Work Text:
If I get out of this place alive, I am going to kill Ratthi.
That is not a promise. I don’t actually want to do that, no matter how pissed off I am. As a figure of speech, however, I think it pretty much sums up the current situation. So would screaming “I HATE HUMANS” at the top of my lungs, to be honest. If I was physically capable of doing that right now, I would. I haven’t checked my oxygen levels in the last three seconds, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have enough air for screaming. It’s a problem, and not the first.
Let me back up a bit. Seventy hours, maybe?
…Yeah, this should do it.
***
“Hey, so—I know it isn’t your thing, necessarily, but I thought it might be nice to extend an invitation that you can refuse of your own free will.”
I don’t blink at Ratthi’s sudden speech, mostly because I saw him mouthing it on the station’s camera footage all the way down the sixteen meter hallway outside of Dr. Mensah’s office door. There’s a cluster of holiday cycles incoming, and Dr. Mensah’s small humans have been tagging along with her to her office on the station, which means I’m sitting outside the door keeping a metaphorical eye on things. I’ve done a good job on securing Preservation and its transit station—no thanks to the security team already in place—but I know it eases Dr. Mensah’s mind when I stay close when the young ones are here.
I give Ratthi 3.4 seconds to expand on what invitation he means. He does not, keeping his gaze down at my feet, rocking slightly onto his toes in a way that betrays his nervous eagerness.
I sigh. “What invitation,” I ask, unwilling to pull feed or camera data from the last few hours to see if he’s mentioned it elsewhere. Ratthi does a lot of things in his free time that I don’t need to commit to my memory banks.
Starting, Ratthi makes a face I take to be chagrined as he realizes he skipped the important part. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s, ah… I wanted to invite you to the harvest holiday on my home planet. I know you don’t like planets and all, and you can say no if you want, but it would mean a lot to me if you’d come.”
And then he sells me on it by saying, “We have some copies of pre-colonial serials I think you’d be interested in. I’d let you borrow the original copies, but they don’t play except on the old disc-readers, and we don’t have any on the station anymore.”
So I’m a sucker for serials. Who could have guessed. If only I had known then how this would come back to bite me in the ass…
***
The planet is the first problem. It’s one of the smaller planets of the Preservation System, and we get there early in the next day cycle, which means there’s ample time to see the massive, roiling dust storm building at the Southern pole. Ratthi, clearly feeling helpful, tells me that it won’t hit until well into the holiday cycle, when everyone is already inside. I neglect to tell him that I had already read this in the local feed. Unfortunately, I had also read the warnings telling me to save any necessary data off the feed in case it goes down due to storm interference, so that’s how my day is going.
I blame Ratthi for that.
The second problem quickly becomes apparent when Ratthi introduces me to his extended family. There are a lot of them, and they’re all very interested in me, which I also hate but am generally equipped to handle. What I am not equipped to handle is a miniature human who is also very interested in me but who A) cannot interface with the feed yet, B) is too small to make logical inferences, and C) starts to copy everything I do.
I also blame Ratthi for that.
The third problem… well. I would blame Ratthi for this one, too (what can I say, I’m petty to my core processors) but this one is all me. Because the thing is—I have been having more human experiences lately. Some of them are still objectively the worst, like hugging. But some, bordering on 78% (stupid high for a good statistic having to do with humans), so long as they are completed A) in a controlled environment, B) with humans I trust far enough not to harangue me into activities I don’t want to do, and C) often with ART supervising in case anything goes sideways… yeah, those have been. Dare I say. Tolerable.
Which means that in short, the third problem is that I don’t say ‘hell fucking no’ when I am invited to sit down for the harvest feast section of the holiday cycle.
***
I am seated seven spots down from the head of the table. Ratthi is within yelling distance and, for now, feed ping distance, but he’s been absorbed with helping the other humans make their feast food for the past few hours and isn’t much help with the miniature human who has their eyes locked on me.
My drone (the only one I brought with me) stares back, focused on the mini human from an angle high above the table. I recently received a gift of darkened sun-shield glasses from Pin-Lee, which makes it easier to avoid probing gazes, but I have been informed by a cheerful great-aunt that they are inappropriate for the table. Normally, I wouldn’t put them away for a stupid reason like that, but Ratthi’s face as he desperately tried to shush his great-aunt without getting smacked with a towel like she’s been doing to the kids who kept stealing cookies out of the tin was, admittedly, hilarious enough that I decided to humor her.
I’m less inclined to humor the people who keep encouraging me to eat. A grandmother is putting down plates full of food, and refuses to understand when I tell her I do not put human food inside me. She’s been yelling very loudly all afternoon so I can only guess that she can’t hear very well—why she doesn’t have hearing augments is a matter beyond my security expertise. I don’t put up as much of a fuss as I probably should about the food—I’ve discovered that I somewhat like the smell of the things that people eat on the planets. There are less nutrient pastes here and more ‘spices’, which are, according to Ratthi, akin to the nectar of the gods.
I’m not so convinced, but hey, I don’t eat. What do I know. Sure, the smell of planetary food always precedes the feeling of the glands in my mouth perking to attention despite the fact that I can’t salivate, but correlation is not causation. There are probably a thousand reasons why that happens, and none of them have anything to do with the food in front of me. So what if I’m curious? I don’t have anywhere to put food even if I wanted to eat it. Well, aside from my lungs.
…And yet.
The fact that I am even considering this should probably be a giant red flag, but my risk assessment module is notoriously shit. And I have been having mostly positive interactions with human things. And (fuck) I trust Ratthi as much as I trust any human—he is very respectful of my boundaries. He would never offer to involve me in something that would risk my well-being, if it could be avoided. Can spices really be that bad?
Guess I’ll never know if I don’t try. I have faced down almost certain death with nothing but the energy weapons in my arms, I have challenged murderous humans and combat bots and worse, and somehow I have always come out the other side. I will not be cowed by some stupid flavorful plants.
I’m just going to spit them out anyway, I decide, as I pick up a human eating utensil and hold it gingerly in one hand. It’s lightweight, not much use as a weapon unless you aim for something soft, and I soothe myself by making a list of ways to disable a combat bot using only a fork. It would never work, of course, but hey. I’m scrappy.
There are several disgusting-looking things on the plate in front of me. I choose the one that looks the blandest—mashed up root vegetables in an unappealing shade of off-white. I think you’re supposed to put some of the viscous brown stuff—gravy?—on it, but I have absolutely no desire to make this more overwhelming than I already know it’s going to be.
Mash on fork, I double check to make sure no one is watching me. The only human who is paying me any attention right now is the tiny one, and I’m pretty sure that one barely talks. Still, if it somehow snitches on me, threats will be had. I am confident I can find a way to intimidate a ‘toddler’.
Okay. Now or never, Murderbot. Last chance to back out.
…I’m infamously terrible at backing out when I most definitely should. This, if you’re wondering, is the fourth problem. No, I can’t blame this one on Ratthi, either—this one’s all me.
Holding my breath, I raise the fork to my mouth and shove the mash inside.
For a moment, I let it sit there, unsure what I’m supposed to do with it. Chewing would make it more obvious what I’m doing, which I don’t need the humans noticing, and it’s not like I’m planning to swallow. I just wanted to taste it.
I’d like it to be known that I’ve tasted things before. I’ve ‘eaten’ nutrient paste—aka shoved it into one of my lungs—to fake being human on one notable occasion. I’ve also had all manor of disgusting things in my mouth, like the sea water that got in there that one time I was pushed off that ship. More to the point, I can draw air or water in through my mouth and use the sensory organs there to test if there are foreign contaminants.
Apparently, it’s easier to taste things that are moving, because the stationary mash does not taste like much. Either that or my chosen food is blander than anticipated.
Telling my drone to circle the room, I stay stock still, pondering this. Then, against my better judgment, I dip into my code, bump up my taste receptors slightly, and—
Eeeugh. Okay, that’s disgusting. What the fuck.
I am a trained professional who is incredibly skilled in navigating less than pleasant situations without tipping off the humans that everything is terrible. A Company SecUnit is coded first to data mine, second to follow orders, and third to have no personality or extraneous movements. I remind myself of this as I hastily lower my taste receptors back down, forcing my hands to stay down at my sides instead of reaching into my own mouth to scrap the mash out.
Something must show on my face anyway, because I get a ping on the feed from Ratthi.
<What> I send back.
<Is there something wrong?> he asks, tactful and hesitant.
Ugh. As much as I’d like to complain about my current predicament, there is a significantly larger part of me that realizes how stupid it is. And it is. Incredibly stupid. The less said about how stupid it is, the better. I will never live this down.
<No> I say. I do not elaborate. I can practically feel Ratthi weighing the pros and cons of asking me further questions, but just then one of his uncles starts to tell some sort of story that the humans find very funny and there’s a boisterous uproar at the far end of the table, catching Ratthi’s attention.
I utilize the distraction. After making sure that everyone’s faces are turned away, I quickly duck my head, open my mouth, and let the mash plop back onto my plate.
Bleh. I’m going to have to adjust my ‘human experiences aren’t so bad’ versus my ‘human experiences suck’ ratio. This definitely skews the percentages.
And that’s that. I don’t think anything further will come of this. No one was watching, I’ll put my own food in the recycler, and after the holiday cycle is over I will leave this inhospitable rock and never, ever come back. No one has to know what I did—it can be relegated to the section of my memory that I specifically partitioned off so I never have to access it.
Then, of course, the tiny human across from me blinks, tilts its head to the side, and, sticking out its tongue, lets a mouthful of gummed up vegetables slide right out of its mouth. It has the gall to giggle at me, waving its spoon around.
Which makes problem number five.
God. Damnit.
***
I sit, frozen, as a search query runs on my main processor. To no one’s surprise, it comes up with no results for ‘holy fuck, what the hell is wrong with humans’. I don’t have protocols for what to do when a human child sees me spit out food and starts to cheerfully mimic me.
It takes me a few minutes to talk myself out of going into a self-imposed exile, and by then I’m pretty sure I know where I went wrong. I had calculated the risk of a small human being as suicidally stupid as a fully grown human to be statistically insignificant.
Clearly, I haven’t spent enough time around small humans. My mistake.
The good news is that none of the adult humans have yet noticed that the little one is refusing sustenance. This is also the bad news. Unless I want to admit what I did, I have to figure out how to make the stupid baby human eat its food on my own.
As I watch, it happily chews up another mouthful and spits that one out, too, making little wet smacking noises the whole while.
…Have I mentioned lately that humans are disgusting.
Okay. Okay. Focus, Murderbot. You have accidentally caused a human to harm itself—now you have to figure out how to make it stop. Let’s think. How would ART solve this conundrum?
Well, first it would try to make me feel stupid, but I already feel stupid, so I can probably skip that part. Then it would say something it thinks is super smart and logical, phrased in a vaguely condescending way. Something like…
Ah. Like, “have you tried getting the human to stop the same way you got it to start?”
No. No I haven’t. Good thing I already got the ‘feeling stupid’ part of this fiasco out of the way. Thus, I create problem number six: I wait until I am certain the tiny human is watching, make eye contact with it, and then, very intentionally, scoop up another forkful of human food and put it in my mouth.
I should make this clear: I know exactly what I’m doing. I am doing it of my own free will, under no outside coercion, knowing more or less how terrible it will be. I am doing it for one simple reason: because I can predict the huge, giant fuss the humans are going to put up once they figure out what I’ve done to the tiny human, and I don’t want to deal with it.
I have free will. I’m allowed to not deal with human fusses whenever I want to, in whatever way I deem necessary.
The good news is that, after I bare my tongue to show the stupid small human that I’ve ‘swallowed’, it again mimics me, giggling and waving its utensil like we’re playing a game. The bad news is that it then just sits there, watching me, food untouched.
Ugh. And here I thought the ordeal was over. Silly me.
I let out a sigh through my nose, checking my drone to make sure the rest of the humans are still occupied. They are. Then, with the little human’s attention on me, I scoop up another forkful of food.
Say what you like about me, but if there’s one thing I have never done it’s back down from a challenge.
***
Sixteen. It takes sixteen forkfulls of food, mimicked exactly, for the tiny human to clear its plate. By the time it’s done, its eyelids have started drooping, and it keeps yawning with its dumb little mouth.
This, I know, is not my problem. I got the stupid thing to eat—that is as far as my duties and responsibilities go. I’m done.
I stand, pick up my plate, and walk away from the table.
I’m halfway to the cooking block—which one of Ratthi’s aunts has informed me used to be called a kitchen, way back when their ancestors first came—when I see Ratthi hurriedly scramble out of his chair to follow. I let my drone fall back, hovering along beside him as I turn the corner and shove the rest of the food on my plate into the recycler.
He’s happy. I can tell by the bounce in his step and the curve of his mouth, a body language analysis coming back at 82% contentedness. He likes to be home—of course he does. I might like to be at his home, too, if this entire planet weren’t filled with things that stress me the hell out.
The food in my lung is an uncomfortable reminder of that. Warning: foreign material in aeration space, my system informs me. Yeah, tell me something I don’t know.
Ratthi grins, averting his eyes as he comes up beside me. “Hey, so. The feed will probably go down soon because of the storm. Did you want to meet me in the lounge in a bit to check out the serials?”
Yes. I would. Very much. Unfortunately, I need to attend to my lung.
I’m done with humans for this day cycle, I tell him on the feed, unwilling to try speaking with a good fourth of my aeration space cordoned off.
The contentedness percentage of his body language falls slightly.
“Oh. Yeah, my family can be a lot,” Ratthi laughs. He’s very good at making me feel like my needs are reasonable—sometimes I want to hate him for that, but right now it’s working in my favor, so I keep myself in check. “Maybe tomorrow?”
I consider. A few minutes spent with my head in a waste disposal receptacle and then a recharge cycle and I should be fine. And I do really want to see those serials—my curiosity is buzzing on my processor.
Slowly, I nod. I will let you know, I say.
“Okay. Come get me if you need anything!” Ratthi says.
And then he lets me walk away.
…I have yet to realize, but this is problem number seven.
***
The building we’re staying in is archaic. Most of the flooring is made of bio-matter—large planks of it that have been worn into slight ruts from a very long history of human feet. There are no blueprints or maps up on the feed, because everyone who lives here has lived here all their lives, generations upon generations of them all crammed into cozy modules. Ratthi gave me a ‘grand tour’ when we first set down, though, and thankfully I had enough foresight to tag and store a video copy in my archives in case something went wrong. Thank you, paranoia.
It doesn’t take me long to find a waste receptacle unit hidden in a small nook away from the main hallway. I close the door behind me, letting my drone settle down in the corner to watch the entrance as I face down the waste receptacle.
Warning: foreign material in aeration space.
Right. Well, let’s get this over with.
The last time I had to evacuate a lung, I was in a commercial passenger shuttle with terrible lighting and way too many drunk humans. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was quick, with no one the wiser at the end of ten point seven grueling minutes.
I assume this situation, while unfortunate, will be the same.
It is not. Because of course it’s not.
Twenty-nine minutes of hacking later, I am crouched on the floor, elbows braced on the receptacle so that I don’t tip over from the force. I am aware that I look ridiculous, but my lungs don’t move air the same way a human’s does. I have to rely on an ejection mechanism designed to evacuate my aeration lobes in the event that foreign material gets in. The result is. Well. Let’s just call it very far from my usual air of dignity.
Warning: foreign material in aeration space.
I tweak the ejection code a little so that it will contract the right side of my chest tighter and hack again. The last bite of food lodged in my lung does not budge. I feel the strain in my muscles and my mechanics both, pain radiating up my side.
This is stupid. This is so stupid. If I can’t get that food out then it’s going to rot and fester in there. My filtration organs would deal with the resulting toxins, but doing so would drag down my performance reliability until the bacterial infection could be excised. I don’t think I need to explain why that would be annoying as hell. I would much rather have the food out.
Warning: foreign material in aeration space.
Tipping my head back toward the ceiling, I consider (read: sulk) for a moment before moaning aloud.
It’s a very human thing to do, but it seems like it helps them when they have their heads inside waste receptacles. Maybe it will help me. (I know it won't, but I feel petulant enough to try.) (It doesn't help.)
And then, because everything sucks, the power goes out.
I immediately send out a ping to both my drone and the feed. My drone, of course, has its own internal power and pings back at once. The ping to the feed, on the other hand, disappears somewhere into the depths of whatever dreamland haunts the wiring of electronics that have been powered down.
Because of course they have.
Because my luck sucks.
When Ratthi had first shown me around the building, I’d predicted the probability of a power failure at a good forty-seven percent. I was kind of hoping it was one of my calculation modules acting up again, because while interference is not ideal, at least there’s a chance I can work around it. Dead electronics, however, are beyond even me.
…This is problem number eight. I’m really racking them up.
Warning: foreign material in aeration space.
Okay, that’s starting to get annoying. I am well aware of the stupid blockage, thank you very much.
Standing from my crouch, I take a moment to wall off the sensory inputs in my lung from the rest of my processing, redirecting the data to a rarely used storage area that I don’t bother to access. The warning can ping as many times as it wants—I am fully within my sparkly, brand new rights as a “person” to ignore it.
Then, completely unaware that I’ve just given myself problem number nine, I call over my drone and leave the tiny room to go find someone who can tell me how to help get the stupid power back up.
***
It takes several minutes to find any humans. I had half expected them to be running around in a panic, bumping into each other in the low light of the bio-luminescent strips that line the hallways as they try frantically to get the main power hub working again. The last thing I thought I would walk in on is all of them still sitting at the dining table, unaffected as could be, playing cards by the glow of a battery-powered light that has been set on a nearby shelf.
Pausing in the darkness of the doorway, I narrow my eyes at the scene. I know humans have very few self-preservation skills, but this is ridiculous. It’s no wonder the tiny human endangered itself like it did, if this is what all the fully-grown ones have decided to do in a time of crisis.
One of Ratthi’s aunts is the first to spot me. She jumps slightly, her hand flying to her heart, before she starts to slap at Ratthi’s arm, scolding him rapidly about “leaving his friend alone.” Ratthi nearly falls off the bench trying to avoid her.
He meets me in the doorway a moment later, flustered, still clutching a handful of cards. “SecUnit!” he says, smiling slightly as he keeps his eyes averted. “Did you change your mind about the serials?”
“No.” I can’t use the feed to speak, which is unfortunate because as soon as the word is out I realize how hoarse my voice is from all the hacking. I just barely refrain from rolling my eyes at the entire universe. “The power is down.”
“Yeah, I think the storm knocked it out. Are you okay?” Ratthi asks.
I’m not going to answer that. “A power outage is a security issue,” I say instead.
Ratthi’s eyes go wide. “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t—of course you’d be worried that—I mean, it happens a lot down here, but that’s no excuse for—there’s a back-up system, I’ll go turn it on. Just, uh—wait here?”
Normally, I’d ignore a request like that. I don’t trust humans to do things on their own, as a general rule. Right now, however, the last thing I need is Ratthi questioning me about my wellbeing while we’re alone together. Or worse, giving me those silent, worried looks.
In the interest of keeping my misery to myself, I nod. A moment later, he’s gone, hurrying down the hall.
You may have guessed that this is problem number ten. You would be correct.
***
As soon as Ratthi is out of sight, I step away from the dining hall’s doorway. I check my performance reliability as I do—70%. Not terrible, but if, for some stupid reason, there IS an actual security issue tonight, I need to be ready to act. I will be more ready if I can get the blockage out of my lung.
There is a storage unit seven doors down filled with a variety of general use items—I go there, sliding the door open to glare inside.
As expected, I find several of the basins usually reserved for humans having digestion issues. Which I am also clearly having, except the issue in question is that I can’t actually digest anything. I take one and retreat to the room that Ratthi designated as my quarters for the duration of our stay here.
I keep vigilant as I set the ejection mechanism to contract my lung every thirty seconds, my drone stationed outside to scan for threats. The mechanism is much less unpleasant with all of those sensory inputs walled off, I have to admit—I zone out a little as it works, analyzing the data stream coming in from my drone.
I don’t realize how big of a mistake I’ve made until I try to breathe in and find that I… can’t.
I jolt, sitting up straight and sending a ping to hubsys in my panic. Then, irritation rising, I remember that I don’t have a hubsys. All I have is one singular drone—there isn’t even a feed up right now. I’m on my own.
Forcefully reminding myself of this, I dive into my own code, tearing down the makeshift wall I’d erected around my lung earlier.
I’m immediately flooded with a cacophony of sensory inputs, various internal readings, and a series of increasingly urgent warning pings. Turns out that the repeated ejection contractions managed to get the blockage out of my lung—aaand it’s now lodged in my esophagus instead, where I can’t draw in enough air to expel it the rest of the way.
This cycle just keeps getting better and better. God, I hate humans. If I get out of this place alive, I am going to kill Ratthi—
—which, I believe, brings us up to speed on my current situation.
So, the good news. Constructs can survive much longer without air than a human can. The bad news: I am on a planet, utterly alone, in the middle of a massive dust storm that has knocked out both the power and the feed, choking on food that I swallowed because a miniature human started copying me after I stupidly decided to try tasting human spices.
The spices weren’t even good. I hate my life.
Unfortunately, if I want to keep living that life, I need some help. If I can’t get the blockage out soon, the lack of oxygen will start damaging my human neural tissue and force a shutdown/restart sequence. Without the aid of a hubsys, medsys, or cubicle, the problem won’t resolve itself and I’ll fall into a shutdown-restart-shutdown cycle until my functions are too damaged to sustain it, and I’ll go inert. Without oxygen, going permanently offline will occur soon after. The more I move, the more oxygen I use, the faster this happens.
It’s an outcome I refuse to let pass. I’ve survived too many things to get taken down by something as stupid as this. Luckily, I have one last trick up my sleeve.
The drone I chose for this trip isn’t a particularly sophisticated one—it was designed to be unobtrusive, which I had hoped would make all of Ratthi’s extended family pay less attention to me. (Clearly, this tactic did not work on the miniature human. Lesson learned.) In any case, the drone doesn’t have enough power to be used as a feed relay… unless you hack into its system and force it to expend all of its reserve power in one short message burst.
It’s a good thing I’m quick at hacking. Working fast, I queue an emergency help request, plug it into the drone’s output slot, and trigger the message burst. The drone sends out the message in one loud, unsecured flare before I feel it die.
Gritting my teeth, I close my eyes to wait, watching my oxygen levels slowly decline.
Seconds tick by. One, two, three, four—I keep track in an effort to stop my spinning thoughts. It doesn’t help. Not enough, anyway. Because what if Ratthi doesn’t come? He shouldn’t come, in all honesty. Not if I’ve done my job right. I’ve spent so much time trying to train my humans to protect themselves—if Ratthi is smart, if he remembers all the security protocols I’ve repeatedly drilled into him, he’ll be suspicious of a random unsecured ping on the feed in the middle of a blackout. He should, at the very least, finish getting the power back up before he comes to investigate, so that he can properly ping me back on the feed and determine that it was actually me that sent the message.
The problem—the last but certainly not least in this never-ending string of them—is that I’m not sure I have time for that. Panic rising, I keep counting, every warning in my system going haywire. Forty seconds, forty-one, forty-two. Oxygen at 67%. 66%. 65%.
I hunch forward, my lungs spasming in a residual urge to draw in breath, my organic matter spamming me insistently.
Fifty-three seconds. Fifty-four. Fifty-five.
I hate this. I hate this so much.
61%. 60%. 59%.
…I’m going to die here, aren’t I.
Fifty-nine. Sixty. Sixty-one.
Is it dumb that I’m thinking about all the serials I didn’t get to watch?
57%. 56%. 55%.
Yeah. I’m pretty sure it is. And then, because my organic matter hates me, I think about my friends.
Sixty-four. Sixty-five. Sixty-six.
I won’t ever get to see Dr. Mensah again. Or listen to ART’s condescending snark. Or visit Three at its latest mission placement. Or watch serials with Ratthi.
52%. 51%. 50%.
Everything feels fuzzy, thick, warped. My body screams at me. I’m pretty sure my face is leaking. I can’t stop it.
Sixty-nine. Seventy. Seventy-one.
I haven’t had time to do all the security updates I wanted to. What if something happens to Dr. Mensah after I’m gone? What if there’s a kidnapping I could have prevented? What if—
The door opens. I manage to turn my head just as Ratthi skids into the room. “What is it, are we under attack?” he demands, hair wild, as he sprints straight to me.
…Alright. There’s that question answered. Apparently my humans are stupid.
I’m so relived that I can’t even be mad.
***
It takes several long seconds for Ratthi to figure out why I can’t speak. The good news is that he’s a trained biologist, familiar with SecUnits, and probably the best human I could have asked for in a situation like this.
The bad news is that after snatching a medkit from the storage unit and shining a penlight down my throat, he informs me that he’s going to have to manually remove the blockage.
I’m very much aware that I don’t have time to be horrified by the idea of humans sticking their fingers in my mouth. I nod, opening my jaws wider.
“Okay,” he says, in a tone that sounds a little like he’s about to decompress an airlock without a space suit on. He pulls on a pair of sanitized gloves, then raises his hands until they’re hovering in front of my face. He swallows. “Hold still, okay? I’ll do this as fast as I can.”
I nod again, a single dip of my chin. Then, sitting rigid, I wait.
The feeling is… foreign. I don’t think I’ve ever had a human reach into my mouth before, though who knows what I lost when the Company purged my memory. There’s no time to worry about that. Ratthi’s face is incredibly close to mine as he focuses on the task—I want to close my eyes, want to shut him out, but I don’t have a drone that I can use to watch him. Somehow, I think this would be even worse if I couldn’t see him at all. It feels strange. Intimate. The hand he’s using to keep my face steady is trembling slightly against my jaw.
I don’t know why, but the fact that he’s almost as anxious as I am makes the ordeal just a little bit less awful.
Maybe it’s because I know he’s not trying to hurt me. Maybe it’s because he knows I could kill him seven different ways right now but he still decided to help. Maybe it’s because I’ve told him a million and one times not to trust random fucking pings and yet he still came at a run when I called for assistance.
I’m down to 17% oxygen. My lungs hurt. My head feels heavy. My face is still leaking, tears trailing down to where Ratthi’s fingers grip my chin. I can’t close my mouth. And then, with a disgusting dragging sensation, the blockage moves.
“Easy, easy…” Ratthi says, as my teeth scrape against his glove. I force myself to freeze, relaxing my throat. Another second… two… three…
…and then, with one final tug, my airway is clear.
The instant the blockage is gone, I drag in a breath, my head tipping back against the wall behind me. My vision swims, but I don’t close my eyes—I keep them locked on Ratthi as he tosses the food away and peels off his gloves. Then, his face pale, he collapses down onto his ass next to me.
“You okay?” he asks, his eyes fixed on the wall across the way. I nod. He nods back. Then, his voice shaky, he says, “I’m not gonna tell you what to do with your life and your body, but I would really… really… rather not have to do that again.”
“Noted,” I rasp.
He’s silent for a few minutes as I get my breathing under control. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” he asks at last.
Right. Here’s the part where I kick him out so I can sulk in peace. I know Ratthi—he’s the kind of guy who wants to comfort people when they’re feeling bad, but he won’t push it if I ask him to leave. No matter how many doors I slam in his face, he’s never yelled at me. He knows I don’t like it when people get all touchy-feely with me, and he doesn’t hold it against me. He respects boundaries.
The thing is that I—I don’t actually want him to leave.
The realization makes my chest hurt worse than it already does. All these humans, all the challenges they bring me… I always thought I’d be better off without them. And yeah, maybe I would—I definitely wouldn’t have the problem of human experiences coming back to bite me in the ass. But even though tonight has sucked, and it’s mostly Ratthi’s fault, and if it weren’t for that stupid invitation none of this would have happened… he still came and helped me. Not only that, but he’d do anything within his power to make me feel better. Which is idiotic, and I hate it, and I don’t understand anything about him, or any human for that matter, but—maybe I need to stop resisting?
I’ve been silent too long. “Hey,” Ratthi says, getting my attention. “Do you want me to leave?”
He would. I could still ask him to go. But apparently the fact that my ‘human experiences aren’t so bad’ percentage has been lowered to 73% in the most traumatic way possible is not enough of a deterrent to convince me to kick him out.
I close my eyes. Let out a breath. Shake my head.
I think about my friends. All the things I still want to do, all the people I still want to spend time with.
…There’s really only one thing I want to do right now.
“Can we look at the serials now?” I ask.
He laughs, his voice weak with relief. “Of course we can.”