All systems red, but SecUnit has a built-in best friend!! (It is ambivalent, at best)
I stood on opposite sides of the cargo bay from the other SecUnit, which implied much more space than there truly was. SecUnits were shipped together with the supply boxes; it was more space-efficient that way. We both have been standing motionless for hours at this point.
Or at least, I have been completely motionless. The SecUnit swayed ever so slightly. tilting with the ship, like a flower in the breeze.
No. That was too whimsical, I must've been watching too much low-reality media. It tilted back and forth like its gyroscope was broken.
Right as the ship was touching down, the other SecUnit turned its armored attention to me. I did my best not to react as it swayed ominously in my general direction.
A simple greeting. I almost ignored it, except it was tagged.
SecUnits didn't bother tagging pings or pokes. It was unnecessary information. Yet this tiny message was packed with information: excitement, joy, and, oddly, pronouns.
I opened the shared feed, we were assigned to the same project, why she– the other SecUnit, preferred she/her pronouns– didn't do it herself was a mystery. I sent a simple “hello.” to be polite.
She sent a “hi!” With entirely too many ‘i's, a happiness/celebration sigil and happy-excited-hello!! Layered tags.
As she looked at me, she stopped swaying and started bouncing slightly. She was acting so oddly I scanned her governor module. It was intact.
“Are you excited?” She asked, filling the message with her own excitement-joy-wonder. Giving me no time to respond she kept going “I'm so super-duper excited!”
Dread filled me as she continued talking. “It's not like it's your first mission.” I sent, in a (soon to be rare) moment of silence, hoping against hope my calculations were wrong.
“Sure is!” She responded, tagged with a gleeful grin-silly-teasing. Across the room I watched her bounce on her heels. It was unnecessary and unnerving.
Great, I thought to myself, backburnering the connection. An inexperienced SecUnit is as good as a dead SecUnit. I would most likely end up protecting her just as much as the humans.
I blinked away from my episode of Sanctuary Moon when the other SecUnit moved suddenly. She took a step. We hadn't been called anywhere.
She met my gaze for 1.67 seconds before sending a “I'm going to go on patrol.” tagged with an odd mix of anxiety-boredom.
I didn't bother responding. She kept walking, actually she was nearly skipping, her presence filled with almost a physical sense of "teehee." I resisted rolling my eyes; she would hopefully learn to keep her emotions to herself soon.
She returned from her self imposed patrol and stood in ‘her’ corner for almost 10 minutes, swaying idly. We hadn't really officially claimed any space, we simply gravitated naturally to ‘our’ spots.
And if ‘my’ spot was as far away as possible from ‘her’ spot while simultaneously being close to the exit… Well, who cares.
She swayed more, head tilting to and fro at the extremes of each sway. It was annoying, and distracting. I glanced at her, hopefully she wasn't too glitched i thought.
Then she started fidgeting.
I turned to her fully, “are you experiencing a system malfunction?” I pinged.
She shook her head, helmet hiding her face. I got the impression she only kept her armor on because I kept my armor on. “Nope, all systems fully operational.” she sent. She did not stop swaying.
I watched her for a moment. She watched me back. We made meaningless implied eye contact for 6.74 seconds.
“I'm going to go on patrol,” she sent, finally turning away.
“You don't have to inform me every time.” I sent, taking the time to tag it with irritation.
“Ok.” She twitched, shaking out her hands. She glanced around the hallway. A notification from the humans popped up, my presence was required for a crater survey.
I stepped towards the door. “can I come?” She asked, having also read the request.
Clearly not expecting my quick. “No.” She practically wilted. “I was called specifically. It would be abnormal for you to accompany me.” I added, unnecessarily.
Cold air rushed through my exposed, hole-ridden skin as I opened the medbay door, or maybe more accurately, as I left the nice warm air behind. It makes sense; humans need warmth and soft things to recover. SecUnits needed to suck it up.
I canceled the shiver instinct; any jostling would only cause me to start leaking again. Which would be both gross and a biohazard.
Arms wrapped around my middle. I froze for 0.23 seconds, analyzing the situation. The pressure was light, the arms warm and hard metal. The other SecUnit.
I leaned away. "Get–!" I started before thinking better of it.
I couldn't show anything was wrong; her governor module was still intact. If she discovered that mine was broken, she would have to report it. Then she would have to dismantle me–attempt to dismantle me. I wasn't sure how well that would go for her.
“I was so scared.” She sent, soaked in fearful-anxious-sad. “I was–” she stood straighter, a shock of governor module enforced sobriety seeping into their shared feed.
“I did everything I could think to do to help.” She finished, trying to take some of my weight onto her shoulders.
The open door, the prepped stretcher, the sanitized medbay. I checked the sec-system; all the doors were locked, needing a code from one of the SecUnits to open again.
I began to try and subtly pry her fingers off. “I maintained more than 50% functionality.” I lied.
She swept me up into her arms like i was an injured human client. Her body heat rose as well, was her med system confused? Another quick scan revealed something odd.
Her med-system was under the impression that this was a training/testing run to maintain her medical situation preparedness. She was working around her governor module by lying to med-system.
She wasn't broken. Yet she wasn't fully obedient.
I let her carry me all the way to our repair cubicle. It wasn't like there was much I could do to stop her. I let my eyes fall closed, and opened Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.
“Good morning,” glad-worried-greatful the other SecUnit sent as i came back online. “How was your nap?” This one was teasing-playful-worried.
“bad.” I sent as I sat up. At the foot of the bed was my casual uniform. I tested my repairs looking down at the clothes.
When I looked at the clothes for over 1.45 seconds without comment, she nervously sent, "Mensah wants us to attend a meeting. You don't have time for the spare armor.”
This was true, I suppose. I shrugged on the dark blue long sleeve knit shirt and asked “Any briefing?” as I stood.
She shook her head, leading the way to the main hub. Everyone sat in a loose circle around the display except Bharadwaj and Volescu who were in med bay.
The room was messy and I didn't miss the way the other SecUnit's gaze lingered on each meal packet and beverage bottle like they were top priority threats. Ratthi glanced at us, then did a startled double take.
Oddly, the still armored SecUnit (not that i was jealous, or anything.) took a step forward, taking the human’s attention. “SecUnit's A and B reporting.” she said, unnecessarily.
The humans all looked up, eyes darting between the two of us. Thankfully their attention was drawn by the other SecUnit as she was still in her armor (yep, definitely not jealous.)
Mensah turned off the interface, looking up at them. “SecUnit A,” she asked looking at the other SecUnit. “If it would make you more comfortable, you may remove your helmet.”
Her helmet slid off, she sent a blank ping with an emotional bomb of excited-scared-happy. As she grinned at Mensah.
Mensah blinked slightly, glancing between the two of them. “You really are identical, aren't you?”
“Like twins.” Ratthi mumbled.
and we were identical, but not in the way that human twins were identical. We were each built to factory standard.
Brown bristly hair atop pale textureless skin. Plain square faces with big blue eyes and rough pink lips over white straight teeth. Androgynous build and exactly two meters tall. We both looked like any other SecUnit ever built to our specs.
"Yes," the other SecUnit said. It was odd how she talked. She pushed her voice to be much higher than it should be; it was almost tempting to describe her as ‘squeaky.’
“SecUnits are supposed to be uniform.” I said, not bothering to step out from behind her. “What did you need from us?”
Mensah sighed softly and began to explain the issues with missing data. They decided to go over their fields of speciality then meet up again later. Which was great! Because I didn't want to be here anymore.
I stood mostly idle as I waited for the other SecUnit to finish with the cubicle. I obviously still had Sanctuary Moon playing in the background to distract me from the acid mud that clung to my legs. I had to wait to wash off the acid mud that sloshed up my legs when we pulled Ratthi out of the ‘hot mud pit’ until she finished.
“I am receiving an update.” she sent, unnecessary.
I forced a placid acknowledgment. She didn't have to tell me everything she did the second she did it. Well, she probably did, but still, her messages interrupted my show.
I almost turned back to my show when something seemed off. I looked back over to her to see her energy weapons sliding out of her forearms. She froze for a moment before aiming at me.
I moved away from any of the more sensitive equipment. Her weapons stayed trained on my head, “what are you doing?” I asked, carefully neutral.
Had I done something to give away my busted governor module? “I–” she shook slightly, forcing her aim down. She didn't disengage.
Then she twitched, face pinching in pain. She aimed for me, and fired.
I rolled to the side. The bolt of energy whizzed by, barely missing me. Smoke filled the air as the plastimetal behind where I had just been standing melted and burned.
I charged her. Forcing her arms up in one hand, it was easy, she wasn't truly trying to fight it. Nonetheless i exposed my own energy weapon. Pressing the barrel into her chest. Something stopped me from firing.
Maybe it was how she was standing perfectly still for the first time since we met. Maybe it was how she had talked to the humans when I didn't want to. Maybe it was the fact she bent the rules of her governor module to help fix it.
Maybe it was because she seemed to want to be friends, or at least as friendly as SecUnits could be.
Either way, against all better judgment, I wasted valuable time scanning her for malware. And I found some.
A looping code, targeting only her governor module. The code forced one, simple directive over and over: kill. Everything.
There was an easy, simple, stupid solution.
I hacked her governor module. Disabling it completely, she gasped slightly. Her weapons disengaged.
Her knees went out, she hit the ground softly, her eyes shimmery and dripping. “Thank you.” She said, voice lower than I had ever heard it.
Her hands came up to hide her face and wipe away the lubricant leaking from her eyes. I looked away, uncomfortable with the leaking. She slumped and began to make sad noises. “I didn't want to,” she said, desperate.
“but it hurt so bad and I just–” she cut herself off, curling tight into a ball. Her leaking redoubled from a drip to a stream.
“I,” I started, wanting her to quit with the sad noises and leaking, but unsure how to achieve that. “I understand. You are free from it now.” Ok, the last part was a quote from Sanctuary moon, it was a good quote though!
She clearly shared my opinion as she slowed with the sad noises. Her face was bright now, red and splotchy. I looked away, focusing instead on my media.
A notification from Mensah interrupted my show again. “DeltFall,” SecUnit-A said, still on the floor. “Do you think..?” She asked, looking up at it.
The evidence was obvious. Most likely The same malware that infected her infected the DeltFall SecUnits.
She stood across from me in the hallway, we were waiting for the humans to get ready. She swayed slightly, nice new armor sliding against itself silently.
“Hey,” she pinged. She moved so she could look at me head on. Or as ‘head on’ as two fully armored SecUnits could be. "So, um,” she hesitated, fidgeting, “other than watching media, what do you do for fun?”
“What else would I need?” I sent. I was deleting our conversation as it happened. That way we couldn't be caught.
She stared at me for a whopping 2.78 seconds, nodded and looked down. No, she wasn't just looking down. Her feed was downloading a game.
I automatically covered for her downloading of The 44th Simulation in the same way I had hid my downloads of Sanctuary Moon. If she was caught, I would be caught.
That was the only reason.
When I hovered near the cargo bay doors hopefully, she stood beside me. When Mensah pointed at the crew cabin, she sent me an empty ping of comfort. When Ratthi leaned over to look at us, she took a step, drawing the humans attention.
“We heard-" he hesitated, “we were given to understand that, imitative human-bot constructs were- partly- constructed of cloned material.”
“Yes, that's true.” She smiled, all friendly and warm in a way I knew wasn't in our programming.
“But surely-” he glanced away for a moment. “I mean, it's clear you two have feelings.”
When I flinched SecUnit-A sent another wave of comfort in an odd attempt to soothe me. Oversay stepped in, lecturing Ratthi. “You're upsetting them.” she hissed.
It looked over to the other SecUnit, her hands were balled. Her stance still and rigid as she glanced between the humans and, oddly, myself. I sent a quick, unnecessary “I'm alright.” To the other SecUnit and snitched to Mensah.
Then I retreated to the back of the ship. The other SecUnit stood, and with a bold (and bad) attempt at casualness, stepped between me and the humans, completely blocking me from view.
When we finally landed, I took a moment to explain that no, actually. Humans should not enter the habitat. And took the lead with the other SecUnit falling behind.
She hesitated as our metal boots clanged up the ramp to the doors. I turned to her, “stay here and protect the humans from any incoming threats.” I said, ignoring how she lit up at the instructions.
She would only get in the way, as inexperienced as she was. My decision had nothing to do with the fear-anxiety-nervous she was leaking into our shared feed.
She stood by the door watching the humans pretend to not watch her. She didn't mind taking as much as the other SecUnit did, but the not-so-subtle staring was starting to freak her out. She fidgeted.
She really was a coward, wasn't she? One so blatant, SecUnit told her to stay safe with the humans– sorry, she meant to write ‘keep the humans safe’ she sighed. Even her tilting wasn't enough to raise her performance reliability.
She wanted to walk, to pace, to patrol. But there was only the hopper, and she couldn't leave their humans. Her mind was quickly changed by a pop up in her eye line. An alert, from SecUnit
⚠️critical system failure⚠️ Assistance required.
She was out the door before she had time to think about it. The metal clanged as she ran faster than she had ever run before. The door was still open, she followed SecUnit's fading ping.
She grabbed the drones from SecUnit's limp grasp. It was at this point that Mensah sent an inquiry. Gosh, what should she say back?
“A combat situation has broken out between the SecUnits. Please stay safe in the hopper, be prepared to evacuate on my mark.” That sounded professional, right?
She shook her head, she needed to focus. She slid to a stop, SecUnit wasn't here. She readyed her energy weapon ports, scanning the room.
Nothing came up. She set the drones to search and began to desperately search her education modules for what to do. Every single piece told her to abandon the ‘lost equipment’ and she most certainly wasn't going to do that.
SecUnit was her friend. And friends don't leave friends to die alone. She finally got a visual on SecUnit.
Another two SecUnits were lifting her friend onto a medical table. Ok, yay! Someone is helping.
She kept rushing, in case their new friends needed help helping SecUnit. The halls were dark, and slick with blood. It was odd how so many humans had died, yet their medbay was functioning.
Maybe they were too late, out on a survey and returned to a habitat full of bodies. Isn't that a scary thought? She shuddered as she turned down the hall that led to medbay.
She waved. “Hello,” she said as she sent a friendly ping.
The closer SecUnit responded with a quick shot, aimed at her head. She ducked down, ok! Not friendly!
She bounced back up, stumbling to the side, trying to copy the strategy SecUnit deployed when she was… compromised.
Evil-unit kept its guns trained on her. if only she had some way to distract it, she thought as she aimed. She fired as she started moving again.
It shook off her shots, ok. Time to try out physical weapons. She slid out the blades in her armor that rested above her wrists.
She punched into its chest. Fluid sprayed out as it became unbalanced. She took the opportunity to sweep its leg.
With it on the ground she went to pin it.
Where did the other one go?
The heat of a charging weapon. Behind her, in the doorway. Her blindspot.
Whelp. It had been a good run. Not really, she still wanted to play games, to make friends, to pick a name– the shot went wide. She glanced up.
Doctor Mensah stood there. Breathing heavily, long dress splattered in SecUnit spray. She swallowed thickly.
SecUnit-A stood. “I asked you to stay in the hopper.” She said.
"Dr. Mensah," SecUnit-B said, "this is a violation of security priority and I am contractually obligated to record this for report to the company—” it closed its mouth, blinked and stared at the ceiling.
She pinged it, inquiring for its status. It pinged back with a comprehensive damage report.
“That great, huh?” She joked (did that count as a joke?) Swinging around to hull it up, into her arms.
“Prepare for lift off. No survivors. We will leave as soon as we return.” She sent to the humans that bothered listening to her, to SecUnit she sent “once you're done initializing you can change it.” And started playing episode one of Sanctuary Moon in their shared feed.
She propped SecUnit on the chair. It hadn't said anything, or interacted with her over the feed. It shifted, reaching for its neck. “Mensah,” it said suddenly, voice low and scared. “You need to shut me down. Now.”
“What? No.” She said, “we're getting you ready for emergency repair.”
“The unknown SecUnit inserted a data carrier.” It said, making eye contact for the first time. “A combat override module. It's downloading instructions into me and will over-ride my system.”
“You have to stop me.” it said, deathly serious. “You have to kill me.”
“No,” Ratthi started, “no we can't” he turned to SecUnit-A
The humans scrambled, trying to organize to fix it. It caught her eye, then glanced at the hand weapon on the seat beside it. She couldn't take a step, the word “wait,” stalled in her throat, taking too long.
Her first friend shot itself in the chest. She lifted a hand to her mouth. It slumped to the side.
She admittedly avoided the humans as they worked on SecUnit. She pretended to patrol until she found a nice dark corner to tuck up into. She tried to be realistic: she wouldn't be much help.
But in all honesty, she was scared. Seeing her friend shoot itself in the chest was scary. She tried to distract herself by starting a new game but it was hard to focus when she kept scanning for SecUnit's stats.
She had set her systems to send an alert when it woke, but that didn't help her anxiety. She scanned it again. This time she actually got a ping back. A bare bones, simple; initializing…
She stood, making her way to the ready room. She hovered at the door when she heard Dr Gurathin say “we still don't know where the other one went?”
No one said anything, the drones around the room told her he was pacing, “for all we know it could be tucked up in a storage closet, just waiting.”
“It's probably just patrolling.” pin Lee “there's no danger, that one never had the combat override module inserted and this one has had it completely removed.”
Mensah said, “Gurathin, what's wrong?” when his pacing didn't stop.
“it was already a rogue” Gurathin sounded stressed and anxious “its governor module is hacked.”
The humans began to argue. She worried, twisting at her fingers. Should she try and do something? What would she do?
The humans swung back and forth, debating how much of a problem she and the other SecUnit were when SecUnit spoke up “the company isn't trying to kill you.”
“SecUnit” Dr Mensah said, soft and polite, “how do you know that?”
“If they wanted you dead they would have poisoned your water.”
Which seemed like a great argument in its defense, until Gurathin snapped “its killed people. 57 miners it was meant to protect.”
It…it did? She stepped through the door, pinging it cautiously. Its eyes flicked to her for a moment. That would make sense, in a scary way. It was better in combat then she was, understood security better then she did.
“I did not hack my governor module to kill my clients.” it's face did something odd, it had been angry/offended but now it looked sad/confused “The company's cheap government module glitched out, they gave me a new one and I hacked it”
So…” Mensah started quietly. “SecUnit, do you have a name?”
She turned, listening just as closely as everyone else. “No,” it said, softly, avoiding everyone's gaze.
Gurathin cut in, “It calls itself Murderbot.” with a hostile look.
“That was private.” SecUnit said, glaring at Gurathin. SecUnit-A took a step closer, fully disrupting the conversation with her ‘sudden’ appearance.
“Hey, hey” Ratthi said, “this whole thing started because you wanted to know what they do in their spare time, what did you find?”
She blinked out of her game, “Hey, SecUnit!” her drones told her it was Ratthi. He was waving her down as he sped walked her way.
She stopped, smile creeping at her face. The humans had quickly learned that M.B did not appreciate being spoken to. They also applied that to her, she wished they hadn't. She likes talking.
She had taken to wearing the casual uniform while M.B still wore its armor in the hopes that their humans could tell them apart. It seems to be working, “Salutations, Ratthi!” She turned with a smile, “how are you doing this cycle?”
He smiled, stopping a little more than a polite distance away. “Good! I'm doing good.” He glanced around, probably looking out for Mensah. Was the ‘don't harass M.B’ rule actually a ‘don't harass the SecUnits’ rule? “How are you?” he asked.
“I am well,” she tilted, shifting her smile in the hopes she looked attentive. Then she stalled, staring at his face. Where do conversations go after this? She was supposed to ask a question, right?
Thankfully Ratthi beat her to it. “So, uh.” He started, glancing around again. “Ya got a name? Something you want us to call you?”
“SecUnit-A.” She shook her head. “No, that's not a name, is it?” he shook his head as well, merely mimicking her with a patient smile.
She thought about it for .32 seconds “I have a feed address?” She offered, tentatively.
He nodded with a smile, “what is it?”
She took a moment, translating it into something audible. “K.A.17” she said, “technically K.A.17-A for this survey.”
“Would you like me to call you K.A Seventeen or K.A Seventeen Dash A?” Her expression shifted without her meaning it to. “Nither?”
She was being weird, wasn't she? “Those aren't names.” she said, dumbly. They were designations, she wanted a name.
“Dash is a name.” Ratthi offered, “so is Even.”
She shifted uncomfortably, breaking eye contact. “Those are boys' names,” her sentence hung for a moment, her voice going quiet.
she set one of her drones to scan his face. “Kai and Avery are gender neutral?” he offered, tilting his head.
“I don't want gender neutral.” He looked at her oddly. One of her humans was finally talking to her and she was being weird. Her eyes felt hot. “I want a girls’ name.” Her voice sounded weird.
She was was starting to understand why M.B hated eye contact, her face burned from Ratthi's stare. “Well,” he hummed, looking away, “we can turn the numbers to letters?”
“Kaila?” She tried, sounding it out. “that's a real name.”
He smiled as she met his eyes again. “A real nice name!” he joked.
She smiled again, reaching out to shake Ratthi's hand, “hi!” she beemed, “my name is Kaila.”
He took her hand. “My name is Ratthi.” he said, shaking it.
I stared straight ahead, out the hopper window. Ratthi also looked out the window, not bothering to glance at me as he explained Mensah's position.
“You know,” he added after a moment, glancing back at where Kaila was watching Overse talk with Arada. She told it once that she wished the humans spoke to them like they spoke to each other. It told her they were lucky they didn't.
Ratthi looked back outside, “in Preservation Alliance’s territory, bots are considered full citizens.” Ratthi smiled a little, like a hint. “Constructs would fall into that category.”
I said nothing, this information had no impact on the mission at hand. Kaila leaned over, meeting Ratthi's gaze, “is that so?” Her voice had gotten more natural in pitch lately, it probably had something to do with the fact she had taken to talking to herself.
“Yep,” Ratthi smiled turning to the hopper windshield.
I ran a search, doubtful. I sent a link to my findings to Kaila and reopened my media. She frowned slightly, looking over my annotated notes. She sat back and opened her game.
I powered back on, which is great! I love powering back on. Quickly, I ran through my logs to catch myself up. GrayCris, Mensah, killing the GrayCris SecUnit. My humans saved me. They didn't have to, but they did.
I was back at the company station, Kaila was in the cubicle right next to me. her feed displayed the choice based game she had been getting into. She didn't seem to care much when I slid in to watch. The game was absolutely ancient, made before even human form bots.
She was currently playing as the detective character, searching for a malfunctioning sexbot. She seemed to know exactly where the sexbot was, going off of how she avoided a blue streaked corner. When she opened an in-game book I asked her about it.
“I want to know what happens if Connor sucks so hard he never finds anything.” She sent happily, “there's a hidden timer, and–” I relaxed into her rambling. I probably wouldn't ever see her again.
Then Ratthi walked in with a grin
She stared for a moment at the uniform the station unit offered her. Simple Preservation standard, but a distinctly feminine cut. The belt is higher, thinner. The boots had slight heels.
When she exited she saw M.B in the androgynous uniform. She smiled, it stared at the wall to her left. The rest of the cycle was hectic, filled with travel and people and noise.
She slotted herself into the corner and opened D.B.H. She almost finished her second playthrough when M.B broke their feed connection. She blinked to reality, eyes locking on the still swinging door
Then she took a step. “Where are we going?” She pinged it, rushing to catch up.
“Away” was its simple answer.