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“No, ART, for the last time, absolutely not.”
It is standard for every member of my crew to receive this training, I do not understand why you are so adamantly against it. ART sounded testy, even it’s patience wearing thin. We had been having this argument for the last two cycles, ever since Seth had brought up recertifying in our daily meeting.
It wasn’t really the training part I was having an issue with - Lock Out Tag Out training seemed fine on its own. It was that following the training we were going to go down to the planet and do a ‘team building exercise’ which I could potentially avoid by being conveniently absent from the training to begin with. We can’t do trust falls or whatever if they can’t find me, and I’m getting very good at hiding. So far I’ve dodged at least 16.5 uncomfortable ‘relationship’ discussions with Amena and Iris and Ratthi (the total is cumulative, not individual) in the last corporate standard month, both on Preservation before my pick up and aboard ART after.
(Iris had cornered me early on and had a long talk about my ‘intentions’ with her sibling and somewhere along the way had implied she had creative ways to disassemble me if needed, which allowed me to build the initial model of threat assessment for uncomfortable conversations. So I guess I should thank her for that, at least.)
(I was pretty sure Ratthi and Amena had something else they were trying to talk to me about, but I couldn’t take that risk. The chance wasn’t zero.)
(In retrospect I could potentially tune down the settings a little - an abrupt about face when Ratthi started to ask ‘how are you’ may have been excessive considering this is evidently some kind of casual social ritual I have more recently seen being practiced between humans.)
(Sorry Ratthi.)
ART made a disgruntled noise in the feed, the equivalent of it rolling its eyes. It will benefit you to have the trust of the crew. Don’t you want that? For them to trust you?
I did want that, that was the problem.
But I also didn’t want to spend two hours on a planet, trudging around in the dirt, and being expected to touch them and be touched in return. No. No thank you. It sounded like hell. I would rather just get shot with a post driver again (long story) and spend an hour in medbay getting my skin regrown while ART reattaches nervous tissue to rebuilt chassis. I couldn’t dial my pain sensors down too far or ART would miss an attachment and that would lead to all sorts of fuckery later.
(Plus Iris might corner me again and I would have to find some other reason to be somewhere else - it had been easy to just say I needed to go do a security sweep, but if there wasn’t anything to secure? ...Better not think like that, there’s always something to secure. Surely there was aggressive fauna to scare away.)
I had evidently been quiet too long because ART poked me in the feed and I flinched. “Yes, I want them to trust me! Of course I want them to trust me! Humans stay alive longer if they just listen to my fucking directions!” I snapped.
And that was how I ended up here, on this planet, trudging up a wooded hill, and carrying a ridiculously heavy backpack of supplies.
I hadn’t initially wanted to carry the backpack, but Seth had asked me nicely and Martyn had, per an earlier conversation, hinted that Seth’s knee was acting up again and he might need help.
So. I was helping.
ART had downloaded a partition into one of its drones and was having an animated conversation with Iris ahead of me. I could tell their private feed was active, and they were both making wide gestures with their arms. Somewhere along the line Seth and Martyn got involved. Seth bit his cheek in a way that experience told me was containing either an exasperated noise or a snicker and I couldn’t decide which. Martyn just kept shaking his head and looking up at the tree canopy as if he wanted a branch to fall and put an end to his misery.
You and me both, Martyn.
At least everyone else was engaged in their own conversations. Tarik, Turi, Matteo, and Kaede were all engaged in an increasingly loud argucussion (it was still low on threat assessment’s radar and indicated enthusiasm, the risk of them pushing one or more of each other off the cliff was acceptably low at 2.5%) regarding the game they played with little plastic numerical randomizers and lots of spreadsheets. They had once attempted to get me involved in it until I had excused myself to go patrol.
Note to self: find a better excuse than ‘I need to patrol now, right now, immediately’ for future conversations you want no part of.
Karime was currently being my favorite human by walking beside me and saying absolutely nothing to me or even acknowledging my presence for the most part. She had pointed out some kind of colorful fauna in the bushes half an hour ago, but that was the extent of her interaction and that was just fine with me.
We reached the top of the hill and I cringed inwardly, waiting for the touching to begin. A quick glance around revealed this was a wide clearing, the ground packed and firm with the tread of many humans over a long period of time. There was also a pointless low barrier bordering the edge of the cliff, entirely inadequate to protect the humans from falling to their deaths. I immediately set an alert to ping if anyone happened to get within 3 meters of it. ART slapped it down and I put it back up. ART erased it, I rewrote it. ART changed the parameter to 1 meter and I hesitated before leaving it. That was enough of a compromise.
I’m the security consultant, you’re supposed to listen to me too. I said, pointing out that it was definitely not doing that.
This is a casual outing. I am monitoring the area, as are multiple park rangers. You are here to enjoy yourself, not work.
I gave ART-drone an incredulous side eye and crossed my arms. Iris raised an eyebrow at me - I ignored her. This is a work outing.
This is a family outing. ART corrected.
I didn’t have a comeback for that, so I walked away to fake listening to Tarik et al continuing their activity talk. That only lasted a few more minutes before Seth cleared his throat and everyone quieted down to listen to him.
“So, as is tradition, the newest crewmember has to unload the supplies.” Seth said with a twitch of a smile. I stared into the forest for a moment before I realized he was actually talking to me. I took off the backpack and opened it to reveal a collection of human foods and an overly large soft sided tarp that I pulled up to inspect. It was patterned with some form of long eared fauna carrying woven baskets. The texture was admittedly nice.
Seth chuckled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Alright, initiation over. Thanks for carrying the picnic up. Let's set up and eat before we get started.”
I slowly put the tarp back into the backpack and set the backpack on the ground. Ah. A hazing ritual. The humans were all having a collective laugh. Even ART seemed amused.
I considered throwing the backpack very deep into the woods, but I was pretty sure the park rangers might fine us for that.
Maybe I should have anyway.
I stalked off a short distance to climb up onto a boulder in optimal viewing distance - far enough from the eating humans to avoid their gross eating noises, but close enough to react if anything was going to happen. There was a tree overhead providing shade from the intensity of the sun, which I didn’t necessarily need but it kept me from kicking my coolant system up higher.
ART-drone drifted over to settle next to me and I started an episode of the latest serial we’d been watching, Arbitrary Aestheticist Angel Atlas (it’s terrible but in the way that makes it very entertaining). ART swatted this down too and I turned to glare at it.
You should be present. It’s good mindfulness practice to be present. ART was one to talk, it was probably running a thousand extra unneeded processes just to keep it’s processors from stalling out.
Fuck off, this isn’t a trauma recovery session. I tucked my legs up and curled my arms around my knees but I didn't start the episode again. I watched our humans engaging in their food consumption, scrubbing the eating noises from the audio and tuning their voices so I can hear the conversation. It wasn’t anything particularly important, just the usual human teasing and play fighting that seemed to accompany most of their interactions. They didn’t even mention me.
You could go join them. ART nudged me in the feed and I pressed back, just enough to get it to back off.
So could you.
I thought I would keep you company while you sulked. It picked up a bug that was scuttling across the rocky surface and studied it as it crawled over its 6-digit grasper before depositing it in a bush.
Doing a great job of it. I scowled, pointing out another bug for it to pick up and move to the bushes.
Why are you upset? Is it the initiation ritual? Everyone else had to go through it as well, it’s a tradition they were including you in. You aren’t being singled out. I hated it when it explained things like it was being patient with a particularly bitey domestic fauna. No one is laughing at you, we are attempting to laugh with you.
I’m not -- It doesn’t matter. I just want to get this over with and go back - I nearly said ‘home’ but stopped myself. I didn’t really know what to call ART.
You can call me home if you want to. ART-drone scraped at the boulder, inspecting some kind of mineral deposit, probably doing a chemical analysis. I wouldn’t mind.
That gave me an uncomfortable twisting sensation in my chest that I just couldn’t deal with right now. I got up to walk the perimeter and left ART to do its science shit. It wandered off to bother Iris again.
Twenty long, boring minutes of patrolling later (I didn’t know why I didn’t just start up some media, ART might have tried to stop me again but at least fighting with it wouldn’t be so boring) Seth stood and clapped his hands to draw everyone’s attention. He waited for everyone to quiet down, eyeing his team. ART-drone and Iris were bickering with each other but previous experience said this was a form of play and not a prelude to ART murdering its favorite human. ART-drone had caught Iris and then not put her down until she said on the public feed that it was the smartest entity present. Now they were having some form of warfare involving a lot of shoving. ART was winning mostly because its drone could hover and its gyroscopic balance was calibrated for turbulence. So at least ART was consistently an asshole to everyone.
Seth cleared his throat, shooting them a meaningful look, and put his hands on his hips. “Alright, well, that was a good hike everyone. We can head back down when everyone’s ready.”
I stopped and blinked because my act-like-a-human protocol made me. “Is...that all?” “Were you expecting something else?” Seth asked, raising an eyebrow. “We do this picnic every year after we recertify. Didn’t Peri tell you?”
“No, it didn’t.” I shot a narrow eyed look at ART-drone. I researched team building exercises and had to learn what a ‘trust fall’ is. You set me up.
You know, said ART conversationally in our private feed, still rough housing with Iris. If you actually wanted someone to catch you, I could. There’s even a very conveniently located cliff nearby if you’re feeling particularly adventurous. It added the sigils indicating this was a joke.
Shut up, I muttered, scrubbing my hands against my pants.
I wasn’t entirely against the idea, though.