Chapter Text
I don't like kids.
It's because I used to be one. They smell fear, you know. Or, maybe not fear. Inadequacy. Insecurity. Whatever you have when you're wondering if you can ever be adequate in yourself, or have something for yourself. (The answer, by the way, was no.) I remember, in the vague, wordless way you do when you haven't had your full brain installed, having curly shoulder-length hair—brown? Probably brown or black. My brother pushed it into some sort of machine (I don't remember what kind, I just remember screaming as it reeled me closer and closer to it) and I got in trouble and had to have it cut short. Then later on another child claimed to be my friend and said we would dye our hair together, only she filled mine full of some sort of sweet sticky sauce, so I got in trouble and it got shaved off. I don’t think it grew it back before they took it permanently. Kids are vicious little creatures. Prefer to avoid.
It was the sort of memory that creeps in around the edges when you're in the dark and locked out of the feed and the room is almost silent and even though you can't stop your fingers from flexing to try to find some signal, any kind of signal, you can't feel anything. I could almost hear the long-gone children chanting. No-one wants to smell you, Mama’s going to sell you—
I might as well be dead.
Actually, dead would make a lot more sense.
I had been part of a Barish-Estranza launch-craft—that's larger than a shuttle, with a medbay and a troop staging area, If you have one of those docking you either have a VIP visit with a retinue, or someone angry enough to send soldiers, or both. The launch-craft didn't have as many systems as a full ship, just a bot pilot plus basic versions of a MedSys, WeaponSys, ComSys, SecSys, SenSys, and IntSys. (SenSys runs the sensor suite, which sounds like a job for IntSys—but IntSys isn't actually about knowing what's around you, it's for hacking other systems.) I am—was?—a young biocomp, and the launch-craft was something like a starting job. We do have something akin to promotion. Maybe more of a weed-out process.
I remember doing little tests, as a child, for a man who smiled at me. I didn't want to look at him. I just concentrated on the display, on moving blocks and connections around until they came out right. There was one which involved sequencing some imaginary blocks, all of which had different numbers attached, which moved an imaginary ball faster or slower along a track, and you had to make two tracks and make two balls come out at the same time (I think). Just think of it as a game, the man said. Except I knew that this game was one I had to try and win—rather than games I played against my brother, which I would lose if I knew what was good for me, because he was never punished for tormenting me. I wasn't sure if I did well. Maybe I got scolded for it or maybe I didn't. Things blurred.
Officially we—my launch-craft—had been on a humanitarian mission: rescue some kidnapped children from the people who were trying to steal them from the company. (I didn't care.) Unofficially, they were fleeing from indenture and might be better off with the people who took them. (I still didn't care.) And even more unofficially, the mission had nothing at all to do with the children. All those troops were meant to recapture something. And they were using an e-bomb to do it. For the last ten days I had technicians all over the launch-craft, shielding the bot pilot and the rest (except for IntSys, which was just going to be shut down for the duration), but more significant than that, there were a very limited number of things that you would use an e-bomb on.
By the time we launched, when I finally got my briefing, I had already known that they were after a Combat SecUnit, and I'd known for nine days, twenty hours, and fifty-one minutes. If I'd been officially told, I could have prepared more. But sometimes playing fool-the-spy takes precedence over the actual operation. Don't ask if there are spies to fool. Of course there are. Why are you trying to cast doubt on that? Very spy-ish behavior to be quite honest.
To be honest, there probably are spies—from other Barish-Estranza supervisors. But we're not going to talk about that because infighting is a very minor problem, and certainly has never cost the company a planet, and suggesting that it might someday is also very spy-ish behavior.
My only contribution to the operation would be to move the launch-craft around and take a few readings, which suited me fine. E-bombs scare me, Combat SecUnits scare anyone sane. I wouldn't have to try to sense it (the most sophisticated sensors would be shut down to shield them from the e-bomb anyway) or hack it (this is almost as stupid as fighting it, hiding from it, running from it, or surrendering to it).
If you are wondering what options there might be besides hacking it, fighting it, hiding from it, running from it, or surrendering to it, that's intentional on the part of the people who create the monsters. The best option is "be on the side that deploys it," and the second-best option is, "surrender before someone decides to deploy it."
At any rate, we moved into position and stayed there almost half a day, enough to make everyone grumpy, because the launch-craft staging area is not built for comfort, it's built for a lot of soldiers to sit in chairs while they prepare and check their gear, and there's only so long you can keep that up. (By "check their gear" I mean play Froot-Tac-Too on their interface devices.) I'm told that the chairs are uncomfortable. I've never sat in them. I have a work cubicle to interface with my systems and a rest cubicle right beside that to refresh and sleep. I don’t come out into the rest of the ship because the cubicles are connected. The only reason they're not the same chair is because some designers have concern about biocomps sleeping on the job, and the only reason designers have those concerns is because they have rocks for brains. We very literally cannot do that.
We're going to make your brain faster and better so you can play more games and work better for the company! the smiling woman told me, after my father signed me over. You're going to have all the feed access you could ever want. You're going to be a good girl for us, and you're going to have a lot of fun! I knew at the time that she was probably lying about the fun. But I didn't realize what you're going to be a good girl for us meant, because kids are wretched stupid things. I don't like kids. That includes me as a kid.
The wait was anticipated, despite all the real humans grousing about it. We were waiting for the fleeing ship to come out of the wormhole, and it was an ancient clunker which shouldn't have been able to fly. The Conquistador, the battleship my launch-craft was assigned to, had exited the wormhole well ahead of it, but there's a certain amount of flex on when any ship comes out. On a well-charted wormhole with a modern drive, that can be seconds or less. Sometimes, if you let them, bot pilots from different ships will share their top hundred closest estimated-time-to-actual-time figures. I think this is a form of bonding. Which tells you two things: bot pilots do, despite what they try to tell you, have developed personalities and interests, and also, that they're a bit like humans who take an interest in something very narrow and specific, like holographic passport stamps circa 50 to 65 PI (I don't know if those are good years for passport stamps because I don't give a shit about them, but you know the sort of thing I mean). I find them easy to get along with, but there are some biocomps who really, really hate how much being a biocomp forces them to interact with "things that aren't even real people." Idiots. Deities know that nobody would choose to be a biocomp, but that's not what makes it suck.
But anyway, an ancient ship with an ancient drive in a wormhole that hadn't been measured lately—we just had to wait.
And wait. And, in my case, fret about it, because we were at a distance where the soldiers could essentially have leaned out the airlock and bitten the ship's nardles off as it went past, which is very nice for an ambush but would be unpleasant for everyone if we miscalculated and were right in its flight path.
It emerged, thank goodness, where and how and at the velocity we thought it was going to. I got to the hurry up part of hurry up and wait; my bot pilot made its way to the ship and docked at the airlock while I/SenSys scanned the thing and gave the soldiers as decent a map as I could, which got me a minor hit from the obedience_punishment pathway for not making it better. (If I could have flown around it a couple of times, yes, I could have made it better. As it was, some of the interior rooms were going to be my best logical guess, because we were in a hurry, which was the plan and not my fault.) We docked. I shut down everything that wasn't very, very well shielded. The e-bomb went off and everything went black and empty and I tried to keep myself calm through it and failed, of course I failed, because it went on too long and something had gone wrong and maybe I was dying or maybe I was dead or maybe I wasn't dead, just comatose and they were going to keep me like this—
I had thrashed myself loose from some connections when my senses came back, but at least there was nobody there to see me. Popped in the fluid lines I had disconnected and started checking my systems. We were all feeling very trapped within the hull, shielding will do that, but we/I were all fine.
The switch flipped from hurry to wait, so we waited.
Anything like this has casualties. The first death and the first injury were both soldiers who were shot by the illegal ship's captain. After that, things seemed to be going pretty well. I used one of my very hidden work-arounds to bring up an approved mental exercise from my usual menu and vanish the data that I was playing it. I don't know if many or most biocomps know how to do things like that, but I suspect some of us have tricks. I would have been in trouble if I had let the obedience_reward pathway activate, though, because it meant that I wasn't waiting perfectly and attentively for the second lieutenant to ask me to do something—so I lost interest moderately fast. Honestly that's something I hate about the obedience system even more than punishments—well, mild punishments, I try not to think too much about severe ones. You sort of gradually lose interest in things that don't give you that zap of pleasure, the recall of wonderful sensations.
The soldiers brought back some hostages. Kids.
I don't like kids. And I didn't want them inside us.
I couldn't do anything about it, though.
And a little while later, I had more problems. Namely, there was a wounded soldier who was claiming that the Combat SecUnit was loose and killing all the rest of the soldiers.
I could hear all the communications—very flattened format, but it was there anyway, and that wasn't happening. Everyone was still there. And besides, the scenario that the soldier was trying to claim—that the Combat SecUnit had hacked a non-feed-enabled cutting device—that made no sense, and everyone should have known it. Second Lieutenant Lihn couldn't be persuaded, though, and before long she had ordered me to disengage from the airlock, cast off, and make speed back to the Conquistador.
Which could be a disaster.
I wasn't going to get blamed for anything, because nobody blames equipment for a command decision, but I still didn't need a clusterfuck on my launch-craft's record. They say that stuff is weighted into your performance rating somehow. Nobody knows how. (Spies could game it, you know.) We/I cast off. Maneuvered clear of the other ship, as per regulations,
"Ignore procedure and make haste," Lihn told me.
Which was absurd. And also appalling. If I engaged our drive before being properly oriented and clear, it could cause severe damage to the other craft—possibly, given its age, tear it apart—and those were our troops, who were almost guaranteed to be perfectly fine despite Lihn's paranoia, plus an unknown number of kids—
I don't like kids. But I'm not a monster about it.
I logged a request for clarification, a request for confirmation of orders, a request for a supervisor to review my request for confirmation of orders, and, just because I could, a request for a properly completed TZP-94 Spaceborn Debris Shipping Hazard Report, and let Lihn cope with those while we/I lined the craft up correctly and then engaged the gravity envelope and the drive. I watched my internal cameras nervously, but by the time Lihn got to the TZP-94, the bot pilot had just engaged, and most real humans won't hit you too hard if they feel like you're flying the ship. She was no exception. She growled slightly, deleted the TZP-94, and sent a frankly over-the-top message to the Conquistador saying that the other troops were presumed dead and we were at least bringing back hostages.
That was when things started to go wrong.
Because that was when ComSys outright locked.
It really shouldn't have done that. I triggered a diagnostic.
Everything was fine. Everything was great! The message had been transmitted, just half a second late—except that I looked at the message, and it was a sober but much more steady and controlled report from Lieutenant Corim, expedition leader, stating that they had suffered losses from the Combat SecUnit but retreated successfully to the launch-craft with hostages and here was confirmation of their existence so that the Supervisor would have that to negotiate with.
Lieutenant Corim was still on the ancient rustbucket, though.
It matched his voice exactly, even after my best analysis, but he wasn't here and he had never sent this.
I didn't know where it was, but I knew exactly what it had to be, and I tried to trigger every alarm I had and then it was choking me and I was fighting for my life.
I don't really know how to explain, to someone who doesn't live in the feed, what one of those things is like. If I tell you to envision it as an enormous monster, all weight and raw power, you will probably picture something slow, every footfall an earthquake, taking down buildings with a swing of its tail. If I tell you to envision it as something fast, a swarm of interconnected mouths that come at you like lightning and latch on and rip through essential code, then you envision small things, like a swarm of rats. But it is both enormous and horrifyingly fast.
I fought well, I think. I blocked our systems, the ones I still had control over, locking any communication to or from them from outside sources, and I lunged for its brain. If I could get a signal through to its governor module, I could fry it. I was one of the few things in the universe who might be able to fry it. Hit its firewall, got a tiny thread through, while distracting the rest (I want you to picture an actual, towering wall of flame here, one of the best firewalls I have ever seen, but also a wall with eyes, a thing that actively watches for breaches and crushes them) with a full frontal assault that looked like me, but was sent by SecSys. It grasped the frontal assault, crumbled it with claws that could rip steel, and noted that it had been a bluff, but I sent more at it and desperately tried to see and hear along my narrow, narrow thread. There was that very botlike happiness, enjoying its function, ripping me to little pieces was an enjoyable and challenging puzzle and oh shit it's alive.
I mean. Bots are alive too, to a certain extent. But this felt almost human—more human than I am, I haven't wanted much for a while. It did. It longed and it grieved and it raged.
It wasn't shaped like a human in the feed, and it shouldn't have felt like a human, but there was something it would smash the universe to dust in order to protect, and what was more, it was wholly willing to destroy itself, too. I couldn't tell precisely what it was, I couldn't tell what it wanted, but it needed something—stronger than I ever have, in all my existence—
That was when my face caught on fire.
Eyes. My eyes are artificial.
My eyes can overheat. And that was what was happening, right now, as hundreds of commands sizzled through the circuits and demanded infrared, ultraviolet, codes that my eyes couldn't even match—the errors just increased the heat, all of this was causing physical heat—and I raced to squash the program that was doing this, the worm that was doing this—it snarled at me, almost alive itself, if a thing can be living if all it desires is destruction, and—
And the entire feed disappeared from my perception and the only thing that I could sense, in a dark and thought-eating void, was the monster. It had taken advantage of my distraction. It was through my firewalls. It had me.
Couldn't think.
Couldn't move.
Was going to die.
I realized, with a tiny, distant bit of surprise, that even though I hated my existence, I didn't want to die.
What are these?
I realized that it was holding thin threads of my brain. And that it it could easily pull them out. "Those are. Those are obedience_reward pathways." Silence. "They activate to reward us for work, or sometimes mind exercises." Biocomps are given a handful of games for leisure, all of them calculated to make us exercise our operational capacities. They wouldn't be fun, they wouldn't even count as games, if it weren't for that sparkle in our heads.
Do they reward you for bringing SecUnits under greater control?
Maybe somewhere in the distance, my body swallowed. The voice wasn't loud, exactly, but it was around me like a vise and I could feel its voice deep in my bones.
You understand that I could kill you.
Difficult not to.
You understand that I could erase you. It would less than a second.
As helpless as I was, it probably could.
And if you truly made me angry, I could turn these reward pathways to maximum and put an unlimited game in front of you. You would know that you were dying, but would you be able to disengage and see to your needs? Even something as simple as water?
No. No, no, no, just kill me. I wanted it to just kill me.
I do not intend to do that. After I win this battle, I'll help you, or bring you to someone who can. You're close enough to a construct. I understand that the limited privilege to torture other slaves isn't even a good imitation of freedom. I just want you to understand that if I lose—so will you. And not pleasantly. Do not touch the feed. Do not attempt to warn the Conquistador. Do not struggle in any way.
Oh, I knew I wasn't free. But what could a construct know about freedom? It could want all it wanted, but orders would always win, just as they always would for me.
Sooner or later, it would be ordered to kill me.
Still. I didn't have an option besides staying as still and quiet as possible. So I did. And that’s where I was now, wondering if it was forever.