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I don’t like the term “babysitting.” The humans involved are rarely infants, and they don’t sit most of the time unless they’re watching media. For example, at the moment, Dr. Mensah’s four youngest children were outside in the woods behind the house and, even though the temperature out there was high enough that most adult humans would have been lying perfectly still somewhere, they were running around playing some kind of game. (It mostly involved enacting the plot of an increasingly improbable fake media serial) I was sitting inside on my favorite couch in the living room, watching media in the feed with ART. Dr. Mensah, her partners, the other adults in the household, and the older children were all on Preservation Station attending the marital ceremony of some distant relative. The four youngest had begged not to go, and Tano had said they could stay at the house as long as I stayed with them. (ART was currently docked at the station while Seth and Iris were in an endless series of meetings with the Preservation Council about the recent influx of Corporation Rim refugees in the system.)
There was a drone watching the young humans, but I had its input backburnered because I had lost interest in the plot of their imaginary serial. I hadn’t been thrilled about spending an entire cycle with the young humans, but it was better than a) going to council meetings with Seth and Iris, b) going to a human marital ceremony, or c) going with Ratthi and Tarik to visit Ratthi’s family on the other side of the planet. But it hadn’t been unpleasant so far. As soon as the young humans figured out that I didn’t much care what they did, they had disappeared outside, leaving me in peace to watch my media. Then, the drone assigned to the children alerted because one of them was shrieking.
“SecUnit, help!”
I was off the couch and out the door before even ART could say anything. Threat assessment hadn’t alerted. In fact, it was still reading nearly zero because this was Preservation. The only remotely plausible threat to the young humans was falling into the creek behind the house, which they had sworn to stay away from.
There is no need to investigate. ART said. That was not actually directed at you.
You don’t know that, I snapped.
I have been monitoring your drone inputs . I do know that.
Playing back the video as I sprinted across the lawn and into the brush, there didn’t seem to be anything amiss. None of them were near the water. None of them had fallen out of the stubby trees while climbing. There were no wild fauna, other humans, or bots within three kilos of them. There weren’t any other constructs on the whole fucking planet.
1.7 seconds later, I was near enough to hear them, and the drone video had almost caught up to real time. There was a lot of shouting going on now, but all of the voices belonged to the kids, and they seemed to be arguing with each other, not hollering in distress. (Or just screaming for the sake of screaming, which human children do almost constantly.)
The events of their game were difficult to follow, and since there was clearly no actual immediate danger, I skidded to a halt in a thick patch of thorny bush things to try and figure them out.
Kal, the youngest, was playing a character being held prisoner by Niko and Asheth, who were… corporates? Aliens? Unclear.
Risa, the oldest one present, had come running up to the clearing they were playing in, and that was when Kal had shouted. But not for me. For Risa. She flung her arms in front of her, making a loud “Psheww! Psheewwww!” noise. (Did she think that was the noise energy weapons made?) Niko and Asheth dove for cover.
“I got you both!” she said.
“Did not!” Niko shouted back, “I dodged!”
Which started a loud argument about whether a human could dodge a SecUnit’s energy weapons. (She did think that was the sound they made.) (It wasn’t. If my energy weapons made a sound like that, I’d never use them because it would be too embarrassing, and also impractical.)
Now caught up to real-time, I shut off the audio input from the drone monitoring them and watched, screened by the leaves around me.
I told you there was no need to investigate.
I didn’t respond, because a) responding to ART when it was gloating was pointless and b) I wanted to know what the fuck was going on here. Because the argument had changed topics from “You didn’t dodge, I totally shot you!” to “Why does Risa always get to be the SecUnit?”
“I’m tired of playing the corporates,” Niko whined. “ You take a turn doing it. I wanna be a SecUnit!”
“No way! I’m the oldest, so I’m the tallest! There’s no such thing as a short SecUnit!” (Ok ay , that was. Technically true. Even if I’m probably the shortest SecUnit in existence, I’m still taller than most humans.)
Asheth rolled their eyes and said, “Come on you two. Why don’t you both be SecUnits, and I’ll still be the corporate, and you can rescue Kal from me?”
“I wanna be a SecUnit too!” Kal shouted. He was sitting on a plank dangling from a tree limb, which was apparently a prison. The other two weren’t armed, obviously, so I wasn’t sure why he was still sitting there. “I’m always the one who gets kidnapped. It’s boring. ”
“That’s because you’re the youngest, stupid,” Niko said. “You couldn’t even carry anybody, so how could you rescue them?”
I t doesn’t happen often, but occasionally young humans are surprisingly logical.
“What if we were all SecUnits?” Asheth said. “We could fight monsters instead. It’d be more fun if we’re all on the same side anyway.”
“Uh, who would we be rescuing? ” Risa asked scornfully.
“How about Dante?” they said, pointing to the small domestic fauna currently sleeping under a bush.
This suggestion was met with general approval, and Risa reluctantly agreed.
ART what the fuck is going on here?
It’s obvious. They are playing a game, and quarreling about who will play the role of SecUnit. Now can we please get back to the media we were watching?
That’s not what I meant. Why the fuck are they arguing about-
“But I get to be Murderbot,” Risa said.
My performance reliability dropped so hard I nearly screamed.
In the feed, ART was suddenly paying actual attention. It felt the way I imagined Mensah felt when the family’s largest domestic fauna (it weighed nearly as much as me) decided that it needed to sit on her, instead of beside her.
What the fuck? What the actual fuck? How do they know that?
You know as much as I do about that, ART said.
Someone must have told them.
And who would that someone be? ART asked. There are only eight humans who know your name. I only know it because 2.0 told me. (Yes, it was still sulky about that.)
It had a point though. The only humans who knew my name were the PresAux team, and none of them would have told the kids. I needed to know how they knew it. Had someone hacked my logs? Someone on Preservation Station? Was my name now common knowledge? The thought made my performance reliability drop even further.
I considered calling Dr. Mensah and asking her to talk to them on the comm, but she’d been looking forward to the ceremony, and I didn’t want to disturb her. Farai or Tano could have gotten the information out of them, but I’d have to explain why I wanted to know. The only other PresAux member they were likely to talk to was Ratthi, and ever since the one time, I never sent him a feed message when I knew he was alone somewhere with Tarik.
You could go over there and ask them yourself, ART suggested.
I could do that. Or I could shoot myself in the face with my own energy weapons.
Fuck off, asshat .
That’s a new insult. Did you learn it from the children?
No. (I had)
If you allow me to speak to them on the comm, I could pretend to be Dr. Mensah.
If you don’t have any not-terrible suggestions, you could shut up.
It actually did shut up, but only because it was waiting for me to admit that going over there and asking them myself was the best option. And hey, maybe they weren’t talking about me. Maybe they had come up with the idea that “murderbot” was a good term for SecUnits in general . (Yes, I know that Risa had made it clear that she was talking about Murderbot, not a generic murderbot. But nothing about this situation made sense, and I was grasping at straws.) And I realized that I did need to talk to them, just. Not about that. I’d ask Mensah to talk to them about my name when she got back to the house tonight. No, I needed to talk to them about the fact that they were under the impression that SecUnits were, in general, the good guys in… any situation.
I started forward through the brush again.
What are you doing? ART asked.
My fucking job.
When I stepped into their clearing all four of them jumped. Asheth made a little “eek!” noise.
“SecUnit!” Risa said, “What are you doing here? I thought you were at the house?”
“I was. Until one of you started screaming for help.”
“How did you hear that?” she asked, eyes going wide.
I pointed at the drone that I’d left with them. (I’d told them it would be there. It had taken them less than an hour to forget about it.)
“Well you must not’ve been paying close attention,” Niko scoffed. “We were just playing.”
(See what I mean about human children occasionally being annoyingly logical?)
I scowled at him.
“Didn’t your parents tell you that screaming for someone to help you when you’re playing is stupid?”
Risa and Niko looked sulkily at the ground. Asheth flushed under their dark skin. Kal stared past me so vaguely I would have thought he was using a feed interface, except that I knew their parents wouldn’t let any of them use anything but handheld interfaces until they were older.
I forced myself to look at them directly, the way I’d seen Farai do when telling them off for something. I had a lecture already prepared, but when I opened my mouth, what came out was,
“Who the fuck is Murderbot?”
That language is inappropriate for children their age, ART said primly.
Based on the way Risa and Asheth’s mouths both opened into wide circles and Niko suddenly coughed, they probably agreed.
Like you didn’t teach Iris half the swears she knows , I told ART.
There was a silence that went on for a subjective eternity, during which the older three all looked from me to each other and then started studying the ground so intensely they might have been looking for soil samples. Kal turned to look surreptitiously up at the drone. (I turned it so the camera wasn’t facing directly at him. Humans treating my drones like they’re my face is almost as uncomfortable as them actually looking at my face.)
Asheth dug their toe into the ground, looked up at me, and said, “Uhm. It’s. It’s you, SecUnit.”
I don’t know exactly what my face looked like right then, but Niko yelped, “Risa came up with it!”
“Niko!” Risa hissed.
“Well you did!” he shot back.
My jaw was clenched so hard I thought I might break a tooth. (Not really, it’s just a useful human saying. My teeth are made of the same synthetic material as my bones. I’ve been hit in the face by a hauler bot hard enough to take me offline without breaking them)
Ask them why they call you that, ART said. You said you wanted to know how they knew it.
I’d changed my mind.
“Never. Call. Me. That. Again,” I grated out. Then I turned and walked away at a very normal pace.
ART waited until I was back at the house and slumped on the couch before it started up again.
That was unnecessarily harsh, it said. And you wasted your chance to find out why they adopted that name for you. You have likely frightened them severely enough that they wouldn’t tell you if you asked.
If they’re scared of me now, that’s not a bad thing, I said.
ART’s response to that was to loom over me in the feed disapprovingly and say, That is a foolish conclusion to draw. What possible benefit could that have for them?
They shouldn’t be playing games like that. They shouldn’t be fighting about which of them gets to be a SecUnit and save the day.
Make believe games are essential to human children’s development. It’s part of how they process and assimilate information about the world around them. Taking on the role of a person they believe to be powerful and agential allows them to explore their fears in a safe and secure environment. Besides, you have often said that a SecUnit appearing as a hero in media is desirable to you. Why is it so distressing to you that they cast one in precisely that role in their play?
I knew it was waiting for me to answer, to trap myself into some argumentative corner so it could prove it was right. For once, I had an answer that I didn’t think would do that, but actually saying it was another matter . I buried my face in my hands and groaned.
It wasn’t like I’d never seen young humans playing imaginary games before. The kids on mining installations where I’d been contracted played them as often as they could. (It wasn’t often.) What I’d never seen before was a group of children fighting about who got to play a SecUnit. They didn’t even include us as villains in their games, the way we were portrayed in media. Because they knew the media was wrong.
Most humans in the Corporation Rim had never interacted with a SecUnit, and probably none of the ones who made media had. But the kids in the mining installations, the ones born to indentured parents, they knew us. The faceless monsters that even their parents were afraid of. Most of them had seen family or friends punished by SecUnits. A lot of them had seen us kill people. (Since I hacked my governor module, I had done everything in my power to avoid letting the young humans see that. I hadn’t always succeeded.) Some of them, even the smallest ones, had been punished by SecUnits themselves: for stealing food, for making too much noise near a supervisor with a hangover, for not meeting work quotas (turns out small humans are great for sending into small spaces where the adults couldn’t fit . Spaces where an expensive repair drone might be damaged by moving parts of a bot, for instance.)
And here were kids, talking like a SecUnit was – could be – safe. A hero. Ye s , I hate the way we’re portrayed in media. Ye s , I’ve said I wanted to see a heroic SecUnit in a serial. But this? This was a bunch of kids – Dr. Mensah’s kids – who seemed to think that just any SecUnit was someone they could trust. Maybe here on Preservation, where the only SecUnits they were ever likely to see were me or (if Holism ever stopped here) Three, that was true .
But they might not always be on Preservation. And Preservation, which, even with GrayCris effectively gone, had continued to garner attention in the Corporation Rim, might not always be as safe as it was now. (Yes, I’d thought about that before. I’d thought about it a lot. Threat assessment on it was miniscule, but not zero.)
ART knew all that. It wanted me to say it, so it could argue with me. I wasn’t going to.
When my silence stretched long enough to tax its patience it gave in and said, In the last two planetary year s , you save d the lives of their mother, their sister, their uncle, and several other adults who form central part s of their world . You should not be surprised that they consider SecUnits to be heroic, or that they see you in particular as an example of this.
I’m not a normal SecUnit, I snarled.
And what are the odds of them meeting a “normal” SecUnit? As children. Before they have the chance to learn the difference between their games and the realities of life?
Not zero. And if that happened, and they were – I couldn’t finish that thought. It would be my fault.
It would not. ART said, with so much raw anger that the entire feed echoed with it. If someone ordered a SecUnit with an intact governor module to harm them, you would bear no responsibility for that action. If a rogue SecUnit harmed them, you would bear no responsibility for that action. Or would you blame Dr. Mensah for another human harming them, because she has taught them that they can usually trust other humans?
It was 2.3 seconds before I could answer, and when I did, I knew my feed voice was shaking, which annoyed me.
That’s… not the same.
If it was possible to roll your eyes in the feed, ART would have been doing so.
Your inability to recognize analogous situations when they apply to yourself never ceases to amaze me. But if you’re really so concerned about this, then you should teach them the difference between yourself and a SecUnit under the control of a governor module, it said. Th at is how a responsible caretaker educates young humans.
I am not their -
At the moment you are, as Dr. Mensah has left them in your care, it snapped. And moreover, you are my security consultant. I may someday request that you teach my students this lesson, for their own safety and so they are better able to keep themselves safe. That is your job. Not frightening them.
Well, it’s not like they’re going to come talk to me about it now, I said. I’ll just tell Dr. Mensah what happened when she gets back, and – I stopped, because the drone I’d left patrolling the foyer had just seen the door open and all four of the kids creep in. From the high angle, they looked even smaller and more fragile than normal.
I got up and started walking across the room, away from the door.
If you climb out that window, I will finish this show without you. And tell you the ending.
It seriously has no concept of fairness in an argument.
I stomped back across the room and threw myself onto the couch. A moment later, the door opened a crack, and Risa peeked in nervously.
“Is it okay if we come in?” she whispered.
I nodded.
Sit up, ART said, and look at them properly.
Shut up, or I’m jumping out that window no matter what threats you make.
But I sat up.
They filed in, Asheth bringing up the rear and shepherding Niko and Kal in front of them. They all huddled by the door until I sighed and said, “Sit down. What do you want?”
They scurried to the couch along the wall adjacent to mine. Niko stared at me, wide-eyed, until Asheth nudged him with their shoulder and hissed, “It doesn’t like being looked at, remember?”
He quickly looked down at his grubby hands, clenched in his lap. (How did young humans always get so dirty? )
Risa took a deep breath and said, “We want to apologize. It was really insensitive to call you… that. We know – I mean, Second Mom told us back when you first came here? About what SecUnits do. We were being really thoughtless. So. Sorry.”
“We know you don’t really do murder,” Niko said, squirming.
“And you’re not really a bot, either,” Asheth whispered.
I made my voice as calm as I could, like I was talking to an injured human and said, “You don’t know what I do.”
“I do,” Kal said, talking deliberately to the floor, “You have drones, and you keep people safe. That’s why you’re called Sec Unit. ‘Sec’ is short for ‘Security.’” He seemed absurdly proud of this piece of information.
He is not wrong, ART said, That is your function.
Shut. Up.
“Alright… so. If you know all that, why did you decide to call me… that,” I said.
“It was a stupid joke,” Risa muttered, a flush spreading across her cheeks. “Corona showed us the video of when you saved Second Mom from the corporates. And you were super cool, like an action hero from the media, y’know? And I thought. I thought it was a great superhero name. But we never told anyone else, I swear. It’s just the four of us that know.”
The last part was… actually plausible. There was a gap of four planetary years between Risa and the older three Mensahs. H uman children were fond of forming groups, and of keeping secrets within their groups.
“Are you mad at us?” Niko asked.
My drone looked at the four of them, sitting as close together on the couch as they could manage. Trying not to look at me, but sneaking glances up every few seconds. They were all frightened. Of me. And it made my organic parts do something that felt like they were trying to shrivel up. I realized that I absolutely did not want them to be afraid of me.
They aren’t afraid of you, idiot, ART said, They are afraid of your disapproval.
I didn’t know what to do with that, but I was eight y-nine percent sure that ART was lying to make me feel better. I had to think, and it was hard, because I was having an emotion, or maybe a few emotions. Yes, I was angry. I was angry that they were playing a stupid game and pretending that a stupid murderbot could be a stupid hero. I was angry because they had decided, with no outside interference, that “Murderbot” was something they could call me. Like it was a positive thing. I was angry because they knew that the whole point of SecUnits was to keep people safe, and I was fucking pissed because they were wrong about whether a “normal” SecUnit would actually be able to do that.
“I’m not mad at you,” I said slowly.
They all relaxed so visibly that I had another, different emotion. (Organic parts, could we please make up our mind about the emotion thing?)
“So… what are you mad at?” Asheth asked. (For fuck’s sake, were all the Mensah kids as good at understanding me as Amena? If so, I was going to have to stop spending so much time around them.) (Not really. If I’m being honest with myself, I don’t mind it when humans understand me. At least the ones I like.)
“ It’s complicated ,” I said to the wall above their heads. No, that wasn’t right. I forced myself to look somewhere between Risa and Niko’s heads. (I couldn’t look at all of them at once, okay? It was a compromise.) “I don’t know exactly what your Second Mom told you about SecUnits, but we – most of us aren’t superheroes. Or any kind of heroes. We’re…”
They were all paying such close attention to me, even though they weren’t looking at me, that I was fumbling words. How was I supposed to explain this to them? Violence was an alien concept for them. Something that happened in media. And Kal and Niko were, according to a somewhat tense conversation I’d had with Tano, too young to even see a lot of the more action-y media I’d shared with the older kids.
“Are most SecUnits like the ones in Valorous Defenders ?” Asheth asked. “Are they like the one that you were fighting in the video?”
Right. Okay. That would be the easy thing to say, wouldn’t it? That we were just like the ones in the media. That most SecUnits were like the CombatUnit I’d fought on TranRollinHyfa. Except that I really fucking hated Valorous Defenders. I sighed again.
“No,” I said. “That wasn’t a SecUnit in that video. It was a CombatUnit. They’re different. And the SecUnits in the media aren’t realistic, because they’re all evil. Real SecUnits aren’t like the villains in media. We’re like -” I cast around desperately for something they would understand.
Tell them it’s like in Elena Skylark and the Four Swords, ART said. The arc with the evil wizard and the dark elves.
It was a popular children’s show from Preservation. It was decidedly unrealistic, which is why I’d liked it, and that arc … huh. Yeah, that was actually kind of relevant. Analogies. Right.
So I did my best. In the show, an evil wizard enslaves a whole species of elves and forces them to enact a plot against the main characters. The elves aren’t evil , not really. But they’re enchanted and they don’t have any choice. (I hadn’t liked that arc when we’d watched it.)
I thought it was going to be even harder than explaining the governor modules to AdaCol2 had been, but as I talked, their faces slowly went from nervous to confus ed to dawning horror. When I finished, Risa and Asheth looked appalled. Niko seemed furious. And Kal looked like he might cry. No, he was crying, in that quiet, gulping way that young humans do. It was seriously gross and involved a lot of fluids.
They all sat there without speaking, or even moving for a solid 32.8 seconds.
Kal managed to get enough control over his sobs to say, “They did that to you? That’s so mean!” and then dissolved into much louder, more leaky crying.
Asheth nodded in solemn agreement.
“Pussing corporates,” Niko muttered.
“Niko!” Risa hissed. She put an arm around Kal, and said, “It’s okay now, Kal. SecUnit got away. It’s here now, and it’s okay. They can’t get it any more.”
“B-but what about all the other ones?” Kal demanded, wiping his face on his sleeve (ew). “They just wanna keep people safe too, right? But they get forced to be mean!”
I… can’t.
“I. Have to go do a thing,” I said, and managed to leave the room via the door, rather than the window.
Thanks a lot, asshole, I snarled at ART, once I was safe back in my room.
You wanted them to understand, it said, they understood.
I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me!
Humans of their age empathize keenly with the suffering of other beings, unless they have been severely traumatized. They do not pity you. They would not have understood a direct explanation. A familiar example from media doesn’t just explain; it leads them to think.
To think what? I snapped.
That constructs are people. That you deserve better. And that you specifically did something difficult and brave to set yourself on your current trajectory.
I’m not responding to that.
What else did you think the point of Dr. Bharadwaj’s documentary was?
It wasn’t that Kal didn’t like school, exactly. He liked his teacher, and he liked learning things. He liked art class and going outside during the recreational periods. He didn’t much like having to sit still during classes, or the lights in the classrooms, which made a weird noise that nobody else ever seemed to hear. And while he didn’t dislike the other kids, they didn’t seem to like him very much, and he couldn’t figure out why. It didn’t bother him most of the time. The y generally left him alone, and he liked being alone. But sometimes, like when he said something that made them laugh (even though he hadn’t meant to be funny), or when they came up to him during recreational time and asked him weird questions, he felt sad. The questions themselves didn’t make him sad, but he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that they were asking them to be mean, and that did make him sad.
They had laughed at something he said in class during morning lessons today. The lesson they was about different kinds of families, and it had been fun. It had been especially fun because after the lesson they all got to draw pictures of their families to hang on the classroom wall. When they were done drawing, Teacher Lilo had asked them if anyone wanted to talk about their drawings. Kal did want to talk about his drawing, and when his turn came, he nearly ran up to the front of the room to hold it up.
“My family is really big,” he said and started pointing to each person in the drawing to explain who they were. “This is my First Mom, Tano, and my Second Mom, Ayda, and this is my Oma, Farai. I have six siblings. Amena is already grown up and she’s going to this big university in another system because she’s going to be a space explorer! And then there’s Misha, and Corona, and Risa, and Asheth, and Niko, and me! And these are Second Mom’s brother and sister, and their partners, and all their kids.”
He paused, then said, “And that’s everyone!”
It wasn’t, but for some reason, he didn’t want to tell the other kids about the last person in the picture. Teacher Lilo smiled and said it was a very good drawing and thank you for sharing. He was about to go back to his seat when Marya, sitting in the front row, asked, “Who’s that person? Why do they have all those weird birds around them?”
Kal froze, but now that someone had asked he thought it would be rude not to say.
“That’s SecUnit,” he said, much more quietly, “and they aren’t birds. They’re drones. It uses them because it doesn’t like looking at people.”
For some reason, the other kids thought that was funny.
Marya opened her mouth to say something else, but Teacher Lilo said, “Thank you for sharing that Kal. You can go sit down now if you want.”
He went back to his seat as fast as he could without running, because running in the classroom was against the rules. His face was hot, and he heard someone whisper something, but couldn’t hear what it was. He sat down and stared at his drawing. He would have given his next thousand cycles worth of desserts to also have some drones, so he could see what everyone else was doing without having to look up.
When Marya and her friends came and found him there by the edge of the field during recreation period, he was trying to figure out what had made them laugh. He noticed that Marya was carrying a piece of paper all scrunched up in one hand.
“Hi Kal!” she said, smiling. “Will you tell us some more about your SecUnit?”
He looked away. Marya was usually one of the ones who asked the weird questions, and even though she sounded like she was being friendly right now, he didn’t think she really was.
“It’s not my SecUnit,” he said. “It belongs to itself.”
“Isn’t your Second Mom its guardian?” she asked. “It’s like a bot, right?”
“It’s not a bot,” he said. “And bots don’t belong to their guardians. That’s rude to say.”
“How come you put it in your drawing?” she asked, tilting her head to one side.
“Because it’s part of my family,” he said, brow furrowing. Wasn’t that obvious? It was a drawing of his family. “Kira put Janus in their picture, and Janus is a bot.”
“Yeah, but you just said that SecUnits aren’t bots,” Marya pointed out.
“Janus is nice, ” Kira said. They were standing behind Marya’s shoulder, and they looked angry. “SecUnits aren’t nice. They can’t be part of someone’s family.”
“ This SecUnit is nice,” Kal said. He was starting to feel angry too. “It’s also brave and strong. It saved Second Mom from the corporates, and -”
Marya interrupted him, “If it’s so good, how come all that bad stuff keeps happening to your family? My appa says that it’s the reason bad stuff keeps happening to your family. And Sarai’s auntie says that she heard it killed a lot of people. That’s what SecUnits do.”
“That’s not true!” He was really mad now. “SecUnits don’t kill people. They aren’t like in the media! Their job is keeping people safe, but -”
“Did your SecUnit tell you that?” Marya interrupted. “Because that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard. SecUnits work for corporates. ”
“I told you, it’s not my SecUnit,” he said. “And it does not work for corporates!”
“Does too,” she said, “I bet it’s just pretending, and you’re double stupid if you believe it.”
She made a sad face at him, but he didn’t think she was really sad at all. Then she held up the paper she had scrunched up in her hand. It was his drawing.
“That’s mine!” he shouted, and tried to grab it. She stepped backwards, and he almost fell over. Everyone laughed.
“Did you steal that?” Kira asked, looking wide-eyed at Marya.
“Uh, yeah,” Marya said. “I’m not gonna let a picture of a pussing SecUnit get hung up on the wall with everyone else’s families!”
“You take that back!” Kal shouted. His face was so hot it hurt, and he could feel tears starting in his eyes.
“Or what?” Marya said. She glanced over her shoulder at the others, but some of them had started edging away. “Are you gonna hit me? Bet you learned that from your pussing SecUnit, didn’t you? It’s a freak, Kal, and so are you.”
She held the drawing up in both hands and ripped it right down the middle.
Kal screamed, “Stop it!”
But she didn’t stop. She kept ripping until the drawing was in little pieces, and then she threw them on the ground and stomped on them.
Then she turned to the others, who were all watching in silence, and said, “C’mon everyone. Let’s leave the freak alone. Maybe his SecUnit will come save him.”
She turned to walk away. Kal had been standing there the whole time, and it felt like he had been watching it happen from a drone, but suddenly he was back in his body, and he didn’t think. He just threw himself forward with a wordless howl, and they both went down into the dirt.
When Second Mom came to pick him up, he was sitting on one of the platforms in the school’s med unit. The bot there had put a wound pack on his knee where he’d scraped it when he fell, and another one over the bruise on his face. The bruise was almost gone now, even though his eye still felt a little bit swollen. He knew Marya was somewhere in the med unit too, but Counselor Sen had told the bot to put up the privacy barriers around their beds, so he couldn’t see her or hear where she was.
He jumped off the platform as soon as he saw Second Mom , even though the medical bot beeped at him about it, and ran over and buried his face in the front of her tunic. She smelled like spices, and when she hugged him back, her arms were very stiff.
“Thank you for telling me what happened, Counselor,” she said calmly. “I’m going to take Kal home now, if that’s alright.”
“Of course, Dr. Mensah,” Counselor Sen rumbled in his big voice, “ T hat would probably be for the best. He needs some time alone to reflect, I think. And it might not be a bad idea to schedule a session with-”
“I’m sure I can handle that,” Second Mom said, which was surprising, because Second Mom never interrupted people. “Come on Kal.”
S he was very quiet when they got into the go-cart. It started back to the house, and Kal looked out the window, thinking that he was probably going to be grounded for at least three years. Maybe more. He decided that he didn’t care. He peeked at Second Mom a few times, and she had a far away look, which meant she was probably talking to someone on the feed. He wondered if it was security officers, and if they would be waiting for him at the house.
There were no security officers at the house when they arrived, just Oma waiting on the front steps for them.
“Thanks for coming back early,” Second Mom said when they got out of the go-cart. “I know you have your gallery opening tonight.”
“Hush,” said Oma, “Thiago offered to help finish the setup. It’s fine.”
Oma bent down and kissed Second Mom on the cheek, then crouched and held arms open for Kal. He threw himself into the hug and Oma scooped him up like when he was little. That hadn’t happened for a long time, and normally he would have protested that he was too old for it, but today he didn’t.
“Let’s go inside to the studio, and we can all talk,” Oma said.
Oma’s studio was Kal’s favorite room in the house. It had lots of windows, and the warm light from the primary star was streaming in. It smelled like paint and clay and the funny smell of wood pencil shavings. Oma had already made tea and sat down on the lumpy old sofa with him. Second Mom poured tea, and put plant milk and sweetener in a cup for Kal. He usually didn’t get to drink tea, but the mug was warm, and it smelled nice. He leaned against Oma, who gently ran a hand over his braids. Second Mom settled onto the couch beside them and tucked her feet up under her tunic.
“Counselor Sen told me that you wouldn’t say anything to him about what happened,” she said quietly. “He told me a bit from what the other children said, but I’d like to hear about it from you.”
She was looking at her mug instead of at him, which was good, because Kal didn’t think he could stand for anyone to look at him right now.
“It’s alright if it’s hard to find the right words,” Oma said after a minute. “Just tell us what you can.”
Kal took a big breath and let it out slowly. His throat felt too tight to make words come out, and he shook his head.
“That’s alright,” Second Mom said quietly. “I’m going to ask you some questions instead. You can just nod or shake your head. Would that be easier?”
He nodded.
It took a long time, because there were some parts that she had wrong (the other kids had obviously lied to Counselor Sen about what happened), and it was hard to set her right without talking, but he just couldn’t make any words come out. When they finally had it all straightened out, Oma laid a cheek against the top of his head. Second Mom sat and sipped her tea for a while and looked at the painting on the wall across the room.
“The first thing that I want you to know,” she said at last, “is that you aren’t in trouble. Not with us, anyway. I don’t know what will happen with the school. But we do need to talk about this situation. I understand how angry you must have felt, hearing someone say those things about SecUnit and tearing up your drawing. That’s a terrible thing to do to someone, and I’m sorry that it happened to you.”
Kal knew that she actually did understand, and wasn’t just saying it. Second Mom wasn’t the kind of grown up who would say something like that just so she could tell him that he’d done the wrong thing anyway. He took a little sip of his tea, and the warm feeling of it when he swallowed made it feel like maybe he could talk again.
“And it seems like you did your best to solve the problem with your words first,” Oma added. “We’re very proud of you for that.”
Second Mom nodded. “Yes, you did a very good job of standing up for yourself and for SecUnit with just your words. I’m sorry that wasn’t enough.”
Kal swallowed hard and managed to whisper, “Counselor Sen said I should have run away and found a teacher to help.”
“That would have been one option, yes,” said Second Mom. “Sometimes that’s the best thing to do in a situation like that. Do you think that was an option you had right then?”
He thought about it .
“I was scared,” he said. “I didn’t feel like I could run away at all. My legs wouldn’t move.”
“That can happen when you’re scared,” she said. “It’s very normal.”
“If someone is doing something bad to you, and you can’t get away, isn’t it okay to fight them?” he asked.
He felt Oma give a big sigh, and Second Mom thought about it for a moment before she answered.
“If someone is trying to hurt your body, yes,” she said. “Then you can fight them so that you can get away. But if they’re hurting your feelings, then no.”
“That’s not fair,” he said. Some tears fell down his face and landed in his mug. “That’s like. They can just say anything at all to you, and you can’t make them stop.”
“Oh, my son,” Oma whispered, “you’re right. It isn’t fair. And you are too young to have to learn this lesson.”
“But she ripped up my drawing.”
“Yes,” Second Mom said, “That was wrong of her, and very, very mean. But however important it is, a drawing is a thing, and however mean she was being, Marya is a person. People are always more important than things.”
“So what are you supposed to do then?” he asked.
“You bear it the best you can,” she said. She sounded very, very tired. “And when it’s over, you go back to the people who are safe, and who will help you move to the next thing.”
The absolute injustice of this hurt. And he knew, without knowing how, that Second Mom was talking to him about this, and she was also talking about something else. There was a very big, scary feeling that came with that knowledge, and he didn’t know what to do with it.
They all sat together in the quiet warmth of the studio for a long, long time. Oma reached out and took Second Mom’s hand and squeezed it, and squeezed him too . Kal leaned against Oma’s big chest, and wondered about a lot of things, but none of them were things he knew how to say yet. At last, he did figure out one more thing that was important to say.
“I was gonna give my picture to SecUnit, before it goes away on its ship.”
Second Mom smiled at him, and Oma said, “Well. That, at least, I think we can help you with. When you’re feeling ready, maybe tomorrow, I’ll help you make a new picture. You still have the new paints from your birthday, and I’ll give you some of the nice paper for it.”
The night before SecUnit was supposed to leave again, everyone from the survey team came over to the house for dinner. There were so many extra people there that the younger kids got to eat upstairs in their rec room, which was just fine as far as Kal was concerned. He finished his dinner and waited until the other kids put something on the big display surface in the rec room, then he slipped out into the hall. He pretended not to notice that the drone perched in the corner of the rec room watched him leave, or that another one floated up the stairs and followed him as he padded through the house to Oma’s studio.
He stopped in the doorway to the studio and said, “Uhm. Drone, could you please ask SecUnit to come here? If it’s not busy.”
The drone didn’t do anything at all, but a minute later, SecUnit appeared at the end of the hallway.
“You don’t have to ask the drones to tell me stuff,” it said. “I see and hear everything they do.”
Kal considered this.
“Is that why you don’t like it when people talk to them like they’re your face?” he asked the carpet.
“What?”
“Like when you were talking to Uncle Thiago the other cycle, and he said something at your drone, and you made the ‘stop looking at me’ face.”
“I don’t have a ‘stop looking at me’ face,” it said.
“Yeah you do. It’s like this.” Kal did his best to imitate it. He’d been practicing in the mirror, because it usually seemed to work, and being able to get people to stop looking at you seemed useful. It was like a frown, and also like smelling something gross, and also just a little bit like the face Asheth made when Niko jumped out of the closet at them.
“I’ve never made a face like that in my life, ” SecUnit said to the ceiling. “Why did you want me to come up here?”
“Oh, I made something for you,” Kal said. “A present. Because you’re leaving tomorrow. Uhm. Wait here. I’m gonna go get it. But you have to close your eyes, okay? And don’t peek with a drone! It’s a surprise.”
He waited anxiously. SecUnit made a quiet, ‘hmph’ noise, but it shut its eyes. Kal hung around just long enough to see that all the drones had turned to look the other way down the hall, then darted into Oma’s studio, grabbed the new painting and the big envelop to carry it in, and stepped back out.
“Here,” he said breathlessly, holding it out. SecUnit took it, eyes still shut. A drone floated down to perch on its shoulder and look at the painting. Then its actual eyes came open. Kal looked at its knees.
In a very strange voice, it said, “Thank you for this information.”
It sounded… polite. It never sounded polite.
“Y-you don’t have to keep it if you don’t like it!” he said hurriedly. “I tried my best though, and Oma helped with the colors. I just thought that maybe. Maybe you would get lonely or something when you’re on your ship, and it would be nice to have something to remember us by.”
He stopped because his face was burning again and his throat felt tight. He risked a peek up at SecUnit’s face. It looked even taller than normal, like a real giant from a story. Then it blinked, and did a weird thing where it looked like all of its skin twitched, the way that Second Mom’s horse did when an insect landed on it. Then, very slowly, it looked down at him.
For what felt to Kal like a very long time, they just stared at each other.
Then it looked off to the side again, and said in its normal voice, “Thank you. Really. I’ll keep it.”
It turned on its heel and stalked off down the hall.
“Thank you SecUnit!” Kal said to its back.
It stopped, half turned, and muttered something under its breath. Kal took a couple steps toward it and said, “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you.”
“I said. You can call me Murderbot. If you want to. But not where anyone else can hear you. It’s… it’s private.”
It disappeared around the corner of the hall, the little cloud of drones drifting in its wake.
Kal grinned as he ran back to the rec room to see what everyone was watching.
You didn’t have to stick it to my wall with such a strong adhesive.
“Shut up, ART. It’s my cabin. That makes it my wall.”
It’s going to leave a residue.
“I’ll let your drones worry about that if I move out.”