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It didn’t make sense. Even after I’d put ART’s many camera recordings of the incident in order, I still couldn’t understand. Nothing had happened, why had I reacted like that? And where had the image of my leg getting eaten come from?
While I was combing through all my memory files that had an amputation tag, Mensah arrived and paused in the passageway outside the lounge. She looked in at me where I was standing between two of the couches.
“I thought you might like some company,” she said from the doorway.
“Company? Not my favorite thing."
She exhaled a laugh. “That was a bad choice of words on my part. What I meant was, I don’t like to leave my friends alone when they’re having a bad time.”
I knew what humans did to each other when they were having a hard time: hug and talk. No thanks and no thanks. What was so bad about being alone, anyway? I didn’t want to worry about what my face was doing while I watched these videos, or what anyone else’s face was doing about what my face was doing. I should’ve gone to stand by myself in my room.
Mensah was still waiting in the doorway of the lounge. Apparently she wasn’t going to come in unless I said it was okay.
“You can come in,” I told her. “But I don’t want to talk about it or anything.”
“That’s fine. I don’t always want to talk, either.”
Mensah came into the lounge, at first standing in the middle of the room. She glanced at me. “And I assume you don’t want a hug.”
Sometimes Mensah could read my mind as well as ART. It wasn’t a question, so I didn’t answer.
She sat down on one of the couches that was near me, but not too near. I resumed my analysis of the montage of camera feeds.
It started with me scrambling away from the meeting room table in sudden, unexplained terror. I was screaming. The humans (all eleven of them) variously jumped up from their chairs to crowd around me, or ran away, or yelled at ART to send a medical drone. The next footage was from three successive hall cameras showing me sprawled on a gurney as it sped towards medical, Mensah running along beside—
I realized my respiratory rate had climbed and my hands were clenched at my sides. Mensah must’ve noticed, too. She wasn’t quite looking at me, but I felt her attention.
“SecUnit, would you like to have a sit?” she asked as she patted the space on the couch next to her.
“Have… a sit?”
“Yes. Maybe it will help you relax a bit? Or help me relax, to spend a little time sitting next to you.”
I guess I could do that. I sat down next to Mensah, right where she’d patted the couch. We weren’t touching. I paused my search for potential sources of the false memory. I would start it again soon, but for now, I’d “have a sit.”
Mensah’s body was calm next to me, no fidgeting. After a moment I felt her lean against the backrest of the couch.
I wasn’t sure what the point of this was. She wasn’t even looking at me, and I wasn’t looking at her, except with the one drone I was using (I had so few left). Through the drone, I saw her body soften a little a more. My hands unclenched.
I didn’t restart my review of [redacted]. I expected to feel bored, or want to start some media, like I usually did when I was stuck somewhere with nothing to do, staring at a wall in an empty room.
But the room wasn’t empty.
I could feel, through the small distance between us, the warmth from her skin radiating towards me.
I watched with my drone as her eyes slowly closed. I could tell she wasn’t asleep, though. She was holding her body upright, not leaning too much against the couch or tipping over onto me. Her breath slowed and deepened. My breath slowed and became shallow (I really didn’t need much air when I was this immobile).
Mensah was next to me, but she wasn’t expecting anything from me. I’m sure if I said something, she would listen. But I didn’t want to talk.
Instead, I closed my eyes and did nothing except sit next to Mensah.