Chapter Text
I thought the term "babysitter" was weird and stupid. I know it is not literal. For one, when the workers in the mines left their kids with one another during their shifts, the children ranged from actual babies all the way to small humans with only slightly less impulse control than their older human sitters.
And sitters really, even humans know that sitting on children is a stupidly dangerous idea, as tiny humans are even more susceptible to damage than regular humans.
Despite this, I had become a literal murderbot babysitter. My “baby” was a 642.5-hour-old, incredibly incompetent “sec”unit, and I was indeed currently metaphorically sitting on it, smushing its symptoms and allowing it to feel my (kind of fake but) reassuringly unperturbed presence in its feed to try to get it to calm the fuck down.
We had been guarding the humans as they took samples in one of this stupid planet's craters. We had both been a bit distracted.
Unit had never been on a planet before this contract, so it didn't know how terrible they were. It watched the small fauna with open wonderment, not even attempting to mask its feed presence or put up any walls like I had been trying to teach it. The fauna were these floaty things and bird-like things. It would also watch the sea and the planetary rings past all the rising and falling hills, and even just stare at the greenish-black grass. I don't know why.
Occasionally, it would get so distracted that its governor module would trigger a low-level shock, which it visibly flinched at. I gave it a drone-sweep routine to watch for hostiles, so it would happen less often.
Unit was way more distracted than I was. I was half-watching episode 397 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon (an episode I had watched 13 times before). I was mostly just keeping it on for background music since it was a musical episode, but I kept needing to pause the episode anyway because Unit was periodically pressing against me in the feed, and I was worried it could feel my reactions. I didn't think it would be able to interpret my strange reactions as me being a rogue and report it to the company. I don't even think it knows what being rogue means yet, but you know, better safe than sorry. It had just pulled away from me enough so that I could start up the episode again, to peer through its drone at whatever uninteresting sample they were taking now, when a giant fucking worm monster had exploded out of the ground. And swiped Dr. Bharadwaj up in its mouth.
I had positioned Unit on the opposite side of the crater, so we were both about equally far from the humans, but when the giant worm tried to swallow Bharadwaj, it had taken off towards Unit's side. Perhaps it could sense weakness.
Its horror shot through the feed.
I sent Dr. Mensah the visual feeds from my and "sec"units' field cameras, then dove into Unit's inputs. There was a lot of different, all unhelpful, information in our shared feeds, including telemetry of the hopper from Dr. Mensah, and the demands from the HubSystem. It was trying to both send us data and demand it at the same time. Luckily, I was the designated leader, so I told Unit that it was allowed to backburn everything. I could respond, and it could focus.
Unit sprinted to the worm and the client, reaching them before I could, but hesitated to jump on it to retrieve the client. The creature turned away from Unit before it finally did something, which was to grab its gun off its back and start shooting at the retreating worm and at the client Dr. Bharadwaj, who was still lodged in its teeth! Come on, seriously!
My risk assessment calculated an unacceptable 18.9% chance of accidentally hitting the client if I were the one shooting at the worm. With “Sec”unit "Junior" (as the clients had taken to calling it), I estimated that the chance of hitting Dr. Bharadwaj was doubled.
I could feel its terror in the feed. I wondered if it was the terror, or its equally inexperienced risk-assessment module, or… hang on, I checked: it had received a stand-down order from its governor module when it hesitated. I checked my own, and I, yeah, I had received the same stand-down. Faulty fucking Hubsystem.
These clients have been pretty great as far as clients go. They didn't tell the govmod to punish us unnecessarily (it wouldn't work on me, and I actually had the permissions to trigger Units govmod as the lead secunit), and also didn't make us fight each other while they placed bets. Honestly, their biggest fault so far had been giving Unit a very skewed idea of standard client behavior.
A more experienced Unit would have ignored the order and taken the punishment until MedSystem superseded HubSystem’s order, but Unit had just froze, missing the chance to pull off the maneuver.
I sent a standard “hold fire” over the feed (I was going to shout at it, but I decided against scaring it more) as I launched myself at the worm's mouth, pushed my client out, and wedged myself in instead.
I turned down my pain sensors when one of its cilia? Teeth? Who knows! pierced through the armor and into my chest and left calf, I used my gun to force feed the worm a whole lot of bullets, and I sternly nudged Unit (I think it got distracted from the pain it felt from being too close to my inputs before I could turn my pain sensors down) over the feed into finally helping by picking up Dr. Bharadwaj and heading over to Dr. Volescu. He was currently cowering behind the turned-up rocks, having a stress-induced panic attack.
I tried to bring my gun up to point at where I hoped the hostiles’ brain would be, but before I could, the worm decided it had enough of my bullets and spat me out. It then tunneled away.
I peeled myself off the sandy ground and began running towards Unit and the clients. It had gotten to Dr. Volescu and had begun trying to guide him along while carrying Bharadwaj. Her side and right leg had large lacerations. Volescu's panic had not subsided, and he was having a lot of trouble maneuvering over the rocks, which was slowing Unit to a snail's pace. But I could carry him as soon as I got over there.
Unit wasn't doing much better than Volescu. It kept throwing its panic and sending “STATUS!!!!” at me in the feed. I highlighted the status of our clients that MedSystem was sending to both of us. Bharadwaj’s suit was damaged, and I couldn't get a read on her vitals from it, so it read as an error code. I upped its internal body temperature to hopefully stop her from going into shock. The hopper's ETA was 4 minutes and 23.6 seconds. Based on previous client extractions, I thought she would make it, and I told Unit this. And Dr. Volescu’s vitals were only lowered because of his stress-induced panic.
For some reason, this information was not very comforting to Unit; it continued to send worried pings until I reached it a few seconds later despite the minor damage to my leg.
Units' relief was palpable, and it immediately attempted to give me Dr. Bharadwaj. I sent it a pointless [Hold position] over the feed just as the giant worm exploded out of the ground again. I grabbed Volescu, pressing him against my chest and holding the back of his neck with one hand while firing at the part of the worm's body that was furthest away from the flailing “sec”unit and Bharadwaj, with the other. Then Unit threw her out of the way, and her survivability stats began sinking with her vitals.
I often feel as though I am playing keep away (a favorite game amongst the more annoying and/or mostly younger humans) with my clients and whatever dangerous situation or fauna they decided to try to die from, but I almost never toss my clients, especially not already injured clients. If we made it out of this dangerous situation/fauna’s mouth, I would be sure to impress upon it how breakable clients are. And for fucks sake, if you are going to toss our client, at least throw her in the same general direction as me Unit!
Unit clearly couldn't feel my outrage over its sheer horror. The worm had got one of Unit’s outstretched arms tightly in its jaws up to the elbow joint, and Unit was ineffectively punching at it while firing its energy weapons instead of sensibly grabbing the large projectile weapon that it had stored on its back when carrying Dr. Bharadwaj, and using that to fire at the hostile fauna. Did Unit somehow forget it was there?
I sent it a reminder of the existence and superior effectiveness of its projectile weapon while carrying Volescu (who was miraculously still physically uninjured) over to Bharadwaj. The unit failed to listen to me and began screaming “Senior Secunit!" and my hard feed address into our open feed.
Since Unit is (technically) a secunit, my priority should be to get the humans out of the crater and let Unit deal with the worm on its own. But I was reluctant to do this. Because of its ineptitude, I had been almost classing it as a client. This is why secunits should never get sentimental about other units. We are not friends, and I am not its babysitter. I'm a fucking Murderbot, and Unit should learn this before it gets too attached.
That being said, while trying to reach Bharadwaj, I still fired at the hostile mouth. It thrashed Unit back and forth, probably trying to stun Unit so it could swallow it more easily.
Once I was about to reach Bharadwaj, I had a great idea, I fired my projectile weapon at Unit's arm, exactly at the weak joint in its armor where it was stuck in the hostile worm's teeth/cilia. It took a few shots, but I was able to break its arm off, and the hostile ate it, inorganics and all.
Unit dropped out of its mouth. I guess the hostile worm was satisfied enough with its snack because it turned around and burrowed back into the crater.
Units screaming in the feed did not subside. After I freed it from the hostile fauna’s mouth, it paused all movement, thought, or noise for an entire second before abruptly beginning to let out an ear-piercing scream both in and out of the feed and curled in on itself, protecting its new stump. Even Dr. Bharadwaj, the actual grievously injured client, was not so dramatic. Sure, she had been mostly out cold due to shock, but still.
I reached further into its brain and turned its pain sensors even further down (I had already turned its pain sensors down to 50% before the start of the fight) and urged it to stop screaming and get up.
So help me, if it thought I was going to carry it along with Dr. Bharadwaj and Dr. Volescu at 73%… But it was saved from my exasperated anger by the hopper finally touching down in the crater.
The hopper landed as close as possible to us, given the minimum safety distance and very uneven terrain (Dr. Mensah was probably flying it). I reached the front hatch with Bharadwaj still cradled in my arms before Unit even picked itself up and started to clumsily carry Volescu towards the hopper.
Pin-Lee and Arada jumped out. I said over the voice comm to Dr. Mensah, “I can't let go of her.” She looked confused for a second, but she figured it out and said hurriedly, “That's all right, bring her up into the crew cabin". I started up the ramp.
Dr. Ratthi, who apparently trusted Unit to do a simple task even less than I did, tore his worried gaze away from Bharadwaj as I made it inside and ran over to assist Unit with Dr. Volescu.
When Ratthi got to Volescu and saw that Arada and Pin-Lee were already doing a good job supporting him, he said, “I'll go get the cases!” I nearly yelled “No!” out loud to a room full of panicking humans trying to save their friend's life. And I did send him a stand-down order, like he was Unit! I quickly deleted the message from his feed and hoped he hadn't seen it.
Luckily, Arada and Pin-Lee yelled “No!” and Pin-Lee added “For fucks sake, Ratthi!” Arada redirected, “Ratthi, try to help him calm down”. So Pin-Lee and Arada helped support Dr. Volescu’s weight, and Ratthi reassured him and tried to pull him out of the panic attack he was still in while guiding them all up to the hopper.
Normally, having humans help a secunit is a sign of complete disaster, but despite the scare, it was helpful in this instance because they could take Volescu into the main part of the hopper so Unit, who Dr. Mensah had forgotten to give special permission to ride in the crew cabin with everyone else, could go back to one of the supply storage spaces.
It sent me a few plaintive pings. And I responded with reassuring pings and suggestions about how to care for its wound with the supplies around it, while also clamping Bharadwaj’s wounds where humans told me to and avoiding looking at the humans who were all staring at me and the mess that was my torso.
Per my instructions, Unit retracted its helmet so it could use its teeth to pull its glove off, which would help its dexterity. It managed to get the wound sealant and sanitation fluid (it had a numbing agent in it that I thought Unit would appreciate) out of the pack. Then it just stared at the supplies on top of the supply containers, frozen. Its stump was still slowly leaking fluid and a bit of blood since its arteries couldn't close all the way, creating a small puddle on the ground.
Then it started shivering, and its intake of air greatly increased, and it began to make sharp, small noises. And it was crying. Wet heaving sobs, full body shaking, and crying. Fluid started dripping out of its nose.
I was both amazed and disgusted (we don't have tear ducts, so it was impressive how soggy and gross it was making its face look).
I had been frantically trying to think of what to do to get it to stop (if it were a normal contract, the governor model sting it would have gotten for this non-standard behavior would have been enough to stop it). I landed on awkwardly smushing myself over its inputs (I made sure to put walls up in front of everything I needed to keep away from it, including how I was still currently trying to keep what blood that Bharadwaj still had inside her body). I let it feel that everything was fine through my feed presence.
It hiccuped, then pulled its arm and stump tightly around itself, almost imitating the feed-feeling I was trying to invoke physically. This caused it to stop shaking, but it did not stop crying.
So, on impulse, I pulled up the hostile fight and let it feel a heavily filtered version of the memory and my experience. I cut the part where its arm became worm food out entirely. The governor module allowed units to review past fights/client retrievals during current surveys with other secunits in order to learn and make improvements to our performances. In the past, (I think) especially before I had better options like Sanctuary Moon, I had found this to be useful for stopping the “I don't care” or, less often, the “I care too much” feelings from taking over when it would be inconvenient for doing my job.
It flinched away slightly in the feed and let out a louder sound (thank fuck the storage part of the hopper was far enough away that the humans couldn't hear it). I thought I had fucked up, but then it pushed back into my feed presence and watched the fuzzy-looking, muffled fight. When I had had a positive feeling like satisfaction at shooting the hostile (note with my very helpful projectile weapon), or relief when the hopper arrived, it could feel it now too. I even let some of my concern (for its lack of capability) slip through the connection so that it would know where it had fucked up and could be reassured that it could do better in the future.
By the end of the memory of the fight, it had calmed down and started to slowly use my instructions to take care of its physical damage. I pulled back but left the connection open.
Unit queried [status?], and I sent it Bharadwages vitals with a graph showing that the slope had tapered off, so even though her vitals aren't great, she is still stable. It sent 11 acknowledgment pings as instantaneously as it could, then [My feed address status query?]
It’s…creativity with communicating in the feed was only possible because these clients had chosen the most lenient behavioral limitations since they were entirely unfamiliar with secunits and how to give us orders. Unit was learning that this was the norm and had barely received any governor module punishment (all low grade). I was glad I wouldn't have to be there on its next contract.
