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”Three made a gesture of approval at me with its thumb and that was all of this I could take. I went up to the cockpit, out of the haze of human pheromones, where ART-drone waited. It had clamped itself in the pilot’s seat like a large metal spider with a superior attitude. It said, It took you long enough.
I dropped into the copilot’s seat. “Get us the fuck out of here.”
As ART-drone disengaged from the torus, it dropped a new file into our shared processing space, a new show it had been saving for me. Then it got us the fuck out of there.
Platform Decay, Martha Wells
I really wanted to watch the new show, but what I needed first was the restart I had been putting off. We were hopefully out of immediate danger, so me making any more mistakes wasn’t a thing we would have to deal with. And I wanted to have more processing space for enjoying media.
And for accommodating ART.
It was its drone iteration and it wasn’t as powerful as ART-prime. It would have to mainly depend on my filter and my processing space to understand the context of the show. So yes, I really needed to clear more space and get rid of the glitches and all the temporary data clogging me up. Clearing out toxins that had accumulated in my nervous system also wouldn’t hurt.
The file was still hanging unopened in our private feed. “Wait. I need to restart first.”
I felt ART’s impatience on the feed. It was as if it had waited for me for 3 weeks instead of cycles. It was being a big baby about it, but it didn’t argue and just pinged me with an affirmative.
If I was a human I would sigh. I didn’t need it, but ART was here and I wanted to annoy it a little. So I did sigh and it poked me back.
Strap yourself in, I will be disengaging us from the lock and getting us the fuck out of here. The traffic here is horrendous.
Right. ART had spent hours navigating the shuttle around the torus, avoiding the chaotic traffic and avoiding being flagged by Port Authority systems as suspicious. I wouldn’t forgive it if it crashed itself and Mensah into a bigger transport full of corporates who didn’t give a shit. Or worse, did give a shit and were pursuing us. We were mostly safe but not completely out of the woods yet. We would be once we reached one of many stations that surrounded the hollowed planet and the Nightmare Transportation Torus.
Right.
ART-drone was piloting the shuttle, but the shuttle itself didn’t contain a full ART iteration for the simple reason that it wasn’t one of ART’s. Barish-Estranza operatives were by now aware of PSUMNT’s involvement on the Hell Plague Planet. If ART or even just its shuttle with University markers and branding suddenly popped up, it would have compromised the entire mission. We were in a hurry but we couldn’t allow ourselves to get caught before extraction even started. And so we rode a different shuttle.
It belonged to one of many agencies renting private transport from the wormhole station to the main attraction of the system, the Nightmare Transportation Torus. It was conveniently settled close to the nearest wormhole gate and was not only a stopping point between the wormhole and the torus but was also doubling up as a maintenance center for the gate. It was also where ART-prime was waiting for us with the rest of our humans. Once we got there and reached the wormhole I would finally feel 100% safe. Threat assessment was currently throwing up an unexpectedly high number of 55% and I really needed to have that restart right fucking now.
I knew that if something were to happen, I could rely on ART-drone and Three.
So I allowed myself to restart.
[Manual restart initiated.]
[Shut down]
***
[Restart]
Took you long enough. I was starting to worry. I reinitialized to ART’s familiar voice on the feed.
What?
(Emotion check: I was confused. But most importantly I was feeling better. I was feeling comparatively good before restart - it was a relief to be among friends and to have all my humans and humans adjacent to them safe, but restart removed some of the lingering anxiety I was still feeling. My threat module happily oscillated around a 16% probability that we were being actively pursued.)
It took you 9.6 minutes to reinitialize. Much longer than your usual maximum of 5 minutes.
Oh fuck that wasn’t good. Was something wrong with me? Was it something that will eventually evolve into a whole [redacted2.0] clusterfuck?
Great, I was anxious all over again.
Calm down, said ART-drone, deep in my business as always. You just experienced a prolonged stressful situation, with no opportunity to take care of your base needs. I’m suspecting this is still within acceptable parameters, all things considered.
ART couldn’t read my mind, but it knew me very well. I wanted to groan. I really needed to watch some media.
“Don’t call it that.”
But that’s what it is. Needs.
I groaned, just to aggravate ART-drone. It didn’t work. Instead it sent me information about our trajectory. We were out of the area with the heaviest traffic and we would soon be able to follow ART’s auto pilot. Like I mentioned, this shuttle wasn’t ART, but when we rented it, I mercifully shut down the rudimentary bot pilot that was supposed to take us to the Nightmare Transportation Torus. We couldn’t have it up and running because 1) ART-drone might be too rough on it, and 2) it didn’t need to log all the maneuvering ART-drone did around the fucking torus to aid the extraction. It was peacefully sleeping now, but once we got to the wormhole station I would resurrect it, give it a false memory of following its pre-programmed trajectory and staying in one dock for a few cycles and then going back to wormhole station without a trace of any side adventures ART-drone took it on.
I peered into the main cabin with the shuttle’s camera to check on the humans. This shuttle was one of the nicer ones, despite sporting only a rudimentary bot pilot. Spacious enough for humans to be able to sleep comfortably, with a separate food prep area and bathroom cubicle which was a balm for my aggravated threat module. The noisy greetings must have ended while I was restarting and everyone seemed to be getting ready for their resting period. The trip to the wormhole station would take us a couple of hours and everyone was exhausted despite all the breaks we took getting to the rendezvous point. For me it was too many breaks, but I remember how difficult it was for my humans. They probably thought we didn’t get enough resting time.
Not to mention this cycle was long enough on its own. Even Mensah seemed to be exhausted. I knew her face well and could see it in the shadows under her eyes and drooping corners of her mouth. She probably hadn’t rested much, worrying not only about her family and me getting back to her safety, but also about Three when it decided to fuck off without informing anyone. Probably because it knew very well that ART-drone would forbid it going in its little mission of freeing random SecUnits during a very sensitive extraction. I could tell ART was still mad about it, but Three must have taken the brunt of its anger before we arrived at the rendezvous point, because all I could feel coming from ART-drone on the feed was a sense of relief.
(Emotion check: I was relieved too. It felt so good to have everyone safe and here. I didn’t want to think about Leonide or the way she died. I didn’t expect to find her in the safe house in the first place. Besides, she never stopped seeing me as an appliance. I recalled what Farai said: you can’t save everyone.)
It was good to see Mensah and Farai quietly talking to each other as they were resting on a pull out sleeping pad. Sofi was again sandwiched between them, but now was in a deep sleep. Nanna Naja’s head was dropping down and then twitching upright weirdly. (She’s falling asleep, ART-drone supplied. It always knew everything.) Three was awkwardly trying to make her lay down in her own sleeping pod, but she was swatting it away. It was kind of amusing to watch. Then Three noticed my attention on the feed and gave the camera another thumbs up. (Ugh. I knew what it wanted and I would not send it a thumbs up sigil back. I pinged it instead; that would have to satisfy it.) Tula was snoring softly in Janity’s embrace. I didn’t see her face but if I were to guess she was still probably crying by herself. Whatever would happen to her next wasn’t my business and I was more than okay with it. Comforting juvenile humans who just had their world be turned upside down was not my specialty at all. But I knew Mensah would take care of them so that was good.
I backburned the camera feed and turned my attention to the file package containing the new show ART-drone had prepared for me. I could feel its impatience, so I went ahead and started the first episode. ART-drone immediately leaned on me on the feed, slipping into my processes. It wasn’t the same as watching with ART-prime, its drone simply didn’t have the same weight to it. It felt less as if someone big was leaning against me like a weighted blanket, and more as if it was wrapping itself over my shoulders like a heavy shawl.
(Emotion check: either way it felt nice and I wasn’t about to complain.)
The show turned out to be set during the time humanity lived on a single planet and constructs didn’t exist. Even the bots that existed were very simple. It was actually perfect, maybe it used to be real once, but currently it registered as unrealistic and that’s how I liked my media best.
Except very quickly the story went into a depressing direction - the main character found himself stuck on a transport years away from home. I couldn’t imagine being unhappy about being on a transport instead of a dingy planet, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was that he was apparently sent on a suicide mission and that wasn’t as unrealistic as I wanted it to be. I paused the show.
“ART, what the fuck?”
Yes, it hit too close to home.
If you watched it for a few minutes longer you wouldn’t be complaining. I think you should be able to trust my media choices by this point.
Okay, okay, maybe it had a point. But it still was an unpleasant 17 minutes that I could have spent watching something that didn’t resemble my life quite as much.
It has stellar reviews. And my judgement is impeccable.
I poked ART and it tightened around me. I relaxed in my seat and loosened the straps. ART-drone did the same in its own seat. We were well into the route leading to the wormhole station and ART-drone was keeping the piloting controls backburned so it could make full use of my neural suite. I could feel its excitement for the new media so I pressed play. It better not be lying to me.
It turned out to be right. Not even a full minute later the main character encountered another transport, an alien one. This is where the show became fully unrealistic in the best way. The alien was friendly and, as humans would say, cute. He sang and didn’t turn the human main character into a gray person obsessed with incorporating everyone into their hivemind. There was a moment me and ART-drone were genuinely concerned – for the survival of the alien and the human respectively. But they both pulled through in a feat of heroic self sacrifice without actual sacrifice and eventually they were granted a happy ending.
I understood why ART thought we would both enjoy this show. Problems were solved with science and the main character was a teacher. You would think ART would actually like the alien character better – it was a rock-like space spider with a smug attitude, but it was instead awed by the heroic human character who was willing to save his alien friend. Meanwhile I found myself liking the rock alien more, despite my usual preference for human characters.
Huh.
(Emotion check: I was feeling catharsis. A nice, safe one. And another emotion I didn’t want to name even for this stupid check.) ART squeezed me tighter on the feed and I relaxed into it.
The only problem with watching very good media was that nothing is even half as good afterwards. We spent at least an hour trying out different titles and nothing really making much of an impression. We jumped around from show to show, until Three pinged us, offering an edumentary about the history of terraforming engines.
Besides sounding boring as fuck it made my still aggravated threat assessment module spike. For fuck’s sake Three. I politely declined. ART-drone was less polite.
Are you sure you reflected quite enough about what you did?
Three’s presence deflated on the feed.
ART was still mad at it. Understandably so.
(Emotion check: was I mad at it? The farther away we got from the dumb nightmare torus, the less upset I was. It didn’t seem logical. (I guess it was one of those times when logic was just not going to be useful.) I should still be mad with it because didn’t it just prove that it might jeopardize the next joint mission on a whim? Maybe. But the whole thing was complicated. Confusing. It didn’t seem like any of the SecUnits it freed immediately went on a killing rampage. But the one who approached me could have caused countless deaths if I hadn’t been there to divert it. Not even because it wanted to kill, but it just didn’t know jack shit about what it was doing. What’s the point in freeing them, if they might endanger innocent humans, and themselves, and then just end up dead a few hours later anyway? But then, I also freed Three (or the version of me that was Murderbot 2.0 did) and all those other B-E units. As much as I hated the timing, I understood why Three did it. And that was the worst part. I just hoped that the packet with my basic codes (like fooling weapon scanners, taking control of cameras and drones, the original version of walk-like-a-human, etc.) would also spread on that stupid fucking torus.)
“I’m sure it reflected enough,” I said to ART-drone where Three could hear it. ART did the feed equivalent of a haughty sniff and proceeded to wall out Three as best as it could. Which wasn’t as effective as if it did it on its own feed as ART-prime but it still worked.
I couldn’t blame it, I was feeling uncomfortably exposed knowing Three must know how deeply me and ART were entangled in the feed. But what was I supposed to say? “Don’t look at us because you might see us...” yeah, I couldn’t even finish the thought in the privacy of my own mind.
I checked the cameras again. All the humans were now soundly asleep and only Three was still awake, sitting awkwardly on one of the seats and watching its own (boring) media. One of its legs was hanging from the arm support. I had no idea how it could be comfortable in such a weird pose. And it was looking dejected. Fuck, I knew my face betrayed what I was feeling way too many times at way too many inopportune moments, but I didn’t know we would be that easy to read. And just as I thought all of that, I could feel my face shift in a grimace. Great.
I tapped Three and offered, “We can watch some edutainment together when we arrive at the wormhole station?”
Yeah, for some reason it went out like a question. The whole “honest and open communication” approach produced mixed results with the humans, but applying it to conversation with another SecUnit was somehow even more excruciating. But Three seemed to lighten up and did a thumbs up gesture at the camera. Again. “Ha ha,” I said and then backburned the channel.
Should I shore up your walls? asked ART-drone.
It didn’t have to. I could have put more walls between me and Three, but it was nice when ART did it for me so I pinged with affirmation.
We were already very close on feed so I had a sensation of ART wrapping itself more tightly around me. As if it was a diffuse kind of suit skin. Like it had plastered itself to me with its whole presence. I mean, it already felt somewhat like that when it wrapped around me in the feed, but now it gave an impression of both of us being in a shipping container not much bigger than a SecUnit transport box. It weirdly complimented the small cockpit we were physically in. I could feel the activity of ART’s processes as if they were my own and I knew it was the same for ART-drone. My face did something weird and I had a sudden urge to fidget in place. I turned off my act as a human code to make it go away.
I also lost a few inputs, like cameras and audio in the shuttle, and usually that would make me antsy but ART-drone was here and Three was in the passenger cabin so it was fine.
(Emotion check: and it actually was fine.)