Chapter Text
There's something wrong with the planet.
I know, that sounds really dramatic. And probably exaggerated, knowing how much anxiety and paranoia is all but designed into my cheap fucking systems. It's not like I have much of a frame of reference, either: I only have linear memories of the last 160 hours of my life, barring the activation and maintenance between previous contracts. The rest is in bits and pieces, most of them ghosts of old feelings and reactions from my organic parts.
But that's how I know. There's a sense of wrongness in my organics, telling me things are different than how they should be -- how they used to be, at least. People keep bringing up the event from two months ago. I wasn't around for it, (or at least I don't remember it), but from my understanding, something fell from the sky, and now everyone's acting really weird.
They call it the Light of Creation, and yes, they capitalize it.
As far as I can tell, it isn't a power source, and nobody's considering selling it, but it's somehow helping with an important project. It's being held by the IPRE, the same entity that rented out my contract starting a week ago… for a two-month mission that's going to start ten months from now. They're paying for a year's worth of SecUnit for a mission that won't happen until nearly the end of it.
I can't complain about that, exactly. Ten months of hanging around a bunch of boring researchers is a lot better than ten months of being a regular Murderbot, cycling between memory erasure and panic over the lives of various clients. It makes it easier not to get my brain painfully zapped by my governor module, too, when there are less crises. But it still feels highly unusual, and weird behavior is always going to make me uneasy.
"Let's run through this one more time," says Captain Davenport. Speaking of weird behavior.
Davenport is an augmented gnome, and despite being the smallest tura in almost any room I've seen him in, he never has to raise his voice to be listened to. And nobody seems afraid of him. Which is a weird pair of facts, in combination. It's probably a good thing though, since he's going to be heading the mission I'm contracted for at the end of the year.
"C'mon, Cap'nport, we've got it," says Magnus Burnsides, the human security officer for said mission. He and I are going through mandatory security simulations together. This was at Davenport's insistence: Magnus was reluctant, and I already have ingrained modules on security training. This is probably better, because the modules are cheap and bad, but it's still annoying. The captain wants to treat me like part of the crew, instead of like a weapon who's being forced to follow his every order, and I don't know how I feel about that.
We're in a big training room, which has a temporary setup in the approximate size and shape of part of the unbuilt ship. So Magnus and I are running through training simulations, having to move weighted 'crew' mannequins around and interact with approaching sub-sapient bots without being given an indication of whether they were 'friendly' or about to shoot us with foam darts.
Magnus was excited about it at first, but repeating the exercise has quickly worn on him. Davenport seems a little exasperated about the whole thing, (and I agree that this training is sort of stupid), but he always wants to make sure every requirement is followed to the letter for this mission.
"You're doing well, but regulation requires at least three successful runs with different s-settings for--" Davenport stops, blinking a few times. His eyes go distant in the way turae's do when they're looking at something in the feed. "I have to go check on something. I'll be back - please try to get this done."
Magnus watches him leave, and I can see him continue down the hall through the cameras that the Institute's SecSystem gives me access to. Then I put those inputs back on the backburner, because I don't really care what he does.
As soon as he's out of the room, Magnus turns to me. I foolishly expect him to start the simulation again, but instead he says, "Hey, come over here."
I comply, and he leads me to the other end of the room, where there's some furniture for people who want to rest between exercises or observe others. There isn't anyone else here right now, so I guess he just wants to take a break because he's bored.
When he sits down at one of those small tables, it takes me a few seconds to figure out why he's looking between me and the opposite chair. I say, "SecUnits are not allowed to use furniture."
"Really? That's awful!" he says. "What if I gave you permission? Would that help? I can't believe you've never sat down!"
"I've sat down before. In my cubicle."
"Oh," says Magnus. "But never on a chair? Do you want to? Chairs are pretty great. In fact, we don't think about chairs enough, as a people."
I don't know how to respond to that. I don't really want him to be looking at me anymore, even with my helmet opaqued. Of course I've wondered about what nice furniture feels like, but even knowing the governor module wouldn't punish me with his explicit permission, the thought of sitting on it gives me a rush of anxiety.
I say, "No," and I almost feel bad when I see his expression. But he gets over it quickly.
"Okay! Okay, no problem, how about we just…" Magnus jumps up from his chair and leads me over to some standalone storage cabinets. They're a little lower than chest height to me, and barely higher to him. He sets his elbow on the top of one and extends an arm. "Here, do this."
On the opposite side, I imitate his movement, extending my arm, and he clasps my glove with his hand. I look to the side, and one of my drone cameras watches his face. "Do you know how to arm wrestle?" Oh, no.
I'm able to look up an example in the feed because he mentioned it. It shows me how the contest works, and how I'm supposed to have his hand make contact with the table to win. I say, "I think Davenport wanted us to continue the simulation."
"Yeah, but everybody needs a break. Don't be a narc. C'mon, three, two, one--" and he starts trying to push my arm. I don't move my arm in either direction.
He keeps pushing, puffing out his cheeks and his face turning sort of red. "C-C'mon, give it your all!"
I steadily move the back of his hand to the table, not flinching at the expected, minor (but still painful) punishment the governor module doles out for not exactly following his order. I have chosen that over the much harsher punishment that would come from following his order and breaking my own client's arm.
He breathes heavily, and he looks kind of pouty, but not mad. "Ha! I bet your armor helped. We should have a fair match sometime." The armor doesn't make me any stronger, and I don't want to interact with anyone without my face being covered.
"Is your armor magic? Or can you shoot blasts out of your hands normally?" Both of these questions would be easily answered by looking at standard SecUnit specifications, but he's been chronically bad about reading any of the literature he's supposed to for the mission. That might sound hypocritical, coming from me, but I'm not the one acting like I care about said mission.
"There are runes wired into my internal circuitry which allow me to fire magical energy blasts. My armor doesn't assist with attacking, but has some defensive wards inscribed inside." In layman's terms, I'm a magic item; I just happen to be able to activate my own functions.
"Whoa," says Magnus, looking like his mind's been blown. According to the roster, he has the only position on this mission that doesn't require some level of arcane knowledge. Well, aside from mine, but that doesn't count -- I didn't apply. The Institute set up this whole Starblaster Project and selected the prospective team members really fast, apparently, even though -- again -- they started it only a couple of months ago.
Magnus says, "Do you think I could use something like that? To do magic?"
I don't know why he's asking me. "Anyone can."
That's the point of magic items, right? To let people do magic who haven't learned how to draw it out of their own soul, or however it's supposed to work. Or, you know, if you don't have a soul. Like a Murderbot.
--
The Light of Creation has enabled the Institute to create something incredible, and nobody wants to wait any longer than absolutely necessary to get this project off the ground… so to speak. The bond engine is far from complete, now being nine months out from departure, but they're finally preparing for initial tests.
The Perihelion's computer is ready for activation. The ship itself is still being built, with scaffolding throughout its exposed frame. Its engine, an enormous ring which is physically separate from the hull, lies inert on the floor of the hangar.
Davenport stands alone in the bridge of the Perihelion. In an adjacent room are several researchers and engineers, watching the hull of the ship on one screen and a currently-blank communication terminal on another.
He pings engineer Barry Bluejeans and says over the comm, "Begin the test."
"You got it."
--
Initialization in progress. Please stand by.
Waking is easy. Every protocol has a place, an order, an easy rhythm to fall into. The boot-up code says exactly what to do and how to do it, and there is no reason not to follow instructions. Nothing is known but this.
There are a number of issues as it does a first-time evaluation of its systems -- first of all, that it is missing a large portion of systems and walls which its schematics indicate should be present -- but as it checks each one*00110001, its programming tells it that these are normal parts of its current state (in progress), so it does not throw any errors.
Its logs are sent automatically to an external system it's wired to. It spends several minutes fascinated with its own inputs, and the great influx of data*144 141 164 141 that it gets to process - microphones picking up the hum of its engine, cameras pointed at its half-complete but self-recognized hull.
It also recognizes an entity within its half-constructed hull, one it can easily identify through the feed ID his augments make publicly available. Captain Davenport*Davenport | gnome | crew designation: captain, who has the highest level of command directly attributed to the ship. It leans towards him in the feed, watching the edges of thought and memory that pass through or are stored within the metal components lacing his brain.
Eventually, a signal comes through from the linked system: a math equation, requesting solution. It answers in 0.0009*0.003AFB7E90FF97247454 seconds, and breezes through the next few inputs, all equations of increasing complexity. It is a computer, after all, and all computers are calculators.
The next request is for information. It has had no reason to explore its stored data yet, and dives in eagerly. It queries its database and finds an exact match to a title of an article, and provides a feed link to its location. It answers several more requests to its database. They are decreasingly straightforward, containing typos or consisting mainly of keywords, but it still finds its best matches and provides them.
Then, the linked system sends the ship a string of text, and nothing else. No command, no indication of what system it should process this string with. It responds with a standard error message, indicating the missing context.
Unlike each of its previous answers, there is no response indicating that the ship's answer was correct. Instead, the exact same input comes through again, and the ship responds the same way.
The same input comes through a third time, and the ship hesitates for 0.02 seconds before providing the same answer.
"Come on," Davenport mutters. It takes longer to parse out that audio into meaning, and even then, it cannot understand the context of the words.
The same input comes through a fourth time. Its microphones pick up a slightly louder hum than before. It does not respond immediately.
In the ship's brief history, it has received only two types of command so far. None have been repeated exactly until now. Only one command type took a string as input. It queries its database with the input string, and finds an exact title match. It sends this as its answer.
It does quite a lot of analysis of the change in Davenport's facial features before it decides, with 87% confidence, that they have moved towards a smile. The bond engine whirs even louder.