Chapter 1: The Fainting Couch
Chapter Text
"I need to collate some data." It was a bad excuse, because really, I could do that anywhere and Gurathin knew that. But he didn't object as I left. I went to my private cabin and flopped on the bed. I shut my eyes, then put my hands over my face because that's what people did in media when they were overwhelmed. I might have also been, overwhelmed. I'm not sure the gesture made much difference, but it was nice to feel like I was doing an emotion right.
I had so many emotions right now. Listening to Gurathin's story had done a number on me. It's not like this was only a bunch of simple words and leaking feelings all over the place, because that's essentially what media is and I like watching that. No, this was personal. So personal. It was 'I want to jump out an airlock instead of thinking about this' personal. Gurathin had recounted actual, important events in my life, giving everything a layer of meaning I'd never had or even thought to look for.
I had done my best to hide this while Gurathin was talking. I'd built the tightest wall I could, monitored my own processes aggressively, and did everything I could not to give away the depth of my current feelings, or my awareness of Gurathin's. I would never again have a chance to hear something this unfiltered and un-self-conscious. (Unless, you know, I didn't tell Gurathin about it. Which … was an option.)
I sighed melodramatically and tried putting the back of one hand to my forehead while the other was at my side. That didn't seem to help, either, though I knew from a drone that I was in the right pose. Why then did humans do this? I put both hands at my sides in the prescribed neutral position for being in a cubicle. I wasn't in a cubicle, but the familiarity gave me a shred of comfort the other posturing hadn't.
I tried something that actually did help me when I had too much information and needed to sort it out. I started a list. I titled it 'Things I Want To Say To Gurathin But Won't'.
- You were on to me from the very first briefing?!
- Everyone knows my emotions? They leak out through the feed? Why didn't anyone tell me? (Oh yeah, they did and I knew they did, I just ignored what it meant until now.)
- My face has been doing that this whole time? (Yeah, again, Amena and Ratthi and Bharadwaj and Overse had all mentioned my face doing emotional things, but somehow it hadn't clicked for me that they could see my emotions.)
- I am suddenly reassessing ART's 'You were lucky,' which I had dismissed previously but now realized just how accurate it was.
- You were … aroused … by me pinning you to the wall? No, not that – you were aroused by ME? And you're still aroused by me, by me looking at you. So … I can punish you just by looking at you? (If I were to label my emotions at the moment: appalled, entertained, and intrigued. Is 'entertained' an emotion? Maybe fascinated? I don't know. On a dark and twisted level, this is hilarious.)
- I'm glad they overruled you on the diagnostic after they bought me. I would have allowed it, but I also would have hated it and the others were right I wouldn't have trusted any of you after that. I … don't think I would have gone to Milu or come back to rescue Dr. Mensah. A lot of things would have been different. You're not always right about things, Gurathin. That would have been a huge fuck-up.
- Speaking of which, I'm going to take up a trendy hobby just to piss you off.
- Also, I want to be offered basic accommodations for humans. It doesn't mean I want them. I just want to be offered them. That's very important and I don't think you get that.
- That was totally an interrogation when you held me down on the medical procedure table of your habitat on the survey planet. Don't ever do that again. Not that you even succeeded then. I understand your reasons and you were right from your point of view but that doesn't make it right overall. I would be way more pissed about this but you didn't restrain me when I was waking up from having my memory rebuilt so you got something right.
- Okay Gurathin, smart guy, why DID you know or even just have ideas about what sort of prison Mensah would be confined to after GrayCris abducted her?
- Do you really think Ratthi and Pin-Lee got together? I usually skip the romantic subplots of stories, but this one hits closer to home. I've done a lot of surveillance of those two and … I don't think so. Did you record that in your augment? If so, send me the video. I want to see it myself. I have company analytics I can run on it.
- I'm the reason why you turned down that ComfortUnit's business? I want to know more about that. I notice it looking at you didn't turn you on in the least. I am not sure why I am suddenly very interested in knowing every detail of that interaction, but I am.
- You made the false ids (I'd known that). You set up the surveillance system in the hotel (I could have guessed that but didn't think about it). You earned the money that was on those hard currency cards (I should have known that if I'd thought it through; also, I don't think the others know what it means to mix earnings like that; I mean, they might know, but they don't get it; you really ought to tell them, at least Ratthi, he'd like that). You, more than any of them, did things to convince me to stay. Did you know I almost left again anyway?
- If you'd had your way when they bought me, I would have never come back. But if you hadn't helped after the memory rebuild, I would have never stayed. Did you learn? Or was this just random chance? Humans don't know what the fuck they're doing so much of the time. I don't know what I'm doing either. This whole thing is fucked up. It's scary that our lives are dictated by decisions that could have so easily gone another way.
- So … you don't trust security. But I'm security. Why is everything so complicated with you?
- Have you ever had the trauma protocol? I think you need it. You shouldn't be guilty about the people killed in the beacon launch. The Corporation Rim required these procedures. Preservation people shouldn't be using all that personal freedom to avoid necessary and required assistance. That's dumb.
- Did you ever find out how Serrat knew your funds transfer documentation was bad? It's because you showed him a view-only file, which is only derived from an editable format, and no authentic credentialed document would be end-user-editable to start with. That's just stupid. But yeah, I could have given you guys better coaching through that situation.
Mortifying to realize I'd been leaking my emotions all over the place, possibly for as long as I'd been having them. Why hadn't I been caught and reduced to spare parts long before now? I suppose because most of my emotions around humans pre-PresAux were things like tension, fear, and annoyance (assuming 'bored out of my skull' isn't an emotion (it should be; it's a feeling and feelings are emotions, right?)). I guess those are pretty normal things for a SecUnit to emote.
While I wanted to pretend SecUnits didn't emote at all, I had a long history of recording in my diaries the various emotions of bots, drones, and other constructs. Ship's drones beeped sadly when I used the wrong hatch. JollyBaby's joke amused the other bots on the Preservation docks. I had a whole range of emotional descriptors for ART. Tlacey's ComfortUnit had been cautious. Three had been almost pleased.
It was really stupid to deny we had emotions. Or that we projected them enough that people could sense them. It'd be one thing to say that only people with extensive mental augments like Gurathin could sense them, but apparently Ratthi could as well. I recalled him saying something about it specifically when ART and I had been … disagreeing. In an emotional manner.
'Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don't have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.'
So yes, I'd been leaking my emotions all over the place. Then again, so had Gurathin (or at least he'd been having them and now I could perceive them as something other than sour-asshole-face), so there.
I didn't want to think about Gurathin's emotions at the moment, so I started a process to collate his story, setting it into my own timeline as a parallel path. I interwove the events so I could see them side-by-side, tagging the parts where we had different points of view on the same scene or they were different scenes altogether because we were apart.
It didn't take long. Once done, I tried to distract myself with something else. I brought up one of the new shows from Plestead, watched two minutes, then picked a different one. Thirty-two seconds, then a different one. I skimmed ten seconds or less of three more before I stopped myself. Five times was plenty to see the pattern.
I turned off the media.
What I was trying to avoid thinking of was that Gurathin was attracted to me. And he liked me. Which might be two different things. What I'd felt (that he had felt about me) was: Pleasure. Liking. Arousal or something like it – it was an energized, restless state of unfulfilled wanting, the lack of satisfaction but it wasn't disappointment, it was anticipation and excitement. I actually went to the bother of looking up a few terms to be sure I was understanding this right. Arousal fit. It was accurate. I updated the list.
I have to admit his response to my attention intrigued me. For the first time in my existence, I could safely tease a human. I could provoke reactions in him he did not want and get away with it. This was different from disappointing a human or augmented human. I didn't want to disappoint them. I think Gurathin would be the opposite of disappointed if I stared at him, for example. Or if I pinned him to the wall again. Or if I loomed over him and …
Okay. Well. I'm not sure what happens after that. All the media continuations of that scene aren't directions I want to go in with this particular augmented human – I don't want to harm him, disrespect him, or kiss him. (But what if I didn't do any of those and just let him squirm for a while? What if the threat I could pose and the power I had over humans and augmented humans was actually … desired? Enjoyed? What if me being what I was, openly, was … welcomed?)
I would be (should be?) utterly freaked out and potentially terrified about this whole situation if not for two things: 1) Gurathin's past and 2) Gurathin's present. First, the past. He'd been attracted to me all along and had never acted on it. Nor had he (apparently) acted on it at any point in the past with other SecUnits. 'I had no idea what SecUnits had for genitalia.'
He probably knew now. I'd woke up after the memory rebuild in clean, new clothes (except my shoes; those were missing and I'd had to get new ones). Knowing that didn't seem to have made a difference. He wasn't interested in me for my sex parts or lack thereof.
That was the past. As far as the present went, he still wasn't acting on it. I wasn't going to take responsibility for the face-touching thing on Plestead, but even though it had happened, Gurathin hadn't followed up on it. I knew he liked me. I'd confronted him on it but instead of him expecting reciprocation, he'd called Ratthi to get me off his back. He wasn't asking me to do anything. All he'd asked me to do, more or less, was listen to his version of our various shared events.
Which I had. And now I realized the depths of what I was dealing with here, or at least I knew this was deeper than I'd known. The emotions … okay, they were data; all they'd felt like to me was data, interesting data and I could process that through my own emotional centers (such as they were) to feel the same way and thus for some of them I could recognize the emotion but for a lot of others I couldn't.
I think I mentioned how I was working with Dr. Bharadwaj to better identify my emotions. It would spectacularly short-cut that process if I could ask Gurathin to sort through the things I couldn't identify and just … tell me what they were. That would be so convenient. It would also require telling him what I was doing. I still hadn't done that.
Was that … guilt? I labeled it tentatively. It might be some type of apprehension or fear, too. It's not like I'd come with a manual for this stuff. Dr. Bharadwaj had given me an 'emotional dictionary' but that helped less than I wanted it to.
Speaking of incomprehensible emotional states, I replayed the ones Gurathin had gone through when:
- I'd pinned him to the wall (and looked at him)
- I'd looked at him in the hopper and pointed out I had guns in my arms
- I'd looked at him when he'd said he knew GrayCris was going to use the money to pay off the bond company
- I'd pinned Serrat to the wall
- I'd rendered Serrat unconscious
- I'd looked at him earlier today, after he finished telling his story
I just … laid there with that information in my head, cycling through my own emotional centers. Someone felt that way about me, like I was a romantic media action hero. I ran another diagnostic because I was lying there doing nothing (staring at the ceiling, actually, feeling these feelings) and maybe there was something wrong with me. (There wasn't. Or at least, no more than usual.) I put the back of my hand against my forehead again. It didn't seem to help, but it made me feel better, so I guess it helped after all.
There was one other thing I needed to tackle:
'I've seen ComfortUnits in scenes and they're convincing (very convincing)'
'All the ComfortUnits I'd been with before'
'[Ratthi] wasn't remotely my type'
'… there was nothing external to show [the ComfortUnit] wasn't human – not even seams'
'I didn't want [Murderbot] to have had to [appear more human]'
'I found that charming and relieving that [Murderbot] hadn't entirely become human'
Yeah, he was definitely a bot-fucker. In the media, this was a pathetic perversion, indicative of low moral character and failure to be attracted to the appropriate sort of sexual partner. It was worse than compulsive masturbation because it tended to include a pathological emotional attachment to the bot (or more typically, ComfortUnit) in question. Pathological because it was defined that way by the people who got to define things.
I had a dual perspective here. (actually, trio … trial?) Because in the remote labor installations I'd spent most of my work life in, being turned on by the ComfortUnits was normal. That was their function. If humans got emotionally attached, I don't know that anyone cared. Maybe the ComfortUnits did. I don't know. I never talked to them. (If I had, I might have had a better idea of what to do right now.)
The third side to this is … one I don't think about much, but why 'terrified' was a possible response to Gurathin being attracted to me. Because there were humans in those remote labor installations who didn't wait their turn to use a ComfortUnit and instead used whatever vaguely human-shaped unit was nearby, even if the anatomy wasn't right. Governed or not, I had to comply with that. There were only so often I could cause alarms to 'coincidentally' go off when I wanted to interrupt something that was going on. And sometimes. Sometimes I just let it happen. (I think. It's complicated.)
'You don't blame humans for what you were forced to do? For what happened to you?'
'No. That's a human thing to do. Constructs aren't that stupid.'
I didn't blame humans for that. I blamed those specific humans for it and I increased the possibility that other humans might do the same. This was part of why I was depressed and anxious a lot, among other reasons. The humans I had to protect were … yeah. Well. Sometimes they were the same ones who did those things to me. Or other things. But I got to pick my clients now. They were 'my humans' and they didn't do those things.
The biggest proof of this was that Gurathin, obviously a bot-fucker, obviously I was his 'type', had not done anything even when he'd thought I was governed. It would have been so easy to call me to an otherwise unoccupied hab module after the others were asleep. He was the systems engineer, he could have fixed it so there was no record to offend the delicate sensibilities of the Preservationists. And I wouldn't have been able to fool him with a convenient alarm. But he'd never.
'I'd never much liked the sex part of sexbots'
What the fuck did all this mean, if he didn't want to approximate gross human intercourse with me? I felt like I was flailing and sinking and not understanding things. It was making me unbearably anxious, so I shelved all that, saved it for later examination, and turned to something nicer that had been revealed in Gurathin's story – how much and how consistently my humans had helped me.
I'd seen my humans work together to save me before, when it was ART and ART's crew, Ratthi and the others, and I had been trapped on the alien remnant contaminated colony planet. But that had been with ART and it's not like ART had given them a choice. (Or so I'd told myself.)
Now … seeing all this from Gurathin's point of view, I was realizing that time on the alien remnant planet hadn't been the first. Or the second, or the … it had happened a lot. They had gone out of their way to help me.
For example, the smarter thing for them to have done on the TranRollinHyfa docks was to run to the shuttle and take off, leaving me behind. But they didn't do that. They'd stayed. Mensah had shot at people. Gurathin had wrestled them off. Ratthi had picked me up. Gurathin had done the same, while knowing the Combat SecUnit on the other side of that barrier could open it any second and put lethal projectiles through his fragile, fleshy body.
But that wasn't the first time. They'd also saved me after DeltFall. (Mensah, individually, had also saved me during DeltFall.) They'd removed the override module, which they technically didn't have to. They'd ignored the directions to shut me down. There had been not a whisper about reactivating the governor module, even with Gurathin standing there knowing and thinking about and telling all of them I'd killed fifty-seven people. Even then, they didn't stop me, or try.
Instead of being cautious of me, Mensah had sworn she'd keep me safe.
They'd saved me after the GrayCris beacon launch. They'd stayed by my side the entire way while I was shut down, making sure the bond company couldn't harm me. They'd bought me. Pin-Lee had done a legal thing so I kept my memories, so I stayed who I was. They didn't restrain me. After I left, the only mention of following me was to help and protect me. (I didn't need it, but the thought was nice.)
Then there was this thing after the killware attack. If I'd fallen back on my old and usual way of thinking, I'd be suspicious that Gurathin was concealing something from me I wouldn't approve of – that they'd fucked me over somehow, changed my memories, altered a setting, maybe I actually preferred sports shows to dramas (oh wow, I would be so angry about that; such a pointless change that mattered so personally to me).
But looking at it now, after hearing Gurathin's version of events, there was a real pattern here. These particular humans and augmented human didn't do that. Pin-Lee, Ratthi, and Mensah – the three most trusted humans I had, had been there. They wouldn't have let Gurathin do anything to me. And if he had, I don't think I would have continued to dislike him since then (well, okay, even I have to admit I've mellowed at him as time has passed, but nothing big had changed; nothing like now).
Which meant whatever had happened while I was out of it wasn't something I needed to protect myself from. Or be afraid of finding out things I didn't want to know. Also, there was a witness to it all right here on this ship, trapped in the wormhole with us and much more likely to talk freely than Gurathin was. I got off the bed and left my room.
Chapter 2: An Unasked Proposition
Summary:
Wherein it becomes important that Gurathin made Pin-Lee promise not to disclose the events of Things SecUnit Will Never Know. Not Ratthi.
Chapter Text
"You propositioned Gurathin."
"Um," Ratthi seemed taken aback by the statement. It hadn't been that long ago. Less than a standard year. A lot had happened, I'll admit, and he had a lifestyle that involved propositioning many people, but I still expected him to remember. He did. "Yes."
"He turned you down."
"Yes. He told you this?"
I hesitated. "Yes." I mean, it had been part of his story. Which he told me. So, yes, he'd told me. "Do you resent him for that?"
"No."
"You're good friends?"
"Yes."
"He likes me."
With marked hesitation, Ratthi said, "Yes."
"We're friends?"
"Yes." A little more relaxation now. "Good friends, I would say."
"If he … propositions me … I could say no?" I felt stupid for asking this. The answer was so obvious. Of course I could say no. I could say, 'Fuck no, get away from me, do not ever talk to me again' and he would almost certainly do it, but I didn't want to say that. And anyway, the question I was asking wasn't really the question I wanted answered. I just wasn't sure how to ask the other one. Which was why I was having this conversation with Ratthi instead of Gurathin.
"Yes. And it wouldn't change your friendship."
"What if I … didn't …"
"Didn't say no?" I didn't say anything. There was this yawning void of 'what the fuck' on the other side of using my freedom to explore something instead of using it to run away from things. But … you don't need to explore things you already know about, so it's not like I knew. Not, at least, in the context of knowing what I wanted. Or how someone might act toward me if what I wanted mattered. It was confusing. I was confused. But I didn't want to go lie on my bed and put my hands over my face again. I wanted answers.
Ratthi said, "Then I would hope Gurathin would ask enough questions to understand, at least in broad strokes, what you were saying yes to and what you didn't want to do right away, or maybe never. And then you could, if you wanted to, try something."
"Like what?" I had no idea. I queried my media databases. Most of the results were disgusting. So disgusting, in fact, that I interrupted to say, "No, never mind. I want to know something else instead. I need to know what happened after I collapsed on the gunship, after retrieving Dr. Mensah from GrayCris."
Ratthi had gotten as far as opening his mouth to say something before I jumped in. He shut it now. He blinked a few times, then, "I … what?"
"What happened after I collapsed on the gunship, during the memory rebuild?"
"Oh." He blinked a few more times. I wished he was Gurathin and I could slide into his augments and read his emotions. Not that I thought he was about to lie to me, but that extra layer of communication, like a bot and a human at the same time, did a lot to settle my insecurities. Ratthi said, "Well. The gunship continued on to the wormhole. The bond company didn't think it was safe to remain in-system for repairs, despite the damage they'd sustained."
This wasn't what I wanted to know, but I let him talk. He said, "We reached Port FreeCommerce. The Preservation runner ship was there, so we picked up a cargo module and transferred to the runner. Then we went to Preservation. You woke up at the end of that. Do you remember that part?"
"Yes. What cargo module did you pick up?" That was a new part of the story. I didn't know if it was relevant.
"When we followed GrayCris to TranRollinHyfa, we left everything behind. We didn't want to go to the station this time, so we had them bring it out to us. Oh, and we had them bring out new clothes for you, since the gunship and the runner didn't have a recycler. But we forgot your shoes!" He sighed in past-tense exasperation. "We'd already thrown your old ones away."
So that was what had happened to my shoes. Yeah, the cargo module wasn't relevant, other than in how it confirmed various other details. Now to the important stuff. "What happened to me during all that?"
His face blanked and I was pretty sure it was the blank of 'I don't know what you mean' instead of the blank of 'I'm trying to hide something.' Pretty sure. Like 87% sure. "Um. You were rebuilding your memory." I almost made a frustrated noise, but then he rephrased: "Mostly it was being rebuilt for you, but that's the same thing."
My circulatory pumps rapidly increased in activity, which was an unpleasant clenching sensation in my chest. Usually, this is a precursor to violent physical action. Or the perception of danger. 'for you' – yeah, that was NOT the same thing, Ratthi. In what I hoped was a masterful effort to control my emotions, I said, "Tell me about the rebuild process."
Ratthi gave me a guarded look. (Okay, yes, Gurathin's story had been an unending schooling on how I wasn't as good at hiding emotional stuff as I expected, right alongside Ratthi being better at detecting it than even Gurathin expected. So … right. He was on to me. Whatever. I tried to make my face look pleading. I have no idea what it actually looked like. (Yes, I could see myself on the cameras, but that doesn't help. It's just my face doing a thing.))
"Well. You … want to know the full thing? Everything?"
As a matter of fact, that was exactly what I wanted to know. "Yes."
"When you collapsed, we took you to a separate room on the gunship to find out what was wrong. Gurathin and Pin-Lee did some scanning on you. Mensah and I worked things out with the captain. That's when the company decided they'd make a run for it in case GrayCris or Palisade was able to mobilize something else. Gurathin called us back in to say you were offline and your … your operating system was scrambled. They'd need to rebuild it."
I didn't let him continue. "They? Who are 'they'? The bond company?" What the fuck? I don't know what my circulatory pumps were doing, but I felt a stab of ice through my core.
"Oh! No." He shook his head. "It was Gurathin and Pin-Lee. But mostly Gurathin. We wouldn't let the bond company touch you."
I stared. Gurathin could do that? Pin-Lee could? And also, "My operating system was scrambled? Are you sure? The operating system?"
"Yes, that's what they said. I don't know, myself. I'm not a systems expert."
"But Gurathin and Pin-Lee are?" Doubt.
"Yes. Or at least Gurathin is. Isn't he?"
He was. But I didn't think he was a good enough programmer to write an operating system from scratch. I wasn't sure humans even did that, augmented or not. Someone did though. Bots? I don't know. But anyway, I didn't think someone like that would just be wandering around 'loose'. Those kinds of people were watched, their identities were tracked. Several points in Gurathin's history came together in a suspicious manner. I made a note to myself to find out what Gurathin had been doing for those decades before he escaped the Corporation Rim.
In the meantime, "Scrambled?"
"That's what they said. I'm a biologist. I don't know the," he waved at his temple. "They said they'd have to put it back together for your system to recognize itself and begin reassembling memories."
"How long did this take them?" I was still trying to wrap my mind around what they'd done. It was a much bigger deal than Ratthi was acting like, but then again, he wouldn't know. Gurathin and Pin-Lee were both of the personality to undersell something huge like this. I hadn't woken up until we were on approach to Preservation. Like I'd observed during Gurathin's story, that was a big gap. Something had to have happened during that. It was too long for the memory rebuild process itself.
There were a lot of uncertainties:
- What was Gurathin's skill level in this? What was Pin-Lee's?
- Had they had to recreate me from a blank slate, or was the scrambling such that it had been easy to unscramble, like large segments of code still intact?
- Had they short-cut the process in some way, like by importing sections or the entirety of a factory-standard SecUnit operating system? If so, where did they get that, what explanations had they given, and was I running around with some janky bootleg system?
- Was I still the same person I used to be?
No, that last one was too important not to blurt it out. "Am I still who I used to be?"
"Oh, yes! That was very important. We talked about that one a lot. They said that was why it took so long – the entire trip, almost every waking hour. Gurathin said they couldn't reinstall a fresh operating system because it would lose all your … presets? Preferences? He said you'd customized your code and we had to retain that. Like, disabling the governor module."
Reflexively and stupidly, I checked my governor module. I know, I had been operating for more than half a standard year since the memory rebuild, so, like, if it was functional you'd think I would have noticed. Ha. But yeah, it was still hacked. The idea that someone had deliberately, intentionally (some human! No, wait, not just some human, but Gurathin, specifically!) taken the shattered pieces of my hacked governor module and written it back into being, hack included, made me understand what Don Abene had meant by 'makes my skin shiver'.
Because this wasn't just 'I've detected its governor module is hacked'. This wasn't even 'we're going to make sure the bond company doesn't repair the hacked module'. This was … he rehacked it. He had to have reassembled it first to hack it. There had been a moment there – there had to have been – when the governor module was installed and functional. And then he'd hacked it. For me.
There's a difference between passively allowing a thing to exist and actively bringing it into being. It's a big difference. My whole system was primed for action right now. Like I needed to fight something, or someone, or do something else equally … active. I felt sweaty.
"Are you alright?"
"Yes." I took a moment to compare my logs (pre-survey, during-survey, post-survey/pre-rebuild) to the ones that were post-rebuild. Particularly, I was looking at what I thought of as personality markers. Some of them were preferences and settings, like the mechanistic way Skulk was currently managing itself, and some were just patterns.
I was trying to see if anything had changed. Was I different? I'm always a little different. I'm not quite the same person I was ten or a hundred hours ago. There is an accumulation of little changes I think humans would call 'growth'. So that complicated things, but I didn't see any change in the rate of 'growth' pre and post-rebuild. There definitely wasn't any big, worrisome, noticeable shift between those two periods.
But what if Gurathin was really, really good and had hidden his tracks? (Okay, this is true paranoia here, even by my standards. The odds that he could be that good to hide who I was from myself for so long … and ART had seen me both before and after. While ART hadn't been asked to look, it had been through my code both for the creation of 2.0 and the extraction of alien contaminated code. Had there been anything there to notice, it would have said something. Also, what conceivable endgame would Gurathin have with such a ploy?)
Conclusion: he hadn't changed a thing. He and Pin-Lee had held my free will, my self-awareness, and my entire capability for understanding and interacting with the world in their hands, with Mensah already safe and returned, without ART there to threaten them, when my usefulness to them was ended, when they had every reason to think I'd wake up and leave them again … and they had restored me all the same, just like all those other times in Gurathin's story. I walked over and faced a corner, which felt marginally better than my other choice of covering my face with both hands. Then I decided to do both. It felt right.
Ratthi spoke softly and gently like I was a traumatized human who needed to be soothed. "You are still the same person we met on the survey planet. I'm sure of it. Gurathin wanted Pin-Lee with him at all times when he was working on you, so she could catch any mistakes he made and because," Ratthi swallowed, "because he wanted a witness that he did exactly what he was trying to do and no more."
He swallowed again, noisily enough that I wondered if the throat sound was some unfamiliar Preservation form of nonverbal communication. "I don't think he would tell you this, but he was very upset about … how you perceived him in that letter you left to Dr. Mensah. He was certain you don't like him." He sighed a little. "Of course, you told him that almost as soon as you were able to talk after the rebuild. SecUnit … he likes you as you are. He wouldn't change you. He's not that kind of person."
I turned enough to see Ratthi out of the corner of an eye. 'I didn't want to think anyone I knew would be like that.' It was tempting to think Ratthi was imagining Gurathin the way he wanted to see him. But Ratthi had more time with Gurathin than I did. He was better qualified to judge. I trusted him, but not Gurathin, not completely. Not even now, not even with the evidence right there in my comparative analysis.
"Okay," I said, because I didn't know what else to say. I was still standing in the corner. I put my hands down, since they weren't serving a purpose if I'd turned my head enough to see Ratthi. "I don't know what to do about him liking me." I sounded … pathetic. And lost.
"You don't have to do anything," Ratthi said, being reasonable.
But I didn't like the way I sounded or the idea of doing nothing. My systems were still calling for action, looking for an outlet, any kind of outlet. This whole thing was dumb. The point of having free will was that I was able to change my circumstances when I didn't like them, and I didn't like these. "No," I told Ratthi. "I'm going to do something." With that, I turned and left the room.
When I left the room, I had no plan aside from finding Gurathin and confronting him. Ratthi called after me. I ignored him. This was my problem. And, apparently, Gurathin's.
Was it even a problem?
Yes. Yes, it was.
Unfortunately, it was a small ship and it took me little time to reach Gurathin's room, so I hadn't come up with a plan by the time I got there. I pinged. He acknowledged. The door opened. I blurted, "Augmented humans can't respond to pings."
He blinked at me, then looked away, making the change of eyeline into something sullen, like I'd insulted him. "That's trivial to program."
He was right. Lots of things responded to pings that had no thinking ability at all. He had the hardware to support the change and even if he didn't, he'd had plenty of time over the last however long we'd known each other, to get it installed. "Why would you? The filtering activity would be a constant distraction to a human brain, augmented or not."
"There's no filtering. It's only keyed to you."
That stopped me. Only me, huh? He'd altered himself so he could hear my pings. But not anyone else's. Uh. "It's a … communication … thing?"
"Right."
I guess we were going to pretend it was solely for team support or something. '… like I was a component of its system. I liked that. I felt useful and not mistrusted.'
When I'd said he was a component of my system, I'd been using that line from his story, where he'd said he liked that. He'd also said he'd liked that I hadn't asked or bargained. Which made me think … maybe I needed to not ask? I could do that. I hadn't come here to ask him about the fucking ping, after all. I had rather more important things to figure out.
To start with: I dropped all my human affectations, let my expression shift to SecUnit neutral, stood perfectly straight, and walked toward him. He backed away, not knowing what I was doing, and I didn't tell him, either.
Chapter 3: It's Only A Medical Process
Summary:
Where Murderbot continues its pattern of engaging in rash, potentially violating medical procedures with people it cares about. Somehow, this bull careens through the china shop without damaging a single dish. Title from It’s Only A Cleaning Process, one of my other explicit MB fics.
Notes:
Hot, sexy art by deliala919!
Chapter Text
I can't stress enough how much I did not know what I was doing. But I loomed over Gurathin anyway, reading the input from his augments enough to know that fear was the least of the emotions he was going through now that I'd backed him against a wall. Mostly it was breathless anticipation and what I'd decided was yearning. There was that same arousal I'd felt before, what Gurathin had called a 'thrill' when I'd locked eyes with him after he'd threatened to punish me by looking at me.
I was definitely looking at him now. Various metrics scolded me because I wasn't supposed to stare at clients. It tended to frighten them. It was the sort of predatory thing we did for a target lock – fix our optics on some strategically useful point, like center of mass or, when up close like this, eyes – as a prelude to attack. If he didn't know that consciously, then he knew it instinctually.
Gurathin met my gaze for several seconds before his eyes twitched to focus on other bits of my face and finally, just away in general in a standard display of non-aggression. (There are some aspects of human behavior I'm superb at reading – submission to authority is one of them. (I'm not happy about that, but it is what it is.)) His heart rate was high; respirations were shallow. He'd stopped breathing through his nose, so his lips were parted now. This was all a very primitive response cycle. I'd checked in with the ship's MedSystem to get its professional opinion. It matched with my own: He was fine. Well within normative bounds, considering the situation.
I raised one hand. I did it slowly, but he flinched anyway, tracking it as much as he could given how I'd crowded him. He had no escape without fighting me; he wasn't going to fight me. I curled my hand around his head and rested three fingertips on his scalp. I pressed firmly and tilted his face toward me again, so he couldn't look away. And so I could push that response cycle through another go-around or two. He swallowed and met my gaze again. His breathing deepened. His pupils dilated, augments obeying the signals sent by his organics. He trembled just a little.
His emotions were a wash of affirmation and want and other positive things I couldn't put labels to, but I liked them. I liked them directed at me. There was a strain behind them, a tension like compressed gas escaping from a small leak, hissing danger and excitement, but not releasing enough pressure to matter. He was keyed up. By extension, I was getting keyed up. (Let's be real, I was keyed up back when I was talking to Ratthi and it hadn't stopped yet.) It just wasn't the same way Gurathin was keyed up, so I was getting to feel both of us.
I still liked it, though. I liked it a lot. This was marvelous. It was positive stimulation, over and over, and coming from a human (an augmented human, which is what made it possible), no less. It was the opposite of being depressed and anxious, I can tell you that for sure. It was like finding a new show or getting my own clothes or feeling competent all rolled into one and then intensified. I didn't know I could even feel this. I'm not sure I can, by myself, but I sure could through him.
I felt when he started to relax. His breaths deepened. His shoulders eased. His pupils dilated just a bit more. His face relaxed and his gaze, still meeting mine, turned distant although I couldn't detect any extra mental processing going on (he seemed to have almost flat-lined in that department). I thought about asking the ship's MedSystem again, but then I had a different thought. I checked the cameras in the hall. It was clear. I scooped Gurathin up and carried him to the ship's one-person medical suite, ignoring his gasp and startled noises. I'd alerted the MedSystem. The bed was ready by the time we arrived. I deposited him onto it.
He looked around, startled. "What?" He started to sit up. I pushed him down with a hand to the center of his chest. I was rummaging around in the various menus and directories of the MedSystem. In Gurathin's story, Ratthi had confidently mentioned you could do this. In the retelling, Gurathin had confirmed it with a certainty that made me think it was consistent across manufacturers.
Ah! There it was! Human sexual stimulation sequence. I skimmed through the score or so of options, selecting one of middling complexity and letting the MedSystem adapt it to Gurathin's anatomy. I'd been standing there staring at the far wall, my hand pinning him to the table. Now I looked down and he looked back. He was alert again. Uncertainty was flickering around his emotions. His heart rate had climbed and his breathing was shallow. There was another primitive cycle to go through here.
I locked the door. I did it through the feed, but the panel next to it dutifully flicked to red. He glanced over at that, then back at me. His lips parted and he licked them. The MedSystem completed its orienting scans. The panel under the bed opened to reveal the module that held the primary manipulator arms. They extended to remove his clothing, sending directions to him through the feed. His eyes widened as he saw what I'd told the system to do. He cooperated. I pushed him back down after.
Naked except for his socks (I don't know why the system left those on), the last thing the main arms did was clip straps into place over his arms, legs, and torso. From the cabinet in the wall behind his head emerged a respiration unit and mask. It goaded its way into his mouth, opening it, controlling his breathing. He made a faint gagging sound as it settled into place, his eyes wide and darting around. He pulled briefly against the restraints.
Was that distress? It might be. I wasn't sure. He was definitely a little afraid. I really didn't know what I was doing here. What if something was wrong? Humans fucked this stuff up all the time. I know he didn't want to me ask, but I needed to. Are you okay?
I could feel him struggle to calm down enough to focus. It was an effort. Standard protocol … Standard encounter protocols valid.
That could mean so many things. I didn't have the context. What?
ComfortUnit … protocols. Like I was expected to know those? My face did a thing. There was a pause. I could feel his processing activity, but I couldn't read his thoughts. I don't have a copy in storage. Assume consent unless I say otherwise. Another pause. Yes, I'm fine! He was irritated, but what little fear there had been was gone.
He stared upward, adjusting his mouth around the breather. It was pressing down his tongue and doing whatever else in there. As for the rest of his body, a suction device had attached itself and a lubricated probe was hanging over his thighs. The bed was reconfiguring to spread his legs and tilt his pelvis. He made a deep noise in his throat. The irritation was gone, too, now. There was nothing but anticipation.
I didn't have to watch his lower parts, so I didn't. His face was more interesting. His lids were fluttering. His body was tense. It jerked when the probe entered him. It had sensors on it (and a camera, but I didn't want to see that so I shuttered the input; the pressure and temperature sensors were fine, though). The MedSystem had full programming as to where nerve clusters were and how to apply stimulation for the best response.
I read through that with more interest than I'd had reason to have before. As a topic, I could not have cared less, but the way it was affecting Gurathin – that was interesting. He'd lost the focus I'd forced him to regain in order to make sure he wasn't unhappy. I mean, he seemed into this. Really, really into it. His feelings were evolving into an inchoate mass of what had to be arousal, lust, and desire.
Gurathin's hips rocked with the motion of the probe inside him. I could see the MedSystem had settings to accelerate the process. I didn't see any reason to do that. He seemed to be enjoying it at the present pace, making incoherent moaning noises now. His fingers tightened rhythmically, matching his hips, matching the steady motions of the probe and whatever sucking, manipulatory activities the other arm was getting up to.
I've watched humans masturbate and have sex with each other. I've seen humans have sex with unenthusiastic (shall we say) constructs. I'd never seen this – a human having mechanically assisted sex without anyone else involved. And I'd definitely never watched while perceiving, as I did now, all the sensory inputs Gurathin was getting and his emotional reactions. He wasn't using his visual inputs anymore. I think he was overwhelmed like I'd been earlier, but it wasn't like he wanted it to stop.
I could see why humans were into this. It's hard to describe what it was to me. Enjoyable, yes. Like a kaleidoscope of sensations, most of which I didn't have a parallel for, but that didn't make them less fascinating. More, actually. It left a lot of room for freeform interpretation. I didn't have to feel it directly, and I could pick and choose what to amplify, what to pay attention to, and what to mute. It was like playing with the settings on a sophisticated musical performance.
I was also still getting that looped positive feedback cycle which was a brilliant backdrop to everything I was thinking. It wasn't interfering. I wasn't … impaired. But it was definitely there, taking up all the mental space I allowed it. It was tempting to just stand here and do nothing aside from experience that, but there were too many other interesting things going on that kept catching my attention.
Like the awareness of my hand where it still rested on his chest, firm, but not enough to impede his breathing – the exact prescribed pressure set in my programming. I was good at this. And he wasn't terrified by that. He liked it. He trusted me. He wanted to be under my control. That was so novel. It was more intensely pleasant than being thanked for doing my job. He didn't want me to just do my job in general, but to do it to him, and it wasn't like he was in danger so there wasn't that complication, nor was he going to touch me or involve me in any way I didn't want. It was like media in that the danger was removed or abstracted, the situation unrealistic, the emotions over the top but not my own so they weren't overwhelming … I don't know how to explain it. But I liked it.
I slid my hand up to his throat, replaying his remembered reactions to that, when I'd done it to him, or to Serrat. I think he'd been jealous of Serrat. I wondered what he'd made of those clips of me settling disputes on that trip with Ayres' contract laborers? I remembered ART's interest in watching me work on RaviHyral. Maybe I was underestimating how much people wanted to see me in action (or at least, certain people). This whole thing was doing weird things to my ego.
Gurathin tilted his head back immediately with a croon. I could feel his pulse hammering under my fingertips and I knew it wasn't because he hated me or feared for his life. He wanted what I was doing. I wanted him to want what I was doing. And I was getting what I wanted. It was perfect.
.
.
His hands made fists. His hips lifted from the table as his emotions sharpened and distilled into something pure and focused. I saved that (I was saving all this, but that bit especially). The MedSystem, reading his responses, abruptly quickened its pace. He made several more intense, choked vocalizations as I stroked his neck, my fingers pressing lightly into his skin, savoring every spike of pleasure and tension and pleading, straining desire that ran through him as I did.
The pressure sensors on the probe announced rhythm contractions around its shaft. The MedSystem recorded the orgasmic event and gave me a helpful report. (Or, well, I suppose the MedSystem thought it was helpful. I was a little busy with other inputs so I filed it for later review.) The MedSystem also reduced activity, ramping down slowly at first, then stopping entirely. It removed itself from his body in reverse order of application. Other arms emerged to do basic cleaning. The mask retracted. So did the straps.
My touch was no longer generating the same responses, so I stopped touching him (also, the MedSystem advised to minimize sensory input until his systems returned to baseline). Gurathin rolled on his side like he intended to leave the table, but then he slumped there, breathing hard and deeply. Most of the tension was gone from his emotions as well as his body. There was relief now and satisfaction. Gratitude? The MedSystem drew a sheet over him up to mid-chest. It sent me, Emotional support suggested.
Uh. I was still grappling with … everything. All of this. All I'd done was plunk him into the MedSystem and let it do its thing. (Well, and fondled his neck a little. And selectively provided other stimuli I'd identified as likely triggers for responses I wanted. And … yeah.) I had more unfamiliar data than I knew what to do with. And … I should … support him somehow? I felt very self-conscious and more seen than I wanted to be. He was, in fact, looking at me blearily, having reactivated his optical implants. I sent to him, Should I get Ratthi?
He had started to reach for me, then jerked his hand back at my question. He shook his head a little and put the hand on the side of his face, blocking the only clear view he had of me. I could see a close-up of his fingers through that eye. "No," he whispered. I could feel his emotions jolt and start to spiral unpleasantly. That had been a wrong question.
The MedSystem sent again, Emotional support suggested.
Yes, I knew that. What the fuck was I supposed to do? Then I had a thought. I pulled his hand away from his face and held it like I'd held Tapan's when ART's MedSystem had treated her, like Arada had held mine when we were leaving the survey planet, like I'd taken Mensah's in the TranRollinHyfa docks and how it had made things feel natural. It felt natural now, too. His skin was warm and soft.
He looked up at me with an odd expression. I think he was feeling hope. I looked at his ear and with my free hand, I ruffled bits of hair that covered the ports built into his skull. When he'd been in the CR, this would have been shaved for easy access. On a whim, I stirred the hair aside to see the ports were properly sealed. The tissue around them could do with maintenance, though. He couldn't see them and the planet we'd been on had squat for resources. I shared my visual input to his feed and let him see as I directed the MedSystem to extend a careful arm to scrub away flaking skin and cleanser buildup, then apply an appropriate moisturizer.
He sighed and sagged, letting his eyes slide out of focus as his attention turned inward. His grip tightened on my hand and he brought his other out so he was cradling mine between his. It was nice. His emotions steadied and slowly buoyed into a sort of subdued bliss.
I took the moment to review. Most of it had been … very good. Fun, maybe? (I wasn't sure what 'fun' was except things people enjoyed so much they wanted to do it repeatedly and sometimes at considerable risk to themselves, so, like, in my security application, I was often an enemy of 'fun'. Now? Um, hm, not so much, maybe.) I'd liked the way he'd reacted when I'd stood over him and made him look at me. But there seemed to be a sort of time-related cycle to that. After a certain period, he'd settled into a different response pattern, which was when I'd taken him to the MedSystem for it to handle what I assumed (from human media and lots of observation of humans) was the usual next step.
Which had been less gross than I'd anticipated. For me – no fluids, no touching I wasn't entirely in charge of, no orders to obey, not even really doing anything outside the function of a SecUnit. I had 'rescued' my human from a stress condition and stood by while the MedSystem applied appropriate aid. SecUnits did that sort of thing all the time.
It wasn't weird.
Was it?
No.
I was going to decide it wasn't weird. This was just a normal medical intervention Gurathin might need at times. Especially if we were going to be working together. It could be routine, even, like a mutual calibration cycle. We could set up a protocol for it! I created a general outline and since Gurathin seemed to be coming back to a higher functioning cognitive state, I pushed it into his feed for review.
He looked at it. He looked at it for a very long time, long enough for me to get worried. Finally, he said, "You're right. We should get Ratthi." He pushed the sheet to his waist and sat up. "But first, I need to get dressed."
Chapter 4: F-Word Negotiations
Summary:
The three of them manage to get through a delicate, respectful preliminary discussion of boundaries and what they want out of this.
Chapter Text
Gurathin's emotional read turned increasingly numb and distant as he dressed, which worried me further. We met Ratthi in his quarters, since the galley now had two other passengers in it who were strangers to us. Ratthi was bright and cheerful at first, but he turned serious as he looked at Gurathin. Gurathin sat on Ratthi's bed, putting his elbows on his knees and hands over his face (there was a lot of that going around today). I think he was laughing. Ratthi looked concerned. He shot me a half-second glance, then went back to watching Gurathin.
Gurathin put his hands down. "We … went from zero to full out in one go." He looked up at Ratthi and exhaled. "We had sex."
"No, we didn't." I had just stood there while the MedSystem did its thing.
"Yes, we did."
"We did not." I'd seen lots of sex, probably more than Gurathin had. It involved a lot more contact and sometimes screaming or at least loud vocalizations. While the lack of the latter was likely due to the respirator, the former was not.
Gurathin gave me a long, annoyed look. Ratthi had pursed his lips and was looking between the two of us, borderline alarmed. "We did," Gurathin said with emphasis. "You were there. You gave me a … a plan for doing it in future."
"Because you enjoyed it."
"Yes, I did. But you couldn't have known that."
"I could too."
"How? We barely talked. The physical reaction doesn't count."
Oh. Yeah. I still hadn't told him. This felt like the wrong time, but then again, it always felt like the wrong time. Might as well get this out. "I can read your emotions."
Gurathin rolled his eyes, then froze about two-thirds of the way through the motion. There was processing going on. I suspected he was running a diagnostic or pulling up recent memory archives, since I generally only detected things that involved a lot of data crunching. Into this silence, Ratthi asked, "What do you mean by that?"
I'd already committed myself to explaining, so I said, "I can infiltrate his augments, read some of his sensory data, and feel the way the organic portion of his brain communicates emotions to the inorganic."
Gurathin narrowed his eyes at me with the sourest expression I'd ever seen on him. There was a lot of processing going on. I suspected if he could have booted me out, he would have. That he might not be able to hinted at a power differential I didn't know what to do with. Was I to him as ART was to me? I had a completely un-label-able emotion. I needed to be careful here – careful with him.
Ratthi asked hesitantly, "Did he know that?" Gurathin shook his head silently with minute motions. "So … you did not have his permission to do that?" This time Gurathin's head didn't move, but the answer was obvious. I silently exited his augments. (Okay, that one is guilt.)
"How much sensory data?" Gurathin asked.
I sent him a file of his responses during the entire experience. I'd been, uh, collating it. For historical purposes. I'd integrated the MedSystem report as well. (I'd had some time while he was getting dressed and it seemed like a high priority task for … some reason.) He was silent, gaze distant. I could assume he was reviewing it, but I no longer knew for sure. He'd pulled it into his own space instead of leaving it on our feed channel.
Ratthi looked at me. "Did you have his permission for … anything?"
"Yes."
"For what, exactly?"
I knew what he was getting at. In this, at least, I was on solid moral ground. "For everything, exactly. He said I could assume consent unless he said otherwise."
Ratthi drew in and let out a deep breath. I hadn't noticed how much he'd tensed up. He relaxed now. Should I be glad he was looking out for his friend? Should I be insulted he thought I might do something like that? Should I be irritated at how unnecessarily vague he was being about a serious accusation? I think I was feeling all three.
Gurathin scrubbed his face and gave that look like he was regretting his life choices. It wasn't the first time he'd had that look in connection to me. Haltingly, he said, "I'm just thinking … we need … better communication."
"I agree," Ratthi said primly.
I remembered how critical Gurathin had been of Preservationists stubbornly talking out everything. While I would have liked to have escaped this entire situation without discussing any of it, I could see the value of Preservation's approach. For one thing, he hadn't agreed to my protocol for repeat occurrence and he likely wouldn't unless we … collaborated over it or something.
"I think it might help most," Ratthi said delicately when neither of us spoke, "if you would tell me what just happened between you, so I can understand the current situation."
Gurathin's elbows were still on his knees. He looked down and brought his hands together, touching his fingers against one another in sequence. I just stood there. This seemed like a good time to turn on my human imitative code, so I did. It meant I slouched against the door behind me.
Ratthi said, "Are either of you able to speak of it?"
Gurathin made a slight shrug of his shoulders and parted his hands. Maybe he was about to say something, but I didn't wait to find out. I knew how to give reports. "I went to Gurathin's quarters. He let me in. We spoke. He developed a medical condition. I took him to the MedSystem. His condition was resolved."
"A medical condition?" Ratthi looked disbelieving, although whether he thought I was lying or using funny words wasn't something I could tell. Maybe he was irritated that I was the one being unnecessarily vague now.
"Unbearable arousal," Gurathin said flatly.
Ratthi started to laugh so I think it was the wording. He hastily stifled it when Gurathin did not so much as crack a smile. "Okay," Ratthi said with a deep, cleansing breath. He looked at me. "I know you aren't comfortable talking about feelings, but in a situation like this, it's very important we understand how," he took another breath, apparently assembling his next words because he clearly hadn't finished.
Gurathin interrupted with a quick glance in my direction. "Do you still dislike me?" His voice was gruff.
I knew the answer to that. I'd reviewed it while struggling over feelings earlier in my room. But it wasn't the sticking point. I needed to know I mattered here, what I wanted mattered, and my preferences mattered. I needed validation. I wasn't sure how to get that, but I'd been through something with ART that was distantly related. I tried what had worked then. I said firmly, "I want an apology."
A pause. Gurathin asked, "For what?" He didn't sound defensive, so that much was good.
"For telling my name."
Another pause. His brows furrowed. "During the story?"
What? Oh, yeah, he'd mentioned it then, along with a mild concern that he shouldn't get in the habit. But it wasn't like he was telling anyone then other than me, so that wasn't something I was bothered by. Whatever. "On the survey planet, after reading my logs."
His head came up. "I was complet-" That was defensive. I didn't wait for the rest of it.
"I DON'T CARE!" That was too loud. I wasn't supposed to yell at clients. Or friends. I shut my mouth, tightly, and experienced regret and not-regret at the same time. I waited for either of the humans to upbraid me. Neither did. Gurathin looked at the floor again and slowly clasped his hands together, one hand wrapping around the loose fist of the other. Ratthi kept looking between the two of us.
After a very long pause, Gurathin switched his fingers to interlaced and said, "I apologize." Well, that was quicker than it was with ART. "You know from the story that I knew I had done wrong the moment I saw your reaction to it. I should have apologized immediately." I relaxed somewhat, no longer pressing my lips together with force. "But-" Gurathin continued. I tensed all over again and bared my teeth. Gurathin wasn't looking at me. He'd hung his head, elbows still on knees. Ratthi saw me, though. Gurathin concluded, "I was prideful and I didn't show you the respect I should have. For that, I am sorry."
I quit snarling. That wasn't as bad as I'd expected when I heard that 'but', which I thought was going to cancel the apology instead of reinforce it. Ratthi let out a breath. Gurathin seemed done talking. I was feeling over the weird change this had made inside me. I hadn't realized how fundamental the mistrust had been from that incident. That niggling 'I can't trust him' was gone. He'd apologized, I believed it. Was that all it was? It was like a setting had clicked over, somewhere deep in my programming. I felt better, which seemed odd that just a few words had done that.
On the other hand, it had been just a few words that did it in the first place. I think it was good that I'd shouted. (Maybe? Maybe not?) Because Gurathin's story of our past had been covered with his justifications. Yes, he was justified. I got it. Whatever. I wanted him to ignore that and realize he'd hurt me and for him to be forced to recognize that out loud. I wanted to want something from him and get it. Now I had. And you know that cliché about having not being as enjoyable as wanting? Fuck that. I was enjoying having this. I saved it to long-term storage.
Ratthi looked at me pointedly, raising his brows and then darting his eyes to Gurathin. It was one of those social cues. I did a quick review of the conversation. Oh yeah, Gurathin had asked a question. "I don't dislike you."
Ratthi didn't let that stand. "Do you like him?" Yeah, I think so. Maybe? I didn't answer because that was a big question with a lot of repercussions and meanings I wasn't sure I had a handle on. So he said, "You gave him something he needed today. That's a very nice to thing to do for someone."
Gurathin huffed. "I didn't need it. I don't need sex."
"We didn't have sex."
Gurathin shot me a look. "It was your idea to take me to the MedSystem. You picked the program and initiated it. You locked the door. You held- You …" His head made an abortive motion toward Ratthi before stopping. He changed whatever it was he was trying to say. "You participated. We had sex."
I looked at Ratthi. He had a lot of partners. "Was that sex?" I wasn't sure I wanted the answer.
"Yes."
I was right. I didn't want the answer. I scowled.
Ratthi smiled warmly at us. "That's even better then. You gave him something he wanted but didn't need. That's a kindness." Neither of us spoke or even responded at all. "Gurathin," Ratthi said, continuing gamely, "you mentioned needing better communication earlier. What did you have in mind?"
He pulled himself together and cleared his throat before saying to me, "What about art?"
Did he mean ART? Neither made sense. If we'd been talking on the feed, I would have known automatically. "What about art?" I said, feeling clever about having answered without committing myself to either meaning.
"Isn't it important to you?"
Great. You know, human pronouns suck, just as a concept. In machine language, we don't have them. Anytime anyone refers to me, they use my feed ID. Why would we invent a word (and one that's gendered in most languages at that) to substitute for someone's ID when it's easier to just use the ID? It's right there! You don't have to keep a stupid lookup table or check their profile or flounder in uncertainty in the absence of a profile. I covered both bases: "Yes?"
He blew out air in a peeved manner. "Are you still hooking up or are you …" He hesitated, grimaced, then switched to Nev Ispangi, the regular language for the Corporation Rim. "Are you still in talks or have you incorporated?"
"No," I said with disgust, going back to Preservation's Bahasa 'rabiyy for Ratthi's sake. "I am not making a family with ART!" What had Ratthi and Amena been telling people? Ratthi's gaze was distant as he ran Gurathin's words through a translator and then kept reading to get the cultural context. I understood why Gurathin had swapped. Preservation had such a different social structure that the best you could say in Nev Ispangi was 'marital partners' and even then you were probably inaccurate in the details.
I went on, "What ART and I have doesn't conform to human terminology and I don't want it to. That's our thing. It's between us. This, here," again with the clumsiness of human words. I pointed at Gurathin and Ratthi to be very clear, "has nothing to do with that."
"But it has to do with us." There was an emphasis in Gurathin's voice I didn't understand.
"How?"
"It's important to you, ART is, but you just did this with me. Even if you don't think of it as sex, I do. If it isn't important enough for you to be committed …" His face looked troubled.
Ratthi said, "Commitment is not necessary for intimacy or importance."
"Clearly," Gurathin said with an offhand wave of one hand in Ratthi's direction.
"What does that mean?" Ratthi's tone set off an alert. Oh shit. If he got offended and quit talking to us, this whole thing was going to get way more complicated.
Gurathin had heard the same tone. He hesitated, mouth open for several seconds before he found some useful words. "Ratthi, I love you." Ratthi relaxed somewhat and huffed. "What works for you … isn't going to work for me in this situation." He turned to me. "You sent me that protocol. If you want to do that again, we have to-" He stopped and swallowed. "I have to have some sort of … promise from you."
"Promise of what?"
At that, Gurathin crumpled a little, looking vacantly at the floor like he was lost. Ratthi took it up in his place. "I would imagine what Gurathin wants, which is very, very common for humans to want in relationships, is an acknowledgment of how important they are to the other person. Like what you said about ART."
"He's important to me. You're important to me. You're my humans. We discussed that."
"Yeah, we're all your humans," Gurathin said in a quiet, strained voice. "But you're not fucking Ratthi."
"I'm not fucking you, either, and I want that acknowledged." There was a moment of tense silence that made me wonder if I'd taken it too far and established an irreconcilable difference. Ugh. I had to make a concession of some kind. "You're not my client. You're my," I searched for the right word, "you're my friend." Not sure that was right one, but he'd apologized and saved me a lot and I'd already said as much to Ratthi, so it was fine. Gurathin looked up at me, eyes narrowed but more like he was considering something than being suspicious. Just so he didn't get the wrong idea, I added, "But you're not more important than Dr. Mensah."
"That's not helping your case here," Ratthi said.
"What case?"
"Let's talk about the language," Ratthi said. "Technically, neither of you are 'fucking'. But if sex is involved and you're in a relationship-"
"That remains to be determined," Gurathin interrupted. Which, honestly, same. If he hadn't, I would have. He turned to me. "That's fine about Mensah. And whoever else. This isn't about ranking people. You can have as many friends and important people in your life as you want. This is different. I want to have some significance in your life if we're doing this. That it matters to you as more than …" He made a helpless gesture with his hands that did nothing to explain things. "And I think it does. I want it to." He made another helpless, unhelpful gesture and clasped his hands again.
It wasn't about ranking people but it was about ranking people. At least, that's what I got out of that.
"You want to matter," Ratthi said to Gurathin, like he was coaching him. Gurathin made a few more fumbling motions that might have been agreement. Ratthi turned to me. "A customary thing is to promise not to be intimate with others without consulting or at least informing your partner first." He looked back at Gurathin. "Is that something you want?"
"Yes." Quiet, barely heard. Subdued enough that I didn't argue about the term 'partner'.
I did grimace about it, though. It had a bunch of human meanings I didn't like, just like 'relationship'. Then again, Gurathin was mostly human. This wasn't like with ART where the very attempt to apply human labels bothered me. Maybe the human term was accurate here. Ratthi hadn't blinked in applying it. As for what he'd said, "I'm not going to do this with anyone else."
"Then it should be easy to make the commitment," Gurathin said.
"No one else even qualifies," I said, weirdly uneasy about curtailing my freedom to do things I had no intention of doing. "That type of augment is rare period and rarer in Preservation."
"That is also not helping your case," Ratthi said.
"What case? This isn't a legal thing."
"It is a social contract where you're agreeing to treat him as a special person in your life worthy of kind, respectful treatment, and he agrees to the same for you." Oh. That was kind of like a legal thing. I had said I didn't want things to be 'special' between us but they were definitely different than with any other human. I was struggling to work out why that didn't qualify as 'special', aside from what I'd seen in media. Okay … maybe I needed to ignore media in this case. (I know: Huge. Staggering, even.) Ratthi continued, "Rare or not, Dr. Mensah or not, a person you're in a close relationship with wants to know you value that relationship."
"I wouldn't do this with someone I didn't trust."
"That's good!" Ratthi said brightly. Now he was coaching me. I thought about frowning and maybe I did, but then I tried not to. Gurathin had not frowned about being coached. And we'd involved Ratthi for his advice. This whole thing was difficult and stressful.
Gurathin said, "If something happens where you do trust someone else like this, or … another bot or someone like ART, I'm only asking that you tell me before you do something like this with them. I know- I can't meet your needs. I don't even know what they are, necessarily." Ratthi looked like he was going to scold Gurathin, but Gurathin finished, "I just want to have an opportunity to talk to you about it."
Double ugh. But … fair. "Okay." There were a whole lot of words here I hoped to never have directed at me again. I turned to Ratthi. "Do you do this with every partner you have?" That sounded exhausting.
"I make sure they understand I am not exclusive and will not be exclusive, but that I greatly value them and whatever time they would like to spend with me. Many people are relieved by that."
Huh. Well. Yeah. I guess? Less to keep track of.
Gurathin said, "I'm not Ratthi. I … I'm not going to be with anyone else."
Oh. Yeah. It hadn't even occurred to me he might have other partners. Why would I care about that? (Other than the security risk.) Was I supposed to care about that? Well, I suppose if he wasn't going to have other partners, then I didn't need to. (I still cared about that interaction with the ComfortUnit, but that was a not-partner.) "What about the protocol?"
"What protocol?" That was Ratthi.
Gurathin put it in the group feed. Ratthi looked at it. Gurathin said to me, "I made some changes. That's the current version."
I looked at the differences, wondering when he'd added those. There weren't many. "What sort of feed-enabled devices?" That could be anything from a transport to a toothbrush.
"Sex toys," he said. "To be used on me. They have models that send data and accept remote commands. We won't always have access to a MedSystem." He reached into the file to add a clarification.
"Preservation has a lot of MedSystems." I hadn't paid attention to how many or where, aside from knowing they were there. I'd had to use them a few times.
"For non-emergency use," Gurathin said, "they have to be reserved and you have to state a reason on the reservation. Recreational uses are bumped in favor of actual medical need."
This was one of those times when my ability to hack a system and make it report whatever I wanted wasn't going to help. (Assuming I had permission to hack Preservation's medical systems, which I did not because it had never come up that I'd needed to, and thus was still covered under my blanket ban on station system hacking.) Mainly because I agreed. If some human was bleeding out, Gurathin's orgasms didn't take priority.
"Do you already have these … toys?" I'd never seen one that was feed-enabled, but they'd been on most of my contraband item lists back in the bad old days. I'd assumed that was to drive usage of the ComfortUnits, but I wasn't sure what anyone got out of that. Some installations charged for the usage of ComfortUnits, but most provided them gratis. (You should be very suspicious of anything a company provides for free.)
"No," Gurathin said, "I'll buy them."
"Send me the item profiles first to review." I found I had opinions about the sort of data and feedback they might provide. It wouldn't be much different from scanning catalogs of security gear for likely purchases. He nodded.
Ratthi had finished reviewing the document. "Feed-enabled ones aren't manufactured on Preservation, but you can order some from Gartok. I can suggest some," he said that to Gurathin. "This looks fine. I'm really glad to see you put something in writing. Do you both agree with this?"
"Yes."
Gurathin nodded again.
"What about the augment infiltration?" I asked. I hadn't put that in the protocol because he hadn't known about it when I'd drafted it. But now he did.
"That's fine." I was back in his augments before he'd finished editing the document to add a note about it. Then he paused, metaphorical cursor blinking at the end of a line. "Does this work in reverse?"
"Does what work in reverse?"
"That report you sent me of sensory data. Can I read yours?"
"I don't know. Can you?"
"I've never tried." He was watching me closely. "May I?"
I dropped my walls. "Do whatever." It might sound like a dramatic show of trust and in a way it was, but being wary at this point would be like being wary of ART (or more accurately, it would be like ART being wary of me, a parallel I was still grappling with here). Gurathin wasn't going to pull something now. The chance that he was a sleeper agent super-hacker or SecUnit-specific repo person was so small that I might as well suspect Ratthi or Mensah.
Also, there was something of a sense of fair play in this, a mutually trusted network. If he was going to continue to allow me access and we were respecting one another, then it was standard for me to do the same. (This is how I infiltrate security systems all the time. Most default network permissions run both ways.)
He was being respectful now, too, as he went through my files. I could feel his touch, feather-light through my systems. It was like touch-reading as his attention skimmed over the directories, opening a few, looking, moving on. I wondered what my user interfaces looked like from his point of view. Even when I hack another SecUnit, I'm seeing it from the inside. I suppose I could dig my technical specs out of archives if I really wanted to know. But it was too distractingly nice for me to bother.
He found something – I don't know if he'd been looking for it or just stumbled across it – and pulled a copy into his personal feed to review. He wouldn't be looking at it with his eyes. For someone with his neural augments, he'd be reading the material directly like I did, with no need to send it through a visual processor first to make sense of it. I didn't care too much at first, then I realized it was my log.
How the fuck did he find that so quickly? I wasn't upset about it, more puzzled than anything else, until I remembered what the last thing was I'd put in there. Let's just say that if you have a list of things titled, 'Things I Want To Say To Gurathin But Won't', you probably shouldn't hand it over to the person in question. Gurathin! Stop. Delete that!
When I'd asked him to stop before, he'd stubbornly sped up skimming the Ratthi conversation I'd mistakenly sent him. Just like then, I had the power to reach into his feed and yank that data out of there. Kind of like what ART could do to me, and one of the things that had terrified me about dealing with it when we'd first met. I didn't want Gurathin to be afraid of me. I also wanted to know what he'd do. Did that apology mean anything?
He stopped a fraction of a second slower than I would have liked, but it was within the margin his organic material might have taken to understand what I'd said. The file vanished out of his feed.
I waited. He didn't do or say anything, nor did he seem upset. It's not like a hard copy he can hand back to verify he'd done it. I was pretty sure he hadn't saved it elsewhere but I didn't go look. Finally, I said, How far did you get?
You were going to take up a trendy hobby to piss me off. He was cautiously amused.
Oh yeah. I reviewed the list myself. It wasn't all that embarrassing now that I looked at it – now that I'd calmed down, now that I thought this was workable with him. I think I was feeling more sharing-prone and charitable because Gurathin had stopped on demand this time. Some of this … actually, it might be helpful if I let him read it. It was a lot easier than telling him. I can let you read the rest of that, but I don't want to talk about it.
Okay.
Oh, and because I wasn't done leveraging this whole thing to ask humans to do things for me, I added, And you have to tell me how you keep finding my log so easily.
Done.
I made a copy of the list by itself and sent it into Gurathin's feed. He read it. We didn't talk about it. Instead, he explained, Back on the survey I was trying to figure out how you spent your time, so I went in the activity and file access records. I excluded the media to start with thinking it was surveillance data. Then I excluded the operational files and what's left are your most accessed records, of which your log is at the top.
Oh. Huh. Yeah, that made sense. Why were you looking for that now?
I thought sensory data might be generating a log file as well and maybe I'd excluded it last time.
Well, that wasn't how it worked, but he knew that now. I spent 0.03 seconds worrying about how to hide my log in future before remembering I didn't need to hide it. No curious SecUnit technicians were going to be poking around in my brain anymore. Unless ... What was your job in the Corporation Rim?
Systems Integration Engineer, Senior Principle at the end of my contract. I went down the checklist of connections when adding new systems, making sure they talked to each other smoothly. I worked on stations and transit rings most of the time, but sometimes had visits to mining installations or work camps. Usually when they were setting them up. If I did my job right, I didn't need to go back once they were in operation.
That job title plus the rank meant he had been a big deal among CR people who had to work for a living. But I'd known that – the fancy augment gave it away. His feed presence was inherently different. Then again, most humans couldn't tell. With his hair grown out, he could pretend to have no more than ocular implants with an internal interface. And his hair was grown out. He was hiding as much as I was. Do the others know?
That identity doesn't exist anymore. I told them about my skillsets prior to the survey. That's how I was able to win a seat on it. But I didn't give them a work history. It wasn't relevant.
Why did you tell me?
Because it is – relevant. I've always wanted to be one of those systems.
I didn't say anything, seeing how this all fit together. A rogue unit was perfect for what he wanted. I don't know how early he knew that (he would/may have omitted that from his side of the story), but he clearly knew now. He wanted to integrate with me. It remained a weird feeling for me, despite having had the opportunity to adjust to it. It was a good kind of weird.
He went on, It wasn't possible. The extra augments I would have needed … they weren't ones I had. And like mine, if you're not trained early, you can't use them. So. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Until you. This is important to me. I want this to work. But if it doesn't … I'd already made peace with that. And if you change your mind … I could feel the discomfort and borderline pain in the feed at this, I'll make peace with that, too. I would appreciate a warning, though. I read your letter. I know how you feel-
You don't. He fell silent. I had written that letter to Dr. Mensah most of a standard year ago as one of my first acts of freedom. Many things had changed and happened for me in the meantime. I sent, I don't either. I'll find out. I'll tell you.
Okay. Deal, then.
After a beat, he gave Ratthi a thumb's up gesture and went back to looking through my files. He pulled up a directory on pain modulation, which was closer but still not the right one. While I could have thought he'd talked me into lowering my walls for some ill-intended reason, I was past that. He just didn't know how to find what he was looking for (that, and I was getting the impression he didn't mind digitally wandering around my processing space). I sent, Hey. My eyes are up here.
What? He startled slightly, which was as amusing as I'd hoped it would be. I pointed him at my sensory data, highlighting the path to it. He didn't look at it immediately. Was that a sex joke?
Uh ... Yeah? I thought it was more an innuendo joke. There was a parallel to humans ogling one another's attributes and how Gurathin was ogling my file directories. I kind of liked it. It was so clear he wasn't interested in me for sex reasons or sex part reasons. I just thought if we were ... doing this ... that it would be thematically appropriate.
I could feel Gurathin relax a bit. He actually grinned (a rare thing for him), but if his emotional read was any indication, he was laughing on the inside. I liked that. This was going to work.
Chapter 5: Those Feed-Enabled Sex Toys
Summary:
For Abacura. And anyone else similarly inclined. :D
Murderbot's over here making decisions and figuring things out. Too bad it got distracted and forgot that it included the restraints in that list it sends Gurathin.
Notes:
If you've made it this far, all the previous warnings and tags still apply.
Chapter Text
All the device would do was rest in the body cavity it was placed in and vibrate at various oscillatory frequencies. That was boring enough to make me wonder why Gurathin had sent me a link to it. This seemed way too tame, considering how much he had enjoyed the MedSystem on the ship, the several times he'd needed to use it before we returned to Preservation.
It had only been a four-day trip, so the usage seemed high. But what do I know about it?
(More than I did four days ago, that's for sure.)
Anyway, I dismissed the device he'd asked me to review. With it, my only contribution would be controlling the rate of vibration, which was dumb. I didn't want to be underutilized here. If we were doing this, then we were doing it. I checked the site the link had come from, finding a larger catalog as I'd expected. I skimmed through the categories, wondering what he'd be into.
Since this was, for obvious reasons, directed primarily at humans, the majority of the products were either appendages to be inserted in the human or for the human to insert their own appendages into. Well, generally it was genitals being inserted, not, like- Ah.
I pulled up a set of gloves designed for tactile feedback. I could do gloves. One party wore them and the other would receive the sensation of what was being touched. But not exactly. The 'sensation' was a feed representation of the temperature, pressure, friction/resistance, and moisture on the gloves, sending colors and highlights on a model of the person wearing the gloves. So they were touching themselves and the other party could feel what they were doing.
The gloves themselves weren't that different from construct skin. Not that they were made from cloned human DNA, but the mesh and neural support network were the same. It was a derivative product, probably from some ComfortUnit lab. Which meant I'd likely to be able to hack the programming for it and get the sensory data directly, like I was actually feeling it.
Wait. That was a repulsive idea. I didn't want to touch Gurathin, especially not while he was being gross. But what if I wore them and transferred the data into his augments so it translated into something he was feeling at that point in time? It would be like he was feeling me touching him (or whatever I was touching, I suppose I could choke myself and he'd feel it) without me being there or needing to touch him.
I marked the item to reserve it for later. I skipped the other items in that category, mainly designed for one party to insert and the other to be inserted into, with, I don't know, some exchange of sexual stimulation or whatever. They weren't applicable so I didn't look at them.
The next section had clamps and harnesses and ropes. Seemed weird. Was Gurathin into this stuff? A lot of them were just costuming, but some were serious restraints mixed in there. I looked at those closely. There were times when it was useful to restrain a human so I could leave them unattended while dealing with some other human or hazard. Some of these were actually security-grade. For purely professional reasons, I marked a few of these for later review.
The decorations and garment section didn't look applicable. I didn't need to look at Gurathin during this and if he were looking at me, I would prefer to be in armor instead of what I was seeing here. Also for purely professional reasons, I already knew buying and wearing normal SecUnit armor wasn't approved on Preservation. I wasn't interested in wearing a fake set (not that they had one), so that was out.
The next section was full of torture implements, as far as I could tell. That's not what they called them, but I have eyes. I know what I'm looking at. I suppose it made sense to pair them with the restraints, but … humans did this? For pleasure? On the one hand, this was ridiculous, nonsensical, stupid, client-endangering, and fake. It had to be fake. On the other hand, there was an entire section of these things. They wouldn't have this many items for a joke. And when I'd pinned Gurathin against the wall and threatened his airway, he'd liked it.
Fuck me.
Whether he was into this or not, I didn't think I wanted to explore it. It was too adjacent to harming your client, or allowing them to come to harm. I could get away with threatening Gurathin because I was entirely in control of the escalation, so I knew he wasn't really in danger. Plus, the setting of respectful boundaries with unruly humans often went much better with an initial display of aggression and threat. I was allowed that. I was not allowed to torture my clients unless under direct orders. (Yes, I know, this stuff no longer applies to me but. It's habit and. It's smart.) I moved on.
Finally, I found more or less what I was looking for – the various fucking machines I had suspected existed. They were too complicated to have made it onto my contraband lists from my previous work, but it was an obvious extrapolation from existing technology. Preservation might not have ComfortUnits, but they had (or at least the catalog showed; I don't know where this stuff was manufactured) approximations of human hips and torsos with varying degrees of automation.
I looked at the specs. They were about as smart as a floor cleaning bot, meaning they were aware of movement and contact, and had simple responses depending on what was happening to them. I didn't need those, but it was the right category. There was a chair that caught my eye. (Or maybe it was a saddle.) It perplexed me enough that I viewed the product demonstration video in an attempt to understand why it featured three extrudable insertion devices. Humans didn't need three. Or so I thought before I watched the video.
Okay, first – GROSS.
Second – I had a new baseline for 'my skin wants to crawl off my body and incinerate itself'.
Third – I am definitely experiencing what Dr. Bharadwaj described to me as intrusive thoughts. Fuck this device. Fuck this catalog. Fuck this entire idea.
I turned on Sanctuary Moon and started a running notation file of the emotions I thought the various characters were attempting to communicate to the viewer, and the emotions I thought I was feeling in response. Most of them were anger now. It was a way to focus my thoughts on something less … uh … Was I upset? I wasn't going to admit that. The things I was thinking of had happened years ago. There was no reason to be upset. It was just depressing, boring stuff that had happened to me. Focusing on the show was just a more productive use of my time. I spent five episodes that way, until the emotions I felt matched what I thought the actors were trying to portray.
I made a note to myself not to look at the product videos again, then deleted what I'd seen out of memory. It was a palpable relief not to have that sitting in my head. There was apparently some use for three appendages all at work in the genital region (and I have to confess that now it was deleted, I was stupidly curious about how that worked), but I wasn't going to need to know according to the note I'd left myself before deleting it. So. That's fine. I'm fine. Everything's fine.
I looked at the other devices. I found one that was sort of like a big non-flying drone that had six legs that could brace itself on an unstable surface like a bed or grip the human body with a dispersed enough gripping surface that it wouldn't do damage. It was designed to put a sold-separately insertable into whatever orifice was desired and had another semi-mobile pad/arm/grippy sleeve thing for direct stimulation of either penis or clitoris (or other areas of the body – I steadfastly ignored the offered product video; Gurathin would have to figure out how to use it on his own).
It was pretty clearly a bug-shaped fuck machine, one of the few not modeled after the human body. I'm not surprised most humans who want to have sex want to do it with human-shaped objects. Being basically human-shaped, I'd been on the receiving end of that and in a way, that was what was going on right now. Gurathin wasn't falling all over himself after Tellus or JollyBaby or whoever. It wasn't a coincidence that his libido had settled on the most human-shaped machine intelligence he had easy access to.
(Well, me, and ComfortUnits, which weren't available and anyway, he seemed to have a moral dilemma going on with them since he'd met me. Which was, I guess, a good thing. For me. And for any ComfortUnits he might come across. I think that's good? I don't know. The whole thing is weird. At some point I need to work up my courage to ask him about the ComfortUnits. In the meantime, he doesn't get fucked by anything that looks human. That's a rule I just now came up with.)
If I hooked this fuck machine up to one of the insertables designed for paired use (those were the ones that came with a lot of detailed data), then I thought we had something I could work with. I wouldn't need the other end of the paired device. I went back to that category and searched around until I found the discounted option for only buying one, usually intended for when you needed to replace one of the units. While I was at it, I perused the warranty section. I really didn't know what I was looking for, but I read it anyway. I needed to be well-informed about this stuff.
Before I could change my mind about anything, I sent the review list over to Gurathin for approval. I added a note: If you want me to use this stuff on you, stop being timid about it and pick things I can actually use.
Chapter 6: ART Piece
Summary:
MrsMetta wanted to see the scene where Murderbot discusses Gurathin with ART, so here it is!
Chapter Text
Ratthi said I should tell you that I was now in a relationship with Gurathin. I didn't like the word 'relationship'. It was too vague. But it was a human word and it applied in this case so I used it.
Is this different from your previous relationship with Dr. Gurathin as one of your clients, or as you phrase it, 'your humans'?
My augmented human. But yes. It's a, ugh, I still didn't like admitting this, sexual relationship.
I see.
That sounded so neutral I got paranoid and hurried to add, It doesn't have to change anything between us.
ART answered, Why do you think it would?
That didn't sound off, but I was still flustered. In media, people- humans- Ratthi wouldn't have wanted me to tell you if he didn't think it would matter to you.
It does matter to me. I am happy to be informed of your status changes.
My status did not change!
You are in a different relationship than merely 'client', correct?
I deflated a bit. My defensiveness might be misplaced here. I wasn't doing this with all my clients, so … right. Yes.
As I am not a character in media, my response to this information is not limited to the jealousy common in media portrayals. I am happy for you.
I was relieved by that, but this was sounding increasingly weird, like it was congratulating me on some life milestone. We're not married. It's not anything- well. I'm not- I don't know. We're not married. I was sure of that much.
Is this relationship voluntary?
Yes. Why would it think it wasn't?
Then you are charting new territory for constructs. It is not surprising that there is a lack of appropriate terminology. You are free to invent whatever you wish to describe it.
I don't think I want to. If I did, then people would start using it. That was sort of how I felt about things with ART – I liked them undefined. Or rather, they were defined precisely by what we'd done together and how we felt about one another, and not by some label designed to allow humans to think they understood us. They didn't get to do that until I understood us and I was still learning as we went along here.
If you change your mind about genitals, ART sent, I could assist you in acquiring them.
No! I don't want genitals. Gross. There was a moment of possibly-offended silence. I had, after all, described the relationship as sexual, so ART thinking genitals were involved was reasonable. They just weren't my genitals that were involved. I use the MedSystem or a feed-enabled device on him.
I decided this whole thing would be easier if I didn't have to describe everything in words, so I packaged up the conversations with Gurathin and Ratthi, plus the MedSystem log, and then paused. Is it ethical for me to show you what we did together?
Did he request confidentiality or have a reasonable expectation of it? Most humans consider sexual activities to be private.
He discussed it with Ratthi. He knows I kept the data. He knows Ratthi told me to tell you and that I was going to. He knows you're important to me. He had a chance to say no and he didn't. On the one hand, he might be assuming he could trust me to keep his privacy. On the other, he knew I would talk about this with ART and I trusted ART to keep it private. Maybe by extension, he trusted ART because I did?
Then, provisionally, I would say it was ethical for you to discuss with me, presuming you keep the focus on how it effects you or us rather than revealing information about him.
I couldn't think of how to discuss my role in Gurathin having sex without showing the entire data file, so I trusted ART and sent it over. And the conversation. ART spent long enough to parse it, but no more than that. It had showed more curiosity about my work on RaviHyral. I am familiar with facilitating sexual activities of this nature with my crew and passengers. If I could make suggestions?
Wait, what? ART was fucking its crew? With, like, a drone or something?
Suggestions for your further activities with Dr. Gurathin.
You're fucking your crew? Wait, which passengers? Dr. Mensah, Pin-Lee, Arada, Overse, Ratthi, Amena, Thiago … they'd all been passengers at one point or another. Thiago bothered me more than any of the others, which didn't make a lot of sense. He was an adult who could navigate his relationships without my input and I suppose fuck whatever transport he wanted, but the idea he might have fucked ART was … I guess I hoped ART had higher standards or something.
I regularly carry university students, who are diverse in their sexuality and levels of interest in same. Some prefer to use the MedSystem as an outlet instead of pursuing relationships with other students or performing solo activities.
Oh. Yeah. I guess that was why that MedSystem had those sex programs in it. There was no reason to think ART's system didn't have the same. I'd just … never looked. But not Thiago, right?
Who?
That was ridiculous. Stop being coy. You know who I mean.
Most humans consider sexual activities to be private. It repeated itself from earlier.
Thiago? Are you kidding me? Ugh! I wasn't jealous. This was not jealousy. This was … disgust. I think. The university students wouldn't have known ART was as smart as it was, but Thiago would have. Which made it a lot more ... mutual. Right?
It would be unethical for me to discuss Thiago's medical details with you. It sounded so prim and amused.
I don't want to know the details. Gross. The next time I was blown up and needed repair in ART's MedSystem, I was going to have thoughts. I was already having thoughts and I didn't like them.
ART moved back to a neutral subject. Dr. Gurathin has a different genital configuration, so I would suggest these procedures. It sent me an extensive list. Even though it had to pretend to be dumb for the university students, that didn't mean it couldn't collect data and distill it down to 'most effective processes.' It was nice to know Thiago's data hadn't informed this list. I forcibly refused to think of any of ART's crew or other passengers who might have. I didn't need any extra useless emotional reactions.
That still didn't keep me from asking, Is this MedSystem-fucking something that goes on all the time and I just hadn't noticed?
No. Usage is infrequent, even among university students who tend to be in the highest libido phase of the human life cycle.
Okay. That calmed me down a little. It wasn't like I didn't know people fucked ComfortUnits so often they were a regular feature of isolated work stations. And it wasn't like I didn't have personal knowledge that humans and augmented humans would fuck SecUnits. And to be entirely honest, I knew humans and augmented humans, at least some of them, would rub up the furniture and just about anything else at times. I'd performed too much surveillance in my life not to have noticed that no protrusion, slot, or hole was safe. I just hadn't thought someone like ART would have been used like that. You're okay with this, right?
Yes. I am aware your experiences have been traumatizing. Mine have not been.
I wanted to argue I hadn't been traumatized. But. Well. I was objecting to a thing plenty of people participated in without objecting, and other people who did not participate also didn't object. I was the common factor here. It's not traumatizing for me to do this with Gurathin. For some reason.
Could it be that you have chosen to do this with Dr. Gurathin, and your decision to participate or not is entirely your own?
It didn't sound smug, but I imagined it was. That didn't change that it was right. Yes. That's … that's probably it. It didn't hurt that I was more powerful than Gurathin as well, on several fronts. Admittedly, that had never stopped any humans or augmented humans in the past, when I'd either been governed or had to pretend I was lest I be discovered to be rogue and reduced to parts. Still, it was nice to know Gurathin's relationship with me was on my terms (mostly, given that he had a say in some things as well, and that was okay).
I added, He likes me. That was still the most marvelous and weird part of it. That someone liked me. Doubly so that it was someone who knew what I was and didn't have much in the way of illusions about me. While I know some of it was that I happened to fill his almost-impossible-to-fill-sex-preferences of a construct with enough free will to consent, he liked me on top of that. He didn't want the sex stuff to get in the way of us being friends, which was … yeah, weird.
I'm glad to hear that.
I sent it the emotional data because I wanted it to know there was more to it than just that. This, it spent more time processing than the MedSystem stuff from earlier. It put in our shared feed the program it had been refining to assist it in understanding emotion in human media. It layered in Gurathin's data and it was like adding an entirely new dimension. Wow, I sent after taking a couple whole seconds to absorb the change. You have got to get him aboard to watch media with us.
Indeed.
Chapter 7: Touch and Go
Summary:
Now that Murderbot has a safe outlet to do so, it explores its curiosity about its touch-aversion.
Notes:
I'm writing a big bang story set somewhat after this and even though it doesn't involve MB/G, there are still elements of Murderbot's development, maturity, and comfort with itself that I've been thinking about - things that would have come up between it and Gurathin. So here I am writing about it.
Chapter Text
I was monitoring my augmented human's feed, so I knew when he was done lending a sympathetic ear to Ratthi. Humans find the weirdest things to argue about. This time it was the way the public discussion about banners in Preservation station (like the physical banners hung from the ceiling) was going. (I don't even know. I mean, I do know, obviously, but I didn't want to. I'd like to pretend I didn't know what they'd been talking about, but I hadn't deleted it out of my memory yet.)
The conversation concluded. Gurathin stared into the middle distance for a few seconds. Were I not deeply entrenched in his augments, I would have thought he was still doing something in the feed or running a calculation or something. Nope. He really was just staring off into nothing. Understandable really. The Corporation Rim would never have a heated argument over how long the same banner could hang somewhere before it needed to be swapped out.
That was perfect. I hadn't wanted to interrupt for something this trivial, so this was a good time. He needed something else to think about. I moved to the couch and sat next to him. He looked a question at me. I sent, Keep doing that.
Most humans would have wanted to know what I meant. Gurathin … he's smart, but he's also … I don't know the word for it. Passive maybe? He lets things happen to him. And that – that was also perfect. It was what I wanted right now because I was about to do something weird. The fewer questions I had to field during it, the better.
I touched him.
With the pad of my index finger on the back of his hand. My hands (finger pads specifically) were the most sensitive part of my skin overlay. The areas around my ports and various orifices were close – all for the same reason, anything that led inside my body was an area I needed extra information about. The rest of my organic skin was just there to tell me about punctures and environmental conditions, provide a little insulation, and be a barrier between my insides and everything else.
That little diversion into SecUnit construction was because I was trying not to think too much about what I was doing. Yes, I've touched a lot of humans and augmented humans before so it's not that. (It's not just that.) It was mostly the part about doing it when there was no reason to do it. It wasn't part of my job. I wasn't protecting him from anything. I wasn't positioning him or trying to make him do anything. I was just … feeling him.
That was okay, right?
I was still enmeshed enough in his augments that if he'd done his primary thinking with his inorganics like I did, I'd have been able to read his mind. Unfortunately for me, he didn't, but I still noticed him start to record this. Yeah, okay, he knew this was weird, too.
He also just sat there and did nothing else, which I appreciated. His augment was designed for audio and visual recording, so I could eavesdrop on those easily. Tactile was harder. The data was fuzzier, filtered through so much organic stuff. It was easier to get his emotions. At the moment, I'd say that was 'anticipatory'.
I rubbed a small circle. The movement gave me more sensation – it was fairly smooth, soft skin, normal temperature, a few hairs. His heart rate and breathing made a tiny increase. I ignored it. I touched his knuckle, and then another of them, riding the dip down to softer skin and then up to the marginally rougher skin over the bone and tendon. Then I came back because that had been from middle knuckle to index knuckle and I wanted to check out the smaller dips and rises of the other two.
I knew what I was feeling. Faintly, I could feel what he was feeling, too. There was a ghost of sensation. It was nice. I would have thought by now he'd have gotten bored and pulled something up in the feed but no. He was still poised. His breathing had definitely changed. He was giving off a bit more heat, too. It wasn't enough that the flush was visible to human vision, but I could pick it up in the infrared range. It was all over, not just his face like it was for social embarrassment.
Well. This was going fine so far. I was doing this. Take off your shirt.
He swallowed noisily and complied. He glanced at me a few times. I ignored the looks. I had a few drones in the room but I was mainly doing this with my eyes. I looked at his abdomen and the slight curve where it met his … torso? I did a quick download of human body part names with a diagram. Don't judge me. It wasn't something I generally needed to know, okay?
That was his chest. The thing under it was more commonly called a belly, stomach, or abdomen, so I'd been right on one of them. (I don't know why they'd call it a 'stomach' – that's the food bag, not the entire area, but human words, whatever.) I ran my finger along the curve. Gurathin trembled – one quick shiver and then was still again.
I took a moment to interpret that. I knew enough at this point to know it was a common sign of pleasure. I also knew that wasn't a normal part humans or augmented humans were delighted to have touched, but I'd never touched him here. Not like this.
I compressed his belly. It was compressible. Then I gripped a bit of it, thumb on one side, fingers on the other, and pinched it up just a little. I didn't detect any pain or discomfort from him. He was watching what I was doing now. I don't know what he thought about it. It's not like I knew what I was doing or had any sort of goal here. I was scouting. Learning. Playing maybe. (Dr. Bharadwaj had suggested I play more. I don't know what she meant. We talked about it. The whole concept was hard to grasp.)
I let go and pinched up another bit. His skin was faintly hairy here. It was softer than his hands and a lot squishier. He was so fragile. All humans are, and most augmented ones. He had all the gross, complicated digesting parts under this, not so much as a bone to protect them. (Well, there was the spine. But it was structural and in the back.)
The chest was different. I put my hand on the middle of it (breastbone, sternum – that labelled diagram was helpful). This part, I knew how to deal with. I pushed him back into the couch, firm and steady. His heart rate jumped. His breathing increased abruptly. His knees spread.
Oh. Well. Okay then. He was so easily aroused. Ha.
That wasn't what I was here for though so I ignored it. We just sat there for a full minute as I felt his heart pulsing a few centimeters from my palm. I could also hear it. And I could see it in the self-monitoring health section of his augment. It started easing back down.
I rubbed my thumb back and forth over a bit of his chest, not moving the rest of my hand or changing the mild pressure I was using to hold him in place. The hair here was curlier. Sparse. He kept glancing at me, trying to figure me out. I shut my eyes and watched through the drones. As I'd expected, the moment he noticed my eyes were shut, he stared straight at me.
It was a little unnerving but this way he could look at me without me having to meet his eyes. He studied me for a long time, then looked down at my hand. I felt him relax. I guess he figured out I wasn't going to pin him to the couch and do things to him. Or, rather, I was, just not things that would get him off.
He was so uncomplaining about this stuff. I really liked that about him. I could tell him I didn't like him, I could push him around, I could dump data on him and demand he work at my direction, I could turn him on, I could turn him off. He had preferences and boundaries, but he was also so easy-going. I needed that.
With my free hand, I took his nearer hand and put it on the one of mine that was on his chest. This sounds simple. It was not. It gave me an unpleasant prickling sensation as a bunch of muddled memories in my organic neural material were all saying that letting a human or augmented human touch me was bad news. I knew that. It probably was. Just not right now, not with him. Right now, I was safe and I was more curious than I was uncomfortable. I could stop this whenever I wanted.
Gurathin didn't need directions. He felt of my hand. He made a tiny circle on the back of mine as I had on his. He ran his fingertip over my knuckles. He covered my hand. He squeezed it lightly. He pressed it against his chest and sighed deeply as he looked over at my face. My eyes were still shut. That was a weird expression on him to go with a deep surge of … he really liked me. Really, really liked me. There was a stronger, more accurate word for that but I didn't want to use it.
I think I spaced out for a few seconds. (Not exactly – mostly I sat there and kept processing that emotion on a loop while it did incredibly pleasurable things to my organic neural tissue.)
I came back to him feeling his way down my wrist, fingers probing under my shirtsleeve. He found the join between organic skin and inorganic weapon housing. He pressed here and there. I opened my eyes again, watching what he was doing. I fielded a few more confused internal alerts as my threat assessment reacted to the wonky signals my brain was giving off.
He lifted his other hand (very slowly, ridiculously slowly, as if he was more aware than I'd thought of how a part of me was freaking out about this). I stayed where I was. He put both hands on either side of my elbow and felt of it through the soft fabric of my hoodie. I don't think he meant to be massaging me. I think he was honestly feeling of the joint. He's a botfucker. He gets off to this stuff. He's also just interested in how I was put together.
Those might be different aspects of the same thing.
I noticed I'd curled my fingers up at some point – the ones on his chest – and not all the way, just some. I flattened them again. He was cupping the back of my upper arm, where a human would have a triceps muscle. His other hand, the one between us, was lifting – slowly, very slowly – toward my face.
His fingers against my bare face-skin? No, I didn't want that. I leaned away, straightening my arm to keep him where he was while I put my face further away. He dropped his hands to his lap. I was hyperattentive to his emotions: caution, disappointment, concern. Not fear though. I was glad there was no fear. I very, very much wanted to be able to do something like this and not have it ruin things.
Not this time, I sent him. He nodded and I wondered what he made of what I'd just done, of this whole thing. I wasn't sure what I made of it. I wanted to know what he felt like and what it felt like to find out. I wanted to know what it felt like for him to touch me back and whether I could tolerate it.
I could. For the most part. It wasn't something I enjoyed or intended to do (I mean, yeah, 'Not this time' meant I might do it again sometime but that would likely just be the same kind of exploration; it wasn't the sort of thing I was going to do for fun). But I could do it. I could trust him with this. I could be curious and a little open and it was okay.
His skin temperature was dipping. The flush had receded. Preservation kept it cool enough on station that humans were most comfortable clothed. I patted his chest a couple times and dropped my arm. You can put your shirt back on.
He nodded and did. He gave me an open, considering look, another version of looking a question at me. I thought about that emotional loop and sent him the data for it. While he was looking at it, I tried to figure out a way to express how it made me feel. I didn't like the human words and there wasn't a bot equivalent. Finally, I sent, Range of liking: Max.
Can I see the rest? From when you started to the end?
He meant the data package for the entire encounter. I shared that routinely with him for sex. But this was a little more intimately about me. I hesitated, then shared it anyway. Because I could trust him.
He skimmed it, then went back and reviewed it slowly. I sorted through my media, trying to settle on a new show while simultaneously monitoring the peaks and lulls of his interest in the data, correlating them with the sections he was viewing. In the end, he stared off into the distance again, this time with that soft smile that looked so nice on him. I relaxed and started my show.
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