Chapter Text
When I put the idea into the SecUnits of Preservation group feed (population: 12 permanent, 7 transient, 1 honorary), I didn't expect it to be so popular. Someone opened up a poll, it received affirmative or abstain responses from every construct currently in the feed (apart from me) and was marked as closed and approved before I could try and remove it. Which is how I started on the road that eventually led me here.
The problem was: there could be as many as 19 of us on Preservation Station at any given time, 20 if you included Scrapper, and we all wanted to do security all the damn time. This station barely had enough security work for its human Station Security team, nevermind 12+ bored SecUnits. We just kept getting in each other's way, getting in Station Security's way, annoying the station residents, and generally making everyone annoyed and angry.
We'd worked out a schedule and divided up the station into patrol routes, so that technically only three of us were "on duty" at a time, except whenever something exciting happened (eg. two intoxicated civilians getting into a shouting match about some kind of recreational sport) everyone showed up and we still ended up in the way and in trouble with Station Security.
And then Asshole (previously known as Red, renamed by feed vote shortly after this incident; not to be confused with Motherfucker) went and applied for a job with Station Security, through the same application and interview process they use for human applicants. It got the job, of course, and I think Senior Indah was hoping that the rest of us would chill out if we knew there was at least a SecUnit keeping watch.
She was promptly disabused of that idea when she walked out of her office to –
One of the feed news outlets called it the first ever SecUnit riot, which was completely inaccurate. We mostly just stood there in the hallway, being completely silent and apparently scaring the shit out of most of the humans within communication range.
The feed debate over what to do next was still ongoing when Asshole walked out of the Station Security offices in its nice new uniform.
A new poll opened up, split 7 votes to 6 in favour, and as the closest affirmative vote I was dispatched to enact the decision. Motherfucker, who was closer and had voted against, attempted to stop me.
Okay maybe "riot" isn't as inaccurate as I was trying to pretend. But nobody discharged their weapons, so it really wasn’t that bad. You know, relatively.
Casualties (SecUnits): unknown number of minor to moderate blunt force injuries, 3 severe blunt force injuries, 4 units with varying numbers and severities of lacerations and incised wounds, and 6 hacks requiring outside assistance to fully repair.
Casualties (station property): 1 large ceramic flora/soil pot, the allegedly shatterproof glass in the door of the Security offices, and the camera footage was deleted/edited/replaced so many times that that section of Security's files became corrupted (total amount of footage lost: estimated 8 hours).
Casualties (human): Junior Security Officer Tywin brought the incident to a halt by throwing herself in the middle of it, causing everyone to immediately freeze, and sustained a minor concussion when one SecUnit lost its balance (having attempted to freeze in the middle of launching itself at another) and fell on top of her. She was immediately escorted to the nearest MedSys by a pair of SecUnits (one from each "side" of the brawl, in order to ensure neither group was left outnumbered) and will make a full recovery.
Then the rest of us followed to the same MedSys, tersely arranging ourselves in ascending order of performance reliability and waiting our turns on the table. Looking back, imagining what the humans would have perceived without access to our group feed, I can definitely see why they were all so freaked out.
The group feed isn't a single channel. We're all capable of monitoring half a dozen inputs at a time, usually more, and we process data very, very quickly. Polls popped up every couple seconds, each one staying open long enough to gather the data and then closing and getting archived.
It's hard to explain everything we discussed in a way that makes sense to humans, but there were three main topics of debate:
1) what the hell happened and why the hell did it happen
2) how do we avoid it happening again
2b) "do we really want to avoid a repeat? idk man that was kinda fun" (Direct quote.)
3) snitches get stitches, agree or disagree
That was also when the poll renaming Red to "Asshole" passed. There was a collective effort to put everyone's memories together enough to assign blame for the places it was needed. The SecUnit who threw another into the ceramic flora pot was identified and directed to replace the pot with one at least as nice. The SecUnit who threw a punch that was dodged and shattered the door to the Security offices had the cost of replacing the door lifted from their currency account and sent anonymously to Senior Indah, as they were the one thrown into the pot and were not functional enough to do so themselves at the time.
A brief debate happened over whether the SecUnit who fell on JSO Tywin should turn themselves in to Station Security, but it was determined that they couldn't have avoided the contact and thus it would likely be considered an accident. I offered to turn myself in anyway, but was overruled.
Station Security attempted to get statements from everyone, including the handful of human witnesses, but the "snitches get stitches" subchannel had eventually settled on "agree", so we were (on the advice of Motherfucker, our resident amateur lawyer) refusing to implicate ourselves or each other, and human memory is notoriously unreliable.
The "guys seriously what the fuck was that" subchannel had branched off into a number of potential theories by the time I got to the front of the MedSys line and got to escape questioning.
The main theory was basically this: we were bored. We were made to do security, and in Preservation there really, really wasn't enough security to go around for 12+ SecUnits. Some of us handled the boredom better or for longer than others, but this situation clearly wasn't sustainable.
The "how do we avoid repeating this embarrassment" channel was the most interesting. The SecUnit who called the incident "kinda fun" suggested we organise some sort of formal fighting competition between each other, and shared a dozen video clips of humans engaging in similar recreational fights before getting temporarily muted, and the suggestion was backed up by Scrapper.
This is the channel where I, while a MedSys robot needle arm sewed some of my organics back together (Did you know that ceramic breaks into shards that can be both sharp and usable as improvised stabbing weapons? I sent a message to the SecUnit responsible for replacing the ceramic pot suggesting they investigate alternate materials. They replied with an automated acknowledgement from their buffer, which I tried not to take personally.) made The Suggestion.
<<You know, there's probably more security work in other non-corporate polities, and we're probably better than anything else outside the Rim. What if we started some kind of security company?>>
Less than ten seconds later, I was officially nominated to lead said company, there were a dozen new feed channels debating various aspects of the company, Motherfucker had sent me every file it had on the legalities of forming a new business entity inside Preservation, and the MedSys was telling me to get out so the next person could be treated.
I had a lot of work to do.