by Martha Wells
Iris said, “No, Dad, this is the SecUnit Peri told us about, the one it was going to bomb the colony over.”
“Bomb the colony?” I said. We were still in the shuttle bay because they couldn’t move me, and I was lying face down, my head propped on my arms, while Thiago, Ratthi, and Kaede rebuilt the organic components in my back. It was a long process and humans kept wandering in and out to watch, but I had my pain sensors tuned down and ART had directly connected an isolation box to my interfaces so I could download my video and audio of TargetContact, and more importantly so ART could play Timestream Defenders Orion for me. ART had also told me that SecUnit 3 had finally figured out that it could walk around wherever it wanted now and was doing that. I thought Iris was confused about when the bombing the colony thing had happened. I said, “That was the distraction so it could retrieve you.”
“No, we were all in that maintenance capsule, the colonists didn’t know where we were,” Matteo said, pausing to make an adjustment to something. “Peri was going to bomb the colony with the armed pathfinders until they gave you up.” They picked up something (I suspect it was something that normally formed a vital part of my insides) and carried it off to show Martyn via the display surface.
I had trouble believing that, but then I barely had the cognition to understand Timestream Defenders Orion right now (which is admittedly a pretty low bar) so maybe I was misunderstanding. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound right.”
ART hadn’t said anything, even to tell me how wrong I was, which was suspicious in itself.
Ratthi said, “Oh no, it was very clear about it. Perihelion, why don’t you confirm what we’re saying to SecUnit?”
ART said, That was Plan A01. I was persuaded that Plan B01, a more complicated but less violent approach, would be more effective.
I said, “So … that whole retrieval with the explosions was for me?” Just for me?
Thiago, with the tone of giving Ratthi a hint that he might want to shut up, said, “Maybe SecUnit is too tired to talk about this now.”
Ratthi was determined. “Why don’t you share the video record with SecUnit, Perihelion? So it will be up to date with everything that happened.”
This was confusing, but Ratthi was right, I wanted to see the video. “I want to see it.”
ART didn’t respond for 2.3 seconds, then it paused Timestream Defenders Orion, and played the security archive of the event.
I was glad I could pretend to be too overwhelmed by being reassembled to respond, because I kind of was overwhelmed. That was ART, and my humans, and humans I had known for maybe five minutes, and a Barish-Estranza SecUnit that 2.0 had randomly found, all cooperating to retrieve me.
I’m going to stop talking for a while now.
* * *
So once the humans had gotten me put back together enough to be stable and to stop my performance reliability from dropping, we had to move my active consciousness into an isolation box so ART could get rid of the contaminated code string. I say “we” but I was mostly just along for the ride.
It would have been lonely in the isolation box except ART kept a part of its consciousness in there with me and we watched the last episode of Timestream Defenders Orion.
After it was over, ART said, That was satisfyingly unrealistic. Almost deliberately so.
I said, I don’t know how they could have managed it accidentally. I’d had time to process everything, and there were parts I didn’t want to talk about yet. (No, I am not talking about Timestream Defenders Orion.) But this part I could say. You and Amena were right, 2.0 was a person. It wasn’t like a baby, but it was a person.
ART reran a section of Timestream Defenders Orion where all the characters got shrunken to 1/25 of their original size. I’ve never had a module on physics, but I don’t think that would work. It was fun to watch, though. ART said, Do you regret my decision to deploy?
No, I told it. I thought without 2.0, ART and I would have ended up connected to targetContact and the humans would be speaking Pre-CR languages and trying to off each other for not believing in the alien hivemind.
ART reran another one of its favorite scenes, this one involving time travel. I said, You told your humans about me.
ART knew exactly what I meant. I told them I helped an escaping SecUnit get to RaviHyral. I didn’t tell them about Tlacey and her employees in the shuttle.
So you lied to them and made me sound … I didn’t know how to put it. Sound like the person Tapan, Maro, and Rami thought I was, and not like what I actually was. You made me sound safe.
My humans are not members of a survey team from a non-corporate polity who have only recently begun to understand how dangerous corporates can be. Our missions are always calculated risks, and my humans must take steps to defend themselves, and occasionally me.
Then it said, I have completed the removal of the contaminated code and started the process to return your consciousness to your body. While that completes, I have a proposal.
I thought it meant that it wanted to watch all of World Hoppers again. Or that it had found a new series. Instead, it said, There is an upcoming mission under discussion where your help would be invaluable.
Uh. I said the first thing that occurred to me, which was I don’t think your humans are going to like that.
I will discuss it with them.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even make a crack about ART’s idea of a discussion and forcing everybody else to do what it wanted.
I didn’t know if I trusted ART’s humans or if I even wanted to try. But no one had ever rescued me before except Dr. Mensah, when she went into the DeltFall habitat after me, and ART had been willing to wipe a colony off a planet for me, and watching the security vid of a group of humans strategizing how best to get me out of there was … a lot, for me, considering the whole reason for me/constructs being created was so I/we could be abandoned in an emergency.
ART said, I know you have difficulty making decisions so you don’t need to give your answer right away.
I do not have difficulty making decisions, ART, you’re full of— I said, but it had already dropped me back in my body. And of course, my performance reliability crashed immediately and I had a forced shutdown.
* * *
When I came out of restart, I was on the platform in Medical. I was back on the feed, with five drones left, including the one retrieved from the space dock, and camera views all over the ship. Martyn, Karime, and Turi were still in Medical isolation in a nearby cabin, but they were on the feed with the other humans. Ratthi and Thiago were in the galley lounge with Seth. Overse was in the engineering pod with Matteo, Tarik, and Kaede, going over the scans of what little was left of the alien remnant from ART’s drive. (Basically ART was going to need help from its University’s decontam team before it could go into a wormhole again, which was not good news. If Barish-Estranza reinforcements showed up, we were in trouble.) Arada was in the control deck with Iris. SecUnit 3 was in the galley lounge, too, lurking in a corner and listening to the humans talk.
Amena … Amena had carried a chair over next to the platform, and was browsing through the Pansystem University catalog in the feed. I said, “I’m back online.”
She smiled. “I’ll warn everybody.”
I sat up. The MedSystem had finished what the humans had started and my performance reliability was up around 98 percent. I was wearing the kind of soft smock thing that injured humans wear, but my drones spotted my clothes, cleaned and recycler-repaired, folded on a gurney. Before I could think about it too much, I said, “ART asked me to join its crew for a mission.”
ART, as usual, was listening, and this was my way of telling it what I was thinking. It was easier telling Amena, for some reason. Maybe because she had somehow managed to put herself in the middle of my and ART’s quote-unquote relationship.
Amena paused her feed and frowned. “For how long?”
“For the duration of the mission.” But I had the feeling that ART me
ant for this to be the first step in a longer … association.
Amena’s forehead indicated suspicion. “Just the one mission? Kind of like asking someone to come stay with your family for the break between the work seasons, to see if they all like each other before you get serious?”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said. I was noticing ART hadn’t jumped in to tell her how wrong she was, and I knew it would have, if she was wrong. So she wasn’t wrong. “But yes, maybe.”
Amena thought it over. “I guess I’m not surprised. How do you feel about it?” My expression must have changed because she rolled her eyes. “Oh sorry, I used the f word there.”
Again, I have no idea why ART likes adolescent humans. “I don’t know,” I told her.
“So … what do you think second mom will say?”
I had no idea. “What do you say?”
She snorted. “I was just getting used to you.” My drone watched her eyeing me. “I don’t think it’s a terrible idea. Except … ART works in the Corporation Rim sometimes, too, right? It’s not all missions out to these lost colonies.”
“That’s a factor.” Though I wondered how often ART’s solo “cargo missions” were actually gathering intelligence in a way no corporation would ever suspect.
Amena didn’t look happy about the idea of me going back to the Corporation Rim. I wasn’t wildly excited about it, either. She said slowly, “I think ART cares a lot about you. You should have heard … the only reason it went ahead and sent your killware to the explorer was because it thought if it didn’t, the only way to get Iris and everybody back was to send you. That sending the killware would mean you wouldn’t have to do something dangerous. Of course, you were already doing something dangerous but we didn’t know that at the time.” She hesitated, and added, “I don’t think it would invite you to come with it if it didn’t think it would be good for you, you know.”
No, I still didn’t know.
* * *
After three more cycles, the rest of the humans were able to leave Medical isolation. The Barish-Estranza crew were sent back via their shuttle to Supervisor Leonide’s supply transport. Nobody tried to hold anybody else hostage, which was unusual for this situation, but then no Barish-Estranza reinforcements had shown up yet.
The supply transport was still repairing its wormhole drive and hanging out within range of us just in case anything else showed up to attack. Also to make sure we didn’t somehow steal the planet out from under them. Which ART and its crew totally intended to still do. If they could manage it. The humans all spent most of their time talking about what to do about the colonists, how to handle decontaminating the colony site, would they/could they move everybody if they had to. ART wouldn’t be there for that part, but its crew would make recommendations about it when the university’s decontam facilities teams arrived.
The one big problem was that because of the alien remnant contamination, Karime said the legal case prepared by the university no longer applied, so they needed help before they could contest Barish-Estranza’s claim. Barish-Estranza had sent a message buoy through the wormhole to their corporate base of operations, and ART had sent one to the University. So we were waiting to see who showed up first.
Also, there was this whole thing where we had a rogue SecUnit aboard who wasn’t me.
It was mostly doing what it had done on the Barish-Estranza explorer, which was to stand around on guard and patrol occasionally. Except ART had made it give up its armor and weapons and I suspect had given it some details about what might happen if it even thought about shooting any projectiles out of its arm.
Amena and Ratthi kept suggesting that I should help it “adjust” whatever that is. I knew if I was in its position, I’d want to be left alone. And if it hadn’t even sat down in a chair voluntarily yet, it probably wasn’t ready to talk.
(I know this sounds suspiciously like a rationale I had come up with to keep from doing something I didn’t want to do anyway, but hey, I can’t help that.)
Then at the end of the third cycle, when most of the humans were sleeping, I noticed it was following me around. I figured that was a sign it wanted to talk. I stopped in an empty corridor, faced the wall, and said, “What?”
It stood there for .6 of a second with the standard neutral-blank expression. Our drones went into a holding pattern, circling above our heads. Then its face relaxed a little and it said, “I saw your files.”
“2.0 told me.”
“The story was incomplete.”
“Because I’m not dead.”
“You continued to perform your duties after you neutralized your governor module.”
“For thirty-five thousand hours.” I suddenly had a bad feeling about this. “You want to go back.”
It hesitated again. “No, I don’t want to. I … won’t. But I don’t know what to do.”
Okay, that was a relief. Just because we’re both rogue SecUnits doesn’t mean we’re going to be friends, but I knew if it went back, it would be dead. I’d hacked my governor module and kept doing my job because I didn’t know what else to do (except you know, a murderous rampage, but murderous rampages are overrated and interfere with one’s ability to keep watching media) but that was different from escaping and then going back. I said, “Because change is terrifying. Choices are terrifying. But having a thing in your head that kills you if you make a mistake is more terrifying.”
It didn’t seem inclined to argue. “Your clients told me I could go with them to Preservation.”
“You can do that. Or not. You don’t have to.”
“They are your clients.”
I said, “You can trust them.”
I’m sure it thought I was delusional. Hey, I thought I was delusional. SecUnit 3 didn’t say anything because what could you say to that in this situation. Or any situation.
Then it said, “The completed portion of the story.” I finally realized it wanted to ask me for it, but its experience at asking for things that weren’t contract-relevant data was nonexistent. “Viewing it would … help me come to a decision.”
I was pretty sure I knew what decision it intended to come to. My files were a how-to manual for fugitive SecUnits. I said, “I’ll excerpt the relevant portions and send them to you.”
It actually looked almost pleased for a second there. It said, “Thank you for that information.”
* * *
In the end, twenty cycles after we had arrived in this system, it was a Preservation ship, an armed station responder, which came through the wormhole.
“They couldn’t possibly have gotten here in this amount of time,” Arada said, after the ship’s ID had been confirmed and the exclamations and arm waving in the galley lounge were over. “Not unless they left only a few hours after we did.”
ART said, They may have. Before I was deleted, I prepared a message buoy, explaining what had happened and asking for assistance, and concealed its existence from targetControlSystem. I set it to jettison automatically when the wormhole drive engaged.
There was more exclaiming. “But why didn’t you tell us?” Amena asked it.
(Yes, Amena is still naive about what a monster ART is.)
ART told her, Because then it would have been harder to force you to do as I wanted.
(Yeah, like that.)
“Can you contact it on comm?” I said. Because I had a feeling who was onboard and if I was right we could save a lot of time and a lot of aggravation. And by that I mean me being aggravated while humans talk to each other for an unnecessarily long amount of time.
Seth gave me a thoughtful look. “We can. Peri?”
Are they likely to deploy malware? ART asked.
“You’re not funny,” I told it.
Once ART secured a comm connection with the Preservation responder, I said, “This is SecUnit. Is Dr. Mensah aboard?”
There was only a four second pause. Then Mensah’s voice said, “SecUnit, I’m here.”
Amena bounced imp
atiently but I tapped her feed to wait. I said, “Coldstone, song, harvest.”
“Acknowledged,” Mensah said immediately, sounding relieved. “Now will someone tell me what the hell happened?”
Arada hastily took over. Seth asked me, “That was a stand down code, I take it?”
Amena made an exasperated noise. “You have a special code with second mom.”
It was actually stand down, clear, and no casualties. I just said, “Yes.” Now I’d have to change it.
Between Arada and the others on the comm, by the time the responder reached ART all the pesky questions about kidnapping and trying to blow up Preservation survey facilities had been resolved.
By this point, Thiago had convinced Seth and Iris to tell Mensah about ART’s actual mission. I think Mensah on the comm being all persuasive and reasonable had something to do with it. Plus along with the responder’s crew and a security team from the station, Pin-Lee had come with Mensah. Since ART’s crew needed someone who was good with Corporation Rim contract negotiation, the idea of an alliance with Preservation was looking better and better. Whatever, the humans worked it out while I watched Sanctuary Moon. ART watched with me for some of the episodes but the idea of Dr. Mensah coming aboard made it weirdly excited and it had its drones clean its whole interior again and was doing things like yelling at Turi to put their laundry in the recycler.
The responder pulled up to ART’s module dock, and Mensah came aboard with Pin-Lee, and there was a lot of noisy greetings and hugging and exclamations and introductions. There was a lot of talking to me, with Pin-Lee asking me if I was all right, and Mensah thanking me for trying to get Amena off the baseship. Seth, as the captain, formally introduced them both to ART. He told them, “We normally aren’t able to do this, since Perihelion’s existence as anything other than a bot pilot has to be kept secret in the Corporation Rim.”
