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It’s been 52 hours, 10 minutes, and 14.03 seconds since the Incident and ART is still being weird. Maybe that’s unfair of me to say, because I’ll admit that I’m being weird too, but it’s being weirder. And anyway, my weird is justified. Probably. We’ve been in the wormhole for just over 3 weeks now, and the crew is on edge about the mission, and also bored, which is a bad combination.
Tarik has taken to pacing up and down the halls at all hours, which frankly is my job and I think I’m a bit miffed about it. I’ve been avoiding the argument lounge (and my favorite chair) because Iris keeps trying to get me to play cards with her when everyone knows ART helps her cheat, and I don’t want to sit there knowing that she’s talking to it, probably about how to get me to talk to it, while we pretend to care about cards. Seth has been in super-serious captain mode even though we’re still in the wormhole, which is normally fine but we’ve already run through every scenario a dozen times and I know that if I go in there he’ll start up again instead of just sitting in silence working through data for his latest paper with ART while I sit in silence watching media in the feed, also with ART (which I’m not sure it would even want to do right now, and I’m trying and failing not to think about that). So I’ve been lying on the bed in my cabin, avoiding the humans and augmented humans, with nothing much to do but watch media. Which is usually my favorite thing to do, but right now it isn't working. I think I might be on edge and bored too. And ART is being so, so weird.
And when I say weird I mean fucking weird. I have its favorite episode of worldhoppers playing and it has the input backburnered. It isn’t riding my inputs or nestled into my systems at all, and that feels bad and empty and I think I’m going to have to say something. I’m going to have to start a conversation about feelings. On purpose. Fuck.
The thing is, I’m not a complete idiot. I’m pretty sure I know what the Incident was all about. I mean, we spend most of our time with it curled so close around my feed that I can feel its emotions almost as well as it can feel mine. It’s a little hard to miss how it feels about me. But it hasn’t said anything in the roughly 26,000 hours since I officially joined its crew, and I like things exactly how they are. If it doesn’t say anything, I won’t say anything, which means we won’t have to talk about it. If we don’t talk about it things don't ever have to change. Except that the Incident happened, and things might be ruined now. And it’s being, and I cannot stress this enough, really fucking-
00:55:32.781: [72:8f:ef:58:a1:04 -> 34:50:0a:3c:a8:74 Query(Status?)]
Fuck. It’s still using my hard feed address. And pinging mopey little status checks instead of just barging into my head like it usually does. It must really be freaking out. You might expect the hard feed address thing to be comforting, because that’s how it addressed me for our first 11 missions together, and in some ways, it’s the only real “name” I have. It understands that much better than humans and most augmented humans ever will. But 10395 hours ago I asked it to it started calling me Murderbot, and the sudden switch back is jarring. It’s being so tentative, and something about that is making me feel breakable. I don’t like the breakable feeling and I don’t understand why I’m having it. “What?” I snap back, out loud. If it’s going to be weird over the feed, it can just talk to me over its speakers so we can both be weird out loud.
00:55:32.825: [72:8f:ef:58:a1:04 -> 34:50:0a:3c:a8:74 Payload(Offer:Gift)]
00:55:32.827: [2:8f:ef:58:a1:04 -> 34:50:0a:3c:a8:74 Payload(ProposedLocation:RecRoom-02)]
00:55:32.831: [72:8f:ef:58:a1:04 -> 34:50:0a:3c:a8:74 Query(Accept?)]
Stubborn asshole. Why is it refusing to talk to me? Is it just trying to piss me off? I get my answer when, 0.05 seconds later, it re-sends the queries, and again 0.05 seconds after that. It’s keeping its feed presence much more shielded from me than usual, but it lets me see a little of the anxiety radiating off of it. I cave, like I always was going to. I send back the most sarcastic
00:55:33.012: [34:50:0a:3c:a8:74 -> 72:8f:ef:58:a1:04 Payload(Gift:Accept)]
00:55:33.017: [34:50:0a:3c:a8:74 -> 72:8f:ef:58:a1:04 Payload(ProposedLocation:Accept)]
00:55:33.030: [34:50:0a:3c:a8:74 -> 72:8f:ef:58:a1:04 MurderbotStatus(ART you’re being fucking weird you asshole, just talk to me)]
I’m capable of, and start towards the gym. I purposefully take the long way, though, ignoring the map ART projects into our shared workspace.
That was unnecessarily petty. it says, as I reach the gym doors. I can feel its presence in my feed again, and even though it’s whisper light it’s still such a relief that my performance reliability shoots up 3% immediately. Anyway, you’re going to like this. I made you something. Threat assessment spikes up to 21% from its wormhole trip baseline of 15%.
You know I don’t like surprises, I send back.
You’ll like this one. I can still feel how anxious and uncomfortable it is, but that doesn’t stop it from being a smug bastard. Threat assessment hits 23% as I follow it through its small, well equipped gym into the padded sparring room and –
Threat assessment spikes to 91% as my organics release a shock of adrenaline. The thing inside the sparring room looks like a CombatBot. A really fucking expensive one. I pull my drones in a tight formation around me and am already firing the energy weapon in my left arm (which I know ART doesn’t like me doing inside its hull, but it’s a reflex) before I realize it isn’t moving. I pull ART into my feed, hard, and throw up all of the firewalls we’d built for me before scanning the bot. I trust that ART will understand what I need, and immediately start reinforcing my defenses. It… doesn’t, and I start having another, messier emotion on top of the “oh shit there’s a CombatBot” one.
Murderbot, wait, it’s not – My scans show nothing. No weapons. Nothing using the scan as an opening to force its way into my systems. The force of my energy weapon blast knocks it over and leaves a visible scorch mark across its shoulder joint. My careful ping returns an empty automated response. Standby mode, no one home.
It’s mine. It’s my new drone. You know how you’re always telling me you wish you could punch me in the face? Well, I made myself a face. ART sounds a bit guilty, but also excited. Threat assessment is dropping quickly back to baseline and I feel a little stupid for shooting the poor empty drone. It looks a bit ridiculous, crumpled on the floor like that. And now that I’m really looking, it’s obvious that it’s one of ART’s. It doesn’t have any logos, but it has the same blue and yellow color scheme and sharp, elegant design as all of ART’s other drones. Of course there isn’t a CombatBot aboard. Where would it have come from? We’re in a wormhole. And if there had been a CombatBot aboard, ART would have known right away and crushed it like a bug through the feed. There is no danger. We’re safe. My organics don’t seem to have figured that out, yet, and I’m considering initiating a purge of the adrenaline and stress chemicals.
But as threat assessment is dropping, my broken risk assessment module is doing one of its inexplicable spikes. ART wants me to punch it in the face? It made itself an entire human-form drone so I can punch it in the face? Why?
You want me to punch you in the face. I don’t say it as a question, but it’s a question.
No, you want to punch me in the face. It sounds… happy? Proud of itself? Risk assessment spikes a little higher. I’m just offering you a chance to try. That is, if you think you can manage it. Oh. Oh. That’s… an interesting prospect. I feel ART flow into the drone, lighting fast, as the drone picks itself up from the floor, and hell yeah, I think I can manage it.
I deliberately freeze up, switching off my “look like an augmented human” code to make my limbs stiff and awkward, and replay a few seconds of my initial horrified shock through our feed connection, covering up my actual emotions. The drone stands still, ART suddenly uncertain, and I slide sideways and forward through the tense moment I’ve created, drones fanning out to give me every angle I need as I throw a well aimed punch at the (extremely punchable) face it built for me, ready to bring a leg around and kick its feet out from under it. I’m almost fast enough.
ART might outclass me by several orders of magnitude in processing speed, but I caught it off guard, and the drone is something new. It thinks fast, but it wasn’t built for physical reaction speed. I was. My fist would have absolutely connected, but ART panics (hah!) and reacts in the feed. I’m not expecting it, focused in on the physical fight, and it’s still deep in my systems from when I pulled it close earlier. Before I can react it’s slipped a command directly to the leg that’s bearing most of my weight. All of the artificial tendons in my left knee joint slacken abruptly and my leg gives out under me, the joint making a gross squelching/grinding sound. I crash forward and hit the ground, fist swinging wide as ART’s drone steps backwards, out of my reach.
Time out, I send. ART’s drone stops and I feel it let go of my tendons and slide out of my systems. I snap the tendons back into place and stand up. If you want a fair fight, we’re going to have to tie your hands behind your back. Hypothetically. Or something. I don’t think hypothetically is the right word but I’m sure ART will be more than happy to correct me. It goes all… fizzy? effervescent? in the feed. It really likes that idea.
Shit. That’s… not how I meant for that to come across. But you know what? Fuck it. I’m having a surprisingly nice time, but I’m still mad at ART. It can manage its own feelings right now. Risk assessment is soaring but I can’t be bothered to care. ART once said that idiotic recklessness was my comfort zone. It was really upset at me at the time and just trying to be an asshole, but it was right. Can you do something to keep yourself from instinctively reacting through the feed? To make it so you only use the drone? I open up our shared workspace and drop in a rough draft of an idea.
You don’t mean hypothetically. You mean metaphorically. Whatever. I set myself up for that. It’s not my job to know what the fuck a metaphor is. It reworks my idea, adding a few layers of failsafes. I counter back with a penalty mechanism: if it uses the feed, I choose all the media for the next week. It groans and adds 14 more layers of failsafes, but agrees. The fizzy/effervescent feeling gets stronger as we deploy the code, and I feel a pang of guilt. You’re an asshole, murderbot, I tell myself. It’s your best friend and you’re leading it on. You know you are. If you were as brave as you pretend to be, you would tell it the truth rather than accidentally, let’s call it what it is, flirting with it. And if it didn’t want you in its crew after that, that would be your own damn fault. But another part of me can’t help but think that the fizzy feeling might distract it, give me an advantage. Risk assessment gets close to maxing out, but fuck it. I think I’m having fun.
The second attempt goes much better. Even in the drone, ART is so fucking fast, and all of the drone’s specs are top-of-the-line custom shit, but it’s never had a human-form body before. All of its understanding of how one moves either comes directly from me or is theoretical. And it’s definitely never been in a fist fight before. For a while it just dodges whatever I throw at it, speed mostly making up for the fact that it’s still getting used to standing on two legs. It normally directs its drones like I do with mine: it rides their feeds when it needs or wants to, but they all have piloting modules installed. They handle their own stabilization and routing, ART just directs them. This new drone? ART seems to have put itself into the drone the way I inhabit my own body. It’s kind of hilarious to watch it try to figure out how much force it needs to take a step, or jump out of the way. On the other hand, I still haven’t punched it in the face yet.
I’m considering the intriguing idea that I might have to actually try when it changes up its strategy and tries to grab my wrist. I can tell it’s trying to disable the joint, to make my right hand less effective. It’s a move it’s seen me execute dozens of times. But the whole bipedal center of gravity thing is still new to it, and it miscalculates, wobbles, and starts falling forward. I step forward and catch it, kneeing it in the lower abdomen where the top joint of its hips connects. I think some of its stabilizing system might be in that area, so it could be a useful place to damage. I push it to the ground, landing heavily on top of it and pinning its arms under it. It makes a startled “Ah!” noise through the drone’s speakers and stops fizzing quite so hard for a second.
It takes me 0.32 seconds to get over my surprise enough to process what just happened, and by that point it’s freed itself and is scrambling out from under me. We were pretty ungenerous with what counts as “fighting using the feed” in the murderbot_ART_ludoadversarial_agreement.file (no, I don’t know what ludoaversarial means. Yes, ART renamed the file), so I say, out loud, incredulously: “You gave yourself pain sensors?” I dodge an elbow aimed at the underside of my chin. It’s still a little bit wobbly, and I’m not sure if I was right about the stabilizing system, or if it’s still calibrating.
“I need feedback to know when the drone takes damage” it says. It’s a sound argument, but its tone is precise and overbearing in the way it gets when it’s hiding something. I glare pointedly at it (the drone makes this much easier), but the effect is slightly ruined because I’m also trying the “kick its feet out from under it” strategy again. I’m bigger than the drone, and outweigh it. It would be ideal if by the time it finishes calibrating the drone’s center of gravity, I have it on the ground. It darts away again just in the nick of time.
“I was curious.” It finally admits, sounding a bit embarrassed. “If I don’t like it I can just dial the sensors down. Or turn them off.”
That’s… baffling. “You’re not supposed to like pain, you weirdo. It’s famously meant to be unpleasant.” It tries my knee-to-lower-abdomen move from 14.09 seconds ago, and pretty much gets it right. Damn, it learns fast. I twist to the side just in time and shove my shoulder against it, sending it stumbling past me with its own momentum. Shit, it doesn’t fall over this time.
“Theoretically, it’s just another source of physical input.” It’s got its lecturer voice on, but it’s gone all fizzy and warm again. “And some humans enjoy it, even if you don’t. Anyway, my function is research, I’m interested in everything”. It pauses for 3 milliseconds longer than it should have, which is not very long but still enough for me to tell that it’s choosing its next words carefully.
“It’s perfectly normal for me to be interested in things you aren’t”. Well fuck. I guess we are going to talk about it.
~~~
And yes, I know that means it’s time to tell you about the Incident. I swear I haven’t been avoiding explaining it. Or, well, more accurately, I definitely have been avoiding explaining it. But I haven’t been avoiding explaining it here specifically. I just really, really don’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t even that bad, ok? It was just really, really uncomfortable. So, a few cycles before the start of this mission, ART was assigned a new crew member, a mission data specialist (that means anti-corporate spy) named Valyera. ART took an immediate dislike to her. I don’t blame it. She has the right clearances and had been told what ART was, but she still sometimes gives it orders like it’s a passenger ship HospitalitySystem and not her mission leader, and other times treats it like a scientific curiosity. She kind of reminds me of what Gurathin was like back when we first met.
The thing is that I don’t think Valyera knows that she and ART aren’t getting along. ART knows, and I know, and Iris knows (Iris knows everything, you get used to it). Obviously Seth knows because he wouldn’t be the captain if he didn’t know when there was tension between crew members, and Martyn knows because Martyn can read ART like an open book (I’m only extremely jealous of that ability). Basically, everyone knows except Valyera. Which I would feel bad about except 1. I don’t really care and 2. ART’s right, she’s kind of the worst. Though Gurathin got better, so maybe there’s still hope for her. Still, to be fair to her, she didn’t know that everyone on the ship had an unspoken agreement not to talk about me and ART. Which is, of course, the problem with unspoken agreements.
We were all in the galley sitting around the big table for her official first mission welcome dinner. It turns out I actually kind of like these things even though I don’t need to eat and wouldn’t want to get drunk even if I was physically capable of being intoxicated. Who would have guessed? But ART’s humans are pretty good at not looking at me or touching me, they’re used to my drones, and they don’t make me talk when I don’t feel like talking.
The trauma specialist ART and Mensah strong-armed me into seeing a while back told me it’s good to go to parties when no one’s trying to kill you. Or. Well. Ter actual words were “it’s important to celebrate the good times with your family, so when things get hard again, you know that the hard times aren’t the only times” which. Well. Fine. Te’s good at ter job. So I was at the party. Which probably made what happened much worse.
Everything had mostly been going ok. ART was only printing Valyera’s food a tiny bit colder than optimal and it wasn’t subtly flickering the lights in that way that gives humans a headache, because the rest of its crew were around, so if you ask me it was playing nice for the evening. And then she said “Peri, how did you and SecUnit first meet?” and it said “you may call me Perihelion” in that ice cold voice it does sometimes, and I sent it an amusement sigil in our private feed channel, and it leaned its feed presence into me so I could feel it being smug and annoying and happy. And then she made her voice 46% as cold as ART’s had been (I was almost impressed) and said “Of course. Perihelion, how long have you and SecUnit been married?”
Which meant it was leaned right up against me in the feed when I got all horrified and it got all. Embarrassed. Pleased. Glowy. Fucking bashful. It flinched away from me and I got up and left the room and shut off my feed connection, so I don’t know what happened after that except it kept pinging me and I didn’t answer, and played episode 385 of sanctuary moon 7 times in a row in the background without letting it watch with me, and didn’t answer any of its pings for a long time.
Anyway Valyera probably knows that ART doesn’t like her now.
~~~
Here’s what you missed during that little detour: our fight was going about as badly as our conversation. I’ll get you caught up. The first thing I say is “So, you’re going to try to make me talk about it after all?” I divert a humiliating 57% of my attention to figuring out that snappy comeback, and while I’m distracted it manages to throw the drone’s full weight at me and push me back into the corner of the training room, which means I only have a few milliseconds to herd my drones into a more useful formation before it sort of hugs itself onto my face and tries to punch me on the top of my head.
It says, kind of muffled by the whole awkward hug situation, “Obviously not. I’m going to let you try to punch me in the face. Which you’re doing a rather surprisingly poor job of, I have to say.” Which is an obvious deflection and an even more obvious taunt, but I’m a bit too busy spinning us both around so I can headbutt it into the padded training room wall, which is frustratingly ineffective because of the padding doing its job, so the taunt works on me. I’m sticking to my story that if it weren’t for that padding I would have been perfectly calm and collected, and not let it get to me, and I definitely wouldn’t have said what I say next.
Which is: “I’ve been going easy on you because of how pathetic and wobbly you are”. And it goes all fizzy and happy again. ART what the actual hell. Gross. Stop. So now you’re all caught up. Which, I hope you’re enjoying this more than I am, which is to say not at all. I try to backpedal the conversation as fast as I can while simultaneously trying to peel it off my face, which means that none of what I say comes off as particularly threatening or dignified, even though it was a pretty good line. “That was obviously a mistake, don’t count on me making another”.
Peeling it off of me isn’t working as well as I want it to (this would all be so much easier if we hadn’t put “Murderbot will not use its energy weapons” into the murderbot_ART_ludoadversarial_agreement.file but it really doesn’t want me firing my weapons inside its hull again), so I change strategies. The floor isn’t nearly as padded as the walls and ceiling, because the humans and augmented humans wouldn’t be able to balance if the floor was too squishy, so I kind of body slam/headbutt it into the floor.
That hurts me almost as much as it hurts it, but I just dial down my pain sensors. It finally lets go, makes another surprised pain sound and stops fizzing again. Thank fuck, it doesn’t seem to like pain after all. If it was enjoying the pain I might have to stop hitting it and leave the room, and I really don’t want to do that. I really want to punch it in the face.
I finally have it on the ground, and distracted. I pin it as well as I can with my body and one arm and am just about to finally get my wish, when it says time out please over the feed. Which I guess is fair, since I did that when it was winning earlier. It pulls up the murderbot_ART_ludoadversarial_agreement.file (that name is still stupid by the way) in our shared workspace and suggests an addition.
- If Murderbot can punch ART in the face in the next 30 seconds, it will receive a reward of its choosing, subject to ART’s approval.
- If 30 seconds pass without Murderbot successfully punching ART in the face, ART and Murderbot will have a real conversation about what happened at Valyera’s welcome dinner. Murderbot will answer up to 5 questions fully and honestly, and ART will answer as many questions as Murderbot wishes to ask.
That’s a lot. But I wasn’t lying before about the going easy on it thing. I still haven’t really started trying, and I’m almost certain that I’m going to punch it in the face right after the timeout is over, with or without the proposed edits to our agreement. So instead of arguing back or flat-out refusing the edits, I just add
- If Murderbot can punch ART in the face in the next 30 seconds, it will receive a reward of its choosing, subject to ART’s approval.
- ok but I get to choose my reward after I punch you in the face, and you don’t get to say no just because you don’t like it, you only get to say no if you’re really not ok with whatever I choose. -mb
- If 30 seconds pass without Murderbot successfully punching ART in the face, ART and Murderbot will have a real conversation about what happened at Valyera’s welcome dinner. Murderbot will answer up to 5 questions fully and honestly, and ART will answer as many questions as Murderbot wishes to ask.
- you also have to answer the questions fully and honestly. not that I was planning on asking any. -mb
And it says of course, whatever you want so sweetly and indulgently that I almost forget I’m mad at it. Which. I’m not sure when it being sweet to me stopped pissing me off and started making me feel warm and melty in my organic parts but I think it was a long time ago.
And then it saves the file and ends the time out.
Anyway I’m a fucking idiot because it was faking the whole time, of course. All the wobbly center of gravity shit and the badly aimed kicks. What was I even thinking? That it could calculate interstellar trajectories while simultaneously fixing Ratthi’s love life, watching media with me, crunching petabytes of data for various studies, teaching a classroom full of kids, performing surgery, and testing new printer recipes for soup dumplings, but it couldn’t figure out a human-form drone? That it would have proposed this entire bizarre exercise without testing and calibrating the drone first?
I had been dangerously stupid. I had underestimated it and it had gotten me exactly where it wanted me. It comes at me like an oncoming storm, if an oncoming storm was focused and precise and extremely pleased with itself. I think about those 5 questions again, and well, there’s no way I’m doing that. Ok Murderbot. Time to do what you do best.
Did I mention how fast it is? Because now that it’s not holding back (I really hope it isn’t still holding back), I have to actually pay attention. I had been thinking of our fight as similar to a human sparring match. I’ve never fought for fun before, that’s a human thing, so I don’t have any protocols for that scenario, but I had been compiling my own protocol in the background based on what I’d seen in a few different serials and the contents of a small number of books I have in my media storage, but now I abandon the half-finished sparring protocol, reclaim the process that had been working on it, and fall back on my well-worn protocols for disabling human-form bots and constructs. I don’t have the luxury of human sparring match politeness any more. It gets a few good hits in before I get my bearings. It even, insultingly, punches me right in the jaw.
There’s nothing in the murderbot_ART_ludoadversarial_agreement.file about it punching me in the face, so all that really does is annoy me and make my lower lip leak fluid for a moment before I seal off the capillaries. And of course it has to follow that up with “Wasn’t that supposed to be your line, darling? ” which, for the record, is not something it’s ever called me before, and I really want to ask it what the fuck it means by that, but I still have 18.41 seconds left to win our challenge and avoid the entire conversation, so I just grit out “ART? Shut the fuck up, babe ” in a very ill-thought-out attempt to give it a dose of its own medicine. Except of course it’s not the one who has weird feelings about that kind of language. In the end I just manage to make myself even more uncomfortable, and all the while I can feel it leaking delight and amusement into the feed.
I can’t afford the distraction, because it grabs my shoulders, flips itself over my head and kicks me in the back. Show off. But that gives me an opening. I twist around while it’s wasting time with another fancy flip to land back on the ground, and grab its shoulder mid-air. The way I grab its shoulder is not very similar to the way it grabbed mine. I dig my fingers into the joint and shove it towards the ground, hard, with my other arm. The drone’s arm rips partially out of the socket. The circuitry that carries control signals for the drone is pretty well disguised, but I know how ART designs drones. The bundle of cables is exactly where I expect it to be, and I rip them out.
This time, I can feel its surprise. It takes it almost half a second to process what just happened and turn the pain sensors off (which is much longer than I had dared to hope for, it’s a curious bastard), and that’s long enough. I get it on the ground, pin its other arm, and punch ART right in the face. The clock freezes in the corner of my vision with 9.05 seconds to spare. Hah.
I look down at the mangled drone I’m sort of half kneeling on, and the first words out of my mouth aren’t the ones I expect. “Are you ok? Was that too much?” Now that we’re not bound by the rules in the murderbot_ART_ludoadversarial_agreement.file, it answers me by wrapping back around me in the feed and kind of smothering me in warmth and affection. Ok, that’s a relief. I didn’t go too far, I didn’t seriously hurt it.
Don’t you mean “are you ok, babe”? It asks, its feed voice bubbling with something like laughter.
You’re never going to let me live that one down, are you?
Never.
I find I don’t particularly mind. I roll off the drone and lay next to it on the ripped up floor padding. It shows me an emotion: something hard to put into words about how the drone’s remaining functional hand is laying about an inch from my hand, something warm and deliberate about the space in which we’re not touching. Something about that, about the way it’s perfectly happy to not touch me, even though it badly wants to, makes my borked risk assessment module drop a full 15%.
It’s ok. I show it the emotion I’m having right now, the one where it not touching me just now made me feel safe and understood. You touched me a lot of times when we were fighting. If you want to touch my hand now you can. I don’t think I actually mind, if it’s you doing the touching. Part of me is still yelling “what are you doing, Murderbot, you’re still leading it on, this isn’t fair to it, you’re going to fuck everything up, when it realizes you probably never want any romance stuff and you definitely never want to do anything even slightly related to sex and it kicks you off its crew where will you even go”, but it’s easy to ignore, because even though I’m trying not to think about it too directly, I already know what I want to do.
And actually, I do know where I would go if I had to leave. I would go to Preservation. I would annoy Mensah’s marital partners, and be a bad influence on her kids. I could work with Bharadwaj, editing documentaries or even telling my own stories. I could go find Three and Aster and whatever other strays they’d picked up, and run an off-planet mission security team so that no citizen of Preservation was ever forced to rent an enslaved SecUnit from some awful conglomerate like the company again. Three had been clear that it was done with security work, but when it first dreamed up its program it told me that there would always be a place for me if I wanted to be a part of it. It would be awful, leaving ART. It would be even worse to know that ART didn’t want me any more. But I would have somewhere to go, if I ended up needing it. I have a family.
I watch from three of my drones as ART very, very tentatively touches the drone’s hand to mine. When I don’t pull my hand away in immediate disgust, it pulls my hand into its hand and laces our fingers together. It’s not that bad. At first, risk assessment tries to spike at having my fingers restrained like that, knowing I would lose crucial milliseconds if I had to respond to an immediate threat, but I remind myself that I’m with ART, nothing here is going to hurt me, I’m safe. After a while, risk assessment settles down a little and then I just have a hand in my hand. For me, it just feels like holding onto metal, smooth and cool against my palm and between my fingers, but to ART it feels like sunlight in the void of space. The emotion is so warm and bright it briefly overwhelms me. It feels like there are sparks of something glorious jumping between the nodes of ART’s consciousness. It feels wonderful. We’re wrapped so close around each other in the feed that the emotion almost feels like it could be mine, and I discover that I don’t mind at all. I lie on the floor of RecRoom 2, sharing ART’s unfamiliar but beautiful emotion, letting risk assessment scream unheeded in the background, for a long while. I have to run back my clock when it’s over to see that it was almost 3 minutes. It’s time.
ART? I decided what I want for my prize.
Am I finally going to have to watch that horrible show about the family on the newly terraformed colony with all the horses? It sends an amused sigil in the feed.
Not that. Though HeartRanch Colony is a fantastic show. My therapist suggested it, and you’re the one who made me get a therapist, so you should probably be forced to watch it with me anyway.
Ok, not that. Armor, then? That’s a genuinely tempting suggestion, and for almost a full second I consider giving up on the idea that’s keeping risk assessment from dropping any lower than 80% and just saying yes to the armor. It would be so easy. I could just let things stay weird, and pretend they weren’t weird, and maybe it would all blow over and we could spend another 20,000 hours not talking about it. My drones lazily circle over the place where we’re still holding hands and I know that that’s not an option any more.
No, not armor either. The prize I want is that conversation. The one in the murderbot_ART_ludoadversarial_agreement.file. But you have to answer as many questions as I want, and you only get to ask 3, not 5.
Its feed presence goes still like a startled animal, and then suddenly I have 87% of its attention pinning me in place. Can I have 4 questions?
No. It’s my prize. You get 3 questions and you should be grateful that I gave you any. I’m bluffing. I know I’m not going to keep track, that we’re going to talk until we’re done talking. Probably we both know it. But it still feels good when it says
Anything you want.