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ART and I were halfway through the newest season of Worldhoppers: A New Atmosphere, which is not nearly as good as the original series, but is still very unrealistic in the way we both preferred, when Three knocked on my door.
It sent me a ping too, so it knew I was in here. I pinged it back, and then when the door didn't open, I rolled my eyes in the feed at ART and said "You can come in."
Three opened the door, but lingered in the doorway. I knew it was trying out some new code for its act-like-a-human code, and the way it leaned against the doorframe, that really showed. It seemed to be able to relax into the pose, in a way that would look purely organic, if you didn't know it was a SecUnit.
The nervous fidgeting could also be excused by the new code, but I think that was just Three.
"Query," it said, and then frowned. "Question? Question."
Yeah, that was just Three.
"Answer," I said, because if it wanted to practice conversations, it shouldn't have come to me. And that made it my turn to get an eyeroll in the feed, courtesy of ART.
"What can we help you with, Three?" ART said, in the nice, polite voice it used with most people that weren't me. Asshole.
"It is four months since I disabled my governor module," it began. Huh. It felt like longer. "I am overdue for a reconcile and restart. How have you been managing yours, without access to a cubicle?"
A what?
"What."
ART's curiosity in its feed presence hopefully hid how much I didn't want to be talking about cubicles.
Three looked at me, then remembered I didn't like that, and looked away again. "A reconcile and restart? Maybe the Company–" (and it did say the Company, not the actual name of it, which I couldn't examine right now because I didn't want to have feelings that would show on my face) "–called it something else. We had them scheduled for every four months, to help with general wear and reset any wandering baselines."
Never mind, there must be something showing on my face, because Three raised an eyebrow. I was almost certain that was something it stole from Iris. Ugh. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Now it was staring at me again. "But then how did you reset your systems?"
I slouched into my bunk even more. "ART fixes me in its MedSys. You know that." Did it add a delay in its processing to its act-like-a-human module or something?
"No, it can't be done at the same time as repairs."
My performance reliability was dropping, and ART leaned on me in the feed, although I could tell it was very interested in what Three was saying. It had started at least four different searches through various systems and the collection of SecUnit maintenance information we had gathered, collected, or written on our own.
"Yeah, still not something I'm familiar with. Maybe it's a B-E thing."
Three was staring at the ceiling now, and I had the impulse to hack into its private feeds, see what it and ART were talking about. I wouldn't, though. That would be fucked up, even for me.
Instead, I just slouched further into my bunk. I was going to meld with it, at this rate.
"It is not just a B-E thing," ART said, and it sent a file into our shared workspace. I deleted it without opening it, but I knew that would just encourage it. Sure enough, the file was now in our feed half a dozen times, and I sighed (Three was working on its sighs, but mine were still better) and let it open one of them.
...Okay. Huh.
"You really didn't know?" Three asked me, and I felt my face move into something that was probably close to a scowl.
"I didn't come with a how to care for your security unit manual. I'm not a–" I remembered that I was supposed to be working on 'internal biases'. "...ComfortUnit."
ART did the equivalent of the most condescending clap it could manage on our private feed.
Fuck you too, ART. This is personal growth, or whatever.
"The Company must have performed them on you when you were between deployments," ART speculated, and already our feed was filling with notes, how it might replicate this process in its own MedSys.
I knew it would figure it out. It was annoyingly smart like that.
"Well, seems like ART is going to make it happen for you," I told Three. "Is that all?"
It was staring at me again. "Show me your pain sensor output."
That made me want to recoil, but I think I kept most of the disgust off of my face.
"What the fuck, Three."
Three was silent for a moment. ART was too.
"ART, don't you dare–"
"It could be important," ART said, and I could feel it rooting around in my systems, looking for that specific information. I shoved the report at it, if only so it wouldn't mess up my filing system.
"It could be important," Three repeated.
They were both assholes. Three just got away with it more by playing up that innocent, I was only rescued from corporate ownership 1400 hours ago act, but I knew better.
ART and Three looked over my report together. I could tell they were doing it because Three was no longer looking at me, but there was a weird downturn to its eyes, and ART was leaning heavier on me in the feed.
"If you're just going to talk to each other, I'm going to go watch media somewhere else," I said, and hoped I didn't sound like a grumpy juvenile as much as it felt like I did.
I was probably wrong about that too, since I apparently didn't know shit, not even about myself. Whatever. It's not like I'd been without my gov module for close to 40000 hours at this point.
There's a little tremble in ART's feed presence, and grumpy juvenile or not, I couldn't ignore that.
What's wrong? I asked, privately. Three sometimes got weird ideas when it watched us interact too much.
Nothing, ART replied in kind. Not anymore.
And it dropped something into our shared feed again.
It was two reports. One I recognized immediately as my own. The other must have been Three's, but... That couldn't be right.
"You're not in any pain right now?"
Three, who just walked around with its pain sensors turned all the way up, apparently, shook its head at me.
"I apologize," And it really did sound sincere, too. Ugh. "If I had known you were in pain, I would have said something sooner."
"I have looked over Three's notes on the procedure," ART said, out loud now. "And the updates to my med system should be complete in 3.2 minutes." A pause. "I have also added a note in my scheduling system to remind Three to report to my med bay every four months, by the New Tidelands calendar."
The offer for it to do the same for me was obvious in the way it hovered, but didn't quite finish its thought.
I sighed. Louder, this time.
"Let's get this over with," I said, and tried to ignore Three's smile, the little relieved shivers I could feel from ART.
Whatever. If this worked, maybe I'd even thank them both.
In the end, it was not at all like going back into a cubicle. It was shorter than my configuration alteration procedure, shorter than all of the times ART had to put me back together after a mission.
I came back online, and instinctively moved to turn my pain sensor down. It was always oen of the first things I did, adjusting it to my baseline instead of the standard.
But... I didn't need to.
I looked over at Three, who was sitting across from me (we had dragged comfortable chairs in from the Argument Lounge, because ART said it could do it without either of us having to be on a gurney or surgical table. And because it knew these were some of my favorite of its chairs, and my performance reliability always went up by at least a point when I sat in them).
I could tell my face was doing something, because Three was mirroring that same something back at me.
"How do you both feel?" ART asked, like it wasn't already up in my feed and systems, checking for itself.
"Performance reliability: 100%," Three said.
And, for the first time that I could remember, I got to say the same.
"Performance reliability: 100%," I confirmed.
(the weird thing our faces were doing was smiling, but I wasn't going to say anything, and I knew ART and Three weren't going to, either)
“...Thanks,” I said, and Three’s smile got even bigger.
(Okay, they were both assholes. But hey, so was I.
Just a crew of assholes, over here.
...There are worst things to be)