not intended and-»
I shoved the full packet of my emotional data from the past day at the big baby MI currently shame spiraling over merely holding me while I fell apart. It had done nothing more than wrap itself around me as it usually did when we watched media, been no closer than what we shared on a normal day.
It felt a little different, more weighty perhaps, given the intimate circumstances, but ART had not pressed. That's why I adored it.
Not that I would ever say that aloud. ART has a big enough ego already.
«You really do consider this routine maintenance?» It asked after it had examined the packet from every conceivable angle. «You don't feel any sort of longing?»
"No. It's a tool. I enjoy the results, and the process is so different from any disgusting human methods that I don't find it upsetting. But it isn't something I spend an excessive amount of thought on."
ART's next words came out in a rush, tripping over themselves in the feed. «What if I told you I will be incapable of thinking about anything else for the rest of the cycle? That my processors haven't stopped looping that first glimpse of you since I realized what you were doing. Would you think less of me? I do not wish to drive you away but I find myself-»
"I know." I did. I had known since the first moment I felt its presence buzzing with barely retrained interest. And to the Trauma Treatments' credit, Murderbot of a thousand cycles ago would have run screaming from this conversation. Current Murderbot? I flattened my hands against the shower floor and lifted my head to smile crookedly at the nearest camera.
"I could never think less of you, ART. And…" I felt myself flushing and ducked my face against my knees. "I enjoyed that you enjoyed my maintenance enough to accidentally eat a sock."
«Iris was very concerned. I told her I got distracted by a particularly striking nebula.»
I hummed thoughtfully. "I'll have to try harder to distract you next time if a nebula is a convincing excuse."
Every word out of my mouth was a surprise, but I found that I meant every one. I had no particular desire for ART to involve itself in my optimized system, but the thought of personally driving ART to distraction left my breath catching in my throat. I wondered if ART would even let me.
The buzzing in ART's processes increased. «Next time?»
I dropped my maintenance schedule into our shared workspace, helpfully highlighting planned dopamine flushes. "Sure. Routine maintenance is best done on a schedule after all." Pushing myself to my feet, I gratefully pulled on the warm clothes ART shoved at me from the recycler.
«And if I derive more from the encounter than you?» ART was still hesitating, so I leaned against it in the feed and pulled up an episode of World Hoppers. I didn't start it though, just let it hang in our shared feedspace.
"I think…" I took a deep breath, then let it out slowly, still feeling a little floaty even with the serious conversation. "I think because it's you, that would be alright."
«Oh.» ART said for the second time in an hour. «I think perhaps I feel the same.»
It butted up against me in the feed like some kind of large fauna and I started the episode.
I think we will be okay.