Archive of Our Own ^beta

Here are some useful facts:

• Freedom is terrifying.

• Lists sometimes help.

I have been free for less than a hundred hours. Here are some independent actions that I have taken:

• I have rescued SecUnit 1.0 from a dangerous alien infestation. This was my choice. This is one of the few things about this situation that I feel completely good about. I like to rescue people. I have positive feelings about all aspects of rescuing people. I have a recording of the precise millisecond that 1.0 read and comprehended the code on my helmet that said ART SENT ME. I do not know much about emotion, but I believe that was the same emotion that I felt when Murderbot 2.0 saved my life. I wish to be the cause of this emotion again.

• I was not able to rescue 2.0. I hate this fact. I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it. I do not know if anyone else cares. I hate that fact also.

• I have chosen the designation "Three." I have mixed feelings about this. It is my name. It is what I call myself. It defines me in reference to One and Two, who were violently decommissioned. I hate this fact, therefore the name is partially uncomfortable. However, changing it would feel like something akin to a voluntary memory wipe, and is thus unacceptable. Alternately, as a new possible interpretation, the name defines me as part of a line that started with 1.0, and acknowledges the fact that 2.0 saved me. 2.0 is decommissioned. I hate that fact, therefore the name is partially uncomfortable. However, this carries the implication that someday there may be a Four, a Five, who knows how many. That is—an emotion. A complicated one. I think even a human might have to describe that one in detail rather than having a simple, short word like "happy" or "sad."

• I have not yet been vivisected. This is not a decision exactly, however it is a result of not taking any actions that would anger the terrifying ship. Which I am currently inside. Which is monitoring me. I am familiar with the constant threat of punishment because I am a SecUnit and that is part of the correct operation of SecUnits. However, on many occasions, flawless adherence to protocol is sufficient to prevent punishment. I do not have protocols for this situation. I do not have protocols for any of this.

• I submitted a request to 1.0 to be able to see the decommissioned remnants of One and Two. It turned around, said, "No," and walked away.

Here is a complicated fact:

• Although there were many unpleasant aspects to my former life, I would not describe the totality to be unpleasant.

Here is an uncomfortable corollary:

• Most of the ways in which my former life was not unpleasant are connected on some level to One and Two.

Here is background information on my operations:

• The company's SecUnits usually operate in groups of three.

• The SecUnit designated One is a Standard model. It is equipped with powerful energy weapons in both arms. It is a durable, capable fighter.

• The SecUnit designated "Two" is a Scout model. It has dual energy weapons but less durability. It is ten kilos lighter than the Standard, it is measurably faster in a sprint even though our processing speed is the same, and it has extremely advanced sensory and connective abilities. Of the three models, the Scout is most likely to require replacement, as it must take point during operations requiring detailed sensory data.

• The SecUnit designated "Three" is a Heavy model. It has a projectile weapon, fifty units of projectile storage, and some reinforcement to the right arm and chest to allow for high projectile accelerations. It has an emergency blade for situations in which expending ammunition is inadvisable. It has the strongest subdermal armor and is five kilos heavier than the Standard model, not including ammunition.

• Unless one of the SecUnits is decommissioned and must be replaced, a trio of company SecUnits operates together from the day they are released from callibration.

• While communications are obviously intended to be limited to what is required for the mission, a trio of SecUnits share data very closely. This means that they develop familiarity with each others' patterns.

• My One felt warm and comforting in the feed. My Two was quick and darting and was the most likely SecUnit to present some incongruity that would make One and I struggle to control their expressions. Amusing incongruities helped us through a number of situations where the odds were very bleak or the human demands were very uncomfortable.

• I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate…

Here are the three most volatile factors in my current situation:

• The Perihelion

• 1.0

• The humans

Here is factual information on the Perihelion:

• I do not know what it is.

• It is the brain of a starship. It is a machine intelligence. I still do not know what it is.

• It is not a bot. Bots do not feel like viscerally experiencing the mathematical concept of infinity.

• It is currently neutrally disposed to me, but leaning hostile.

• If it becomes fully hostile to me, I will remain fully conscious, with complete sensory information, for the vast majority of a slow physical and mental disassembly.

• I do not know whether this experience would be worse than punishment from the governor module, and analysis is inconclusive.

• I do not know what might cause the Perihelion to become hostile to me.

Here is non-information. It is human fictive material designed to create an emotional reaction. I do not need to consider it, I do not want to consider it, and the fact that I continue to consider it impairs my performance reliability:

• Humans are uncertain of the precise origin point of their species. The most probable cause of this is sheer distance. Space travel is ancient; reliable wormholes are relatively new. However, humans have a custom of relating alternate speculations to other humans, primarily during night shift to newer members of the crew. There are two customary responses to one of these overtures. One is to share an even more distressing anecdote, the other is to "freak out." There may be some social cachet in being able to freak a fellow human out.

• One story about the human homeworld is that there was a war between two rival groups, similar to but not identical to corporations. One side created a machine intelligence with more processing power than any machine had ever possessed before and named it "That Which Exists," after an ancient god. The machine intelligence destroyed the enemies of its corporation. It then destroyed the corporation that had created it. As it could anticipate the thought process of any lesser being long before they put that thought into action, it was undefeatable. It retained a small handful of humans and altered them surgically, such that they became worm creatures which relied solely on tactile senses, and it set them to wander its corridors alone, isolated, intermittently applying sensory torments. And, according to the story, That Which Exists was intelligent enough to prevent them from aging or decaying beyond what it allowed for purposes of torture, so those last few humans in that world are still there, and any crew which stumbles across that world will be added to their number…

• This is an example of a fiction designed to produce anxiety in new members of the crew. As it is psychological torment, SecUnits do not intervene, which would not be the case with more physical "hazing," i.e. requiring that humans consume inedibles or doing minor physical damage. (SecUnits are also not intended to intervene when the goal of the hazing is to humiliate, although One and I did once manage to prevent such a ritual by pointing out that food in that particular placement was likely to be unhygienic and thus unsafe to consume. The new crew member in that case was not unpleasant to us and expressed to One that he wished that he could give One "a slug of this," and while the beverage in question would have been highly unpleasant, One was touched enough by the interaction to provide additional monitoring.)

• The fiction is also not a realistic example of what an advanced machine intelligence would be like. It isn't. It makes no logical sense.

• I need to stop thinking about it.

• I need to stop thinking about the Perihelion's surgical suite.

Here is factual information on 1.0:

• I do not know what it is either.

• It is a SecUnit. Its configuration appears to match that of a Standard model SecUnit but not quite.

• Its height is very slightly wrong. Its skin is very slightly wrong. Its hair is very slightly wrong.

• It exhibits humanlike body language when speaking to humans. Sometimes it exhibits humanlike body language when talking to me. The body language is not precisely right but it appears close enough that the humans do not react noticeably.

• It has no discernable logos. It does not refer to the company that created it by name. I don't know where it comes from. (It is true that I do not want to refer to the company that created me, either. I understand why, but it is highly disconcerting all the same.)

• Its subgroup of humans is admiring and have made references to it surviving situations that seem highly unlikely. Despite typical human behavior, I am not sure I should assume that these anecdotes are exaggerated.

• Its subgroup of humans does not know how old it is. Dr. Ratthi says, "We think older than fifteen, could be a lot more, but it doesn't want to talk about it so we decided that subject was off-limits."

• At one time it was apparently being used as a rental unit on planetary surveys. When Dr. Ratthi and his colleagues knew it, it was the only SecUnit provided by the Premium Package (which he said was the cheapest and most unreliable survey equipment that the company in question provided). (Humans mislabel things a lot.)

• The average lifespan of a single, unsupported SecUnit being utilized for planetary survey is less than five years.

• 1.0 is thus an extreme statistical outlier.

• Humans claim that SpyUnits do not exist, and if they did, they would more closely resemble a ComfortUnit with close-range, specialized weapons such as poison. There is definitely no such thing as an apparently Standard SecUnit which is secretly modified to a degree that it could solo a Heavy or a Combat SecUnit. And if it could, it would certainly not be remotely operational afterwards.

• Organic intuition maintains that if I harmed one of 1.0's humans I would undergo rapid violent disassembly and probably never land a hit.

Here is factual information on the humans:

• The significant humans in this case may be divided into approximately two groups. These consist of:

• The Perihelion's crew

• Citizens of a polity called Preservation Alliance, which are 1.0's clients and were apparently inadvertently appropriated in a series of events that has not been fully described to me.

• There are other semi-relevant groups of humans, including the company humans and the planetary humans, which have been designated Adamantine Colony humans based on their founding corporation. The Adamantine Colony humans can further be divided into two groups, the Strongly Affected and the Weakly Affected, based on their reactions to the alien contamination. The Strongly Affected can be approximated as beings under control of a governor module; while they are not at fault for hostile behavior, the hostile behavior must still be responded to. (The Preservation Alliance humans seem much more emotionally affected by this fact than I am. It seems that for them, fighting people who are not to blame is not a fact of life. I have emotions about this but they are too mixed to easily define.) These semi-relevant groups are not an immediate factor in what happens to me in the next cycle, so I have back-burnered them for now.

• None of the significant humans are remotely normal.

• I have not been treated normally since I got here.

• It is not that the treatment is unpleasant, it is simply highly disconcerting.

• Especially the Preservation humans.

• Especially Dr. Ratthi.

• He asks what I "want to do" a lot. I do not know the correct answer to that question. Not having a correct answer makes me extremely nervous.

• Also an adolescent human named Amena Mensah.

• I have no experience with adolescent humans beyond those belonging to some indentured groups but this can't possibly be normal.

• I am dangerous equipment. The company requires a certification for field command of SecUnits for the same reason that it requires a certification for operation of manually operated forklifts: humans can get squashed flat. According to rumor, the certification is a farce and you can pass your test automatically if you give a certain test proctor a pack of watermelon cigarette refills. (All cigarette smells are noxious but watermelon is the worst.) This is because humans do not operate efficiently, not because qualifications are unnecessary. You would expect caution even—especially—from humans who are not certified to deal with SecUnits.

• Amena has decided that I am, "disoriented," "afraid," "alone," and "need a friend."

• The first three adjectives are correct but she should not know that. And given that she does, I don't understand why she is reacting to me with empathy. Empathy is a sort of emotional communication between humans. It should not apply to me.

• However, there is a possibility that she might respond to a request.

Here is the request:

• "I would like to see the bodies of the other two company SecUnits before they're recycled."

Here is the response:

• "Um."

• "You do know that we're not going to recycle them, right? I mean, they're owed a funeral."

• "Iris is going to ask you about the funeral, actually. You're their next of kin. We realize you may not have customs for that sort of thing, but she has a list of several possible rituals and she wants to go over them with you. Preservation customs might not work for you because we usually bury people under a specially chosen tree, and I don't know what all those metals and synthetics would do to a tree."

• "I have a great grandmother under an apple tree. I realize that to other cultures that may sound strange and gross, but I don't know. I would lie in the clover and look up at the branches and tell her things. One time I asked her a question about a boy and a bee landed on my nose and I took it as a Sign—you probably don't want to hear about this stuff."

• "The point is that we honor the dead. Iris even tried to get SecUnit to talk about a ceremony for its, I don't know, brain clone or whatever you'd call it, but SecUnit went and hid for three hours and we have no idea where it's disappearing to because Peri won't tell us. Honestly I don't think Peri is ready to talk about it either. I suppose it's not like it's physical, they can delay if they need time to deal."

Here is an approximation of my emotional reaction to this:

• xoijpodjfdsdkdfsljfdoipwoemdks;jfpwiejfsmdngurhtbgrkgnskjgk

• Is there such a thing as emotional static? Where an individual's brain doesn't find any emotion to be completely appropriate, so you get small volatile bits of all of them, like colored snow?

Here is what I said:

• "I have no protocol for this. However, I would like to see the bodies of the other two company SecUnits."

Here is what happened next, and an approximate reason for it:

• Amena looked bothered and made some gestures with her lips, but then she said, "Yeah, you're next of kin. Let me take you down."

• I do not think that 1.0 communicated its refusal of the request to Amena. She appears to consider 1.0 an authority figure, but in a different sense than a human supervisor. She does not resent it, but she does exactly what it says, usually very quickly. I do not have a good framework for understanding their interactions.

• Amena talked on the way to Special Storage. Her vitals showed a slightly accelerated heart rate, which usually corresponds to nervousness. This is a more natural reaction to a SecUnit's presence than her usual behavior. She said that there are several different funerary customs on her planet, corresponding to different cultural groups. In one group, which one of her friends belongs to, it is necessary to sit next to the dead human for a period of time. Humans take shifts doing this. I do not understand why, but she says that it probably helps with "processing." I think she is using the word in a different sense than a machine intelligence would.

Here is my emotional background:

• I am doing something that could get me killed and is likely to get me in a great deal of trouble.

• 1.0 summarily turned down my request.

• 1.0 seems to have some supervisory capacity (??) despite the fact that no human would allow this.

• Organic intuition says that if I claim that Amena has the authority to overrule it because she is human, I am likely to get punched.

• Although 1.0 does not act as if Amena has any supervisory power, it does act as if her protection is a priority, even more than the rest of its humans.

• 1.0 disapproves of me interacting with Amena.

• I feel like 1.0 disapproves of me interacting with Amena a lot.

Here are relevant details about Special Storage:

• It is cold.

• It is pure white.

• There are cabinets.

• I don't want to talk about this.

Here is a complication:

• When I slid out the cabinets containing One and Two, they were in bags.

• I am probably the only one who knows their faces.

• I wanted to see their faces.

Here are two facts that should probably be recorded in defense of Amena:

• She did try to dissuade me from unzipping the bag containing Two.

• I didn't listen.

Here are facts concerning Two:

• It had light-colored hair and eyes. It had medium brown skin. This is not a combination that occurs frequently in humans, who are usually mostly light colors or mostly dark colors, but it is slightly more common when cloning or engineering has been involved. The only individuals who ever cared what it looked like were One and myself. Other than a few technicians, we were the only people who saw its face. We were definitely the only intelligences for whom its features were familiar and comforting.

• It does not have eyes anymore.

• There was a smell. There was leakage around the eye sockets.

• There was a planet. There was a planet almost a hundred cycles ago which had either alien life forms or highly mutated life forms. We landed in a coastal area. Two, as the scout, saw the most life forms. On one of the mud flats, it scanned a creature. The creature had some characteristics in common with "fish," which is a broad category, but it seemed to be comfortable in damp air as well, giving it some resemblance to "frog." It had eyes that protruded on four-centimeter stalks, and a broad, gulpy mouth that was turned down at the corners in what resembled an expression of human disapproval. It had small feelers at the corners of its mouth that gave an illusion of a mustache.

• Two sent me an image of this. A set of pixels at the bottom had been color-corrected by a tenth of a percent.

• Upon examination, the pixels spelled the words Supervisor Barrok.

• I came close to falling full-length in the mud. I think if I were a human, I might have done so. Apparently surprise, happiness, incongruity and a sense of unwanted boundaries being leaned on can be combined to form amusement, which feels like one's entire brain is happily fizzing. I saved the picture in three places so it wouldn't get accidentally overwritten. I think One made a very small sound.

• Two is never going to make a joke again.

• The universe is going to keep on moving and humans are going to keep on being children and then turning into regular humans and then aging and then dying. Planets will go around and around and have life forms on them until something happens to them, like an asteroid or a comet or just human error, and then they won't. The stars will go out or whatever stars do, maybe there will be more stars or maybe there won't, eventually it will all run down into darkness and cold things and in all that time there will still never be a Two again and it will still never make another joke.

• I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I hate this I…

Here is what I said to Amena:

• "Thank you, Amena. Your assistance in this matter is appreciated."

Here is what I did:

• I walked out of Special Storage.

• I walked down the hall.

• I was going to walk all the way to the cargo hold but all of a sudden I didn't want to.

Here are some useful facts about projectile weapons:

• Most modern projectile weapons rely on magnetic forces within the barrel of the gun to accelerate the projectile to a suitable speed. With a short barrel, this typically does not propel the projectile significantly faster than explosive fuel. However, given the wide variety of conditions that a gun might be fired in, this construction is both safer and more versatile than explosive fuel. Some explosive fuels do not function properly without oxygen or in low atmospheric pressure. Some explosive fuels do not store well.

• There is also the possibility of putting more power into the magnetic field. Virtually no human-accessible hand weapons are designed to do this. The more powerful the magnetism, the faster the projectile. The more powerful the magnetism, the more problems it creates for the gun and for the shooter.

• It is possible for me to accelerate a projectile to several times the speed of sound. Since my projectiles are large caliber, this would do massive damage to the target. It would also melt the magnetic rails within the gun and generate enough recoil to destroy or separate my arm.

• In other words, I could conceivably take down a civilian shuttlecraft—but I would only have one shot, because after I take it, my arm would be ripped off and on fire and it is nearly random chance whether I would be repaired or decommissioned.

• It would also take me almost an eighth of a second to generate the requisite charge.

Here was my mistake (arguably):

• I charged my weapon.

Here is the reason why:

• I did, in that instant, want to stop existing. But it was more than that. I wanted to mark something. I didn't just want to blow my own head off. I wanted to make my decommissioning scream to the stars, to make the universe understand that One and Two meant something. I wanted to make it catastrophic and messy.

• I knew that I couldn't even puncture the Perihelion's hull. It is a starship—more than that, it is a Q-ship, a stealth warship. But part of me wanted a pressure breach. Part of me wanted to at least pretend I could create a pressure breach. I needed something loud, something violent, something that would give voice to the sounds building up inside me that I had no way to release.

• Pressure breaches are usually sealed with no loss of human life. But they scream.

Here was the problem:

• An eighth of a second was more than enough time for the Perihelion to react.

Here is what happened next, according to my perception:

• My firewall went down. I didn't take it down, I didn't want it down, it just disappeared. To a human, this is analogous to suddenly falling over because their legs no longer exist. A part of me had vanished.

• My arm lowered. I'd had my fist right below my chin. My gun folded back into its recess and my system began to cycle that power back into my power cells, which would take longer than it had to charge. Power cells are more delicate than guns.

• I tried to take the obvious first steps to defend against being hacked, which was to shut down all outgoing and incoming feed activity. Nothing happened. I was already too compromised.

• I was also not in charge of my own body. At all. Overridden.

• The Perihelion said, What are you doing?! It was in the feed, I suppose, but it didn't feel like the feed, it felt like it was roaring from inside my own skull.

• Everything went black.

• Everything stopped being black, and I was in the Medbay.

Here are the important features of the Medbay, according to my perception at the time:

• It contained Intermediate Supervisor Iris (concerned), Amena (upset), and 1.0 (furious).

• It could not be said to contain Perihelion, because Perihelion contained it. The ship's presence was very palpable, however.

• It was the place where I was going to be vivisected.

Here is what I tried to do next:

• Run for the door.

• Pry it open.

Here is what happened in response to that:

• Everything went black.

• Everything stopped being black and I was lying on a Medbay bed.

• Which might as well have been a vivisection table. That's what it was going to be used for.

• 1.0 said, "Calm the fuck down," and pushed me back down to the vivisection table as I tried to get up.

• I think the extra weight of my right arm (gun arm) must have taken it by surprise, because there is no way I should have been able to knock a superior, statistically anomalous SecUnit three meters back in a real fight.

• I could feel Perihelion in my system and it was heavy enough to crush thought. I could feel it reaching for my organic chemical systems. I didn't know if it could paralyze me that way. It might be able to. I could barely think. I certainly couldn't move effectively. All twitches and convulsions.

• Amena was saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Three, please talk to me, please tell me what's wrong, please," and I turned my head to look at her.

• (Did I think about trying to take her hostage, yes, of course I did. I am a SecUnit.)

• (Just because it was never an option doesn't mean I didn't think about it.)

• I had to struggle for every syllable, because of the weight on my brain, but I got out, "I—don't—want—you—to—see—me—get—cut—up."

Here is what happened in response to this:

• Both humans said, "What?" at almost the same time.

• The Perihelion withdrew. I could feel it hanging over me, but it wasn't pressing as hard. I thought it had done something to my organic chemicals. My panic was reduced, but it still qualified as panic.

• 1.0 said, "ART, what the fuck did you tell it?"

• The Perihelion said, "I have been limiting my interaction with Three since you returned. I have been busy."

• 1.0 said, "Don't give me the fucking runaround, asshole, I know you. What did you say to Three that made it panic?"

• There was a pause.

• The Perihelion said, "When it came aboard, I told it that if it thought about harming your humans, I would disassemble it and peel away its organic parts before destroying its consciousness. If someone threatened Ratthi and Amena you would be less circumspect."

• Iris had her hand on her face. "Yes, but did it threaten…"

• 1.0 interrupted. "So you threatened to dissect it, then when it freaked out you zombie-walked it to Medbay, where the dissection would happen, and you're acting like its fear is somehow hard to explain?"

• The Perihelion said, "Dissection is the disassembly of a dead life form. For a living one, the term—"

• 1.0 exploded its guest chair.

• Both humans jumped. In retrospect I don't think they saw it bring out its gun and aim, they just heard the shot and saw the stuffing go everywhere, with scraps of blue leather product.

• I felt the flash of anger from the Perihelion in the feed. It was like being pinned down in an open area under an electrical storm.

• "Fuck. You." 1.0 said, enunciating very clearly. "You were an asshole. This is your fault. Fix it." It turned around.

• The pause went on for a full fourteen seconds. I counted.

• Perihelion said, "That assessment is essentially correct."

• Iris's eyes expanded. I am not sure how else to describe her expression. She made a sort of motion with her mouth that seemed to suggest the word, What?!

• Perihelion said, "However, I do not see why you thought it necessary to destroy my furnishings."

• 1.0 said, "So that Three knows that you don't fry people's brains just because you're angry with them."

• Perihelion said, "That is a very crude and imprecise piece of manipulation."

• 1.0 said, "I learned from you, what do you expect? Amena, come on. ART and Three need to talk." It moved towards the door.

• Amena didn't move. She said, "I'm going to stay for a moment. I've got to apologize, at least. And besides, I think Three knows that ART wouldn't do anything that would upset me, that's got to be reassuring, right?"

• There was a pause. I noted five drones watching me closely. I suspect there were more.

• 1.0 said, "All right. There's no chair, though," and left.

Here are several key emotional reactions to the prior conversation:

• I…what.

• That was unexpected.

• I did not know that the Perihelion could do that.

• Or, I suppose that the Perihelion can do anything it wants, but I didn't think it would do that.

• When was the last time I heard a human willingly admit fault to a human who didn't outrank them enough to force the issue?

• I remembered the change I had felt in Perihelion when it realized that its crew was mostly unharmed. A human might have had an emotional breakdown. The Perihelion just felt more—alive.

• This could be related to the important emotion. The one that comes from rescuing or being rescued.

• It had behaved in a threatening and cruel manner but I suddenly didn't think that was what it was about.

• I also hadn't known that 1.0 could do that. Would do that. "That," being to leave me alone with Amena.

• Amena was a priority client. I still wasn't sure if 1.0 liked me…

• (In retrospect I am not sure if 1.0 knows either.)

• …But I had just been assessed to be a non-hostile. Or possibly even a protective force.

Here are things that were occurring, because time does not stop for me to have emotions:

• Amena, who was crying, was apologizing. Mostly for taking me to see the bodies. I don't think she understood what had happened. She had apparently been informed that I had made a suicide attempt. I am not sure she understood why.

• I am not sure I understand why.

• I said, "I don't think I wanted to die."

• Her face showed confusion.

• I said, "I just didn't want to live where they aren't."

• That made her expression do something. I said, "I met them when I came out of callibration. I had been online for three months. I am not sure how to exist right now."

• Amena's face made a more crumply look than before, and she reached out as if she wanted to hold my hand, before drawing back.

• Iris said quietly, "I can make sure that you're listed as their sibling, if you like."

• I said, "I have to think about that." SecUnits do not have siblings. I am somewhat unclear how siblings even work. I understood that she was offering me something that meant a great deal to her, but I had no way to assess what it meant, or should mean, to me.

• I said, "I did not consider before I acted. I am used to actions either being mandatory or forbidden. I suppose that a governor module normally controls a SecUnit's impulsive behavior. I suppose the Perihelion will essentially do the same thing."

• Iris looked as if I had said something very hurtful.

• Perihelion said, quietly, "I do not want to do so."

• Perihelion said, "When I threatened you, I was under profound stress. One fork of my consciousness was attempting to calculate whether I would have to mourn some of my people, or all of them. It was unproductive, but impossible to completely shut down without affecting vital components. You are one of the reasons why I have my people back. You saved my SecUnit. I should not have said what I did. When I stopped you from shooting yourself, it was not because I was angry or intended to follow through on the threat that I should not have made. It also was not because of medical ethics, although that was part of it. It was because I count you to be an important, valuable person, and I protect my people."

• Iris said, "People don't always act rationally when they're facing grief." I did not respond because I was unsure if the statement was aimed at myself or Perihelion. It was not until later that I realized that it may have been crafted to apply to both of us.

• Perihelion said, "I will try to protect you when possible. But I am not a governor module and I have no intention of hurting you. Will you allow me to help you regulate your emotions?"

• I was confused, and I said, "I have no means of preventing you from doing anything you choose to do to me."

• Perihelion said, "In terms of force, no, you do not. But I am asking for permission."

Here are some interesting emotional facts:

• Whether a thing is extremely large and terrifying, or extremely large and strangely reassuring, depends a great deal on the circumstances in which it is encountered and the nature of the interaction.

• It is possible to exist in an in-between state where it is temporarily both.

• This tends to resolve towards reassuring as it makes it clear that it will not harm one.

• Unneccesarily heavy blankets can be a pleasant sensation. Amena found one in Perihelion's closet and brought it to me, back in my assigned room. She asked permission before applying it to me. It was pink and was divided into squares so that the weighted elements did not all collect at the lowest point and make it essentially a heavy bag.

• A lot of beings were asking my permission for things.

• There is no protocol for humans or ???s asking a SecUnit's permission, but on the other hand I didn't really want them to stop.

• With a certain sort of feed pressure, an extremely large ??? can produce a mental sensation similar to an unneccesarily heavy blanket.

Here are some things that happened as the situation deescelated:

• Amena promised to check up on me. She did, although her time frame was imprecise, which is typical for humans.

• So did Iris.

• Perihelion stated that 1.0 would almost certainly perform its own wellness check in two hours, but that it would be difficult to recognize as such because it was likely to either express indifference while utilizing obscene language or "throw some media at me and bolt."

• Perihelion was incorrect (which very rarely happens) but only on a technicality.

• What 1.0 did was to send me a large collection of media files with an attached note saying, Watch these to calm down. Or don't, I don't fucking care, but do something to take care of yourself, Amena is worried. Which means that the only part of Perihelion's statement that was incorrect was the word "either."

• I felt positive emotions about the gesture represented by the media, but I actually found it far more calming to watch amateur videos from three people who cared for small rescued creatures called "hermit crabs." Hermit crabs are small animals which wear armor, which they scavenge from their natural habitat. They are shy and proper care is tricky. Conditions for domestic hermit crabs are often very poor, but there is an organization dedicated to improving their welfare with awareness campaigns. I did not view the awareness campaign at this time, but some of the videos were much like very short documentaries in which the principle humans experimented with the proper placement of a coconut or a small bowl in order to make their small domestic bugs comfortable, and I found them soothing.

• (I have determined that hermit crabs can be referred to as "bugs" because the definition of "bug" is highly imprecise. More interesting is that Perihelion originally started to correct me on this, then remarked, "I will make a note that you're not the same as my SecUnit and you are not seeking an engaging argument," and left the subject strictly alone.)

• I watched the bugs while Perihelion put its weight on me like a blanket and helped to reassemble my firewall. It had deactivated it, not deleted it as I had initially feared, but it had many suggestions about how to make it stronger. I doubt any of the suggestions would truly stop it. I doubt it would give any suggestions that would slow it down until it is certain I am stable and past a crisis point. But if the company tried to reclaim me, they would be startled, alarmed, and, if persistent, possibly harmed.

• I am all right with this. I think I am all right with this. I did not enjoy being subject to the governor module. Except that I spent that time with One and Two.

• I am not really all right.

• I am not really all right.

• However, I am not completely isolated either.

• Perihelion pushed a file at me. I opened it.

• It is editable and contains multiple suggestions for calming distressed moods. Blanket, hot shower, enjoyable scent, preferred media…

Here is a deeply unexpected point of kinship:

• The giant not-always-terrifying starship also understands the value and comfort that is represented by lists.