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I had known for a long time that Preservation was a ridiculous place. When a compressed packet hit my feed from JollyBaby, one of the station hauler bots, I didn’t know that Preservation was going to prove even more ridiculous.
One of the hazards of staying on Preservation Station was that I was often in range of the bots that lived there. I had set a sort of procedure for dealing with them. If they reached out to me, I pinged back once and only once. And with none of the silly text or image emotion sigils they frequently used. Unless someone was in trouble, then I actually interacted. They annoyed me for the most part but I was… protective of them. JollyBaby and its cohorts had saved me from getting torn apart by Balin. They weren’t my friends but I was pretty sure that they counted me as their friend.
I tried not to have any bot friends after… Anyway, ART and Three didn’t count. I preferred my friends to be either human or machine intelligences, apparently.
When I received that packet from JollyBaby, I immediately pinged it back in acknowledgement and left the packet in my file buffer. I’d look at it eventually. I was in the middle of helping Senior Officer Indah reconfigure the station’s admin firewalls. This was my latest contract for Station Security, although a short one. ART would be picking me up in 30 cycles after my brief “vacation” as its crew insisted on calling my visits. (According to most media, vacations are for fun and not working. I was always working on Preservation in some capacity.)
Indah apparently received the same packet because she stopped what she was doing on a console and said, “Let’s take a break. I have some messages to catch up on.” Her gaze turned inward as she downloaded and read the file. She smiled as she read it, which was weird. Then she said something I never could have anticipated.
“I love weddings. We don’t get many of them up here, especially for anyone I know.”
What? A wedding? My file from JollyBaby must have been a weird coincidence.
I realized I was making a face and hadn’t said anything so I said aloud, “Is there going to be a wedding up on the station?” Weddings sometimes required security. Or, at least they did in Sanctuary Moon.
Indah turned towards me but looked past my shoulder. I appreciated the lengths she’d gone to to work with me, although I knew that I had caused 90% of the problems she’d had to deal with in the last year.
“Yes, I’m surprised you hadn’t read it before me. You're copied on the message it just delivered.”
What the fuck? Bots don’t get married. Do they? I felt myself getting stuck in a feedback loop of some unidentified emotion and confusion.
I managed to pull myself out of it and say stupidly, “Uh, that’s, uh… nice for it.” Smooth, Muderbot. “To who?”
Indah thankfully didn’t comment on the face I was making or how obvious it was that my words didn’t match my face.
“The invitation says ‘You are cordially invited to celebrate the marriage of JollyBaby and Tellus’,” she squinted her eyes even though she was reading in the feed. “Is that the one that works in the restaurant?”
I never programmed a delay on my mouth so I replied, “No, it works in the hostel.” Indah raised her eyebrows at me but again, didn't comment.
I decided my physical presence was no longer needed and left her with some instructions on the testing strategies I had developed. I needed to go have a moment.
💫
After a bit of much needed wall-staring and watching episode 44 of The Rise and Fall Sanctuary Moon in my station quarters, I walked to Mensah’s office. I had read through the invitation twice before I forwarded it to Mensah then deleted it. I considered sending it to Ratthi instead but Mensah had two marital partners and Ratthi had zero so she might be better equipped to answer my stupid questions. The drone assigned to her showed me she had left the office to get a stimulant drink from a station restaurant.
When I arrived, I draped myself across the small couch (the office she had as planetary leader had a much bigger couch but this one was softer, albeit way too small for me). Being in this position was an unspoken signal that I wanted to talk to her. I had an episode of Timestream Defenders Orion playing in background (I missed ART but I wasn't desperate enough to watch WorldHoppers by myself… yet) to pass the time.
A few minutes later she walked in. She glanced at me and sat down in the chair adjoining the couch rather than behind her desk. It was easier to talk to her while she was busy working because it meant her attention wasn't solely on me. Oh well.
“Hello, SecUnit. It's lovely to see you,” she smiled in my direction and took a sip of her beverage.
“Hi,” I replied. My face was upside down behind the arm of the couch but I had a drone on the ceiling.
“I read through the document you sent me,” she nodded in the direction of the main station, “Generally, people are happy to be invited to a wedding. What are your thoughts about it?”
What were my thoughts about it? I had so many thoughts but what came out was, “Why would a bot want to get married?”
To her credit, she didn’t laugh. Instead, she kept her face neutral but her eyes crinkled slightly.
“I imagine for the same reasons humans decide to get married,” she looked at the window wistfully, “companionship, stability. To display a deeper level of dedication and commitment than people typically ascribe to friends,” she paused. “That could come with an emotional and physical intimacy, or just one or the other, or neither. No two marriages are identical, just like no marital partners are identical.”
She gave me a moment to continue staring at the wall. I huffed and sat up (huffing is one of my favorite things to do – like sighing but more whiny – I only do it around Mensah).
“That doesn’t explain why a huge hauler bot would marry a hostel bot. They have entirely different functions!” I didn’t like what my face was doing.
Mensah did laugh that time. She said, “SecUnit, a person’s function doesn’t define who they are. Yes, it affects what they spend most of their time doing – what their job is – but you of all people should know that a person is much more than their function.”
That stung a little.
She continued, “Do you acknowledge that bots have feelings? Even ones that don’t have as sophisticated a mind as you have?”
I grimaced. “Of course they do. I just… don’t understand why they would want to do a human thing like that.” The station bots were always being infantilized and even doing it to themselves. I had a hard time believing that they liked being treated that way.
She nodded and turned towards me, looking over my shoulder. “I can see how that is troubling to you. Let me offer a different perspective. Now, I am not JollyBaby or Tellus and I don’t know either of them well but I do know Preservation. These two people have lived on Preservation Station their whole lives. They don’t know anything about corporate violence or trickery. They are regular citizens. And being regular people, they can do regular people things – although I will admit this particular situation is a bit uncommon. Falling in love with someone and deciding to get married is a normal thing and not something that belongs only to humans. At least not here.”
At some point I had looked at her eyes with my eyes and she held my gaze for a moment before looking past me again. When she talked like that, I could see how she had been chosen as a planetary leader. How she had been chosen as a marital partner by two people.
My insides were melty. I tried not to have an emotion. My face was doing something again but I said, “That… makes more sense.”
“Good,” she said. She smiled lightly and stood to leave. She had drained her beverage in the short time she'd been here talking to me.
“Wait,” I blurted, “Do you want to go with me – to the wedding? I’ve never been to one and don’t want to fuck it up.” Ugh, I didn’t mean to say that last part out loud.
If she was surprised by my request, she didn't show it. “I would be delighted to accompany you.”
And that was that.
💫
I met Mensah outside her station quarters a few cycles later. She had returned from the planet specifically for this. For me.
I was wearing the nicest clothes I had, which happened to be one of ART’s crew uniforms. A simple jacket with a collar and pants with less pockets than I would normally wear – both in dark blue. I always wore my boots, so nothing special there.
Mensah wore a multicolored tunic with a pattern that was simultaneously floral and geometric. The scarf she had wrapped around her head was similar. She looked nice.
“You look nice,” I said. Because suffering through so many trauma modules made you say the things you wanted to say.
“Thank you. You look nice as well,” she glanced at my jacket as we walked, “It’s good to see Perihelion keeps you looking sharp.”
I knew she wasn't teasing but that didn't stop my ears from burning.
The walk to the “venue” was short. I didn't know what to expect since all my reference points for weddings were from media but this definitely wasn't it.
The site was on the edge of the Port Authority’s cargo bay that was normally used for temporary storage. It had been cleared out and was absolutely crawling with bots. There were a few chairs for humans (and me, I guess) set on either side of an arch fashioned out of what looked like dozens of small display surfaces welded to a metal frame. That was… weird.
As soon as I entered, I was bombarded with pings and messages tagged with amusement sigils. Mensah saw Indah across the room and offered her a small wave.
Mensah had told me that guests typically bring gifts so I had brought the – ugh – couple a hard currency card. Did they even use hard currency? I didn't know. Maybe they could take a weird bot vacation. I dropped it on a table designated for gifts and joined Mensah by the chairs.
She let me pick where we sat (because she's good like that and there weren't any markers for assigned seats). I picked the two seats closest to the wall.
A few humans I recognized walked in – Gamila and some port authority workers as well as the manager of the hostel. Gamila sat next to Indah, opposite the aisle from Mensah and I. A human solicitor I knew to be as a nicer, less scary version of Pin-Lee was standing behind the metal arch. (In my shows, religious officiants were common but in Preservation lawyers were also an option, apparently).
I was not engaging in the cacophony of bot activity in the feed but I had picked up that apparently this was not the first ceremony of its kind here. There were huge hauler bots in the farthest corners of the area, tiny cleaning bots up front between the chairs and the altar, and every size and type of bot in between behind the chairs. Somehow it was mostly orderly.
When the scheduled start time came and went, I briefly thought that this had all been a complex joke. I was mildly disappointed by that for some reason. My drones circled the space idly while I considered leaving.
Mensah sent to me, Human weddings rarely start on time either, as if that was an explanation. I pinged an acknowledgement.
Finally, 404 seconds late, two things happened at once: 1. The display surfaces lining the metal arch all lit up with bright images of hearts and flowers and 2. JollyBaby and all its bulk crawled down the center aisle.
I was kind of stunned at the images and animations, they were… a lot. It took me .314 seconds to realize there was also music playing softly. I made sure my drones were recording – ART was going to love watching this. Sappy asshole. Mensah, meanwhile, was smiling and looked more serene than I’d seen her since… well since I’d known her.
JollyBaby had a large ribbon tied around its main engine compartment. It turned and faced the entrance. The glow of the displays reflected on its (not previously) shiny frame.
Tellus entered with an identical ribbon tied in a bow around its midsection. It was followed by a gaggle of very similar bots, only distinguishable at a glance by their feed IDs (which were all sequential). I didn't know Tellus had siblings. It stood/perched by JollyBaby and had reached out one of its spindly arms and grabbed JollyBaby’s big hand/clamp.
The officiant opened with some words about the stars aligning or something and I turned my audio receptors down. I could listen to all of this back later. The visuals were enough to make my insides feel gooey.
I knew that bots (and constructs and whatever the hell ART was) had sentience and thoughts and emotions but seeing this whole display really sent my corporation-rim manufactured brain into a spiral. This was normal here but totally new to me. What did that mean? What did that mean for other constructs like Three? I wondered if any of the big monstrous AIs from PSUMNT had gotten married. What if Three and Holism were to get married? (they bonded over huge amounts of nerd stuff). My spiral made me start dropping inputs.
Mensah must have sensed that I was not okay because she sent I believe it’s almost over.
Oh, good. I had missed the majority of it and still had a freakout.
Okay, I replied.
I hadn’t looked at her in a while and was surprised to find that her eyes were glistening.
Are you okay? I asked. I played back some of what I had missed and couldn’t find anything sad. I knew humans got emotional for happy reasons but Mensah wasn’t most humans.
Oh yes, she sent. I just get caught up in the joy of a new union. After seeing so much of the bad the universe, it’s nice to be reminded that there is also love. She dabbed at her eyes.
Before I could word it better I asked, You like love?
She chuckled and looked at the drone I had peering at her. Yes, I suppose I do.
She gently nodded her head towards the front of the room where Tellus and JollyBaby were now tying their two ribbons together. I like seeing and knowing that people care about each other, she glanced up pointedly at my drone, In whatever form that may take.
My face did something I was going to ignore. I watched the bots that had helped me. Saved me.
Maybe I do, too.