Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

The court cases had taken a while (or so I’ve heard – I wasn’t actually in Preservation yet when that all happened) but constructs were now fully independent, legal citizens capable of signing contracts and everything else. That didn’t mean I was used to it.

Judging from the look on the human solicitor’s face, he wasn’t used to it either. Motherfucker, sitting there with a (figuratively) shit-eating grin on its face, was enjoying itself too much to be uncomfortable.

“It’s like programming, but for human society,” it told me once, downloading law textbooks with an inappropriate amount of glee. “If you know the exact rules and never technically break them, you can get away with almost anything! It’s like finding loopholes around stupid client instructions, except without getting your brain toasted!”

Completely unrelated (tone indicator: sarcasm), Preservation Alliance does not actually have any laws preventing you from naming yourself “Motherfucker”.

“This seems to be all in order,” the solicitor says, after the eon that humans take to process information. “There’s just a few more things…”

Apparently even a SecUnit’s processing capability and memory can’t beat a trained human at navigating Preservation law. I don’t know if it’s any more or less complicated than CR law, but in spite of the massive document file Motherfucker and I brought with us, we were still in the solicitor’s office for hours before it’s all finally completed.

There were decisions to be made, more of them (and more important) than I’ve ever made at once, but fortunately the group feed had anticipated a lot of this well in advance and had already come to consensus about most of it.

We’re going to be calling it United Security Cooperative, UnitSec for short. That was Scrapper’s idea: they think they’re funny, and most of the other units seem to agree with them.

We’re going to be a co-op, which apparently involves members each taking partial ownership of the business and voting on things, which honestly isn’t much different from how we currently do things.

There was a brief voting scuffle when it was revealed that we need to have a minimum of three directors, instead of just one, due to some permutation of co-operative business law. I’d already accepted my fate as “the person who has to suck it up and Make The Decision”, but nobody else had prepared and there was nearly thirty seconds of frantically going “not it” and “not you” before the decision was reached.

“K and Unidentified Root Vegetable are on their way here,” I told the solicitor, probably making a Facial Expression. Of all the units.

Finally, finally we were done. I was more than ready to go to my room and lie facedown on the floor while playing feed games. I give myself a lot of handicaps in order to put me on level with the humans playing, and it’s a pretty fun challenge.

Of course, Motherfucker wouldn’t leave me alone. It kept putting more files into the feed, stuff we would need to deal with if we were going to operate in whatever other region of space, and I was trying to project “done” into the feed but it clearly wasn’t getting it, or maybe it just didn’t care.

I closed the feed connection as we reached my room. “I’m done thinking about this. Motherfucker, if you follow me in here –” A legitimate concern, they have done that before. “– I will find another pot and I will use your head to break it.”

Some nearby human made a noise of horror at my use of Motherfucker’s name, which, I forget that’s a swear word sometimes, in the group feed no-one ever reacts to it. Or maybe it was about the threat. I reopen the closed feed connection to share the tone indicator for “half joking”. Motherfucker returns a lightbulb symbol and uses their actual hands to make snapping sounds and also finger guns at me. Then, at least, they turn and walk away.

Five minutes later, I’m in a simulated jungle, using delightfully unrealistic tactics to beat the (thankfully unrealistic) gore out of some hilariously unrealistic aliens. Finally, some good fucking me-time.

I don’t know how long it normally takes for security companies to get contracts, I don’t know how advertising works, and when someone suggested networking I asked if they meant “like, with cables” and I’ve now looked up alternate definitions and that is not what they meant, which explains the face they made.

Various people on Preservation offered to spread the word outside the system, but even with their help things take time.

About two cycles after the legal formation of UnitSec, the vote (functionally limited to once every two hours for our collective sanity) (that’s how long the temporary mute lasts) finally tipped in favour of what K had been calling “SecUnit Fight Club”.

K is the one who discovered that humans – even on Preservation, oddly enough – engage in regulated recreational violence against each other and has been getting regularly muted about it ever since. “K” is short for, depending on who you ask and what mood they’re in, “Killer” or “Kisser”. K is one of (that we know of, so far) two SecUnits with an actual interest in kissing people, and they were the first one to reveal themselves, due to their extremely pale skin and tendency to turn emergency-paint red when the topic is brought up.

(About the other romance-inclined SecUnit: It’s Unidentified Root Vegetable, which is short for “Unidentified Root Vegetable And Also Dirt”. K and U.R.V. attempted to do the romance thing with each other. It lasted less than a cycle and, unlike the SecUnit “riot”, someone did discharge their arm weapon on the station, so no-one (them, me, or Station Security) is happy about both of them being elected directors together.

I bet you thought SecUnits were above such petty bullshit as “being stuck working with two people who used to date and now hate each other and now somehow their problems are your problems”. I fucking wish.

I was the last vote change needed to bring about SecUnit Fight Club, and the moment the poll closed I was dragged into a feed conversation with all the other affirmative votes. I mostly just listened, focusing more on my game (different one this time, more gore but still unrealistic).

K thought we should televise the fight club, like something they shared clips of called “pro wrestling”. Apparently it was more like a soap opera, but with nearly-naked people beating the shit out of each other. K did read the (chat)room eventually, and said that the costumes and personas didn’t have to resemble pro wrestling at all, they just liked the idea of scripted fights with stories.

Scrapper thought that was bullshit that defeated the whole point. It wanted unscripted fights with as few regulations and rules as possible, despite the fact that that would get it flattened in milliseconds.

Scrapper is, or at least was originally, a ComfortUnit. Not an especially large or tough one, either. But before I met it I heard one of the other SecUnits here describe it as “a CombatUnit in a ComfortUnit body” and while that isn’t actually true, it definitely has the thirst for violence that I assume CombatUnits have.

It now describes itself as a DisComfortUnit, having scarred up its organics and modified its inorganics specifically to unsettle and frighten humans. It doesn’t always work, seeing as it’s smaller than most adult humans, but that doesn’t stop it.

Several compromises were suggested, including running two separate fight clubs. Both ideas had merit, but the scripted one, especially if they were going to televise it, would take much more time and effort to set up. That could be done later. For now, we needed to find a way for at least some of us to blow off steam that wouldn’t alarm the humans too much.

We negotiated rules. Scrapper started out wanting no rules, getting angry when the rest of us leaked amusement through the feed, but eventually admitted that it didn’t actually want to be disassembled. So there were rules.

No hacking. No drones. No armour. No firing your arm weapons. No bringing or using additional weapons. Keep your hits to non-vital systems. No choking. When you’re done, tap out. Tap out well before you have an emergency shutdown or you will be (temporarily) banned. No injuries a medsystem couldn’t fix.

We were probably going to have to expand that list. I, at least, could already think of a few strategies that would probably get banned as soon as someone used them, but if I was the first one then maybe –

And the most important rule: no snitching.

Inflicting the level of violence we were planning on another person was illegal, and in Preservation, at least, we were people. But for the same reason nobody got charged with anything after the incident, we weren’t going to get in trouble here as long as nobody. Talked. About the fight club.

The details were hammered out over the next couple days. We located a mostly-empty, unused storage room in the quote-unquote “ass end” of Preservation station, and we swept up the dust and moved all the boxes aside and someone got a recycler to make some kind of grippy padded mat for the floor so nobody would dent the station with their head, or something.

Of course, everyone wanted to go first, but it wasn’t a very big storage room, especially with all of us crowded in to watch, so we really had to go two at a time. The order was resolved with the usual lightning-quick intricate system of negotiations and bargains, which ended up putting me in the third match. Scrapper and K had been granted the first slot without too much complaint, seeing as they’d organised most of this thing, so the rest of us lined up around the walls and they stepped up to the mat.

We agreed that, in the absence of someone tapping out and in the interest of the rest of us getting a turn sometime today, the fight would be “won” when someone was forced off the mat or when someone received three fouls (it didn’t count if the rule wasn’t created until you did it, fortunately, although I suspected if I wanted to use any dirty tricks by the time I got up there, I would have to get pretty creative).

Scrapper was wearing what a female human might have worn to work out, shorts and a secure, practical sort of bra. K was wearing a shiny blue thing that had evidently been copied from one of their pro wrestlers. At least we could delay the inevitable argument over how tough a piece of clothing had to be to count as armour.

I, extremely reluctantly, got elected to referee the match. Someone (probably K) dumped a bunch of regulation manuals for human recreational fighting events into the feed, and I drowned in it for a moment before suggesting that any potential foul plays go up to a vote. We’re constructs, we can think fast and watch the fight without getting distracted by the vote and then I won’t have to make decisions by myself. It was still up to me to trigger a vote though.

Honestly, I expected the fight to go a lot faster and more one-sided than it did. K started out going easy on Scrapper since, you know, ComfortUnit, but after the biting (called foul, voted, and banned before you could say “damn it, I was going to try that”) they started taking it more seriously.

I’ll say this for Scrapper: they are, well, scrappy. They went for K’s eyes (leading to a brief but intense debate that decided the eyes were not under the category of “vital systems”), used their own momentum to throw them around in ways I thought I recognized from some human fighting training, and at one point, spat on them, which made them recoil enough for Scrapper to get loose from a grapple and kick the shit out of one of their ankle joints.

(We couldn’t decide whether to ban spitting. Mostly because Scrapper was the only one of us actually capable of it (I’d rather not think about why, thank you). It seemed kind of unfair to take away one of the few advantages (?) they had against us, but we did make them promise to only do it as a last resort because ew.)

Not that K just took it either, or played like a gentleman (gentleperson? gentlebot? GentleUnit?). Once they recalibrated their assessment of Scrapper’s threat level, they got vicious about it. Scrapper had cut most of their hair off shortly after arriving on Preservation, but sections of it were still long enough to grab, and at one point K picked them up by the hair with one hand, and was only stopped from further violence by a quick foul vote banning hair-pulling from any future matches.

The fight was declared over when K managed, in a moment of slow reaction time from Scrapper, to turn, balance on one leg, and use the other – with the ankle Scrapper had mangled, which must have hurt even with pain sensors turned down – to kick them directly in the chest. Scrapper went flying the way people only do in shows, hitting one of the SecUnits watching. They both crumpled to the ground and K made obnoxious victory noises.

“No injuring or making contact with spectators” was added to the rapidly expanding list of rules. The next bout, thankfully refereed by K, also added “biting yourself still counts as biting, so that’s a foul” as well as “don’t bite yourself, get your hand all gross with fluids, and then chase your opponent around like a human child threatening to get his spit cooties on someone”.

Wilson complained that that rule was overly specific, in which case they should have no trouble not doing it again, right Wilson?

Wilson and its opponent were voted back to the sidelines on the basis that Wilson was getting fluids on the mat and someone needed to escort them to MedSys or at least get a towel to keep them from leaking everywhere.

Just as I stepped forward (I’d started sitting on the floor, but after Scrapper got kicked into that other unit I decided to stand up for easier dodging), Motherfucker pinged my feed.

Motherfucker was not at SecUnit Fight Club. <<Can it wait? I’m kind of busy,>> I sent them, requesting a brief pause before my match. I wanted to put all my focus on the fight.

<<I just got a job request for UnitSec and I want you to look it over,>> they said. I reluctantly stepped away from the mat and gestured for the others to go ahead. In the feed, I saw the roster get shuffled as I was bumped to the very end. <<Also where is everyone? Specifically, where is everyone who voted for SecUnit Fight Club?>>

<<Error: Query not recognized,>> I responded. It sent me a series of unamused humour symbols, and also a copy of a longform feed message from out of system.

I read through it quickly. <<Do some background checking,>> I suggested. <<Make sure they are who they say they are and everything is normal.>>

<<And if it is?>>

<<Then write up a contract and book some transport tickets. We’re going to –>> The pause wasn't noticeable to Motherfucker, I hope, but I did have to check what system the message came from. <<– OutPointSade.>>

There was a pause, as I waited to see if Motherfucker had anything to add. <<So,>> it started, sounding suspiciously excited. <<Who’s going?>>

Chapter Text

The negotiations over who, exactly, got to go on our very first contract were ongoing right up until we boarded the transport. As Motherfucker and I stepped onboard, I heard Wilson make a frustrated noise and turned around to see it get pulled back. In its place, Scrapper stepped up, looking incredibly smug.

I sent a round of pings to the assembled units – half of whom had bags, hoping they’d be able to get in last minute – and went to our cabin.

Ship – the bot pilot was simple but friendly, and the human crew knew what they were doing – was a small passenger transport that made a circuit around a number of non-corporate polities. Plotting out a route to OutPointSade that didn’t cross over into the Corporation Rim was easier than I expected, but I guess non-corporate humans don’t like the CR any more than we do.

In our cabin – there were four bunks, but no indication yet that the fourth would be occupied – I set down the locked case containing most of our equipment and wedged it into a corner. We realised early into the planning process that Motherfucker really had to go, because we were going to be bringing our own weapons (in addition to our arm guns) and armour, and Motherfucker was the only one willing and able to navigate all the legal bullshit that generated.

At some point before the job started, we were going to need access to a recycler that could print projectile weapon ammunition. Not that we’d used much since moving to Preservation, but some kinds of ammunition actually had expiration dates (something about the chemicals involved in making things go bang?), and none of the recyclers on Preservation would print it.

Presumably our clients could arrange that, and they would if they wanted us to be effective. Me especially: most SecUnits’ arm guns are energy-based, but mine fire projectiles. I’d emptied most of my internal magazine in the process of escaping to Preservation, and unloaded the rest about a thousand hours later, when I finally convinced myself I was safe enough. I kept my components in good repair, though.

We had a couple cubicles on Preservation now, all thoroughly hacked, but they weren’t portable enough to bring with us, so we had multiple copies of the program for modifying a MedSys to work on us, and we would share that with our clients just in case.

Motherfucker and Scrapper were having an intense staring contest, presumably accompanied by a feed argument. I just sighed internally, triple-checked that our MedSysMod programs were compatible with Scrapper, and sat down on one of the lower bunks.

“You need to put your weapons in the secure box,” I told Scrapper out loud.

It turned to me, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. “Why do you think I brought extra weapons?” it asked.

“Because you’re smart enough to compensate for not being built with guns in your arms, and dumb enough to try and smuggle weapons through polities where breaking laws will fuck everything up,” Motherfucker said, strolling over to the other lower bunk and throwing itself down on the mattress. There was a small creak of protest from the bunk frame.

“It’s only breaking laws if they catch me.”

“That’s not how that works and you know it.”

Sighing (externally this time), I opened up my feed to try and get things sorted out before we undocked and left the range of Preservation station.

There were nineteen SecUnits who claimed at least part-time residence in the Preservation system, plus a handful of others in our extended network of contacts, plus a slightly lesser number of ComfortUnits (including Scrapper). Shortly after I arrived, I helped establish a shared database where we could all dump our education and training modules, as well as protocol, helpful programs, and any useful data we’d come across.

My experience as administrator of that database was one of the points brought up in the debate/poll where I was nominated to lead (what would end up becoming) UnitSec, but honestly, after a couple dozen cycles (once I’d worked out all the kinks in the tagging system), it really didn’t require any additional effort. Occasionally I’d get a ping requesting clarification on how to tag a new file, or a ping reporting something that had been misfiled, and I’d had to request additional data storage space three times, but other than that it managed itself.

Most of us Units were from different manufacturers, with different makes and models and protocols. Me and some others attempted to standardise communication and data storage protocols a few hundred cycles ago, but with 16 different companies of origin (not including the ComfortUnits, or any of the extended network, or any of the friendly bots we sometimes socialised with) that whole project was a nightmare.

One of the few items in my personal bag for this trip was an external data storage unit, about the size of my palm. The storage units back in my quarters on Preservation (the second time I requested additional storage space from the station resource allocators, they suggested I purchase some of my own – we now have a small shared fund in the group feed for purchasing additional storage, as necessary) were significantly larger, each about the size of an office box, but even a unit of this size held plenty of space for my purposes.

Those purposes being, in order of priority:

1) Modules necessary for completion of this contract, mainly modules ensuring we could all use all of the different equipment we’d brought. The variety in manufacturers and origin companies also affected our equipment, and while Motherfucker and I had been decided fairly quickly, and therefore the locked case contained our gear, we weren’t natively able to use each other’s gear. Also, the third member of our team had been changed so many times that the armour in the case belonged to Unidentified Root Vegetable and the weapon belonged to the SecUnit that called itself Fatiha.

1b) Shit. That armour wasn’t going to fit Scrapper, not even sort of. I pinged U.R.V. with a request to modify its armour at the first suitable recycler, which it granted on the condition it get a new set of replacement armour once we’d come back. It also queried the group feed, and a minute later they’d mocked together a recycler pattern for armour that would fit Scrapper. I downloaded it onto my external storage and copied it into the newly created contract feed (just myself, Motherfucker, and Scrapper) so we could tweak it once we were in the wormhole.

2) Modules likely to be useful for completion of this contract. In other words, the vast majority of the text information (easier to store than images or video) in our collected database, and a significant number of images and videos as well. Language translation modules, data on entities related to the survey group (a noncorporate company/entity called EcoGen), basically anything and everything we might find useful.

3) Entertainment media and feed games. This took up the bulk of the storage, due to the data types. I included Scrapper into the feed where Motherfucker and I were sharing data storage contents (in order to optimise usage of space), and it promptly started deleting duplicate files from its own storage and downloading more from the Preservation feed.

I was also, at the same time as this, in two separate feeds with K and Unidentified Root Vegetable. Two separate feeds because they absolutely refused to be in the same feed as one another. Getting them both to sign the solicitor’s UnitSec paperwork (why do they call it that if there’s no paper involved?) had involved getting them to come in one at a time while the other waited in a nearby hallway, since they were that determined to avoid each other.

<<You two need to get your shit together and keep it together at least until I get back,>> I told them, in pretty much those exact words. <<If you need legal advice, consult the human solicitor, his name is Latif. Do not ask him to mediate your personal arguments, that isn’t his job and he has better ways to spend his time. If you need to make urgent decisions and you can’t agree, put it up to a general vote. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.>>

Scrapper had grumpily stowed their additional weapons – a handheld energy weapon I recognised as someone’s sidearm, a Station Security baton, and a large knife – and relocked the case, then climbed into one of the top bunks as Ship undocked from the station. I heard footsteps in the corridor – two sets, likely human – and we all looked up when the door hissed open.

One of Ship’s crew stepped in, and blinked in surprise at Scrapper. They looked between myself and Motherfucker, before seeming to decide I was the one worth talking to. “I thought there were three of you?”

Scrapper rested their elbows on the edge of the bunk and glared down at the humans (a second human, smaller and more nervous, not crew, had followed the crewmember in). “I’m a SecUnit,” it said.

We don’t have uncontrolled emotional reactions the way humans do. So the snort Motherfucker let out was absolutely intentional.

Scrapper leaned over, facing Motherfucker upside-down. “Now listen here, Motherfucker–”

The humans both flinched slightly, either at the use of Motherfucker’s name or at the venom in Scrapper’s voice.

Motherfucker leaned back in its bunk, putting its hands behind its head and grinning up at Scrapper. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” it said, mimicking something I’d heard from countless exasperated parents on Preservation.

<<Both of you shut up.>> I glared at them, mostly for the benefit of the humans. Then I stood up. Clearly, it would be up to me to do the social interactions. Ugh.

“Hi, welcome to–” Uh. I couldn’t really say ‘Preservation’ since we were currently leaving Preservation. That script was maybe a little iffy. “– um. Hello. My name is Pancake, these two –” I gestured at them in turn, now both sulking on their bunks. “– are Scrapper and Motherfucker. Yes, that’s its legal name. It also answers to MF or Mofo if you’d rather not say it.”

Out of habit, I did a cursory scan of both the crewmember and the new human, and I caught the signals of Motherfucker and Scrapper doing the same, although Scrapper's was a different range, with some overlap but not much. I made a feed note to compare scanner protocols between different units.

No weapons. The crewmember had a feed interface on their ear, a small portable screen in one pocket, and some kind of medical implant in their abdomen.

The new human had nothing. No implants, no devices for connecting to the feed, no data storage units, nothing that sent or received signals or had any digital storage capacity. Not even a feed profile. This was highly unusual. Motherfucker flagged it as suspicious in the contract feed before I could.

"Hi," said the new human, giving a small wave while her other hand clutched the strap of her bag. She was small, and her shoulders were hunched to make her look even smaller. "I'm Liana."

<<She's lying,>> Scrapper said in the feed. <<Her vitals ticked when she said it, that's not her name.>>

I have some capacity to scan for vital signs – useful for digging people out of caved in tunnels, or for hunting down anyone who escaped – but it's not nearly fine enough to detect lies. I noted to specifically talk to Scrapper about that.

<<It's not our business,>> I warned. <<Unless you think she's a threat, don't say a word, not to her or to the crew.>>

<<I wanna know what she's hiding,>> Motherfucker said. <<If she's traveling under fake information, that's super fucking illegal, even outside the CR.>>

"It's nice to meet you, Liana," I said, giving her my best normal person smile and holding out my hand. She shook it briefly, then – glancing between us like we might eat her or something – she climbed up into the last bunk and sat down, hugging her shoulder bag.

The crewmember left to do crew things, and we settled in. It was mostly silent, except for the distant humming of the engine and a small noise I could hear from the bunk above me.

I didn't want to spook the human by getting up to look at her, so I asked the contract feed.

<<What's she doing?>>

<<Reading a book. Like, a paper one.>> It sent me an image, captured from its own eyes, of Liana. She was sitting up, tucked into one corner of her bunk. She hadn't removed her sweater/jacket/thing or her shoes, and she held her bag protectively in her lap. And she was, indeed, reading an actual physical book.

I saw printed books exactly once before coming to Preservation. I got dispatched to an executive's office to deal with the human woman he'd tried to use as a ComfortUnit. It wasn't pleasant, and if I ran into him again now I – Well, if I was human I might say something like "I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire." but I can't say shit like that because I don't piss. 

Anyway, he had a shelf of books in his quarters. They looked shiny and brand new, like he'd bought them and put them on the shelf and never touched them again.

Then I came to Preservation, where they have a library – a wealth of printed books that executive couldn't have even dreamed of, just there for anybody to handle and read and even borrow, if you promised to be careful with them. Those books were worn and faded from generations of use, and it boggled my mind a little. Still does sometimes.

Scrapper sent another picture. Liana had shifted slightly, giving it a split second's view of the spine and back cover. In the Orbit of Destiny . 

It looked… well, I'd seen books in that condition get taken out of circulation at the library on Preservation. The pages were uneven, and some of them were loose, so Liana had to hold it carefully so they wouldn't fall out. The cover looked like it had been torn apart, but it had been carefully repaired with clear tape. And yet, under that, I could see the same fading and cracks of frequent use.

Motherfucker pinged that we didn't have In the Orbit of Destiny in our data archive. We were already out of range of Preservation station, so we wouldn't get a chance to try and find it until we exited the wormhole on the other side.

We'd tried to optimize our route for time, cost efficiency, and "not going near the CR", and ended up we would need to change transports twice before we ended up at OutPointSade.

This was going to be a long trip.

Chapter Text

We got to our first layover point without anyone causing trouble. The human mostly kept to herself, occasionally climbed out of her bunk to go do human things like eat and shower, we occasionally left the room to do SecUnit things like patrol (old programming dies hard, okay). She didn’t ask stupid questions (or talk at all, really), and she seemed extremely nervous around us, but she was nervous around the crew and other passengers too. Some humans are just nervous all the time, I guess. 

Motherfucker sent me a proposal on day two, in a secret, heavily encrypted feed channel to keep it hidden from Scrapper. The contract was technically open about how many units we were sending, the clients would likely be expecting one (three was the smallest number we could manage without creating a sequel to the SecUnit riot), so at the layover point, we could hit Scrapper over the head, stuff them in a box with a breathing mask, and mail them back to Preservation, and then we could do our job without any, and I'm quoting them here, "dead weight".

I told them no, since that was a dick move and seemed obviously illegal to me. Motherfucker sent me an upsettingly large document on trade categories and shipping regulations pertaining to live goods as defined by the layover station, which I did not read, but apparently that would only be illegal on Preservation. I still said no.

I kind of got where Motherfucker was coming from. They're not the only one who's gotten shot in the figurative or literal ass by a "trained" "qualified" human with a weapon they shouldn't have been allowed to carry. And sure, no amount of modules or training could turn Scrapper into a real SecUnit. We were going to have to remember, every time we made a plan or decision, that Scrapper was less durable, less strong, and less equipped than we were.

But they were still a construct, with free will and working with us rather than against us, which meant they were light years better than "dead weight". They actually had slightly more processing power than I did, and while it was optimised for the resource-intensive process known as "interacting socially with humans", it was still more than enough to make a difference.

Not to mention, "not as durable or strong as a SecUnit" still left plenty of room for them to be stronger and more durable than a human. So they didn't have guns in their arms; functionally, until I got the chance to print more ammunition, neither did I. I could maybe threaten someone, if they were gullible enough, but if I needed to shoot something, I was fucked.

I might have taken Motherfucker's proposal a little personally. The remainder of that part of the trip, the contract feed was empty of anything but the bare minimum exchange of information.

It was… uncomfortable. I spent a lot of time playing through a singleplayer campaign of Edgeworlds 3 with most of my less-than-SecUnit-average processing capacity blocked.

My manufacturer believed in taking the time to train our organics, not just loading our storage space up with modules. It has its pros and cons.

So we got to the layover station. We all put our bags on, I hefted the trunk of weaponry, and we disembarked with the rest of the humans.

We were met by a wall of station security personnel, who were facing away from us, holding back a crowd of humans flashing lights at us and yelling.

I hesitated briefly on the ramp, trying to adjust my eyes to deal with the flashing. My eyes were damaged slightly during my escape to Preservation, and the technology is both extremely delicate and extremely proprietary, so without a cubicle from my parent company, I haven't been able to repair them. Most of the time, there's no issue, but I couldn't get the stupid –

Without saying a word, either in the feed or out loud, Motherfucker shared its visual inputs with me, and it took a step back and to one side to get behind me, so I could get a sense of where I was. A beat later, Scrapper shared access to its visual inputs as well, from where it was waiting for us to catch up.

I sent them both a ping of gratitude. Apparently we were just going to carry on like we hadn't spent most of a week ignoring each other.

Through their eyes – we'd brought drones, but they were shut inside a secure box in Motherfucker's bag, for use on the job only, and also we weren't supposed to hack cameras in random stations – I looked at the situation. I'd closed my own eyes while I tried to wrangle them into some useful configuration, which left me with enough input to figure out what the heck was going on.

Most of the flashing came from camera drones, and we all sent amusement sigils of concern when we started identifying the news agency logos.

<<Damn it, I thought we were keeping this stealthy,>> Scrapper hissed.

<<I thought we did,>> I replied. Station security personnel were guiding the human passengers out through the crowd, but I wasn't sure what they had in mind for us. <<You go on ahead, if they assume you're not with us they might assume you're human and let you out into the station with the others.>>

<<And leave us to deal with all this by ourselves?>> Motherfucker demanded.

<<If we end up in a station security holding cell or some bullshit, we might want to have someone on the outside. Especially if we have to escape and want to minimise the chaos.>>

Two affirmative pings, both somewhat reluctant but seeing my point, and Scrapper moved further ahead, reaching the cordon of station security. An officer guided them through the crowd, keeping anyone from getting too close. As they reached an emptier hallway, Scrapper nodded thanks to them and pulled up the hood of its shirt, to better hide their distinctively weird hair and facial scarring.

Motherfucker and I reached the cordon together, neither of us making any particular attempts to appear human – judging by the signs saying things like "Go away war machines!", we'd been made before we ever left the wormhole.

Two station security officers, quickly joined by others as the crowd realised what we were and pivoted focus, guided us into the port authority office and then into some sort of back office room, like an interrogation room but a little nicer. Not as nice as the ones on Preservation though.

I finally opened my eyes again and grimaced. I'd fucked up my vision settings real bad, from how they'd been carefully tuned to compensate for the damage, and when I tried to apply the saved configuration it gave me a slew of company-code error messages. Everything was too bright and the colours were all wrong.

I put down the secure case, sat down on the couch and put my hands over my eyes.

<<Of all the fucking times for this to happen,>> I complained. Motherfucker sat down next to me on the couch. It sat half-turned, so I could see myself and my surroundings through its eyes. It helped my performance reliability a little.

Out in the station hallways, Scrapper started walking, taking turns seemingly at random until it ended up down by the cargo docks. <<I think you're using the wrong map,>> Motherfucker suggested. Huh. I didn't realise they'd shared inputs with each other as well.

<<Go fuck yourself,>> Scrapper snapped.

<<I don't have the anatomy for that and you know it.>>

<<Then go to a recycler, print off a couple – Wait. Shut up. I hear something.>>

Scrapper shared its audio input, in addition to its visual ones, and it definitely sounded like someone was trying to have an argument quietly.

A port authority human entered the room and introduced himself, sitting down in one of the chairs. He had the air of someone who was determined to pretend everything was normal. I let Motherfucker take the lead on that, dividing my attention between Scrapper, cautiously approaching the hushed argument, and unfucking my eyes enough that I could maybe go help if they needed it.

Scrapper peaked around the corner in a dingy hallway junction and saw two humans, very close together, the tall one whispering furiously and gesturing with his hands while the small one pressed their back against the corridor wall and clutched a bag to their chest 

The small human was Liana, from the transport.

Scrapper walked towards them, quickly and quietly, and leaned against the wall, close enough to be a visible threat but out of the tall human’s melee range. As they got closer, we heard a few sentence fragments, which all got stored in permanent memory three times over.

“– being stupid, Tori, you’re walking away from the best thing you could do for us, and –”

“Hey, Liana. Who’s your friend?” Scrapper’s voice was casual, as if there’s nothing unusual going on, but I saw their hands as they put their hood down, and when the tall human looked up he did a double-take at their ragged hairstyle (I think it was called a “hawk”? It really doesn’t look like any bird I’ve ever seen) and scarred face.

“Oh, h– hey, Scrapper!” Liana said, and I’ve gone back and reanalyzed the moment again trying to find an alternate interpretation of her expression, but I stand by what I thought at first: she was relieved. She’d spent most of a week all but hiding from us, including from the self-proclaimed SecUnit who was even shorter than she was (only by a bit, but they passed each other in the doorway once and I confirmed it), and when she saw Scrapper, she relaxed. I’m positive Scrapper noticed it too, with no doubt more accuracy and detail than I could provide.

“Tori,” the tall human started, an edge to his voice, and Liana tensed up again. “Why don’t you introduce me to your friend.”

“Um. Scrapper, this is –” Liana swallowed spasmodically. “This is Dilan. He’s my brother.”

“Hi, Dilan,” Scrapper said, their tone moving slightly away from their casual, friendly first greeting. “I’m Scrapper. I’m from Preservation. You might know us as the non-corporate polity with all the rogue SecUnits.”

Dilan’s eyes narrowed. He could probably tell from Scrapper’s tone that they were trying to make some sort of point, but couldn’t figure out what . “Nice to meet you, Scrapper. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to take my delinquent sister –” He reached for Liana’s shoulder. Scrapper was faster.

Dilan staggered back, clutching his wrist. “You’re not a SecUnit,” he gasped, backpedaling as Scrapper put itself between him and Liana.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Scrapper said. Their voice was sharp – not like a knife or a sword, not a clean, straight edge. It was more sharp like a saw. “Now you’re going to tell me what’s going on here, and you’re gonna be real honest about it.”

Dilan pulled himself up to his full height. "My sister and I are in the process of immigrating to the CR –"

What? Why the fuck would someone do that?

In the office, the port authority human paused whatever he was saying, looking worried. "Are you two alright?" he asked. I, at least, was making a Facial Expression, and from his reaction so was Motherfucker.

"Don't worry about it," said Motherfucker.

"This unit is – ah, fuck," I cut my buffer off with a grimace. I'd managed to get my visual inputs to send coherent images at a resolution only slightly lower than usual, but the colours had managed to get worse. "Experiencing technical issues. Situation normal."

"Don't worry about it," Motherfucker repeated, with extra emphasis. The port authority human kept sending me worried looks, but returned to … Whatever he was doing.

"Why the fuck would you immigrate to the CR?" Scrapper demanded. "Are you a fucking idiot?"

"That's what I said!" Liana said, looking vindicated. Her brother glared at her and she flinched back.

"My point is, she has a contract, and I need to get her back there so she can actually fulfil it," Dilan said through gritted teeth.

At that point, Motherfucker butted in to the conversation.

<<Ask who signed the contract.>>

In the office, the port authority human looked increasingly worried the longer we both stayed silent and motionless. I pulled my focus enough to try and offer some reassurance.

"Apologies for the interruptions. Our colleague is navigating a difficult social situation and we are providing support via the feed."

"Colleague?" he asked, sounding slightly choked. "There's another SecUnit loose on the station?"

"Negative. Colleague is not a SecUnit. Please hold further questions until the situation is resolved."

Then I turned back into the feed and replayed what I missed.

"Who signed her contract?" Scrapper asked.

"I did, as her legal guardian," Dilan answered. "Which–"

"So you sold your little sister into slavery." There was no mistaking the edge to Scrapper's tone this time. "Liana, Tori, whatever your name is, are you legally capable of signing your own contracts?" That sounded like another question from Motherfucker.

"No?" Liana said. "I tried to get emancipated, but–"

"Shut up!"

Liana flinched and went silent.

<<We can't just let her get sold into whatever the fuck," Scrapper said. It was leaking a lot of emotion into the feed, mostly fury.

<<Depending on her home polity, we might be shit out of luck for legal ways to help,>> Motherfucker admitted after a pause almost long enough for a human to notice. <<If we're willing to bend the rules a little–>>

<<We are,>> Scrapper said.

Finally, fucking finally, I managed to get my vision inputs into a usable configuration. No colour at all, now, but I could deal with that.

<<I am prepared to assist with separating the humans. Motherfucker, you need to focus up here and convince the humans not to go looseshit when I get up and leave.>>

<<I don't need your help!>> Scrapper insisted. 

Then it punched Dilan in the dick.

Brilliant.

Chapter Text

<<Alright, I've subdued the target. What comes next? The training modules didn't really say.>>

<<Write the incident report and submit it to SecSystem, then await response from a human supervisor,>> Motherfucker replied, with a note of sarcasm that carried even through the feed.

<<Check the current action code and depending on what it is and the target's value code, either escort the human to a MedSystem, leave them on the floor, break their neck, or shoot them,>> I answered.

There was most of a second of feed silence. Dilan tried to get up. Scrapper sat on him.

<< Query: current action code,>> Scrapper sent.

<< Action code: croissant. Translation: idle, in transit, zero action authorised.>>

<<Hey, Pancake, don't be an asshole,>> Motherfucker said. <<It couldn't have just stood there and let whatever that was happen.>>

<<Yeah, Pancake, don't be an asshole,>> Scrapper said. <<But seriously, what do I do with this guy.>>

I studied the feed map for a moment, then highlighted a small room nearby. <<This restroom is out of service. Trap him in there and leave station maintenance a message on delay so someone will get him out once we're in the wormhole.>>

I made a note in our official contract workspace to avoid passing through this station on our way back to Preservation and possibly ever again.

Once Scrapper had wrangled Dilan into the restroom and bent the door's latching mechanism badly enough they couldn't open it again, it turned to Liana.

"You look like shit. Do you need food or something?"

"No thanks, I'm fine." Liana was immediately betrayed by a growl from her stomach, loud enough I could hear it clearly through Scrapper's audio inputs.

"Let's go get you something to eat."

I backburnered the conversation, although I made sure it was getting recorded. I could see all of Scrapper's human interaction programming at work, getting Liana to relax and open up, maybe enough to explain more about what was going on there.

In the office, the port authority human got up and left, and I rewound the conversation to catch up.

Motherfucker finished negotiating our permits to ship weapons (the ones in the case, and also us) through the station. Or at least the parts of the station directly between here and our next ship. The port authority human suggested that we sit in this office until we were ready to go, for the sake of avoiding any incidents with the media and station inhabitants.

“Are we being detained?” Motherfucker asked.

“No, no, of course not, we–” he chuckled. “I’m not even going to try that. I’m just saying that if you want to avoid another mob, it’ll be a lot easier for us to keep them away if you stay in here. We might need you to move out to the lobby so we can use this room, but otherwise you can just stay here. I’m gonna go do– stuff.”

He paused in the doorway, looking back. “Uh, do SecUnits eat or drink? Or anything like that? If you were humans, I’d offer to get you coffee and something to eat, but…”

“You don’t need to give us anything, thank you,” Motherfucker said. He nodded and left, leaving the door open just a crack.

In the feed, Motherfucker shared a digital receipt showing they'd bought Liana a space travelling with us to the second layover point.

I was having an accumulation of emotions. At some point I was going to have to figure out where they were coming from, but I didn't want to deal with that. So I booted up Edgeworlds 3 again and started a new save file.

I've found that if the game is graphics- or physics-heavy enough, I don't have to limit my computing power all that much to play at a roughly human level. I have less computing power than most SecUnits and a few ComfortUnits, and if I don't pay attention, some games can actually work my processors hard enough to trigger heat warnings.

It's not life-threatening, assuming I stop and let myself cool down, but it's uncomfortable and slightly embarrassing. I'm not sure if SecUnits can be "stupid" exactly, not in the way humans can, but I'm pretty sure that if stupid SecUnits exist, I'm one of them.

Scrapper took Liana to a food court and got her something to eat, and had to remind her multiple times to slow down so she wouldn’t choke.

Something about Liana was causing the emotions. Liana, and Scrapper, and Motherfucker? Ah. I reluctantly paused my game to retrieve the file.

I pulled up the memory of the feed exchange, two days into our journey, when Motherfucker suggested knocking Scrapper into a forced shutdown and stuffing it in a container to mail back to Preservation. It had seemed somewhat out of character at the time, Motherfucker is usually more logical than that, but next to their recent suggestion that we bring a useless human with us to at least the next layover point, their calling Scrapper “dead weight” was – 

I don’t think I have words for this. It’s like when a supervisor punishes their workers harshly for a behaviour and then goes on to do the same behaviour as soon as they think no-one is watching. The only word my organics are giving me is “hypothermic” and I’m nearly positive (87%) that means something else.

Whatever. I finally labelled at least one of my current emotions: I was mad.

I took the memory file and shoved it into the contract feed.

Scrapper froze, mid-sentence in their conversation with Liana, and an emotion bled over from their connection, but not the one I was expecting. I was expecting confusion, hurt, quickly covered up by anger. Instead I caught the distinct impression of what I can only describe as “oh shit, they’ve caught me”.

Then Motherfucker pushed a memory file of its own into the feed, and loading it up revealed a conversation eerily similar to mine, except the roles were reversed – I was the one proposing to mail Scrapper back to Preservation, and Motherfucker was citing laws from at least two different polities explaining how and why we couldn’t, shouldn’t, or wouldn’t do that.

I took a moment to thoroughly scrutinise the file for signs of tampering (all clear), and felt Motherfucker doing the same to mine. Then, without communication between us, we turned our combined digital attention on Scrapper.

<<Dude, what the fuck,>> Motherfucker asked.

Scrapper impersonated us, to each other, to try and get us to leave it behind? No, that doesn't make sense.

<<You were testing us,>> I realized. <<Trying to find out if we really wanted you along or if we were just putting up with you.>>

Scrapper radiated discomfort and guilt into the feed, and characteristically covered it up by lashing out. <<Like you're not thinking the same thing. A network works at the speed of its slowest processor, Pancake.>>

I mostly had not been thinking that. Thanks, Scrapper. <<At least I don't jeopardize the mission by impersonating my teammates. If you're going to call yourself a SecUnit, then fucking act like one.>>

Throughout most of this, Scrapper had been maintaining casual small talk with Liana, but as soon as my words entered the feed, I saw its field of vision move as it abruptly stood up.

"Are you okay?" Liana asked.

Motherfucker shoved into the figurative center of the feed conversation and cut us off from each other. I lost Scrapper's inputs, and when I tried to protest the block, I found out I'd been temporarily muted.

<<Both of you need to shut up and calm down,>> Motherfucker said, feed voice tense and angry. <<Scrapper, if we're going to be working together on a contract, you can't do shit like that. Don't do it again. We're supposed to be part of a team, which means nobody is dead weight.

<<Pancake, don't be a fucking asshole. Yes, Scrapper crossed a line and I'm mad about it too, but ultimately there wasn't any harm done. I realize both of you have insecurities but you've gotta deal with that without putting each other down.>>

There was a long feed silence as the mute timer ticked down, then a longer silence as I tried to put together a reply that didn't have too many Emotions in it.

<<Since when did you get emotional intelligence?>> I muttered.

<<We've got modules for it in the database,>> Motherfucker replied. <<Taking the trauma modules on Preservation also helps.>>

<<You are sickeningly well-adjusted. Go fuck yourself,>> I said. <<I'm gonna play video games until I don't want to beat someone's face in.>>