Work Text:
Gurathin was acting weird. Weirder than usual I mean.
He was normally pretty solitary for a human. Sure, he’d meet the other members of PresAux occasionally for a meal or media night, but most days he’d finish work and go straight home. I could see the way the tension in his shoulders relaxed as soon as his door closed behind him. He was an augmented human that appreciated his solitude. I could relate.
That’s why his behavior now was so strange. He’d started hosting the PresAux crew more often, offering up his space for media nights. He was accepting more meal invitations even when he’d had a long day and would have normally declined with a polite excuse. He was letting Ratthi drag him out to live shows of all kinds: plays, communal media showings, pop-up art displays.
Weirdest of all, he’d started going out for long walks around the station. Cutting into his relaxation time to trace circuitous routes past the areas he visited most frequently. He’d always end these outings at the large viewport near the travel docks, the one that gave visitors the nicest view of the planet below. He’d stand there for minutes at a time, gazing out silently at the stars and the planet like he was trying to memorize their exact placement, before turning to retrace his steps back to his quarters.
He followed this pattern for a couple of months before I noticed anything new.
I’d decided to accept one of Mensah’s invitations to the tea vendor she liked to visit when work slowed down. (She, Gurathin, and Bharadwaj met there semi-regularly and they had eventually convinced me that just holding the little ceramic cup of hot water and enjoying the scent of the freshly-brewed tea could be nice. I still didn’t always come along, but my humans were always delighted when I did and seeing them smile at me gave me a melty emotion that wasn’t terrible.) Bharadwaj had to back out (something about a deadline that I honestly didn’t pay much attention to), but Gurathin was already seated at our usual table when we arrived.
He didn’t seem to notice us enter at first, staring down into his tea like he was lost in thought. I pinged him as Mensah ordered her preferred blend (and mine) at the front counter. His head shot up immediately, scanning through the establishment before finally landing on us. (Another point in the ‘Gurathin being weird’ column. There was only one other group here. It’s not like he had to search through a crowd to find us.) He returned my ping and raised his teacup in greeting once Mensah turned around and started towards his table.
My humans filled the silence with comfortable chatter, neither pushing me to participate but careful to leave the option there if I decided I wanted to speak up. (My humans really were the best humans. Even Gurathin, with his weird asshole behavior, was better than the vast majority of clients I’d had to deal with.)
I’d actually managed to relax a little into the comforting monotony when Gurathin startled suddenly, flinching hard enough for a little bit of tea to slosh out of his cup and onto the table. Threat Assessment spiked, but I couldn’t find anything out of place in any of my drone views. I pinged Gurathin insistently for an explanation at the same time as Mensah half-stood out of her seat in concern. Gurathin waved the both of us off, spots of color high on his cheeks indicating embarrassment as he accepted the cleaning cloth Mensah offered to him by the tea vendor who’d wandered over, clearly used to dealing with spills.
“I apologize for startling the both of you. I’m fine, I promise. I had a meeting scheduled for this time and I must have forgotten to disable the alarm I’d set.”
Mensah’s brow furrowed. “A meeting? Gura, darling, if you were busy you could have told me that today wasn’t good for tea.”
Gurathin gave her one of his quiet smiles. (Was it just me or did it look slightly strained?) “No, Ayda, today was perfect. The meeting was cancelled a few days ago, before you extended the invitation.” He carefully folded and set aside the cloth. (He’d missed a few drops of tea. He was usually much more thorough (thorougher?), but I decided it wasn’t worth bringing up. Humans, even augmented humans, were prone to error and I doubted Mensah would approve of me needling him about this one.)
The two of them exchanged a few more pleasantries as they finished the last of their tea before we all parted ways. I pinged him again as we walked away.
Are you sure you’re okay? You’re acting weird.
I appreciate the concern, SecUnit. I am unharmed, I swear.
Not exactly what I’d asked, but whatever. Good enough. I tapped his feed in acknowledgement and left it at that.
Gurathin didn’t return to his workstation, opting to head directly home from the tea vendor instead. It took him a little bit longer than usual to get there, even though he was following one of the familiar routes he’d spent so much time walking over the last few months.
After that, Gurathin started to gradually pull back on the hobbies he’d picked up. He took far fewer walks and almost never spent time by the big viewport anymore. He’d put away most of the tools he used for tinkering on small machines, shifting his focus to updating software instead of hardware. He’d even stopped attending most of the events Ratthi tried to drag him to, only agreeing to the occasional concert when Ratthi sufficiently broke his resolve down.
It was at one of those concerts when I noticed something was really wrong. The venue was busier than the events Gurathin usually agreed to. Standing room only, from the looks of it. It only took a few minutes for him to get separated from Ratthi in the crowd. Through my drones, I could see it was dim, but not so much that Gurathin should have had any trouble seeing Ratthi a few rows ahead of him. (There were a few benefits to being ridiculously tall for an augmented human, I guess.)
Even so, I could tell Gurathin was growing increasingly anxious from his rising vitals.
What’s wrong? Is there a security threat? Do I need to get you and Ratthi out of there?
I was already outside my quarters, idly patrolling the winding hallways behind the buildings that housed Mensah’s office space, but I turned and started making my way towards the entertainment sector without waiting for an answer.
No, everything’s fine here. I’m just having trouble locating Ratthi. He left his interface at home and it’s too loud here to call out to him without bothering the other attendees.
I tsked out loud and rolled my eyes even though he couldn’t see or hear me.
He’s right in front of you. Three rows forward and two people to the right. How many times do I have to tell you to calibrate your vision augments? Actually, just give me a minute. I’ll do it for you.
Before he could protest, I bullied my way into his systems and tapped into his visual input so I could see how bad he’d let it get.
I promptly walked face-first into the wall of the corridor I was in, missing the way the hall turned at the last moment in my surprise.
Gurathin’s visual input was entirely dark. I cycled through a few settings on his vision augments, but nothing changed. As far as I could tell, Gurathin was currently entirely blind (no wonder he was so stressed when Ratthi left his immediate vicinity) and, judging from his behavior over the last couple of weeks, he probably has been for a little while.
You’re blind.
Thank you, SecUnit, I hadn’t noticed.
Okay, things couldn’t be that dire if he was still being an asshole.
Meet me in your quarters. I need physical access to your augments to run the necessary calibration testing and fix you.
Back in the music venue, Gurathin’s posture had deflated slightly and he’d started slowly making his way to the exit, apologizing in low tones to everyone he bumped on the way there. Once he got out, he leaned against the wall next to the entryway and looked up at the station ceiling with a soft sigh. (Does it count as ‘looking’ if he can’t see? He had his face pointed upwards is what I meant.)
There’s nothing to fix.
Bullshit.
No, I mean it. My vision augments have just reached the end of their lifespan. I’ve known this was coming for months. They’d been getting worse, as I’m sure you’ve noticed with how often you tell me to calibrate them. They fully shut off a few weeks ago at the tea shop. I’m… adjusting. It’s fine.
He didn’t look like he was fine. He looked defeated. It reminded me too much of the expression indentured humans got when they’d accepted that they were going to be worked into the ground and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. I really didn’t like seeing that expression on one of my humans. Especially not when there was still a chance I could do something about it.
Shut up. Maybe you couldn’t fix them, but we both know I’m better at jailbreaking corporate components. Stop arguing with me and just meet me at your quarters.
Gurathin tapped me with a reluctant acknowledgement, but didn’t move from his place against the wall. Frustrated, I pinged him again. Hard. He winced a little and rubbed a hand across his face.
I can’t get there from here.
What.
Luckily, he continued without me having to prompt him again.
I don’t visit this venue very often so I didn’t memorize the path. I was planning on returning to Ratthi’s quarters with him and leaving for my home in the morning.
Looks like an extraction was in the cards for me today after all.
Fine, just stay there. I’m coming to get you.
He started to protest but I just shut our private feed down, cutting him off mid-thought.
It only took me a few more minutes to reach him at a light jog. I pinged him as I got close and reopened our feed, but he still jumped a little when I put a hand on his elbow to lead him away towards the residence sector.
“It’s just me. Come on, I want to get this handled before the new episode of Interstellar Dreams drops in a couple hours.” He grumbled a little bit, but let me guide him back home with minimal complaint.
Once I got him inside, I nudged him unceremoniously onto the couch and ignored his annoyed objections as I dug through his side table until I found one of his hardwires. I waggled the end of it at him before I remembered he couldn’t see me taunting him. Something in my chest tightened in a way I didn’t like.
“Turn your head. I need to plug in the hardwire.”
He frowned, but didn’t fight me on it, turning his head obediently after a second and letting me plug in and flow into his systems.
All in all, it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. I fucked around and poked at different setting for a few minutes until I found the one that ensured a loss of augments function a given period of time after last official Company maintenance. It was explicitly designed to be as close to invisible as possible to the person with the augment installed, hidden behind coding that would be pretty inaccessible if you weren’t willing to risk borking your whole brain while still allowing Company personnel to easily switch the functioning back on once payment was made.
As familiar as I was with Company programming, it was pretty easy to insulate any danger zones with my own processing power while I fussed with the setting until I’d convinced it that Gurathin had, in fact, paid the eye-wateringly large amounts of credits necessary for an extension.
I could tell that it worked (beyond the fact that I had his visual input pulled up while I worked) when Gurathin’s breath abruptly caught in his throat. Through the hardwire, I could feel the wave of awe and relief that rushed through him as his vision returned. His head snapped back around to face me, eyes meeting mine for less than a second before he wrenched his focus to somewhere over my right shoulder. It was long enough for me to be able to see the tears threatening to spill.
“I- thank you. SecUnit, I-”
I cut him off. Too many emotions were being pointed at me.
“I rerouted the problem software, but you should still get those augments replaced. Soon. ART will be docking to pick me up in five cycles. I’ll tell it to account for an additional passenger.”
I turned away from him and, at a loss for what to do, threw Interstellar Dreams up on his display screen. He made a confused sound.
“I decided it would be better for me to watch the new episode here. Your display screen is nicer and I don’t want to get interrupted and have to come all the way back over here if your augments run into any more errors. And if you’re going to be watching the new episode with me, you need to catch up on what’s happening.”
He blinked at me a few times. (I couldn’t exactly blame him. That whole explanation had come out sort of as one long run-on sentence.) Eventually he got one of those tiny smiles and leaned back against his couch cushions more comfortably.
“Sure, I guess I don’t have anything else planned tonight.”
We settled into a comfortable silence and watched media until he fell asleep against the armrest of the couch. It was… not unpleasant. I found myself absentmindedly putting together a list of other serials he might enjoy. I wouldn’t mind doing this again. Preferably without the augment malfunction.