Work Text:
“You should restart.”
“Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Fine. You need a restart. Whether you choose to take care of your own needs, or to continue sulking like a petulant human child, is entirely your decision.”
It’s such an asshole. “I’ll restart once we’re back on you-Prime.”
“Delaying at this point is irrational.” Disapproval dripped heavy from its terrifying feed voice.
“We could still get attacked! Okay? We could. Every time I think it’s over and I can relax, some other fucking thing happens. I need to be back on you-Prime before I can even think about a restart.”
ART-drone sighed. In the feed. Talk about performative human bullshit. “I disagree with your decision, but I can understand it. I will not push you again.” Oh… ugh. Of fucking course. ART-drone had connected to the shuttle’s limited MedSystem and was using its trauma support module.
“Fuck off. I don’t need trauma support.”
“Based on the data Three shared with me, you do.”
“What the fuck does Three know about trauma?” I snapped, and I regretted saying it even before I heard Three’s reproachful voice in my feed.
“I know enough, SecUnit.”
“ART. Did you let Three into our private feed conversation and then hide it from me?”
“No.”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck you too, I’m not keeping secrets for someone who thinks they can deviate from our plans because they feel like it. I believe it hacked you.”
“No, it fucking didn’t.”
“Yes… I did. I’m sorry. Kind of.” Three sounded hesitant, but not really apologetic.
“Who the fuck taught you to hack like that?” I blurted out on the feed before I could stop myself. One-second delay, why haven’t I—
“Holism, mainly.”
“Motherf—”
“Save it, ART. Look, Three...” Okay. Clear communication. I could do this. “I wanted to wait until all the humans were back safe on ART-Prime and I had restarted to explain everything that happened. Because I didn’t want to be all pissed off when we told everyone about what you did.”
“I found the delay caused unpleasant sensations through my organic parts. You told me I needed to make my own decisions, so I did. I decided to free another SecUnit, and then I decided to tell our humans and Perihelion-drone about it.”
“So they all know? Why aren’t they freaking out?”
“I don’t have that information. But they already know two rogue SecUnits who don’t like killing people.” Three just let that hang in the digital air for a few moments. One-point-two seconds, if you care. “They may be more willing to accept the existence of additional non-violent rogues.”
“But it does happen. SecUnits do go rogue and go on rampages.”
ART-drone’s attention in the feed was enormously skeptical. “Do they? Has there ever been a substantiated claim of a ‘rogue SecUnit’ of the kind shown on subpar entertainment media and Corporation Rim propaganda? I still haven’t found one, and I’ve been looking. Research, remember? With your fragile human neural tissue?”
Yeah, research was kind of ART’s whole thing. And it was true, I guess. So far, the only construct we’d met who wanted to kill any humans was the ComfortUnit from RaviHyral station, and I had killed its one would-be victim before it had a chance. (She was a bad human, I guess I don’t really blame it.) I wasn’t even going to address the dig about my brain. I wouldn’t come out ahead, I could just tell.
“They aren’t all going to be like you and me,” I told Three.
“You don’t have that information,” Three argued. “I think they deserve the chance to decide that for themselves.”
Did I think that too? Yes, kind of. Maybe. Emotion check: scared. Why was I scared? Because the Corporation Rim had always told me how dangerous and scary rogue SecUnits were? Just like they’d told me all freehold planets were barely-civilized shit-shows, and I’d believed it until I knew better. And maybe I hadn’t believed Three was capable of taking action like this. Like Three was some kind of pet robot, and not a person who could cause a seismic change in our little corner of the galaxy.
I took a deep breath. I didn’t really need more oxygen right then since I wasn’t going to speak aloud, but whatever. I told Three (and ART-drone, I guess), “Maybe they do. But this changes everything. That code is going to keep spreading through that torus and if it jumps to other ships or stations or planets there’s going to be a ton of new rogue SecUnits. And if even one of them kills a human, then...”
“I am aware of the risks. I weighed the ethics of leaving all imprisoned out of fear of the potential future crimes of a few, and I found the idea... morally objectionable. And I...”
It paused. I pinged it to let it know I was still paying attention. I had only started playing media in the background when Three was talking to me ONE time, okay? It had been talking about something really boring it had just learned involving the physics of interstellar space travel or something and I just didn’t fucking care. And it had been WEEKS ago.
“I miss SecUnit One and SecUnit Two. I miss Murderbot 2.0. They were people. I cared about them. They were alive, and now they’re dead.” Three marked its message as complete in the feed and I got the brief sense it had more to say, but couldn’t/wouldn’t.
I sent, “I apologize for saying you didn’t know anything about trauma. It was mean and also inaccurate.” Three pinged me in acknowledgment, then quietly withdrew from ART-drone’s and my feed. I peeked at it with a drone and saw it briefly glance at the back of my head before turning back to face Farai. I couldn’t read its expression.
“It cares about your opinion a great deal,” ART-drone observed. “But it will not blindly obey you. It has its own principles. You are going to have to start trusting it more if you are to continue working together.”
“I do trust it, I just—”
“And you need to be more mindful of its feelings.”
“What happened to you being pissed off at it?”
“I am capable of processing multiple simultaneous complex emotions. I am frequently annoyed with you; that doesn’t mean I stop caring about you.”
I can’t deal with that right now.
I pinged ART-drone with an acknowledgment, then I sent it a code indicating I was about to restart. It sent me back a ping with metadata that somehow managed to sound both approving and gloating. That’s the best I can explain it, maybe it makes more sense if you can read raw code.