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Reason #8734 why planets are the worst: sand. It slows you down when you try to run on it, it gets literally fucking everywhere, it can cause microabrasions to organic skin if the wind is severe enough, and there’s always so goddamn much of it. I’ll never understand why humans’ standard vacation locale is a seashore (ocean = potential hostile fauna, environmental hazards like sharp rocks and dangerous currents, and a lot of water which humans can’t breathe) covered in sand (which is, again, the worst).
At least this location didn’t have any ocean nearby. Instead, it was all rocks and sand (so basically just rocks of various sizes), most of it in this gross yellow-brown color, stretching all the way to the horizon in every direction. Some of the rock formations were big enough to offer rudimentary shelter/concealment; one of them had a deep enough overhang that the humans had been able to set up their temporary survival shelters in it. I still didn’t like how exposed we were, though.
And at least I wasn’t the only one suffering. I mean, obviously there were dozen or so humans here (scientists and researchers from PSUMNT, investigating something about residual evidence of whatever that would imply the previous existence of something something I don’t actually care that much), and ART was in orbit above the planet (no drone this time, because if sand was hell for delicate SecUnit mechanics then it was doubly hell for a fragile drone body) where I could contact it whenever I needed to with my secure comm, which still being kept safe and sand-free in my rib compartment.
But anyway: I wasn’t the only SecUnit on this mission. Three was here too. It seemed to be doing this thing where it was trying to experience the greatest degree of environmental variation that it possibly could (not the worst thing to do with free will, so whatever), and apparently it hadn’t been to a desert before. If I were it, I’d keep it that way, but if Three avoided stuff just because someone else told it to that’d kind of go against the whole idea of being rogue.
So we were both here in this stupid desert, waiting on a bunch of scientists that weren’t even my or ART’s humans, standing in the shadows of boring ugly rock formations so we didn’t overheat. I wondered if Three regretted its decision to visit a desert. Then I remembered that we were apparently, technically speaking, according to some people, “friends” (ugh) so I could just open a feed channel and ask.
So I paused my show (a historical drama called Ten Steps Closer; it was NSFA, aka Not Safe For ART, so I’d been watching it on missions like this when I was mostly on my own) and pinged Three. There was a brief pause (0.35 seconds longer than construct average) before it pinged me back. I sent Query: environmental assessment?
There was another brief pause, then it replied with a status report containing a summary of relevant data regarding our surroundings. Which, no, obviously not what I wanted. There wasn’t anything in the report that my own systems hadn’t already gathered.
So I clarified, Modify(query_prev): assessment=personal. Then, in case that wasn’t enough, I tacked on: And by “personal”, I mean your metadata (mental, emotional, etc.) and organic reactions.
There was another pause, this one even longer (1.2 seconds), before Three responded, Request: assessment(personal).FeedID_SecUnit send . That was fair. I hadn’t wanted to give my data to it at first, in case it thought that meant its data had to look like mine (SecUnits are supposed to agree on all assessments when working together, otherwise it’s counted as a shared mistake and both SecUnits’ brains get zapped), but I guess it wanted an example of what I was talking about.
So I sent it my personal opinions about the desert, which pretty much boiled down to “yikes bad”. Our feed presences were just close enough that I could faintly sense it sorting through the packet. Then it highlighted one section, the part where I complained about the wind blowing sand absolutely everywhere, and sent me a copy of its sensory inputs and attached metadata, which showed that it disliked the sensation as much I did.
I pinged a confirmation, just to reiterate my agreement with the sentiment, then resent my request for its personal assessment. The fact that Three didn’t like sand was such an obviously correct situational evaluation that it didn’t really count as a personal opinion, not like I’d been hoping for.
Three sent an acknowledgement, then took 6.5 seconds (kind of a long time for a SecUnit of a fancier make than me) to gather the data I’d requested. It pushed it into a shared workspace in the feed, and I thought I caught some flickering [nervousness] metadata in its feed presence. I kept the file in the workspace as I looked through it.
It was a pretty straightforward assessment; Three was still mostly focused on objective facts and not personal opinions (fair enough), but along with it sharing my utter disdain for sand, it also seemed to like the patterns visible on some of the rock faces. In fact, it apparently liked them enough that it’d been doing research into their geological causes, and had even linked a bunch of academic sources (many of which were in documentary format) on the subject. I didn’t look at any of them, but I bookmarked a couple in case ART wanted to see them later.
Three also noted down some interesting data about the sunlight. It was definitely wary of overheating, and it had attached a copy of some code for an alert it’d set to make sure its coolant levels didn’t get too low (kind of a nice gesture, but I’d already coded myself something that did basically the same thing). But there was a surprising amount of metadata attached to its haptic data recording the sensation of the sun’s radiated heat warming its body. It had paid special attention to the data from its face and back. Weirdest of all, its metadata was almost exclusively positive. Huh.
I highlighted that section and pinged it, asking Query: elaboration?
Three replied by nudging a memory file into the workspace. I opened it cautiously.
It was pretty short, recording only 28.6 seconds of Three’s visual and audio data, annotated at the end with part of its thoughtstream. In it, two humans were walking down a corridor, the view of them switching between security cameras as they progressed. Their uniforms marked them as Barish-Estranza employees. I’d already assumed this was data from when Three was still working under B-E, but I still didn’t like seeing that logo again. The two humans were talking to each other as they walked, and the audio recorders Three was linked up to recorded the conversation like this:
Human1: “...been forever since I’ve been to a planet like that!”
Human2: “Right? It’s not like we ever get shore leave in this godforsaken—”
Human1: “Shut up, man! Unless you want to get us both shoved down the ration priority list.”
Human2: “Shit, sorry. I just mean I missed being somewhere with a sun like that.”
Human1: “Yeah. Like, this ship has good climate control and all—”
Human2: “—no, yeah, you never really think of it as a cold place—”
Human1: “—barely even have to wear these jackets, but still.”
Human2: “There’s something different about, like, actual sunlight. It’s a different kind of warm.”
Human1: “Yeah. Just gets right though to your bones.”
Human2: “Mhm. I already miss it.”
At that point, the conversation faded into the background, and the data file shifted focus to the annotations detailing Three-in-the-memory’s mental reactions. It had wondered—abstractly, quietly, using only the minutest fraction of its processing power so GovSys didn’t log misuse of company property—about the phrase “a different kind of warm”. There were no significant differences between the heat produced by a solar body vs. the heat produced by a ship’s climate control system, so it was odd that humans thought they could distinguish a difference. Or perhaps not so odd: even when planetside, Three had typically been stationed within habitats, colonial structures, etc. It had very rarely had the chance to feel direct sunlight of the sort the humans had discussed, so perhaps it was warm in a different way. Three had no way to be sure.
The memory file ended there, and I closed it. Huh. Three was still hovering on the edge of our workspace; it’d been examining me examining its data. I asked, So were those humans right? Is there a difference?
Three sent a nonconfirmative acknowledgement, the feed analogue of a shrug. It highlighted part of its earlier report, where the formatting indicated that space had been left for future data.
I nudged some of my own haptic reports into the workspace, highlighting examples of the same kinds of data Three had gathered. Three received it politely, scanned through it, and sent it back to me without doing anything with it. I mostly succeeded at not being offended.
I want to solve this by myself, Three told me quietly. I like to learn things.
…That was fair. It did really like documentaries and the media from ART’s onboard curriculums (curricula? curriculae? Note to self: ask ART the next time I contact it). Plus it was doing that whole journey of self-discovery thing, so if it wanted to have opinions about the sun all on its own and very slowly, that was up to it. So I pinged it an affirmative and withdrew in the feed, starting to close the channel behind me.
But Three startled me by lunging further into our connection, slamming it wide again. It was only because I was used to ART’s dramatic immensity in the feed that I didn’t flinch. I sent it a confused Query???
Amid a small flurry of pings, it replied, SecU[des: “Three”]--SecU[des: “1.0”] feed.link[indef] establish&maintain. That was a security code fairly common among SecUnits, a request to make a direct feed channel between the listed participants (me and Three) and keep that channel open until the specified time. Or, as Three had requested, for an indefinite period of time. I hadn’t spoken this language (not an actual language, but whatever) in a long time, but I guess it made sense that Three was used to speaking this way. Having been paired up with other SecUnits for however long, it probably knew all these codes way better than I did (and that wasn’t just because I’d deleted a lot of them to make room for serials).
I responded as well as I could remember how: SU[des: “1.0”]--SU[des: “Three”] feed.link[indef] confirm. Then, because I felt like it, I added, SU[des: “1.0”] des.change=(“MB”). I still didn’t want anyone to call me by my real name, but the two of us calling each other bare numbers made me feel something weird and uncomfortable. And, based on what Ratthi had explained to me about nicknames, “MB” was a suitable designation change.
Three replied, Des.change=(“MB”) confirm. Then, after 0.8 seconds of hesitation, it added, You like to talk in words on the feed. We can do that. I am just used to the codes.
I don’t really care, I said, then (to prove that I really didn’t) repeated myself in typical SecUnit syntax: Assessment=neutral & recommendations=null.
Three pinged acknowledgement, then added, Thank you.
I pinged back, then nudged the show I’d been watching into our workspace. There was no SecUnit code for “want to watch my media with me”, because that wasn’t a thing any normal SecUnit would ever say, so I made do with a request for a data review. Request: data type=aud-vis assess, I told Three, then elaborated, Data = {“Ten Steps Closer”, specif:(serial, fiction, historical drama)}.
It seemed to get what I’d meant, because it sent back a polite Request_prev(data assess) confirm and settled closer in the feed. It was weird to be feed-close with someone that wasn’t ART. It was weird to be feed-close with another SecUnit, honestly. But Three probably needed this; it was, at least, clearly used to this kind of thing.
So I let it happen. And it… wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t the same as sharing feedspace with ART—not that Three and I were running code in each other’s processing space or any of the stuff I sometimes did with ART—mostly because Three didn’t take up as much space as it did. It was almost kind of reassuring, honestly, having someone in the feed that functioned the same way I did, whose brain and code and everything were based off the same blueprints.
Whatever. I didn’t hate it, is what I’m saying. I let myself get comfortable with the feed situation, spending the rest of the humans’ work time on season two of Ten Steps Closer. We were midway through a weird flashback episode that I was 82% certain was actually a twist dream sequence (Three disagreed, but it wasn’t exactly the media expert here, was it) when the humans announced through the feed that they were done working for the day.
Took them long enough, I muttered absentmindedly, pausing the episode.
ETA received << [time actual], Three agreed. Then, as it withdrew slightly, it added, Thank you, MB.
Hearing it call me “MB” (I know I told it to call me that, I know), did a weird flippy thing to some of my organics. Having a name was weird, and having a form of my private name was especially weird. But I ignored that and just sent Three an acknowledgement ping before withdrawing the same amount.
We kept the channel open, though, as Three had requested. It was empty aside from the previous message records, neither of us so much as letting some metadata fall through, and I assumed it’d stay that way. I assumed that this was just me helping Three with rogue SecUnit things and there didn’t need to be any emotions involved. Totally unrelated note: remind me to never assume anything about anything regarding emotions ever again.
We crossed the short stretch of sand from our patches of shade to where the humans were working. One of the scientists (feed ID: Dr. Rogazan, female; the group’s de facto leader) waved at us as we approached. It seemed like more of a beckoning wave than a greeting wave, so I went over to her.
“Hi, SecUnit,” she said, looking tired but pleased. “Could you help me box up the last of the sedimentary analysis array? I could do it myself, but it’d take longer, and I’d kind of like to get back to camp.”
I agreed strongly with that sentiment, so I said, “Okay. Show me how it goes together.”
She knelt onto the sand and started pointing out different slots in the crate and the equipment bits they matched up with. I paid enough attention to get the gist, then started filling the crate. And, either because ART had politely threatened all of them to be nice or because PSUMNT people were just weirdos that were unusually inclined to not take advantage of things people like me, Rogazan helped.
While we were doing that, another scientist (feed ID: Dr. Arius Karova, male/female) came up to us. He waved at me with a smile (see? PSUMNT people are weirdos), then turned to Rogazan. “I’m gonna go look at that weird pattern in the sand again,” she told her. “We have enough time for that, right?”
Rogazan shrugged. “I mean, probably. Just don’t take too long, ‘cause I wanna get out of this heat as fast as we can.”
Karova grinned, giving her a double thumbs up. Then he smiled at me again and darted off.
I frowned after her. “What weird pattern?” I asked Rogazan.
She shrugged. “I dunno, it’s probably nothing. The sand had been disturbed in one area of our survey ground; we only noticed it because it was interfering with our data. We moved to take data at an unaffected spot nearby, so it wasn’t a problem or anything. Arius was wondering what had caused the pattern, though.”
Uh-oh. Threat assessment ticked up a percentage. “What did the pattern look like?” I pressed. “Send me a picture.”
Rogazan blinked. “Oh. Uh, okay, sure.” She squinted off into space for 3.6 seconds (why are humans so slow), then sent me a copy of part of the scientists’ report, where they’d documented the fact that they’d had to slightly change the area of their survey and why. And in the report—yep, there it was. Linked visual data. I opened it up, and threat assessment immediately rocketed up by 12%.
Goddamnit. Did anyone ever read the fucking hazard reports I sent them? I tossed the piece of equipment I was holding into the crate, ignoring Rogazan’s yelp of surprise, and ran for where Karova was crouching a dozen or so meters away. Because this was a stupid fucking desert full of stupid fucking sand, I was 1.3 seconds slower to reach him than I should’ve been, so I still had 0.7 meters to go when the big scaly fauna erupted from the ground.
Luckily, though, Karova’s squishy prey animal instincts came through and she fell/scrambled backwards, screaming. This got him out of immediate range of the fauna’s tooth-filled jaws, and gave me a nice clear shot over her head. I took it. The fauna collapsed instantly (an energy bolt through the skull will do that to you) onto Karova’s legs. He screamed again.
Having made it that last 0.7 meters while firing my arm weapon, I went to my knees (I shut my gunport just barely too late and got it filled with sand for my trouble) and yanked the fauna off him, tossing its body aside. It wasn’t heavy enough to have crushed anything, but its mouth had been open when it fell and this species was venomous, so I was worried Karova might’ve gotten stuck with a fang by accident.
Karova looked unhurt, though. The fabric of her clothing was still whole, and though there was fluid all over his pants, it was all the fauna’s weird purplish liquidized-brain-goop and not human blood. Yay for the little things.
“Oh, deity,” Karova whispered, staring at the dead fauna. “Oh, deity, what the fuck was that?”
Too tired to deal with any more human bullshit, I just sent her the relevant part of the hazard report (I may or may not have passive-agressively highlighted the section on this particular fauna’s nesting habits, the visual appearence of its nests, and its typical behavior upon being disturbed) and stood up. Ugh, my gunport was going to be hell to clean after this.
It was around this time that all the other humans reached us. They’d mostly finished yelling by now, but they still loudly exclaimed a lot of stuff when they reached Karova, helping him up and asking if she was okay and all that. No one said anything to me, but whatever. I didn’t care.
Then Three almost collided with me, skidding in the sand as it reached me and grabbing onto my arms. (It could move faster than the humans, but it had also been farther away, having already started back to camp carrying supplies.) Query: status??? it sent desperately, and I realized it’d sent me 58 pings in the brief range of time between me running for Karova and Three reaching me just now. Oops.
Status: green, I told it, trying to seem reassuring. Hostile=neutralized & client=secure.
Three latched onto my messages, pinging me a few more times. I could feel its continued distress radiating through our open channel, and it was still holding my arms even though it wasn’t in danger of falling anymore.
I sent it my diagnostics, hoping that would help, and tried to lean supportively on it in the feed. My client care protocol was pretty much useless for SecUnits (raising my body heat wouldn’t do jack shit if the person I was trying to calm down could just raise its own body heat) and I had no idea what Three wanted/needed, so I was just trying to mimic what ART usually did to calm me down.
It seemed like it was working, though, because Three leaned into me hard in the feed, our presences fuzzing into each other at the edges. Query: status? I asked it, because its fear was still spilling through our channel.
Three hesitated 0.2 seconds before telling me, Status: green.
Are you sure? I had no idea why Three would be so shaken, but it clearly was.
Yes, Three said. It stopped holding onto my arms, but it didn’t let go of me in the feed. I didn’t pull away from it, either.
To the side of us, the other humans had helped Karova to his feet and were ushering her away from the dead fauna. He looked deeply rattled, and I made a note to make sure she got any trauma treatment he needed.
Meanwhile, Rogazan turned to me, looking worried. “Is… Are we safe now?”
“There are no other immediate threats,” I informed her. “The hostile fauna is fully neutralized, and environmental data suggests there are no others nearby.”
“Okay.” Rogazan nodded to herself, looking slightly calmer. Then she repeated, louder, “Okay! Everyone grab the rest of the equipment, and let’s just get back to camp already!”
So we grabbed the rest of the equipment and just got back to camp already. After depositing everything for the humans to sort through and doing a brief perimeter check, Three and I returned to our own temporary shelter. Neither of us had requested one, because we didn’t need to sleep or do anything else that humans usually needed shelters for, but Iris (who’d arranged most of the mission even though she hadn’t gone planetside for it) had insisted.
(“It’s not just about physical needs,” she’d said, looking from Three to the space over my shoulder and back. “It’s about having privacy, a place to rest, somewhere to go when you aren’t working. Having a personal space, even if you have to share it with each other, will denote you as true members of the team.”
“That won’t stop humans from thinking of us as equipment,” I’d told her.
Iris had raised her eyebrows. “None of the people on the trip are from the Corporation Rim. Believe it or not, most people who haven’t been flooded with propaganda their whole lives are gonna just naturally understand that you’re a person. That both of you are people.”
I hadn’t been so sure, but then ART had pinged me to tell me to stop being an idiot and just accept the offer already, so I’d gotten distracted telling it to fuck off.)
With the entrance to our shelter closed behind us, I linked up to my intel drone (I’d only brought one because like I said, sand is especially terrible to fragile drone mechanics; I’d been keeping it in the shelter as a safety precaution for that same reason) and settled into the extra input. Wow, that was a lot better. How did humans handle having only two eyes all the time?
I sat on the pile of blankets I’d brought instead of the standard cot (because, again, I don’t actually need to sleep, and also blankets are the best part of a bed anyway). I wanted to pull up some Sanctuary Moon and maybe ping ART to ask it to watch with me, but my gunport was still full of sand and the foreign particle detected errors had accumulated enough that they were kind of impossible to ignore. This is why I hate deserts.
So I leaned forward and held my arm out over the floor, cycling the weapon a few times. That cleared it a bit, but a lot of the errors remained. Damn it. I grabbed the repair kit I’d packed for this reason, taking out a slender pick tool and working it into one of the more heavily clogged seams. It was a bad angle, and not being able to use my other hand to brace what I was fixing made it slow. I managed to get about half of the grit out but another dozen or so particles just got worked farther in.
Three must’ve felt my frustration where we were still leaned against each other in the feed, because it asked me, Query: maintenance assistance required?
I pinged it a negative. I’d gone my entire existence repairing myself (not counting the use of cubicles or the unavoidable involvement of company technicians) and I didn’t need help now.
It sat down next to me anyway, picking up the repair kit and repeating Query: maintenance assistance required?
I pinged it another negative. I was fine; I didn’t need its help.
Three reached closer in the feed before I thought to stop it, pulling up the slew of foreign particle detected errors flooding my systems and pointedly displaying them in our channel.
I shoved at it gently in the feed, enough to communicate my displeasure but not enough to actually do anything, a wordless “fuck off”.
Three, almost surprisingly, shoved back. Let me help you, it insisted, not even using SecUnit code. Please.
That made me hesitate. Query: purpose? I asked it.
It took Three 4.3 seconds to formulate a response, but eventually it said, I want you to be okay.
I flinched away from it in the feed without really meaning to, gunport automatically snapping closed. It froze, then slowly shrank its access to our channel and kept it that way. Waiting for me to say something, probably, but I didn’t know how to respond. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Three, or didn’t like it, or something. I just hadn’t thought anyone except ART or Mensah or maybe Ratthi would ever say that to me, and I especially hadn’t thought another SecUnit would ever say that to me.
But Three had said it. It wasn’t taking it back, either. I looked at it through my drone; it was still sitting on its heels next to me, looking down at the open repair kit in its hands with an expression I thought was [worried]-[hopeful].
Oh, fuck it all. Fine. I reached for Three in the feed and gave it an affirmative ping.
Three reached back tentatively. It queried my ping with a general request for more information.
Come on, was it going to make me actually say it? You can help me, I said. If you want to.
I want to, Three replied instantly, then added, Thank you.
What? If it was helping me, shouldn’t I be thanking it and not the other way around? I sent it a confused acknowledgement, but it didn’t respond. Apparently that had been enough.
It leaned back into me in the feed, but I felt its focus shift towards its physical inputs. I did the same, bringing my drone input to the front of my processes and handing Three the pick tool I’d been using. Three took it, put it back in the kit, and withdrew a narrower, longer version of the same tool. Then it took my arm in its other hand, turning it so my gunport faced up.
When I didn’t deploy my gun for it to fix, it sent me, Query: cease&retreat request?
That was a fair question, but I didn’t actually want it to stop or leave. I just didn’t know how to do this. Physically opening part of myself for another SecUnit to poke around in, trusting it not to do any harm, trusting it to actually help me… that felt impossible. But it was happening. This was happening, because I was letting it happen, because Three wanted it to happen, because—because I wanted it not to not happen. Or something.
Query: status? Three asked worriedly. I realized I’d been leaning on it kind of heavily in the feed. I started to pull away, embarrassed, but it nudged into me again. Are you okay?
I’m fine, I told it. Status: green. To prove it, I cycled my gunport open.
Three pinged me reassuringly, then lowered its own single drone towards my gunport for a better view. The pick tool connected with the metal inside my arm, and I shifted my drone to hover farther away but kept it angled at Three’s hands.
Three was gentle with the pick, gentler than I’d been. It slid it carefully into a seam, then shifted it back and forth crosswise under the sand to loosen it. If I focused, I could feel the pointed grains grating against my pressure sensors, then slipping free.
After working through 4.5 cm of the seam, it leaned its head forward and exhaled steadily through pursed lips, blowing my gunport clean. At the feel of its breath against my sensors, I shuddered—not physically, but in the feed, my focus briefly scattering as the sensation shivered through me. Hopefully my face wasn’t doing anything too weird.
Then Three pinged me worriedly and I realized that with our channel still wide fucking open, it had probably felt my presence shake against its. Shit.
Status: green, I told it. It’s fine. You just startled me.
I apologize, Three returned, tense and unreadable. I thought the low temperature of compressed air would be too unpleasant, but I can retrieve the canister from the repair kit as an alternative if you would prefer it.
It’s fine, I repeated, trying not to think about how Three was right, its breath had been warm, comfortably warm, and nothing having to do with someone’s breath had ever been comfortable before. I’m fine. You can keep going like this. If you want.
Three acknowledged this with a ping and bent over my gunport again. It was still vaguely tense in the feed, holding some part of itself away from me. I didn’t blame it, though; this situation was weird enough without me completely failing to handle it normally. I resolved to keep a tighter hold on my reactions.
It mostly worked. The next time Three leaned forward to blow away some sand, I braced myself for the sensation and managed to remain almost completely still and calm in the feed. Three didn’t react any more than I had. We were still leaned together in the feed, but we were each holding back more, keeping part of ourselves out of the channel. I felt bad that Three was having to do something that made it feel like… whatever was making it so tense, but everytime I pinged it for its status, it just told me Status: green and dislodged another grain of sand.
Four of the deepest seams in my gunport got cleared out like this. Three worked steadily and efficiently; I realized partway through that with its background as part of that Barish-Estranza team, it probably had a fair bit of practice doing maintenance for other SecUnits. Meanwhile, I just sat there and let it work, trying not to feel [terrible]-[weird]-[???] about the fact that its fingers were physically moving around inside of my arm.
Eventually, it flipped my arm over, tipping some loose sand onto the floor. It even gently shook my arm a couple times, which felt silly and also apparently didn’t do much, because Three flipped it rightside up again and leaned forward to blow it clean. This time, its breath wasn’t concentrated in one small line, but directed methodically across the entire interior of my gunport, from the inorganic compartment walls to the opening of the barrel to the place where the gun was attached to my semi-synthetic bone. I could even feel it across the seam of organic skin on the edge of the gunport, warm and faint and raising my vellus hairs.
And all of that was way too much to not react to. I tried anyway, pulling my feed presence away from Three to better conceal the emotion I couldn’t stop from rippling through me, but every hold I tightened around myself just amplified the shuddering.
Three, unsurprisingly, froze with its face half-raised away from my arm, feed presence drawing back entirely. I still couldn’t quite read its metadata. It said nothing.
Sorry, I told it, feeling stupid and clumsy. I didn’t mean to flinch like that. This is working, it’s fine.
It’s fine, Three echoed. It let go of my arm, and why did that make me feel something bad? Query: status? it asked me.
Status: green, I insisted. I was just being stupid.
You are not stupid, Three stated, which was weird and also vaguely inaccurate. Query: situational assessment? When I didn’t respond, it rephrased, What is going on?
I didn’t know what to say to that. Status: green, I tried again.
But Three just brushed that aside. Query: situational assessment, it repeated more insistently, tagging it with some metadata to show me that it was legitimately concerned.
Oh, fuck this. Fine. Whatever. I shoved a copy of my diagnostics (including, ugh, mental/emotional metadata) towards Three before I could talk myself out of it. I told you it was fine.
Three looked through the data once, then twice, then focused back on me. It didn’t say anything for an excruciating 3.5 seconds, then sent Query: situational assessment positive?
This was stupid and embarrassing. Confirm, I told it.
Query: situational improvements enact?
Wait, what? What improvements?
Parameters define: applied force=[decreased] & physical contact.time=[increased]. Three hesitated for 0.075 seconds, then added, & metadata exchange(mutual) enact.
Whoa. Just… okay. That was admittedly more tolerable because Three had said it in SecUnit code instead of saying something in words, like if it’d said—yeah, not finishing that thought. But no matter the phrasing, the suggestion still made risk assessment spike like hell and triggered a bunch of weird hormonal combinations from my organic neural tissue. Because… wow. Also, yikes. Also, what the fuck.
My weird uncomfortable emotions must have been coming through our channel loud and clear, because Three withdrew in the feed. Query_prev(“situational improvements”) disregard, it said with a strange twist of emotion. It started to shrink the scope of our feed channel.
I lunged forward to keep the connection wide and said, No, wait. Fuck, maybe I really should code myself a 0.5 second delay.
Three froze, then sent me a questioning ping.
Goddammit. This was such a reversal of our standard dynamic (see: that moment half a cycle ago when we’d established our indefinite-length channel) that Three probably felt as confused and unnerved as I did. You don’t have to back off, I told it, forcibly wrangling my metadata into something resembling normalcy. It’s fine.
The strength of Three’s feed presence wavered as it composed and then aborted several commands/messages within the span of 0.1 seconds. Then after a few full seconds of hesitation, it finally sent, Is that your preference? Do you want me to stay?
God-fucking-dammit. I hated this. Except, no, that’s inaccurate: I wish I hated this. It would be so much easier to deal with all of these stupid emotions if they were something simple like [this-sucks-get-it-away-from-me]. I was very, very good at feeling [this-sucks-get-it-away-from-me], thanks to a lot of practice. But instead, I had to deal with whatever the fuck this was.
Maybe Three had a point about words being unnecessarily hard. So I just sent it an affirmative ping, then shifted my focus firmly away from it so I wouldn’t have to look at its responding metadata.
Unfortunately, Three was a conniving bastard who deliberately sent me its metadata attached to its Good. I am glad. text response. I couldn’t not read that attachment, which my deeply unhelpful emotional assessment code (ART’s idea, not mine) automatically tagged as a complex [relief]-[affection]-[tenderness] mixture. (Which, gross, I was definitely deleting those last two from memory. Or I would. Eventually. I just wasn’t doing that right now because I was busy, okay, which was a very good reason.)
I shoved Three’s metadata away from me and right back towards it, which seemed to add [amusement] to the code that it wasn’t even trying to keep under control anymore. Then I realized my metadata was also pretty tangible, and I was broadcasting [embarassment]-[nervousness], with a disconcerting amount of [affection] thrown in, pretty loudly into our channel. I slammed an improvised wall down around that part of myself to hide it, but apparently that was a stupid thing to do, because Three’s amusement only increased.
Environment=secure & hostile presence=null, Three reminded me. You are safe. Then it brought up the situational improvement parameters it’d sent. Query: enact?
I hesitated. Three waited. The thing was, these “improvements” weren’t necessary for the maintenance process. In fact, they were probably going to emotionally compromise one or both of us and make everything harder than it had to be. The smart, logical, reasonable thing to do would be to answer a negative and proceed with maintenance in a more standard/efficient way. Weirdly, though, that idea dropped my performance reliability by a whole percentage.
So maybe I wasn’t feeling very smart/logical/reasonable. I told Three Confirm before I could talk myself out of it.
Three sent several affirmative pings in a row, then nudged itself closer to me in the feed, its metadata unabashedly clear ([affection]-[relief] seemed to be the gist of it). And because it was one of the parameters we’d set (ugh) I dropped the hasty wall around my metadata to give Three equal access (ughhhhhhh).
It leaned companionably against me in the feed (if ART’s feed presence was like being sat on by a bitchy thunderstorm, Three’s was like being encircled in swirls of serious fog) and lifted my arm again to keep working.
There wasn’t anything for me to do except sit there with my thoughts and my emotional metadata, which seemed like not the best idea. So I started composing an incident report about today’s scaly fauna accident. In case the humans hadn’t learned their lesson about fidgeting around with environmental anomalies without a SecUnit present (and apparently without even reading the hazard report beforehand, even though that’s literally why it exists in the first place), then this document showing up in the team feed as soon as the day cycle started would hopefully get the point across.
That was the plan, anyway. It turns out that it’s really hard to focus (even on something as simple as an incident report) when someone has a hand inside your arm and keeps touching every bit of your mechanics it can reach. On purpose. It didn’t hurt or anything (Three was way too careful for any of my pain sensors to react) but it was touching me a lot.
It skimmed its fingertips lightly over my semi-synthetic bone, smooth and cool. It carefully worked its nails under my wiring, clearing the embedded sand with slow, repetitive movements. It slid the pad of its thumb against the inner walls of the compartment with gentle pressure, my forearm braced in its other hand. It used its breath to clear out the sand even when there were barely any loose grains to clear, faint brushes of warmth against my gunport’s smallest and most untouched corners. It moved slowly, telegraphing its motions as best it could. It didn’t pinch or jostle or crush anything, the way company technicians always did. My gunport had never been touched so gently. I had never been touched so gently, at least not physically or for such an extended time. But I didn’t tell Three to stop.
And from the quiet pulse of Three’s metadata in our channel, it didn’t want to stop either. Slight waves of [awe] and [curiosity] and [want]-[uncertainty] fell from it smoothly. It was weird and kind of alarming that I was the focus of all that stuff, especially because with us being as close as we were, I could sense through the feed how sincerely Three was feeling all of it. It wasn’t doing the weird things humans do where they communicate exaggeratedly about their positive emotions as a way to be nice (?); it wasn’t even really communicating about its emotions at all. It was just letting me see how it felt, and I saw.
The foreign particle detected errors had been blinking steadily out as Three worked, and eventually, the last one sourced from my gunport vanished. I nudged that now-quiet input towards Three in the feed and its hands went still as it accepted the data. The maintenance on my gunport was complete and now Three knew that, but it didn’t move its hands away. One thumb moved in a small, repeated arc over the boundary between skin and inorganics.
I didn’t tell it to stop touching me. I just waited. There was something I couldn’t identify shifting at the core of Three’s metadata, and I wasn’t diving in there to figure it out if there was a chance Three would just explain itself instead.
Sure enough, it eventually asked (with minimal metadata attached), Query: further maintenance necessary?
Confused, I showed it my diagnostics. There was some sand caught in my ankle joints but footparts were exposed to stuff like that often enough that there were built-in cleaning mechanisms there, so maintenance wasn’t really necessary. Other than that, I was fine. Performance reliability was hovering around 93%—a bit lower than usual, thanks to all the weird emotion shit that’d been happening, but still pretty good—and threat assessment was humming along at about 4%.
Three acknowledged all this with a ping. It still hadn’t let go of my arm.
Hoping I wasn’t about to magnificently fuck things up, I shifted closer to it in the feed, letting it see more of the emotional metadata that indicated I was genuinely okay and not mad at it and just confused. Then I asked it, Why do you want this?
Three flinched minutely in the feed. I caught a flash of [shame]-[fear], apparently in response to the word ‘want’.
Right. Three was still only a couple hundred cycles into the whole “being a person” thing. I pushed my not-in-distress-or-angry metadata towards it more pointedly. I can tell you want something. Its fine that you do. There’s nothing here that can or would attempt to stop you.
Three spent 6.8 seconds pulling itself together in the feed, then a further 17.5 seconds composing and rewriting a message. Finally, it told me, I want to be close to you.
…Okay? I waited, but Three didn’t say anything else, so that seemed to be the whole reason.
Huh. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but that… to be honest, that didn’t make sense to me. Part of me wanted to end the whole conversation here and never talk about wanting things ever again again, but much more of me was curious. I wanted to know more, to understand. Maybe ART was rubbing off on me. I asked, Query: reason?
Three responded by showing me a highlighted bit of memory data, one of the same bits it’d shown me earlier in the cycle. “A different kind of warm.”
Something emotional tugged at me strongly. I did my best to ignore it (as usual), but Three tentatively caught hold of the resultant metadata and then showed it to me. It was [want], as keen and as densely complicated as Three’s. Fuck.
…ART was going to be absolutely insufferable about this later. I highlighted Three’s “I want to be close to you” message and before I could talk myself out of it, I asked, Query: parameters?
Three metaphysically glowed with positive metadata. (Not metaphysically, the other one. You know what I mean.) It said, Parameters define: metadata exchange(mutual) maintain & physical contact.area=[increased].
That’s it?
Query?
You just want to… Ugh. Saying it felt gross. Keep touching me? With shared metadata?
Three highlighted the second parameter it’d given. And touch more of you.
Okay. Wow, that was even worse. Or maybe not worse, but definitely weirder. I wanted to ask why again, but didn’t think I’d get any clearer of a response. So instead I told Three, If I tell you to stop, you will stop.
Confirm.
And if you want to stop, we will stop.
…Confirm.
Okay. I moved physically closer to Three, so that my entire body was within its reach if it just extended its arms. I also shoved my erratically spiking risk assessment far onto the backburner where its alerts would barely even reach me. I didn’t want to hear from it right now.
Three’s drone dipped closer to me. Query: parameters enact? it asked with a flicker of—[anticipation], maybe?
I only hesitated 0.05 seconds before telling it, Confirm.
Confirm, it echoed. Then it reached for my face.
That caught me off guard. I managed to suppress an automatic flinch, but I was pretty sure my surprise had come through loud and clear in the feed. Three’s hand stilled midair, but I told it Status: green before it could ask.
It accepted that and reached forward again, fingertips gently brushing my cheekbone, warm against my skin. It must have upped its body temperature. I closed my eyes and sent my drone up into a holding pattern above our heads.
Three shifted its hand without breaking contact with my skin, fingertips sliding up to my temple and palm flattening against the curve of my cheek. Its other hand, still cradling my forearm with the still-held-carefully-open gunport, shifted too, thumb dipping inside the compartment to trace the wiring coiled inside.
Some emotion (vaguely similar to how I felt when my batteries got low and I really needed a recharge, but different somehow and less bad) surged, triggering a spike in threat assessment. I backburnered that, too, and leaned into my feed connection with Three to fill the gap in my inputs.
It leaned in too, expanding the breadth of the link. Most of its emotional metadata was the same stuff it’d been radiating this whole time, but I thought the small wave of [calm]-[relief] was new. It made me less worried, for some reason, knowing it wasn’t worried, but I was still pretty conclusively the opposite of relieved and calm.
And Three could probably tell, because its thumb stilled on the innards of my gunport. Query: request? it asked, nudging the edge of my feed presence.
What? I dropped my drone down for a better view of Three’s face. What?
Three took what I was starting to realize was its usual pause to explain something in words instead of machine language. Then it said, I requested something from you and received it. If you would like to request something from me, I will do my best to give it. Would you like to request something?
Oh. I hadn’t thought about that. Trying to deal with the consequences of what Three wanted was taking an embarrassing amount of my focus; I hadn’t spared much processing power for what I might want. I mean, the main thing I wanted was to not want anything, but between ART and Mensah and the therapy modules, I was beginning to realize that was maybe a bit stupid. So I examined myself internally, trying to sort through all the negative system feedback that was always drifting around for something actionable. I didn’t really find anything immediately, except… huh.
I didn’t like being vulnerable like this. I mean, understatement of the fucking century, but seriously—I didn’t like that someone had physical access to my body, no matter what the circumstances were. Plus, if I needed to protect myself, there was nothing I could do without hurting Three. I wanted this to be a fair fight. (This was where ART would typically barrel into my head and pointedly remind me that this wasn’t a fight at all, but whatever. ART wasn’t here). I wanted to be able to do to Three all the same things it could do to me. I wanted to touch Three like it was touching me. Which was kind of stupid, but this whole thing was kind of stupid and that hadn’t stopped me yet.
My feed connection with Three was close enough right now that a ping would be more aggressive than polite, so I just told it without preamble, Request: physical contact(mutual) establish.
That did a lot of weird things to Three’s metadata. [nervousness]-[embarassment] and [excitement]-[want] were the main ones, but my emotional assessment code was still catergorizing everything when Three said Confirm confirm.
I was pretty sure it hadn’t meant to repeat itself like that, but I just rolled with it and echoed, Confirm.
Three dropped its hand from my face (which I didn’t feel anything about, obviously) and moved closer to me. I opened my eyes and moved to the side to give it room on my blanket pile. Our drones settled into a shared holding pattern near the ceiling of our shelter. Three’s hand was still holding my forearm, thumb laid over the edge of my open gunport. Its other hand was curled in its lap. It didn’t move, so I waited.
Query: status? Three asked after 2.5 more seconds of silence.
Status: green, I said, confused. Why?
You are not moving. Did I misunderstand?
What? No. I just thought— I aborted the rest of the message.
Query?
It doesn’t matter.
But Three was persistent. Query?
Ugh. Whatever. I thought. I thought you were going to touch my face again. But it’s nothing. I don’t care.
Three just said Confirm, which didn’t make much sense until it lifted its hand and put it back in the same position on the side of my face.
I closed my eyes again. Confirm. Then I lowered my drone to look at Three. Query: can I touch you now?
Confirm confirm, Three said, accidentally repeating itself again.
So I did. I reached out the arm that Three wasn’t holding onto and touched its cheek with my fingertips, like it had done to me. [affection]-[shock]-[wonder]-[fear] sparked instantly in our channel, and I didn’t even flinch that badly in response. (I still didn’t look at my own metadata, though, because I didn’t really want to start an emotional spiral right now).
I kept my hand there for 2.5 seconds, trying to get used to all the mostly positive metadata Three was flooded with. Then I moved my hand down and touched the base of Three’s throat, the tip of my middle finger resting in the small divot between its reinforced collarbones.
Three tensed in the feed, but physically stayed completely still. The spot I was touching was a vulnerable spot for my model of SecUnit, and apparently I’d been right to assume it was the same for Three. The throat itself was lined with inorganic reinforcements under the skin and the chest was covered with inorganic plating (for ease of access to internal components), but that one spot was almost purely organic tissue. In a fight, it was a hard place to hit but a smart place to target. I pressed down slightly. The rapid pulse of Three’s coolant system was working faintly beneath my fingertips .
Query, Three started, then aborted the rest of the message.
I saw my face frown on the edge of my drone’s vision. What?
Message_prev disregard.
I was still curious, but I could sense Three’s [apprehension] in the feed so I dropped the subject. Instead, I moved my hand down onto on Three’s chest, where I knew there was a lot of inorganic plating. Where are your access panels?
Three hesitated, then moved its hand from my gunport (which I promptly closed) to my chest. Here, it said, slowly tracing small shapes over the fabric of my jacket. Here. And here. And my pelvic plate splits from here… through to here… and here. The plate folds out along this line… this line… and this line.
I was glad my eyes were closed. It was easier to watch this happen through a drone. Okay, I said. My sensory system must have been glitching because it wouldn’t stop trying to prioritize the tactile data of Three’s hand radiating warmth through my thin shirt as critical priority.
Three’s hand had stopped in the approximate middle of my chest and it kept it there. Query: Where are yours?
…Here. I traced on Three’s chest the outline of where my smallest access panel was, the compartment where I kept ART’s secure comm. Also here—a slightly bigger rectangle on the opposite side of my chest—and a larger one here. I outlined a medium-size trapezoid on Three’s midsection, roughly where a human’s stomach would be. My chest just has small access panels. The only place my plating splits is on my back.
Request: show me.
The only thing I wanted to acknowledge about Three’s metadata was that it matched mine pretty closely. I shifted closer (Three’s hands on my chest and face moved with me) and reached around it to its back. Here, I said, and I traced a careful line from near its hip seam all the way up along its spine.
Three dropped its drone down to the same level as mine and closed its eyes. MB, it said.
Fuck. What the hell was I doing. Query?
After 8.2 seconds of silence that felt like half a cycle, Three just sent me a 255: Information not found error message.
You don’t have to say anything, I told it. In fact, it’d be a relief if it didn’t. But of course I wasn’t that lucky.
MB, Three said again. Do you really want this?
Wasn’t that the question of the cycle. I don’t even know what this is, I said honestly.
Three was quiet for a while, fiddling with something in the feed. I still had my arm curled around its back, hand placed flat between its shoulderblades. My other hand had come to rest on the blanket next to Three’s thigh. Its hands were still resting on my face and chest.
I’d never been this close to someone for so long outside of an emergency situation or the few times I'd hugged Mensah. But it wasn't as bad as physical contact usually was. All the emotional stuff was still uncomfortable, but… I didn’t really hate the physical contact. It felt kind of like the way ART and I always curled around/into each other in the feed, just with actual physical bodies instead of feed presences. The comparison felt pretty accurate, which probably meant that not only did I not hate this, but I might even like it. (Ugh, ART really was going to be insufferable about this.)
Then Three sent me a file labeled WhatThisIs_Hypothesis.file. There didn’t seem to be any malware inside or anything, so I opened it. It was a patchwork collection of a bunch of data of all different types all bundled together. The bit of Three’s memory data that recorded the human saying “a different kind of warm” was in there, and so was a snapshot of when it had told me I want you to be okay, and a copy of my Request: physical contact(mutual) establish message from a few minutes ago, and that was about where I slammed the file shut.
Three asked Query??, radiating [worry].
Status: green, I told it automatically, holding the file on the fringes of my processes. After giving myself 5.0 seconds to prevent an emotional spiral, I opened it again. This time, I got to the copied-in sensory data Three had gathered when it had touched my face the first time (emotional metadata, excruiciatingly, fully included) before I had to shut it again.
Three, thankfully, didn’t say anything. It didn’t take the file away, either. So I kept trying. Eventually (I’m not telling you how long it took) I got through the whole file and saved it before I could think about it too hard. You’re the worst, I told Three.
Assessment=information false, it replied. Query: status?
Status: green. Query: status?
Status: green. Query: request?
I pointedly highlighted my response to the last time it’d asked me that question. We’re already doing what I wanted.
Acknowledge, Three said. Clarification: what else do you want?
Okay, no. I pinged it a negative.
Query?
We’re not doing that. Talking about feelings. On top of everything else. We’re not.
…Acknowledge, Three said.
Then we sat there for another 20.8 seconds, which was how long it took me to realize that maybe Three (who was still pretty bad at making requests or stating preferences) had asked me if I wanted anything because it wanted something and it’d been hoping I’d ask for what it wanted so it wouldn’t have to. It seemed convoluted, but emotions usually were, and it wouldn’t take much to check if I was right. So I asked Three, Query: request?
Three said Request: [pending], but by now I was used to it pausing before saying things. Then it sent me a copy of the feed message where I’d asked it where its access panels were and said, Query: purpose?
Fuck. I didn’t want to talk about this, but Three wanted to know and I wanted it to have what it wanted. (Which, okay. Backburnering that to think about later. Or preferably never.) So I tried, Purpose=maintainence.
Maintenance=unnecessary, Three said promptly. Query: purpose?
Fuck and shit. I really didn’t want to talk about this. I was curious.
Three didn’t respond, but its focus stayed centered on me. Waiting for a better response, probably. Ugh, fine.
I pulled up some of the sensory data of Three’s fingers on the inside of my gunport and scraped off most of the emotional metadata, then sent it to Three. This. I wanted to make you feel like this. Three’s metadata flashed with [surprise] and I immediately added, Don’t ask why and don’t ask me to talk about it.
Acknowledge, Three said. It combed over the data as I watched, then did it again. After a pause of typical length for it, it focused back on me and repeated, Acknowledge.
I waited for it to elaborate, but it didn’t. I prompted, Query?
Three paused for 43% longer this time. You can. Make me feel. Like that.
Do you want me to?
Predicted outcome=positive.
That wasn’t enough. Request: query_prev respond.
Three backed partially out of our feed channel, but didn’t close it. It sent a positive ping.
Well. Okay. Acknowledge, I said, and slowly moved my hands to the edges of Three’s jacket to remove it. After a 1.5 second delay, Three removed its hands from my face and chest so I could get the sleeves off its arms and then pull its shirt off in a similar way. Then it put its hands loosely around my wrists, which made sense. I wouldn’t let someone reach into my body without giving myself some semblance of control over their motions, either.
I placed one hand on its shoulder and moved the other to the first panel it had shown me, located roughly one-third of the way down its chest in the middle. I could easily distinguish the seam and the pressure points that opened it. (I might not have seen a SecUnit of Three’s make and model up close before, but this stuff was made for idiot human technicians to poke their way around, so it wasn’t exactly subtle.)
Query: status? I asked.
Status: green status: green. Three was still partially backed out of our channel so I couldn’t see much of its metadata (probably a good thing), but I was starting to think it repeating itself might be a good sign.
I pinged it an acknowledgement and opened my eyes. I wanted all the visual input I could get of this. Then I clicked open its access panel.
There wasn’t a whole lot there. There were a few ports for manual hardwiring and some tubing full of coolant and a bundle of power cables and behind a synthetic barrier (to keep things tidy) organic muscular tissue shot through with hundreds of wires so thin they were barely visible. Three wasn’t showing any distress, so I reached in to touch. The barrier was flexible and it indented slightly under my fingertips.
The second I touched its muscle through the barrier, Three’s entire chest spasmed sharply and its hands tightened around my wrists enough to have broken a human’s arm. Startled, I tried to pull my hands away, but its iron grip around my wrists didn’t relent.
I pulled it closer to me in the feed, trying to get it to focus as I askedQuery: diagnostics?
Its presence was shuddering, but it was able to clumsily share its haptic input log with me. I opened it and—yeah, I probably should’ve predicted that making very nearly direct contact with its muscular tissue would do some really weird stuff to its haptic systems. Query: diagnostics? I asked again, even more insistently.
Status: green, Three managed, then took 0.5 seconds to pull itself together enough to send me a actual report.
I accepted the file and scanned it rapidly. Three’s threat assessment had spiked enough that it had automatically un-backburnered itself, but it was slowly sinking back to nominal levels. A lot of processing power was being shunted towards figuring out what exactly had happened and how to sort the resultant data, but there was no damage incurred to the muscular tissue, as far as any of its systems could tell. It’d been briefly scared but was calming down now, and didn’t even seem angry or betrayed or anything. It was fine. I hadn’t hurt it.
Query: status? Three asked. It loosened its grip on my wrists slightly but didn’t let go.
Status: green.
Acknowledge.
Acknowledge. I gave myself 3.5 seconds to internally scream about kind of everything, then told Three, I will not hurt you. Ever. No matter what.
Three’s drone darted over to circle mine in a holding pattern. I know, it said. I will not hurt you. Then it added a copy of that exchange to WhatThisIs_Hypothesis.file, because of course it fucking did.
I nudged my drone to join Three’s pattern and closed my eyes. The emotions that had been roiling since Three had first taken hold of my gunport were starting to get pretty fucking unmanageable, and it was taking an uncomfortable amount of my processing power to keep my risk assessment quiet. Confirm, I said.
Confirm. Query: assistance required? Three asked, nudging at me in the feed without much force.
I thought about pinging it a negative and just ending the conversation there, but its hands were still loosely circling my wrists and the panel in its chest was still hanging open and the majority of the emotional metadata it was continuously sharing with me was a weird mix of [trust] and [trepidation]. I couldn’t let this end here. So I pinged it a positive. I said, I want you to show me what you want, and only hated myself a little bit as I said it.
Three pinged an acknowledgement. It lowered one of my hands into my lap but kept holding my wrist. The other hand, it slowly raised back to its open access panel. Risk assessment spiked, but I shoved that away.
Environment=secure & hostile presence=null, Three said, just like it had earlier. We are both safe.
Acknowledge. This was fine. We were safe.
It guided my hand so my fingertips rested on—fuck. On the power cables running beneath its open panel. Power cables were as important to SecUnits as veins and arteries were to humans, so either Three was really stupid or it actually fully trusted me with its life and safety even knowing I might fuck it up like I’d literally just fucked up by touching its muscle tissue. And I knew Three wasn’t stupid. (Fuck.)
Three let go of my wrist, leaving my hand halfway in its access panel. I didn’t move. I didn’t pay any attention to whatever metadata Three was probably emanating in my direction. I just let my fingers rest on the bundled up black-coated wires, knowing that Three’s entire life force was literally and physically within reach.
Once I managed to get my emotions under control, I lifted the hand that was in my lap (Three let go of my wrist as soon as I started to move) and opened my own access panel. Then I took Three’s wrist like it had taken mine and gently guided it towards the coil of power cables inside. Three startled in the feed, but I reminded it Physical contact(mutual) maintain, and it calmed to something more quietly nervous and only vaguely unsettled. Yeah, welcome to my world. I placed its fingertips on my power cable, then let go of its hand.
It didn’t move. Neither did I. The only movement in the shelter was our drones circling slowly overhead. My sensors knew something had entered my access panel, but there wasn’t any kind of tactile sensor array in there so I didn’t physically feel much. The biggest indicator that something important was happening was just how much Three was leaning on me in the feed. (As soon as I noticed that, I also noticed that I was leaning into it the same amount without even meaning to. Which was probably fine but also kind of scary.)
ART probably would’ve told me to say something to Three, to tell it I trusted it or thank it for trusting me, but the silence between us was kind of comfortable and I didn’t want to ruin it. Three seemed to feel the same way, because while its emotional metadata had a lot going on, [dissatisfaction] wasn’t anywhere to be found.
So we stayed like that. For a while. Quiet; drones moving in slow loops overhead; my most essential system physically in Three’s hands and Three’s in mine; not looking at each other but close enough in the feed that we could’ve started running subprocesses in each other’s processing space. It was… good? More than fine? I don’t know. Maybe Three’s WhatThisIs_Hypothesis.file could’ve helped with that, but my emotional management subprocesses were A) flawed to begin with, and B) kind of overloaded at the moment, so I didn’t want to open that back up.
Eventually, Three pinged me. Before I could ask, it sent its diagnostics with its power levels highlighted. They weren’t concerningly low, but they were on the lower end of nominal.
I ran my own diagnostics, then showed them to Three. My power levels were in the same general range and just a bit worse off (perks of being a shitty outdated model). Query: recharge cycle commence? I asked.
Confirm, Three said.
Confirm. Being unconscious did sound pretty good right now. I slowly removed my hand from Three’s access panel, letting my fingertips drag along the length of its exposed power cable as I did. I gently closed the panel and sealed it well.
Three did the same. It closed and sealed my panel like I’d closed its. Then it said, Assessment: this was good. Query: assessment shared?
Confirm, I said, then promptly set a reminder to ask ART to help me code a 0.5 second speech delay.
Query: unit position maintain? Three asked.
What? I looked at it more closely through my drone. What position was it talking about—oh. You want to stay on the blanket pile for your recharge cycle?
Three sent a positive ping. I positive-pinged it back. It laid down. I laid down beside it. I started to minimize our feed connection to not much more than a closed high-priority contact link, but then Three sent me a vaguely distressed Query?. So I stopped and sent it a trimmed-down version of my diagnostics, showing how much energy and focus it was taking for me to keep sensing (and making sense of) all its emotional metadata. A faint ripple of apologetic [regret] was all that came through the channel before Three minimized it the rest of the way.
And just like that, the inside of my head was quiet again. Well, mostly. My camera feeds and my blaring emotional assessment protocol and my still-slightly-higher-than-nominal risk assessment were making themselves known, but all of that was pretty normal.
Three and I weren’t looking at each other, but our drones were still looping slowly in a shared holding pattern overhead so I caught regular glimpses of Three through its camera feed. Three looked—relaxed, I guess. There wasn’t any visible tension in its organic or inorganic tissue, but its eyes were still flicking minutely to trace the paths of our drones, meaning it hadn’t started its recharge cycle yet.
So I messaged it, You haven’t started your recharge cycle yet.
Confirm, Three sent back, then paused to phrase its next words. You can enter your cycle first. I will maintain active security protocol for the duration of your unconsciousness.
That felt weird. No one had offered to stay up and keep watch for me… ever. I mean, ART watched over me like that every time, but it didn’t need to take recharge cycles in the first place so it wasn’t staying up like Three was. Three was prioritizing my protection over its own comfort, which felt like a big enough realization that I could justify not thinking about right now. Confirm, I sent Three. I’ll do the same for you later.
Confirm.
Well, okay. I made sure all my extraenous subprocesses were set to close neatly, properly stored a few loose clumps of data I’d shoved into random folders throughout the day, and finally sent my power system the cue to start a recharge cycle (without thinking about Three’s hands on my power lines at all, thank you very much).
Just before I dropped off, I told Three in SecUnit code, Contact time=[t-4.0 hours] expect.
In words, it echoed, See you in the morning.