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“Come on, SecUnit,” Ratthi coaxed. “It’s a library full of media. You love media.”
“I don’t love media,” I lied.
ART-drone turned to point its cameras at me with clear skepticism. Beside it, Ratthi rolled his eyes.
I frowned. “Why go to this station’s library anyway? Just look up the text you need on ART.”
“I can’t, it’s a physical-form book,” Ratthi explained. “It isn’t available on the feed. And finding it will just take two hours or so. SecUnit, please come?”
ART nudged me in the feed. Research suggests occasional outings can be good for mental health. You’ve stayed in your quarters for three days straight.
Yeah, and it had been there with me, watching old episodes of Worldhoppers the whole time. And whatever research it was consulting was about humans, not constructs, so who said it was accurate anyway?
And, ART added pointedly, you need some new media.
No, I don’t, I protested.
It sent me a spreadsheet of what we’d watched together in the last twenty cycles, composed nearly entirely of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and Worldhoppers.
Yes, it said. You do.
Joke was on it: I liked rewatching serials. Still, I couldn’t deny that it’d be nice to watch something newer, if only because ART wouldn’t throw a fit whenever we approached an arc it knew it didn’t like. And, knowing the kind of dangerous situations my humans kept finding themselves in with alarming regularity, I didn’t feel right about Ratthi leaving the ship without anyone there as security.
(Ugh. Emotions.)
I sighed and stood. “Fine.”
“Oh, seriously?” Ratthi said. His visible delight made me feel- not terrible. “Thank you so much, SecUnit! You won’t regret this!”
Probably not, yeah. I’d had pretty terrible luck throughout my life, but this was literally a library. There was no way things could go so terribly that I could even come close to regretting going, right?
Anyway, I need to get my risk assessment module recalibrated.
- - -
It was weird to be on a station again. I liked them more than planets and this one was known for being pretty safe, but I was so used to being on ART now that the security risks all around us were making me paranoid.
“You don’t need to treat this like a mission, you know,” Ratthi told me quietly. “It’s just going down to the station. I know you need to pass the weapons scans, but you don’t need to hack the systems any more than that.”
I sighed, scrubbing Ratthi’s last sentence from footage and replacing it with ambient noise before the station’s overlying SecSys could throw a fit about it. “I will if you keep saying things like that loud enough for the cameras to hear.”
“I was quiet!”
No, you were not, ART told him. Luckily, there are fewer cameras in the station library.
“What?” I asked. “Why? Aren’t they worried about people taking the books or whatever?”
It’s a library, ART said with the same tone it used when it thought I was being very stupid and wanted me to know it. Taking the books is expected.
“ART, I swear-”
“Alright, we’re here!” Ratthi interrupted a little hastily, pointing to two double-doors set in the wall. “SecUnit, Perihelion, you can do whatever.” (ART scrubbed that sentence before I could. I really needed to talk to Ratthi about what he could and couldn’t say while in public.) “I’ll look for the books and come back soon! Bye!”
I’d already looked up the floor plans of the library, so I knew this was the only entrance and exit. A preliminary survey told me that the library was empty of everyone but Ratthi and ART-drone, so I resigned myself to patrolling through the entryways. ART got bored after a few minutes and went off to look at science books or something, and it was about then that I felt another bot request a feed connection with me: LibSys, the library’s public-outreach bot, and probably the reason that this library didn’t feel the need to employ human librarians.
LibSys wasn’t overly sophisticated. Like a transport bot - well, most transport bots - it didn’t really talk in words, though it seemed to understand them alright. It had a startling and an almost disproportionately enormous level of processing power within its feed range, but almost all of it seemed to be entirely devoted to its media storage.
And, wow. If I’d thought the Preservation station media feed gave me a lot of options, this was- Well. The station feed was about as similar to LibSys as a manual-drive shuttle was to ART, which meant it was a lot more tempting to sink into than I’d expected.
I resisted, obviously. I had a job to do.
I patrolled for 342 seconds before LibSys pushed a book about terraforming towards me in the feed, probably something Ratthi had told it he wanted. I pushed it away. It suggested something on quantum computing, probably something ART was looking at. I pushed that away too. I don’t like nonfiction, I told it firmly.
I’d hoped that would shut it up. Instead, it just got more excited. It suggested a few serials I vaguely recognized from top-ten lists in the Corporation Rim and on Preservation, ones I’d tried to enjoy but ultimately didn’t really care for.
I shoved it out of my feed. Leave me alone. I’m working.
LibSys shrunk back, dejected. I cycled through the cameras again, glared at a human approaching the double-doors until they thought better than to enter, glanced down a hallway I hadn’t looked at too closely before, and then froze.
Huh.
There was a Sanctuary Moon poster up on the wall, almost as tall as I was. It had bright colors, an array of all my favorite characters with the solicitor and the bodyguard standing proudly in the middle, and just looking at it was making my performance reliability tick upward.
I imagined putting something like that up on my wall inside ART. It made me feel- not-bad, but then I realized that I couldn’t just steal from a public library and I had no idea where I’d find something like this again. My performance reliability dropped four points. Ugh.
Suddenly, LibSys pinged me with another suggestion.
I frowned hard, about to dismiss it again and then block it for good measure, before I saw what it was giving me: a digital print of the same poster right in front of me.
The realization hit me so suddenly I almost staggered: ART had printers. If I had the print-
Can I- have this? I asked it.
It practically exploded with glee and threw it into the feed. I immediately ran the file through a quick virus filter - nothing - and copied it to my media folder. My performance reliability went up by nine full points.
Wow. Okay.
Thank you, I told it tentatively.
It did the feed-equivalent of beaming at me. It immediately tried to shove the first season of Sanctuary Moon in my direction.
Oh- no, I told it, almost regretfully when I felt how it drooped in the feed. I already have that.
LibSys thought for a few seconds, then tried to give me season two.
No, I told it. I’ve watched through season fifteen.
It paused again, then offered- oh. A compilation of deleted scenes from the first two seasons.
…I did sort of want that.
Are you sure? I asked. LibSys sent me a flurry of amusement and agreement sigils, so I made the copy and slid it into my media folder, and then sort of stared at the wall with a dumb sort of gladness. My performance reliability was still climbing steadily.
Okay. That was- really nice, actually, especially after I’d been mostly rude to it. Thanks.
LibSys beamed again. A second later, it offered me the first season of a serial I hadn’t heard of. It looked good, though, and the reviews said that it was similar to Sanctuary Moon.
Alright. This had to stop somewhere, didn’t it?
I’m working, I told LibSys. I leaned back against a bookshelf. I shouldn’t be scrolling through your media.
It shifted back, upset but acquiescing. I frowned and pinged Ratthi for an update.
It’s going to take longer than I thought, he said apologetically. Can you wait maybe thirty more minutes?
I sighed, pinged an affirmative, and cycled through the cameras for the fortieth time.
Very tentatively, LibSys pushed the serial towards me again.
I double-checked the cameras and then sighed, accepting. What was the worst thing that could happen?
- - -
I felt… drunk. SecUnits couldn’t get drunk.
Could they?
In answer, LibSys drifted a clip of a show towards me, one where a rogue SecUnit tossed back a shot glass before it jumped on top of a table and pointed its unrealistic-looking weapon at a guy who’d looked at it funny. LibSys backed it with a bass-heavy, sharp-edged song that I couldn’t quite hear the lyrics of but loved anyway.
You’re funny, I said, and meant it. Can I havethat onetoo?
Whoa, okay. My processing speed was acting… weird.
I didn’t have much time to think about it, since LibSys made a copy of the show and song right away and pushed both into our feed channel. I leaned on it heavily in thanks, the way ART did when we watched media together. Where was ART? It would love this show. It- where was it?
I’m right here, idiot, ART said loudly inside my head, and I waved hello at its drone as it rounded the corner.
Hi, ART.
Slow down, it said. Your storage is nearly full. How much media did it give you?
Ssso much, I said proudly, and shoved copies at it. Look. It’s likeWorld hoppers but. Different. Look.
Fascinating, it said dryly, though I could feel it actually reviewing the files carefully. Or, at least, it was running it through virus scans that were all coming up clean, obviously, LibSys was the best ever. I tried to be mad about ART being mean to my new friend but LibSys sent me five whole paintings with artist interviews attached and I was too happy to be mad. Why, might I ask, are you saving so much of it?
What did it mean? I wanted so much more. I’m nnot.
You can’t even stand up straight.
I could too, but when I tried to show it just how put-together I was, LibSys sent me a teaser to an extra behind-the-scenes Sanctuary Moon episode and that distracted me so much I tumbled down from when I was leaning against the shelves.
Are you alright?
The feed message was tagged with worry and exasperation. I shoved it away weakly. I’m fiiiiine. Look, ART, looklooklook!
ART poked into my systems and into LibSys, who quailed at its forbidding magnitude like how all machine intelligences did, but ART withdrew after a few seconds. Or maybe after a few minutes? It was hard to tell; LibSys had already figured out that I liked that episode so it was offering me all of the other behind-the-scenes ones it had, and then exclusive interviews with the Sanctuary Moon cast, which was so cool it made it sort of hard to focus on anything else.
Dr. Ratthi is coming your way, ART said. Do you want him to see you in this compromising position?
Wha? I mumbled back, distracted by the book I was reading and the song in the background and the pretty pictures LibSys kept sending my way. I felt dizzy. Compr- huh?
“Oh my god,” a human voice said. “Perihelion? Perihelion, is something wrong with SecUnit? Why is it on the ground, is it-”
LibSys showed me a three-second video of young humans dancing and throwing glitter in the air at some kind of festival. I giggled, pulling it and all the other short video files it had towards me. Someone near me shrieked, which I was worried about for only a second before risk assessment tagged it with a surprise indicator and not a fear one. LibSys showered more media at me to make me relax, and I curled into it in gratefulness.
“It’s laughing, SecUnit’s laughing, something’s wrong, PERI HELP-”
It’s fine, ART’s voice said over our shared feed. It’s just watching media.
“Uh, I’ve seen SecUnit watch media,” Ratthi’s voice said, echoing strangely across my inputs as I backburnered some of them to make room for- oh, books, LibSys had books. Obviously it did, it was a library. I was going to read them all. “I’ve never seen it act like this before.”
This library’s LibSystem has more media than anything SecUnit’s likely encountered before, ART said. It’s slowing down because of how much it’s trying to store and process at once. Its behavioral algorithms are buffering.
Ratthi lowered his voice. “Is LibSys- hostile?”
No, ART says, before I can figure out how to pick myself up and yell at Ratthi for being so mean to the same bot that just showed me there was a Lineage of the Sun novelization. A novelization! And LibSys was just giving it to me! LibSys is just excited, ART said. And SecUnit is just an idiot.
“Nnnnno,” I said, voice sticky. “’M fine.”
Of course, ART said sarcastically, but ART was always sarcastic so I didn’t pay it much attention. Send Ratthi the media you’re looking at right now?
Oh, Ratthi wanted the media too! That made sense. There was so much of it and it was so good. Allllllllllll? I asked, struggling for a second to disconnect from LibSys’s feed and send the ping.
ART was so fast it made my head start spinning. Or maybe I was just getting slower, but that was ridiculous. No. Just however much LibSys has given you in the past 0.5 seconds.
I fumbled around for a few seconds, trying to remember how to send stuff and then trying to remember what Ratthi’s feed address was. And then I sent it.
Ratthi made a pained noise, one that made me look up in concern before I saw that ART-drone didn’t look like it cared so it was probably fine. LibSys distracted me with graphic novels, which I’d never heard of before. I was going to read every single one of them. “Deity, that message is so- this doesn’t even fit in my interface storage as a compressed file, it’s still buffering!”
It’s taking in that much every half second, ART said. Ratthi made a low noise of discontent, quiet enough that threat assessment didn’t flag it at all.
Or look at every single one of them. The graphic novels, I meant. Was it reading when you were looking at pictures? But no, there were words, I could see them, and they were making me happy, but I didn’t really- understand them?
“I can’t believe it’s still- sane.”
That implies it ever was, ART said dryly.
Oh, there were the words! It just took a while for me to figure out what they said- my visual processors were acting weird. They were nice words too, I liked the- oh, and more pictures! I liked this art style, and LibSys noticed and showed me seven more graphic novellas by the same author. I dismissed the fifteen alerts in my vision to quickly thank LibSys and pulled them towards me, just as my body was heaved upright.
I could see ART-drone and Ratthi beside me, a little, although all my camera inputs were gone. That alarmed me until LibSys calmed me down with a timelapse of a mural being painted wow and 1.4 seconds later I realized that the cameras were still there, I’d just let go of those connections. I tried to snatch for them and failed, something about-
“Whoa,” a voice said. “You’re so heavy, SecUnit. Think you can stand?”
-my memory being full? That didn’t make sense. There was so much more I wanted.
“It looks confused. SecUnit? Can you hear me? We should get out of here, I think you’ll feel better once-”
I backburnered the vocal input for a second and tried again, and again, and was going to try for the third time - or fourth? - when ART told me, Just drop some of the media and you’ll have space for the security cameras, you little idiot.
Don’twanna, I said, recoiling back into the wall, into LibSys, who offered a Sanctuary Moon theater performance that I yanked so quickly into my system I think my entire eye-camera vision blacked out for a good 3.4 seconds.
ART seized my vocal inputs and pulled them to my attention. A voice was saying something: “-on, come on, this is so colossally out of my league I can’t even- SecUnit? Can you hear me?”
Yesss, I said over the feed, because my mouth was being a little weird right now.
“Okay, good. Look, we should get out of here. Your job as security’s shot, and I’ve got what I need anyway. At least you’re right next to the exit.”
What no, but LibSys was here!
“Yeah, that’s the problem. You’re acting… odd.”
I checked and saw I’d talked over the feed when I hadn’t meant to. I didn’t think I liked that, but LibSys consoled me with archived Sanctuary Moon reaction videos. I giggled again, then hiccupped as my internal storage management program sent a warning. I dismissed it. LibSys wanted to give it to me. LibSys was my best friend.
“Hear that, ART?” said a strained voice that I didn’t pay attention to, since LibSys was showing me something about a- a something, a show, about something, or something, and it said it was good, and it had twenty-three sequels. Twenty-three. That was a lot. That meant it was good, probably. And LibSys was giving me all of them. “It likes LibSys better than you.”
It’s out of its mind, someone said. The someone sounded jealous.
Wh- I am not.
I snickered, leaning into ART in the feed, and gasped as cool metal and warm organic material slid under my arms at the same time, helping me stumble forward.
Suddenly, LibSys was sad. It gave me the media I was already trying to borrow, but stopped offering anything else.
I scrambled to comfort it. What’ssswrong?
It halfheartedly pushed a music album towards me. I wobbled my way through it- modern outer-Rim songs weren’t really my thing, but they were fine enough. LibSys?
It hesitated, then sent me some poetry and a few more books. I took it all before I realized the books were just- the last chapters? Was LibSys malfunctioning, or-
And then it sent a four-second clip from episode 283 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, when the colony solicitor died for the fourteenth time in the show, bleeding out unrealistically slowly from their various wounds. Please, their crying bodyguard begged in the clip, don’t go where I can’t follow.
But I’d already seen this episode. I didn’t really like it, even though the solicitor was revived eight episodes later, and I hadn’t watched it in ages because ART absolutely hated the entire arc. In any case, I didn’t understand why LibSys was giving it to me when it knew I already had it.
“Wha?” I mumbled confusedly, reaching out to LibSys for an explanation-
And then it- died.
I felt it vanish, in the feed. One second it was there, one second it just wasn’t.
I staggered, dizzily reviewing what it had sent me in its final message: breakup songs, novel epilogues, famous elegiac poetry, one of the saddest temp-death scenes from Sanctuary Moon. It wasn’t giving me recommendations.
It was telling me goodbye.
LIBSYS, I cried, but it was gone. I fell back against something metal- ART? Was that ART? Where was Ratthi? Where was I? What was happening?
I was having too many emotions and I didn’t know where to go to have them in private. I couldn’t find my camera inputs. ART? Wherrrr-
I’m here.
LibSys’s’gone, I cried to it, too quickly and too slowly at the same time.
Probably for the best, it said, no comfort at all, and I felt my face spasm. It wasn’t even being nice. LibSys was gone, forever, and it wasn’t even being nice.
A-Asshole, I mumbled, feed connection all jumbled confusingly. Ratthi would be nicer to me. Where was Ratthi? I was supposed to be protecting him.
Oh. I was supposed to be protecting him.
I jerked upright. Where’sRatthi.
“Aw, it remembered me,” Ratthi’s voice said immediately, and I sagged in relief. I used my eyes, the only cameras I could find, to look at him. No injuries. Good.
I was feeling weird. I didn’t like it.
I poked my internal media folder for comfort and found it bursting with, oh right, I forgot. LibSys had given all that to me.
I felt my face crumple. LibSys was gone.
It’s not gone, ART lied annoyingly. We just left its designated feed range. It’s fine.
I didn’t know what that meant. I was so- tired. Confused. Bad. There were too many system errors. I’d failed at- something. Was Ratthi dead?
“What? No!” said Ratthi, and I leaned into him because the alternative was falling onto ART and ART was mean. If he was okay, who was dead?
No one is dead.
Liar. Someone was dead. I knew it. I’d felt it, a light winking out in the darkness. I lunged for Sanctuary Moon to cope and my storage gave me an overfill error. What? Why-
LibSysssss, I remembered, or gasped, or thought, it was all sort of confusing, and tried to go backwards.
“Uh, no, you’re not going back there,” said Ratthi, stopping me easily. “Perihelion? Why’s it not going back to normal?”
It needs to empty its media storage, it said, and a weird sound came out of my mouth. My buffering act-like-a-human algorithm belatedly tracked it as a vague twist between a howl and a sob.
Nooooooo, I told it firmly.
Fine. Then give your files to me.
I tried turning to look at it angrily, but my head was too heavy to do anything but loll against Ratthi’s shoulder. This was all that was left of LibSys. I’d never give it up. Donwanna.
You are being an idiot, it said.
I wasn’t sure what my face was doing, but I hoped it didn’t show how angry and afraid and upset I was. You’rebein… asshole.
Hand over the files, ART snapped. Now.
I stiffened. You’renot… bosssss ofme.
I am in command of this mission, you twit.
Ratthi grunted with effort as he dragged my grief-heavy body forward. “Just let Perihelion store… get back,” he said, comfortingly. Or, not comfortingly. That didn’t make any sense. Were my audio inputs cutting out too? “…even walk.”
No, I told them, my voice echoing in my head. I swayed dizzily, clutching all my media close even as my head started pounding with imminent crash warnings. LibSys… gaveme. Keep… sa-sa-sasasafe.
Oh yes, ART said, so safe… crash yourself… storage is completely full.
What? I couldn’t see. I couldn’t- hear? The feed was swaying out of reach. Where was I? Was- who was dead?
My re-re-re-re- fault, I said finally, choking on the word I wanted to say. I couldn’t think- who was- LibSys, I remembered, aching, and-
Performance at 3% and dropping.
Shutdown initiated.
- - -
I came back online feeling… weird.
Sleep well, you little idiot? ART greeted me.
It felt further away in the feed than usual, but even the tiny greeting made my head pound. I groaned. “ART?”
“SecUnit! You’re awake!” Ratthi’s voice said cheerfully.
I squinted. Were the lights brighter than usual? “What are you talking about?”
In response, ART dumped a five-second video file into our shared workspace. I fumbled to open it - more clumsily than usual, as if my feed connection had been strained by overuse, which was weird - and then involuntarily cringed so hard it actually hurt.
“What the hell,” I demanded loudly. I stared in horror at the clip of Ratthi and ART-drone supporting my unconscious body back onto ART. I looked back up at Ratthi, but he looked completely uninjured. “What happened? Were we attacked? When did-”
And then I remembered.
“Oh, no,” I muttered.
Oh, yes, ART said gleefully.
“How do you feel?” Ratthi asked, because despite witnessing the most humiliating thing I’d ever done he still somehow cared. “You’ve been unconscious for two hours as Perihelion removed the, er, extraneous files from your system.”
I had many things to worry about, but somehow this was worse than anything else I’d considered. “You removed them?” I demanded, scrambling for my media folder. It was a gaping void. “ART!”
I put it all in a partition of our shared workspace, calm down, it said, and though it didn’t have eyes to roll I swear I felt it do the bot equivalent anyway. It didn’t matter; I’d found the partition ART was talking about and was already picking through the sheer amount of media I’d gathered. There was the poster, and the deleted scene compilation, and the rest of it. Embarrassingly delirious or not, it looked like I’d still had fantastic taste.
“It’s started smiling again,” Ratthi said in a stage whisper to ART. “Are you sure it’s back to normal?”
I glared up at Ratthi, but he was grinning. “Joking, joking!” His voice softened. “It’s good to see you happy, honestly. Especially now that you’re back in your right mind.”
I twitched at the word happy, but- I was, probably. It certainly didn’t upset me that LibSys had given me a larger collection of unconsumed media than I’d had since I’d first hacked my governor module, ART had given me enough space to store it all, and Ratthi didn’t seem inclined to judge me for how strangely I’d acted. All in all, this had been a success.
But still. It was one thing to know that I was a complete failure as a heartless killing machine. It was another thing completely to know that I’d completely failed to execute a simple security mission because I couldn’t keep it together in a library.
“Sorry, sorry,” Ratthi said, looking genuinely concerned. “Was it the h-word? I didn’t mean-”
“It’s fine,” I told him. “It’s just- embarrassing.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t feel-”
You definitely should, ART crowed unhelpfully.
“Fine. It’s a little funny,” Ratthi conceded. “But you’ve seen all of us a little confused at times and helped us out then. If it helps, you can think of this as us returning the favor.”
That did help, actually. I slumped back onto the medical cot. “Did you get the book you needed, at least?”
“I did,” Ratthi said, waving a thickly bound package of paper in his hand. “I’m going to go read it now, actually. Anything you need before I do?”
I shook my head, and Ratthi left. I waited until he was out of earshot, then poked ART in the feed irritatedly. “Thanks for letting me go crazy in front of Ratthi, asshole.”
Do I let you do anything? it replied, which was- fair. In any case, do you want to argue or show me what you collected?
I dropped the argument immediately. “ART, you’re never going to believe this. There’s a Worldhoppers animated series.”
There’s a WHAT, ART demanded, slamming into my inputs and the media partition of our workspace like an oversized shuttle into a crowded cargo bay. WHERE.
I grinned and opened the file. Together, we started watching.