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ART paused the media I was watching. I knew it wouldn’t be interested in this particular historical drama, and I hadn't invited it. It was really well annotated. It was really more of a documentary, but it was just the story without any interruptions from interviews.
I had actually waited to watch it until I was off ship where ART couldn't ride my inputs and filters as closely. It was the sort of thing it wouldn’t want anything to do with. It was pretty dark. And entirely too realistic.
I'm not actually sure how it managed to turn off my media clear down here on station. I should probably figure that out at some point. It shouldn’t have this much control of my systems when I’m station-side.
Why'd you do that? I demanded, letting my frustration fill the response even if it couldn’t really feel it from here. At least not nearly as strongly as it could had I been aboard. I was purposely watching that without you.
I didn't actually call ART a big baby about it, but I sure thought it.
Your stats were dropping, and you did not respond to my pings.
What?
What pings?
I am going to assume that question is rhetorical.
I was already checking. Oh… oh shit. Those pings. There were 26 of them. No wonder ART forced its way in. I frowned and checked my stats. Sure enough, my Performance Reliability had dropped to 92%. That was pretty low considering that I was entirely in one piece and had been doing pretty well lately.
I…
Yeah, I don’t know where I was going with that.
What were you watching?
Apparently something I was also a big baby about…
I didn’t respond quickly enough because ART took the media from me and started perusing it itself. Stupid, overpowered bot.
No wait, it’s—!
I do understand why you chose to watch this away from me. ART commented.
It was a historical drama about a planetary station where a disaster had occurred about 30 years ago. Lots of people died, including several members of the party of main characters. There had been a hauler bot crash that had initiated an explosion that took out a secondary docking ring. There was heavy damage to the transport of the crew the story followed.
I do not understand why you chose to watch this at all, ART continued.
It was not my usual fare, but I did appreciate a good historical disaster drama on occasion. I usually waited until I was on Preservation though. Pin-Lee also appreciated the genre.
I think she liked to look for where some sort of legal breach had occurred and what sort of law suit would work. In this particular case, it seemed to have been negligence so far.
Perhaps I had watched too many of these with Pin-Lee…
This particular trip with ART was was scheduled to be my longest stretch away from Preservation since joining ART’s crew. It was mostly teaching and deep space mapping so mostly low stakes.
My job was almost entirely keeping adolescent humans from acting on stupid thoughts. It wasn’t a whole lot different from keeping miners from acting on stupid thoughts, but the adolescent humans actually treated me with more respect than the miners did. No one even attempted to try to make me hurt myself or do weird tasks or fight other SecUnits (not that there were any currently on board as Three was with Holism at the moment.) for their entertainment. I definitely prefer pretending to be an augmented human security consultant among adolescent humans to pretending to be a governed SecUnit among miners.
Still, I had already been away from Preservation for longer than I had been since my first arrival there, and we were only half way through the term. I missed my Preservation humans. ART’s humans are great and all, but they’re not my Preservation humans.
ART had told me that I was “home sick” and that it’s normal for humans away from home for the first time. I reminded it that I was not human, and Preservation was barely my home. I had only lived there for a few months before I had joined ART’s crew for my first official mission with them. It said that the length of time there did not matter, what mattered was that was where my first crew was.
Whatever. I’d visit when the term was over.
In the meantime, I had taken some shore leave, and for some ridiculous reason, I felt like watching this stupid historical drama. So I did.
You do not usually choose media that features this many SecUnits.
There were SecUnits in this? What the fuck had I been doing that I didn’t remember that?
I took the media back and ran it back.
Oh… there were SecUnits in this. There were several SecUnits in this… I don’t think they had been in the earlier part.
Well shit… Not negligence. Definitely not negligence. That was— ART paused it again and pulled the file away from me this time.
Stop! High-mid-range stop command. ART meant it, but wasn’t as firm as it could be.
Stop what?
You should delete this file and stop accessing it.
I did no such thing. Hey! That’s mine, you asshole! Give it back! I took it back and started running the scene again.
Would you at least come back so if you crash you’re somewhere safe?
I was in my own transient pod on station. This was a perfectly safe place. Or at least as safe as anywhere was. ART meant it wanted me somewhere it could take care of me if I crashed. Part of me wanted to object on principle. ART would just be annoying until I gave in though.
Fine. But I’m still going to watch it.
Even here I could feel ART doing the feed equivalent of rolling its eyes. And since it’s ‘eyes’ were technically all the cameras and sensors around it’s ship body, it had a lot of them to roll.
I made my way back to the ship. Only after ART promised to let me watch my historical drama in peace if I did.
Once “safe” on board in my cabin, I did start the historical drama again. Even though I could feel ART peeking around the edges of my consciousness. It wasn’t smothering me in the feed like it usually did when I watched media. It clearly didn’t want to watch this. It clearly did not want me watching it either. I’m not really sure why I was so insistent on it. I guess I’d started it and I just really wanted to finish it. I don’t know. It was stupid. It was definitely fucking with my Performance Reliability.
A SecUnit fed new instructions to the Hauler Bots that had caused the crash and subsequent explosions. Humans don’t tend to notice when a piece of equipment gives instructions to other equipment.
No one seemed to have asked where the SecUnit had gotten its instructions. It’s not like we can just do that on our own. Well… most SecUnits can’t do that on their own. I could do that on my own, but no governed unit could. And it was definitely not something I would do. Even if I had wanted to hurt a bunch of humans for whatever stupid reason, this just wasn’t a good way to go about it. No SecUnit, rogue or otherwise, would do this without a good reason or direct orders. There had to be something else going on.
Following the explosions, during the partial decompression of the docking ring, multiple SecUnits were sent in.
Two seemed to be on an actual Search and Rescue mission.
Two others were on Search and Destroy. Any survivors these two found were killed. Most by crushing. The SecUnits took nearby debris and dropped it on them.
There was no explanation of why one of the Search and Rescue SecUnits was destroyed. I knew though. It had noticed something. It had probably tried to send an alert to HubSystem and been destroyed for its meddling.
And there went my Performance Reliability again. Though it hovered in the mid-eighties through the end of the story.
The end had some text that explained that the cause of the incident had been deemed “Equipment Failure.” We both knew that was Company Speak for “Rogue” SecUnits.
The same “cause” as Ganaka Pit. (Was that why I had needed to finish this so badly?)
And ART and I both knew there had been nothing “Rogue” about the Ganaka Pit SecUnits. Well… I was there, and I’m rogue, but I wasn’t at the time.
I didn’t realize I was staring at the wall.
Is the end… unrealistic?
That pissed me off. ART knew the answer. I knew ART knew the answer. It was just being an asshole about it and leading me to thinking about what it wanted me thinking about. Again.
You know it’s not. Whatever had played the SecUnits even moved fairly close to right. I had a feeling they were a combination of human form bots and humans or augmented humans in armor depending on the scene. And we both know that wasn’t “Equipment Failure.”
No. It was not.
That “Equipment” did exactly what it was ordered to.
Whoops… lost another 2% on my Performance Reliability.
ART wrapped itself around me in the feed and just let me pretend to not exist for several minutes. It took over some of my background processes and reorganized some files for me, allowing more space for me to process what I had just watched.
I spent a good half hour like that before I pulled up the file again. Not to watch it this time, but to decide what I wanted to do with it now.
I did the equivalent of staring at the file for a long moment. I should delete it. I wasn’t sure I could delete it. I don’t know why not. I’d already watched it. I didn’t intend to do so again. It was disturbingly accurate. At least from a human point of view. And weirdly… beyond the final cause being listed as “Equipment Failure”, it didn’t actually say that the SecUnits were rogue. I suppose it could be assumed, but it was just as easy to assume that the SecUnits had messed up orders. I wasn’t sure what to do with that information. I wanted Pin-Lee and maybe Bharadwaj to see it.
I think I needed Pin-Lee and Bharadwaj to see it.
I shoved it deep into ART’s archives. It did it’s equivalent of sighing and rolling its eyes at me, but it didn’t remove the file. I’d give it to Pin-Lee when I made it back to Preservation. Then I would delete it from ART’s archives. I really didn’t want to watch it again.