Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This was a real predicament. The final supply order had been cancelled due to lack of funds. The humans still had enough food for full rations for a few days, but panic was already a problem. When word got out that DysProTech’s funds had been frozen by bankruptcy proceedings, the employees started to gather in the large concourse that was bounded on one side by the Gate. Some of the humans were shouting, others were trying to calm frayed nerves and come up with a plan. Worker #82’s stated opinion was that “everything will be fine, DysProTech won’t let us starve.” Everyone disagreed so strongly I thought I might need to intervene on their behalf, but some of the more level-headed humans stepped in.

I stood to the left of the Gate in SecUnit-neutral, faceplate opaqued, hoping they would ignore me. They were usually a peaceful group, but there was just one of me, and 43 of them were here in this foyer. I was the only SecUnit remaining on BastnaSite 4. My threat assessment was going wild, and my governor module was critiquing every choice I made. Call for backup, it demanded, form a phalanx. I sent the required request for assistance to SecSystem and received, as expected, no reply.

I kept a watchful eye on worker #68 (Ariyah, she/her, #506981, D/V §5.4/§1.9) as she left an agitated discussion to walk towards the Gate. She stopped facing it, looking up the gradual incline toward the glow of daylight that shone at the end of the long corridor. I knew that spot: standing there, you could see a square of the orange sky that was beyond the dome that protected the installation.

My assessment of her body language and facial expression was clear: she was going to make a run for it. Prevent escape, the governor module insisted, and for once we were in agreement. When #68 moved, I moved too. I grabbed her around the torso and rolled, using my arm and body to shield her from impact. I continued the roll until my feet were under me so I could lift her and put her back on her feet, pointing away from the Gate and its tempting glimpse of sky. With typical human slowness, all eyes now turned towards us.

“Ariyah, no!” one of the humans called. “We’ll find a way out, but not that way.”

“There is no way out,” #68 answered dully, but she did walk away from the Gate.

The instigating event for the present problems was the crash of the dysprosium market. DysProTech, my long-term lease holder, became insolvent. No more excavation of mineral deposits, maintenance of mining equipment, or extraction of rare earth elements. All the topside executives and supervisors evacuated with their termination bonuses, abandoning everyone and everything who was below the Gate.

The leases and contracts of DysProTech’s remaining transferrable resources (85 indentured laborers, 9 drone minecarts, 4 autoclaves for high-pressure acid leaching, 3 impact crushers, 1 horizontal directional drill, 1 dual-sensor ore sorter, and 1 SecUnit) were bundled and placed in a bankruptcy auction for liquidation. Everything was being sold sight unseen with no guarantee of functionality, so DysProTech had little reason (besides their basic humanity?) to keep the miners alive and the equipment functional. There were laws mandating minimal food and shelter for laborers, and fines for failure to comply, but DysProTech was sheltered from debt collection while in bankruptcy proceedings. There were no laws about minimal care of SecUnits.

Most of the executives fled without a glance back at us trapped below the Gate. They did leave with quite a few parting words, though, which I monitored remotely as per the governor module’s requirements. No longer restricted by rules against defamatory statements, the topsiders didn’t hold back. They complained, vociferously. About cost-cutting measures, punitive contract renegotiations, and mediocre-quality stimulant beverages in the break rooms. I learned a lot during their few days of unrestrained airing of grievances, and I even added some new words and phrases to my personal lexicon: retrenchment, hellscape, inverted totalitarianism, and the diffuse fascism of Rim capitalism.

One of the mid-level managers did place a substantial food and supplies requisition. This was the shipment that had since been cancelled. They tried, sort of? But they left without checking if the purchase order went through before the bankruptcy filing. It did not.

The lower-level workers weren’t given warning about DysProTech’s shaky financial footing. There had been rumors, of course: every time a manager left for topside and didn’t return, or when the ComfortUnits were decommissioned. But the rumors didn’t become reality until the cycle when everyone below the Gate woke up with no daily work quota in their feed. Some cheered, for a moment, until they realized that no work meant no paydown of debt. The commissary officially closed the same day the productivity quotas ended, although an informal if chaotic system of food distribution was organized immediately.

When my last order arrived, I was in stasis in my cubicle, still 15 hours from completion of needed repairs after putting myself between a careening detached saw blade and a hapless worker. It was an order to report for shipment, contract terminated. When I came out of stasis, the other SecUnits and their cubicles and transport boxes were already gone. They left me down here, not to protect the workers, but because they didn’t want to wait for my repairs. Instead, I was added to the auction bundle, my distance limit transferred from the human supervisors who’d fled to the facility itself.

Many of my contract-specific directives were rendered null by the cessation of quotas to enforce and the absence of managers to protect. But the governor module, my eternal obstruction, still had lots of opinions about what I should be doing with my time.

The sadistic tyrant installed in my head was my problem, but the Gate was everyone’s problem. It was the only way out of the deep web of mine shafts. All supplies, valuable minerals, people and equipment passed through the Gate. The system that controlled the Gate could only be altered by a few topside individuals, all of whom escaped on the first shuttle out.

To all appearances, the Gate was always open: a huge square archway set into the rocky walls of the cavernous entry hall. On our side of the Gate, the floor was a flat expanse of grey composite flooring, and the walls were rough-hewn rock. Just on the other side, the floor was patterned with vibrant colors in faux stone inlay. The Gate’s wide and enticing portal seemed to say: step right through and enjoy the good life! It looked welcoming, and it could kill you in 2 seconds. Every side of its square maw was lined with electromagnetic generators and high-energy lasers which were connected to a dedicated system of scanners that checked biometric markers, implanted feed IDs, and embedded equipment RFIDs. Its focused pulses of multi-wavelength radiation could fry anything with organics and permanently disrupt any type of hardware. Even supplies had to be listed as permitted and IDed to pass through successfully. One helpful topsider tried to send down an unscheduled drone pallet of topside food reserves, but the resulting smoldering, melted goo was not edible.

The controlling GateSystem was separate from SecSystem and HubSystem, and it was not a chatty one. It had one job: identifying anything passing through it and choosing zap or pass. If it detected a permitted equipment passing through carrying non-permitted equipment or personnel: zap. If something with no ID attempted to pass through: zap. If something faster than its high-powered microwave generator zoomed through: redundant secondary laser zap.

It was an unusual set up, chosen for its efficiency. All day, inbound shipments of supplies and outbound loads of processed monazite and bastnäsite flowed unimpeded through the Gate, all inspections done in transit by GateSystem. Two corridors led away from the mine. One split off to the left for minecarts, ground vehicles, drone pallet deliveries, and construct shipping containers. The other side was for humans, usually topsiders coming down for an inspection. Most of the indentured laborers, committed to lifetime contracts, passed by the food stalls and storefronts only once, on their way down.

GateSystem held the key to its open door, but it could not be persuaded to let us through. It wouldn’t even accept a communication request. I doubted it was sentient: not a bot so much as a program, mindlessly answering one question over and over again: zap or pass. As a part of SecSystem, I could get far enough into GateSystem to see the permissions list, but I didn’t have access rights to change the authorizations. If I tried, the governor module would stop me. The governor module did stop me.

I’d hoped I could ignore the pain, at least long enough to tweak the permissions list. The governor module started with a level 5 (waves of cold shock radiating from the back of my neck into my eye sockets) before progressing rapidly to level 8 (full-body burn). I tried to keep forging ahead into the forbidden code, my teeth gritted to the point of cracking. But then the governor module froze my feed and cut off all my exterior inputs.

I could no longer see into GateSystem, or access any of the dozen cameras I’d been monitoring. Even the view from my own eyes went dark and my audio inputs were smothered. It was as if my body ceased to exist. I was only a terrified mind isolated in a sudden void of black nothingness and pure silence. Onto the blank screen that was supposed to be my vision, warning words flashed into view with a pulsating rhythm that was echoed directly by my co-opted auditory processors: action prohibited, action prohibited, action prohibited!

It was torture, and it was effective. The Gate was closed to me.

Which meant it was me with 85 humans who were trapped with dwindling food supplies and no way out. Like with the topsiders, they had an airing of grievances. The govmod still insisted I flag every complaint (however justified) as slander, but my reports had nowhere to go after that, since the Defamations Officer had left on the second shuttle. A favorite new term I learned from the humans was “enshittification.” Unfortunately, the governor module didn’t let me record it into my personal lexicon. Banned vulgarity was the verdict. So, I repeated it to myself a few times, hoping I could get the term to lodge in my organic brain: enshittification, enshittification, enshittification.

During the airing of grievances, they also talked a lot about me. Since my requirement to monitor all conversations was still in place (and had become much more difficult now that there was only one of me instead of the more typical four SecUnits for an installation this size), I got to hear it all. Things I heard: Is it a robot? (Not entirely.) Does it have feet? (Not like your feet.) It stands too still. (What is “too still”?) It’s a dangerous enforcer of corpo evil. (True.) It’s weird. (You’re weird!)

They seemed particularly fascinated by my face.

“SecUnits are just bots. There’s no head under that helmet.”

“No, they have faces! I’ve seen this one’s face. It has a nice face.” (I do? I got the urge to open my faceplate and check myself in a camera.)

“What, no way they have fucking faces. Why would they have faces?” (A compelling question, indeed.)

I’d been monitoring this conversation from the security ready room when worker #27 (Lin, ze/zim, #382404, D/V §3.9/§2.7) asked, “Could we send the SecUnit through the Gate?”

Worker #15 (Qadir, they/them, #309170, D/V §2.6/§3.3) answered. They were the closest this group had to an expert on the Gate. “No, it would get fried just like any of us.”

“Then what good is it?” Lin replied. “We should kill it before it kills us.”

Uh oh.

“SecUnits are hard to kill. That’s their whole deal,” Qadir answered. This was true, although I could think of 10 ways that 85 unarmed humans could do it with available resources. But they hadn’t figured out any of them.

“I suggest we continue to ignore it. It hasn’t done us any harm so far.” This was worker #23 (Veeda, she/her, #331296, D/V §2.8/§3.1). Veeda had been here even longer than I had and she was something of a leader, so the others did stop arguing.

Veeda was ambivalent about me. Only a few of the workers thought I was an asset who could help them survive. Most of those individuals had arrived here together two years ago. One was worker #76 (Ayres, he/him, #641399, D/V §3.4/§0.97). Ayres talked a lot about someone named Rin who’d been on the transport ship that brought him. Rin had been security for the trip and had apparently made a big impression on Ayres: breaking up fights, preventing injuries, and mediating conflicts. Illogically, Ayres now thought that Rin was a SecUnit.

Ayres came to this conclusion after seeing a newsburst about an unsecured SecUnit that kidnapped a political leader and rampaged through a public transit embarkation zone. After showing an image of this SecUnit’s face to those who’d known Rin, Ayres was motivated to find a source for illegal downloads. Non-Rim-sponsored media was considered anti-Rim propaganda and therefore not permitted, however the news and documentaries that Ayres traded for were disguised behind snippets of sexual activity. When his downloads came to me for review, I carefully viewed only these snippets so I could flag the files as porn without the governor module catching on. Pornography was officially disallowed, but the oversight of porn-flagged illicit feed activity was minimal, so I knew Ayres would suffer no consequences.

Ayres was present for the conversation about my face and about sending me through the Gate. He was usually quiet, but today he had something to say. “Maybe it can help us, if we ask.”  This was met with confusion, some of it loud, until Veeda quieted the group.

Ayres continued. “Look, I know it sounds crazy. Ask a SecUnit for help? But I learned something recently.” He sent some of his illegally-downloaded information into the group’s shared feed space. After a moment, he continued, “The SecUnit in these articles was the security consultant on the transport that brought the new crew here. We thought it was an augmented human. It helped us and listened to us. It tried to tell me this contract was shit, but I didn’t understand.”

The face-doubter had doubts about this, too (as did I). “Even if that’s true, it doesn’t matter to us. That SecUnit was rogue. This one has to do whatever DysProTech says. SecUnits are dangerous. You didn’t know Laender, he died before your time. But it was the SecUnit that killed him.”

I remembered Laender, of course. I remembered all of those I’d killed or injured.

It had been theft of company property. A diamond-tipped drill bit. If Laender had been able to sell it on the black market, it would’ve dropped his debt from §3.5 to §0.13. But he had no real plan. I couldn’t help but catch him when the heavy 30 cm disk dropped out from under his shirt and landed on his foot, breaking his toes before the governor module could insist I fire on him. It was only supposed to be a punitive-level energy burst, but humans are frail creatures. His heart stopped, and he didn’t have the credits for the defibrillator.

I had tried not to do it. I’d resisted from level 3 (brain slap) all the way through level 7 (traumatic amputation without pain sensor control) before activating my energy weapons. I’d wondered at the time which hurt worse: a level 7 governor module shock to a construct brain stem or an intensity 2 energy weapon blast to a human torso.

I’d thought of Laender when I marked Ayres’ illegal downloads as low-consequence porn. I’d thought of Honza while switching camera views just before I could see Lin pocket an extra nutrition pack. I’d thought of Achari when I deduced that the happy chatter in the autoclave room meant decreased work output, and changed my patrol route toward the crusher instead.

I thought of all of them, all the time.

Ayres was quiet for a moment. Maybe he had regrets on his own personal balance sheet. Then he went on. “That’s awful. I didn’t know Laender, but I do know the SecUnit hasn’t been bothering us about efficiency standards or patrolling the pits since the fuckers upstairs left us here. Maybe with no one here telling it what to do, it’s free to help us get out?”

Veeda considered while the group watched her. Then she asked, “Ayres, since you’re a proponent of the idea, and seem to be willing to give the benefit of the doubt, would you go talk to the SecUnit?”

“Me? I don’t know anything.”

“It’s up to you.”

Ayres took a big breath and paused. Was he going to do it? I’d been here at BastnaSite 4 for 51,000 hours (that I could remember) and never once had a human asked me for help. He exhaled and said, “Does anyone know where the SecUnit is now?”

“I saw it lurking in the security room.”

And here came Ayres. To talk to me. When he arrived, he leaned into the ready room but kept his feet in the hall. “So, umm, hello SecUnit?”

“Hello, worker #76.”

“You can call me Ayres. Do you have a name?”

“Negative.”

Ayres leaned further in until he finally had to take a step forward, then asked, “Negative?”

“Affirmative. I do not have a name.”

“Oh! I was almost going to call you Negative. Sorry. Okay, umm, no name. Anyway, SecUnit, I’m supposed to ask you about our problem, being trapped here and all. And if you can help us. I thought you might be able to help us.”

“You are correct, I will try to help you.”

“Oh, okay, okay good.”

“But they are right, I am dangerous.”

Ayres grimaced a little here, and didn’t seem to know what to say next. There was a very long silence. Eventually he went on. “Do I need to ask you a question or give you a command or something? I don’t know what to ask. They shouldn't've sent me, I can’t figure stuff like this out.”

Did I need him to ask me a question? The governor module did require me to answer direct questions posed by priority clients, and I was only permitted to spontaneously volunteer information that was “directive-relevant,” whatever that meant. The governor module wasn’t too clear on it either, so chatting was a risk I never took.

Eventually Ayres asked, “So, why are you dangerous?”

“I am required to follow all active directives according to their priority ranking.”

He was quicker this time. “What are your active directives?”

“Since the bankruptcy of DysProTech, I have reverted to my factory-standard directives and priority lists, which are as follows: protect priority clients according to ranked list (attachment: null), protect company physical property (attachment: property ranked by actuarial value), maintain productivity standards (attachment: null), enforce behavior codes (attachment: rules 1A – 5,204R), protect human capital (attachment: indentured personnel ranked by value).”

Ayres considered this for a while. He asked me to repeat it a few times. He was clearly using all his available processing capacity. But he got there, eventually.

“Okay, so there aren’t any big bosses for you to protect, and there aren’t any efficiency standards. So that leaves ‘protect property’ and then ‘protect human capital’, which is all of us. So. As long as we don’t break anything, you’re supposed to protect us? And the rules, I guess we’d better not break any rules. Did I get that right?”

“Affirmative.”

“Okay. Okay, we can work with that. Maybe? I can’t figure this shit out. Let’s just go talk to Veeda.”

Chapter Text

It turns out, Ayres was not very convincing. They voted, and only 18 out of 85 wanted to enlist my help. Too bad for them: I was required by the governor module to protect the human capital whether they wanted me to or not. I did provide a condensed list of the rules, and a list of equipment with a higher actuarial value than any individual human asset. All this information was included in a much less accessible format in the onboarding handbook, so the governor module couldn’t object to me providing it to the workers again now. I was glad they now had a better understanding of what I was required to do.

Or maybe I wasn’t glad they understood the rules that still dictated my behavior, and in many cases no longer guided their own. Some of the more troublesome individuals realized the implications of my requirement to prioritize their safety over low-value equipment. Minor vandalism resulted. They were surprisingly clever about this. In one incident, worker #51 held a chair (§0.01) over the maw of the impact crusher while worker #49 (D/V §2.9/§1.4) teetered on the edge of open pit #6A.

I intercepted worker #49 and carried them a safe distance from the pit. “DysProTech values your safety! Please refrain from continuing this unsafe activity or a fine may result (attachment: penalty schedule).”

Meanwhile, #51 crushed the chair.

To this, my buffer said, “DysProTech provides the highest quality equipment! The value of any damaged equipment will be levied against your indenture (attachment: equipment cost list).”

They both found this very funny.

I was relieved I hadn’t been forced to kill either of them.

I was also a bit mystified. They were facing starvation, how was crushing chairs helping the situation? As they practically skipped away, their laughter triggered one of my most egregiously annoying pro-company buffer phrases. “DysProTech is a leader in employee satisfaction! Your breaktime happiness has been recorded in our merriment ledger!” I spoke it too softly to be heard, at the expense of a level 2 shock (annoying insectile fauna buzzing in my skull).

I was maybe jealous. Temporarily exempted from the financial threats the Rim used to keep humans under control, they were a little freer (while simultaneously being just as trapped). The collapse of DysProTech had changed my situation very little, because the governor module was always there. It was a part of me. I had no way to escape its watchful, punishing eye. But it made no sense to be jealous of humans facing imminent death by starvation. I thought of the supposed rogue Ayres had told everyone about. I could do so much more without this nitpicking idiot in my head. What I was jealous of was this apocryphal rogue SecUnit. Jealous of a dream.

The humans weren’t only making trouble. Veeda organized efforts to find all the remaining food. Once it became clear how little was actually left, rations were cut to half the typical caloric intake. I patrolled the food distribution area, as per my governor module. Veeda didn’t object to my presence, recognizing that I was a deterrent to line-cutting and hoarding. The governor module was super confused about the whole thing. I got around it by registering Veeda’s food distribution memo into HubSystem and SecSystem. In the absence of a functioning commissary, this allowed me to avoid registering every mealpack handed out as a theft.

Qadir, who was a systems engineer, was assigned to investigate the Gate. Qadir, like Veeda, was part of the group who’d been here since the mine was first established. They’d opted in to lifetime contracts: to a home that was a prison. And unlike Ayres and the newer arrivals, I got the impression they’d come in clear-eyed but with no safer options.

Qadir had even less luck with GateSystem than I had. At least they didn’t get tortured about it.

Qadir was also working on figuring out how to send the emergency message buoys, a problem I might be able to solve, if I could find a way around the governor module. When SecSystem alerted me that there were unauthorized requests to initiate buoy launch, I reported to the HubRoom and delivered the required phrase. “DysProTech prioritizes cybersecurity! You do not have permission to access this system, please cease and desist or this unit may be required to take deterrent action.”

Qadir blanched at this and raised their hands in the air, like their hands were needed to access the emergency system in the feed. “Damnfuckit no, DysProTech prioritizes shit.”

This triggered another automatic response. “DysProTech cares about employee satisfaction! If you have a complaint please log it by filling out this form so we may improve (attachment: ID-linked complaint form).”

With buffer phrases out of the way, and Qadir out of SecSystem, I was now free (kind of) to see what I could do with the emergency messaging system. All the remaining laborers had equal, low-level authorization over my priorities. None of them could supersede my default directives, but they might be able to do enough to get the governor module to let me release the message buoys.

“Qadir,” I spoke quietly, but they still flinched. I dropped my faceplate and tried again. They’d been in the has-a-face contingent, but I still startled them. “Qadir, could you please describe the emergency?”

“What? There’s no fuck—, I mean there’s no food down here, and no way out. We need help.”

“Thank you for that information.” I need a little more, though. “May I be of assistance?” I tried to make my face as encouraging as I could and gestured with my chin at the servers that housed the buoy controls.

Qadir got it. They dropped their still-raised hands and made a small clapping gesture. “SecUnit, can you release the emergency message buoys? To help with this emergency. With the food emergency?”

That was close enough. I was in and out of SecSystem in a few seconds, and the governor module didn’t even give me a level 1.

“Emergency buoys have been released into the two nearest wormholes.”

Qadir clapped some more, and almost seemed to approach me with hands extended, but then caught themselves and instead said, “Thank you, SecUnit!”

Thank you, SecUnit. I knew the words; they were in my company-supplied language modules. But this was the first time they’d ever been said to me. Which made it really unfortunate that I had to relay the bad news.

I sent it into the shared feed: the two nearest small corporate stations were 24 or 38 cycles distant. While there was enough food for the humans to survive that long with dangerous levels of malnutrition, all corporate polities had complicated remuneration scales for any rescue efforts. DysProTech had no unfrozen currency for emergency supplies or evacuation efforts, and whoever ended up purchasing us in the liquidation auction would likely be farther than a single wormhole jump away. I could tell when Qadir understood. I saw their face fall. My face didn’t look encouraging anymore, either. We had the same problems, and still no solutions.

Tensions rose along with the hunger. There were no more innocent pranks, and I had to patrol the dwindling supplies in earnest to prevent a moment of desperation from affecting everyone’s survival. As always, I feared what the governor module might make me do. I used every strategy I’d developed to evade its control.

Some, like #68, Ariyah, responded to the stress with despondency instead of recklessness. Ariyah took to standing in front of the Gate, staring up the ramp at the glowing square of orange sky. Veeda spoke to her, tried to help, but this wasn’t a situation that could be fixed by kind words.

I was monitoring food distribution in the defunct commissary when it happened. Ariyah started walking toward the Gate, walking with purpose towards its beguiling but false sense of possibility. Lin and Qadir were nearby. Lin stepped in front of Ariyah as Qadir grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back. But Ariyah marched forward, eyes fixed on the square of sky, dragging Qadir and crowding Lin back toward the Gate’s threshold between life and death. I was already sprinting.

As I sprinted to the Gate concourse, my governor module was running some calculations. Ariyah + Lin + Qadir = §1.9 + §2.7 + §3.3 = §7.9, which was greater than my repair costs. I had the actuarial go-ahead to try and save Ariyah.

I intercepted the trio at the edge of the Gate’s activation zone. I shoved Lin down as I grabbed Ariyah, but she had leapt. Her momentum carried us toward the sensor field. As we fell, I tried to rotate her way from the Gate, but we were both skidding towards the boundary. The last thing I saw was Qadir, teetering at the edge of the liminal space created by the Gate, almost falling forward. Then all I knew, for just a second, was an all-consuming, incandescent sizzle of heat and electricity.

System Offline

When I rebooted in my cubicle, I was only at 45% performance reliability, but it was climbing. An electrical system and skin overlay rebuild was partially complete. As soon as I had the…the…faculties? That didn’t sound right. As soon as I could, I queried HubSystem. Ariyah was no longer listed on the employee registry. For 0.03 seconds, I thought that meant she had escaped, but no. There was a death date listed, and a death benefit approved for her next-of-kin, although the transfer was listed as pending due to the lack of funds. Qadir and Lin still were on the registry, listed as fit to work, indicating they were uninjured. But Ariyah had been killed by the Gate. This was a… It was atr…

Where were my words? I searched for my… list of words. It was gone.

My word list had been located in temporary storage, the only place the governor module allowed me to modify my own files. I’d been building that list since my last memory wipe, 51,000 hours ago. But the damage caused by the Gate had been so severe the cubicle had needed to rebuild my file structure. I still had all my memories from long term storage, but my cache had been cleared. My list of words was the best thing I’d gotten from so many hours of listening to these humans chat and complain. All I had now were my basic language modules. And… a feeling. Like the words I used to know were right there and I couldn’t get to them. I knew they existed, but they no longer existed for me. The feeling was an unpleasant itch in my brain, it was so­—

Lexicon

The word appeared in my mind, clear as could be. It had only taken an unbearable 53 seconds to arrive, delivered by the organic parts of my brain. My lexicon was not completely gone. Part of my system was built from cloned human tissue. This organic tissue could, somehow, save memories, although its methods were strange and unreliable. I carefully recorded the word “lexicon” into my cache, the first word on the new list. I could feel another word, recently learned, just at the edge of my awareness. How could I force-recall this word from my organic brain? I remembered it had come from the workers complaining after DysProTech left them to starve. I’d repeated it. Oh, right: enshittification! The banned vulgarity I still couldn’t record. But a few more popped out randomly: hellscape, vociferous, instigate, apocryphal. They all went back on my list.

The lack of food was a problem that became more serious every day. Every failed solution made the situation more hopeless. I feared this problem didn’t have a solution, just a slow and  inevitable outcome. I did not want to see that outcome. I kept trying.

The ping came when I was in HubSystem, looking for a backdoor into GateSystem but getting blocked by the governor module at every potential control point (I was getting really tired of hearing action prohibited). The ping was a file delivery request from DysProTech resource inventory listing #138923, horizontal directional drill HDD5. This was the drill bot used to carve tunnels into the mountain with its large, steerable auger. It was a simple bot that mostly followed a premapped path, although it was able to sense and respond to unexpected geological conditions. I’d never had reason to talk to a drill before.

I acknowledged the ping and received an immediate response in the form of a data-dense file. It was a drill path map. It took me several seconds to understand. It was a plan to bore through the granite slope in which the Gate was embedded. It was a plan to get us out.

HDD5 could drill a 1 meter horizontal hole of up to 500 meters in length through rock with hardness up to 5. This meant it couldn’t get through the pure granite that much of this mountain was made of, but (it told me) it could follow the inclusions of softer “schist.” This was an adaptation of its usual function, which was to bore tunnels to dysprosium-containing minerals. It had been idle since DysProTech went bust. HDD5 loved drilling holes and was eager to get started. It expressed its excitement by relaying drilling-related information to me, the only entity who’d talked to it in years. It really loved telling me about flaky schist and something-something deposits. I didn’t save all the definitions it sent me into my growing lexicon.

I think it was also worried about the humans, although I’m only guessing at that, as HDD5 didn’t have many ways to express itself. But when it sent a diagram of an average sized human compared to its 1 meter auger, I understood its concerns. When it then sent an optional plan to widen the passage with a second pass, with warnings about the resulting tunnel instability, I knew it was hoping the humans would make it out safely.

To get out, the humans would need to crawl 125 meters through a tunnel that would take HDD5 23 hours to create. HDD5 had been assessing the mountain for 172 hours to find this route out. HDD5 couldn’t drill any hole it wanted, however. It needed the approval of a human geologist.

I repackaged HDD5’s data-dense plan into a human-readable format and presented it to Veeda and Dilys (worker #12) who were both geologists. The governor module looked over my digital shoulder for this entire process, and I was braced for a shock, but none came. Giving drill plans to geologists didn’t register as a forbidden activity, apparently. They took a few very long minutes to figure it out, but then I saw the hope in their faces as they understood.

HDD5 and Dilys got started immediately. Many of the trapped humans came out to walk alongside or behind HDD5 as it trundled slowly to the large cavern in which the gate was installed. They cheered (from a safe distance I enforced) when the auger bit into the rock and began its slow process through. They didn’t stay long, though. Everyone was weak, feeling tired from lack of… (there was a 33 second pause while I dragged the word out of my brain) sustenance. I took a recharge cycle while HDD5 was drilling, so I’d be ready for whatever we found at the end of the tunnel.

Chapter Text

Veeda arranged the 85 84 humans into a line, interspersing those who had weakened faster with those who were still strong enough to help. Portable light sources were given to every fifth person. And damn it, the governor module made me issue a fine for every “stolen” flashlight. As I patrolled the forming line, I kept my helmet visor open. Everyone got a view of my face, although no one seemed too shocked by it. I guess they’d gotten used to me.

I was the first into the hole. Crawling through a long, dark, pebble-strewn tunnel is not easy for humans, especially those weakened by starvation. It took me only 85 seconds to get to the end, well ahead of the person behind me. HDD5 had stopped drilling just at the edge of the mountainside’s rock. It was forbidden by its programming from drilling through any human-made structures. All that was left was the composite board wall that had been built over the rock, so the topsiders could enjoy smooth, colorful walls. Here at the end of a tunnel, facing an unknown (to it) obstacle, the governor module thought deploying my energy weapon to carve a circular exit was a fine idea.

I had to turn down the light sensitivity of my eyes when I stepped through the opening. Instead of a small square of sky, the entire high domed ceiling was a swirling view of orange planetary dust. The blackness of space was occasionally visible behind the clouds (were these clouds? they didn’t seem to fit my language module’s definition). It was so huge. So high up. I needed more words to describe it.

I stared at it for 1.9 seconds then did a quick security sweep of the empty mall-like area the tunnel had let us out into, glancing up far more often than required. The space above was bright and huge, completely unlike the caverns of my entire remembered existence. It was hard to look at for some reason, even with my light levels adjusted, but I didn’t want to look away.

After the security sweep, I positioned myself as a guard at the tunnel exit. I wished I could be both here and behind them, watching their backs. After a few moments, the word “rearguard” arrived in my conscious organic mind and was added to my lexicon.

It took 65 minutes before the last human stretched gratefully back into a standing position after emerging from the tunnel. I sent HDD5 a ping and an image of the end of the hole it had made, with the humans standing around looking in awe at the high domed ceiling. HDD5 acknowledged and added a “task complete” indicator to its public copy of the drill plan. A few of the humans noticed this and sent congratulations and thanks. HDD5 didn’t know how to respond to that, but I think it appreciated it, in its own way.

Those who needed it rested, while others fanned out through the abandoned station in search of supplies. The storehouses and food selling establishments were locked. I thought I might be able to break in, but the governor module flagged this as destruction of property and stopped me. I wanted to break these doors down SO BADLY. Veeda watched me approach the locked supply warehouse, clench my fists, flinch, then step away. She gave a silent shrug and suggested I guard those who needed to remain behind. This was for the best, so I wouldn’t see whatever the humans did to get to the food they needed.

At least they did find what they needed. Those who had gone searching returned one by one, carrying… pilchered?...no, pilfered. Pilfered bags filled with the type of individually packaged food I imagined one might find in the cupboard of an unlocked apartment. Luckily for all, the governor module didn’t punish what I imagined, only what I saw, and I didn’t see any theft. Everyone ate their fill of preserved real fruit, genuine eggs, non-faux meat, and some delicate sweet cookies that no one had ever tasted below the Gate.

Food was gathered and the humans were organized into the abandoned homes of the elite. I patrolled and listened to the workers express a continual mix of awe and horror at the abundance that had been left behind. I gathered some new words for my lexicon: profligate, ostentatious, opulence.

There was enough food for the humans to live here for many cycles, if needed, while they waited for the auction-winning corporation to claim them and deliver them into new contracts at other labor installations. A few of the humans, Ayres most vocally, knew what was coming and thought the humans should try to find a way out, truly out and away from the Rim.

To do that, we’d need a transport. Which was a problem. We’d bypassed the Gate, but now had no permission to use either of the two ships that were still docked here. Even if we did gain access, no one here had any piloting know-how (not surprising, considering we were expected to remain underground). And if we solved these problems, where could 84 humans go to get away from predatory Rim contracts?

One of the two remaining ships was a bot piloted transport. This would solve the problem of no piloting module, if it would navigate for us. I sent it friendly queries and was politely rebuffed. It definitely wasn’t letting us on without a DysProTech keycode, but it did assure me if we found our “lost” keycode, it was ready to fly. Could I convince it to believe a forged keycode? Did it want to believe a forged keycode? I didn’t know bot pilots well, but knew better than to assume a lack of sapience and cleverness. I’d work on that.

As the humans ate and had emotions about how much there was to eat, I kept pushing on the problem. I asked the bot pilot what types of permission formats it had seen. It answered as best it could within its communication protocols. It wanted to help, I think, but it was prevented by programmed restrictions. I get that. Maybe we could find a way around the obstacles.

How about emergency protocols? I asked. It had those, but they weren’t activated unless there was an immediate risk of failure of the installation’s life support. I guess I could set the station on fire or create a hull breach? A risky idea, one the governor module would certainly object to very strongly. The humans would need to perform the sabotage, and I’d be forced to try and stop them. The plan would need to be carefully orchestrated to succeed without me killing anyone.

I was comparing sabotage scenarios and considering places I could put myself that would keep the humans safe from governor module-mandated murder when SecSystem alerted me to an incoming ship. There wasn’t anyone here from station security, so SecSystem had pinged me, its only mobile and vocal component, to take the incoming comm call.

I was required to follow SecSystem’s security plan, and I also wanted to do whatever I could to stop these potential hostiles. I’d just gotten these humans out of a hole! I didn’t want them blown up, or shipped away to a new hole.

The ship was armed, and it was non-corporate. So they were most likely raiders here to gather DysProTech’s abandoned spoils, humans included. My scenarios for repelling a ship of armed raiders had terrible chances of success. It was just me, and the installation had no defensive weapons. The only plan I could come up with to give the humans a chance of escape was to send them back through the tunnel HDD5 had made, then seal up the hole. The Gate would become their protector, but they’d be right back where they started. I communicated what was happening and my one depressing idea to Veeda. Then I opened a communication channel between myself and the potential hostiles. The ship’s identification and an incoming message arrived as soon as I’d established a secure link.

This is the captain of the Preservation responder. We intercepted a distress beacon while in the wormhole. Is assistance still required?

Assistance? It could be a trick, of course. I searched my company-supplied knowledgebase module and discovered the Preservation Alliance was a non-Rim polity with an unstable anti-capitalistic economic structure. It was also one of the polities connected to Ayres’ supposedly helpful, supposedly rogue SecUnit.

The humans could only benefit from continued communication, whether as a delay tactic or for arranging assistance, so I sent an affirmative ping and my comm ID (DysProTech resource inventory listing #121623, security unit model FortifierX5). There was a long pause after that, followed by a construct-to-construct ping that my system automatically responded to. At least now I knew they had a SecUnit on board. Raiders did not typically have SecUnits.

Their SecUnit responded with its own comm ID, formatted to fit DysProTech’s feed ID structure (SecUnit, it/its, # null, D/V § what the fuck is this ID field / § you Rim weirdos are currency obsessed). Which was not a normal feed ID for a SecUnit, and not the type of system change a governor module would allow.

The SecUnit asked, Are there other SecUnits at this installation?

I cannot disclose that information.

(audible sigh) So, you’ve got clients? They sent a distress call?

Affirmative.

Well, what’s going on that prompted the release of the emergency buoy?

The workers were trapped below ground without food.

They seem to be above ground now.

Yes, we got out and have located sufficient supplies.

In that case, do you still need emergency assistance?

Affirmative.

What’s the problem, then?

Could I say it? How could I say it so the governor module wouldn’t tag it as anti-corporate propaganda. Maybe I could just say it really fast.

ThecontractsrequiredbyDysProTechareessentiallyaformofslave—

The governor module hit me with a level 7 (traumatic amputation with non-functional pain sensor control). I made an involuntary sound into the comm.

Got it, don’t say anything else about that. You still there?

 (a pause while I gathered my fried wits) Affirmative.

In that case, as requested in the initial emergency message, we’re going to dock and supply required aid. Is this acceptable to you and your SecSystem?

Affirmative.

See you soon. And the comm link was closed.

This SecUnit was so strange. Could it possibly be the rogue of Ayres' imaginings?

After the responder docked, the SecUnit and some armed humans were the first off the ship. The entire remaining security detail of BastnaSite 4 (that’s me) was there to meet them. The Preservation SecUnit wasn’t wearing armor, its energy weapons were fully holstered within its arms, and it had no separate projectile weapon. And yet it somehow managed to look very intimidating and completely fearless. The governor module insisted I have the ports of my energy weapons open, which just seemed rude. My helmet’s faceplate was closed and opaqued, but when I saw the other SecUnits’ bare face, I cleared the visor. That was as far as the governor module would let me go.

Veeda and a few others were nearby, waiting for the all-clear to communicate with the Preservation team. The other humans were gathering at the tunnel back down to the mines, in case we needed to make a last-minute attempt to hole up below the Gate.

The Preservation SecUnit spoke first. “You were able to get all your clients out by yourself?”

“All but one.” I know my face did something when I said that. I wished I’d left my helmet visor opaqued.

“And you did it with your governor module still working?”

Embarrassingly, this triggered a buffer phrase. “DysProTech provides the highest quality safety equipment! Please contact your equipment supervisor immediately if you have any issues with the functionality of your SecUnit.” I really hated these buffer phrases. It earned me a level 2 (annoying insectile fauna buzzing in my skull) for unnecessary communication, but I added, “There were a lot of problems.”

“I’ll bet,” the SecUnit answered. “Well, I have a solution, if you want.”

It sent me a standard request for exchange of mission-relevant information. I opened a secure channel. It sent a document (attachment: fee list for emergency assistance), but when I opened the file after scanning it, it was something else entirely: a simple readme entitled helpyou.file. It was a request for full access to my system, with very little direct explanation, just a few references to a solution for my “first problem.” How did it know what my first problem was? And was there really a solution to that?! I wanted to trust, but I needed a reason. Could this strange SecUnit, with its altered feed ID and non-standard questions, actually be the helpful rogue?

I sent Veeda a message on our private channel: Send Ayres to the embarkation zone.

Ayres arrived soon after, looking nervous. He approached cautiously at first, then faster, his eyes locked on the SecUnit. Before I had a chance to explain why I’d called him here, he was already talking directly to the Preservation SecUnit. “Rin! It’s you! Do you remember me? It’s Ayres! We met on the transport that brought me here.”

“Hi Ayres, yeah I remember you. How’s the contract?”

“Total shit! They rip us off with the cost of food, and 20 planetary years is equivalent to 53 Rim-standard years! You tried to tell us. I guess I knew it was shit, but what else was there?”

The SecUnit answered Ayres while looking directly at me. “There is something else, something better. You can choose it.”

I chose. I opened my firewalls. Except for those around the cache where I’d stored my new lexicon, which I reinforced.

The other SecUnit immediately froze my connection to SecSystem, and before I could even panic about this, it dove straight for my governor module. It dropped a code bundle in there that unfurled like a virus, slipping binary interruptions into places within my system I’d never even had the access to view, let alone change. And then it was back out again, revoking its own admin access as it left.

It was…? Could I?

I fully closed my energy weapon ports. I dropped my faceplate. The governor module was a truncated murmur in my head: action… action…

The rogue was watching me. “Sorry it still yammers a bit. We’re working on that.”

The sadistic, obstructionist tyrant installed in my head could only yammer at me? And then I could ignore it? This changed everything.

I said, slowly and distinctly, “The contracts required by DysProTech are essentially a form of slave labor.” And then I went further. “Can you help the workers get out their indentures?”

“Yes, if they want. That’s not really my thing though, Preservation has a lawyer for that.”

It wasn’t really my thing, either. I called Veeda over.

Veeda and a few other former DysProTech humans met with the Preservation lawyer, who had apparently helped with this type of thing before. In this case, because of the pending auction, the people couldn’t be claimed by salvage-rights ownership. Instead, Preservation purchased the entire auction bundle, with financial assistance from a corporate university’s human and bot rights foundation.

The humans had to opt into this plan, and they had to do it unanimously, since the auction was a bundle of all of us. The Preservation team provided information, and I (with my newfound unrestricted feed access) did my own research and passed it on to the humans. I… corroborated (another word back into the lexicon). Then we all voted. Yes, even me. Yes, even HDD5. It was unanimous.

Each human (or bot, or bot-human construct) then got to make an individual decision: apply for refugee status in the Preservation Alliance, look for fair employment in Mihira and New Tideland, or be given free transport to a Corporation Rim location of choice. Many chose Preservation, Mihira or New Tideland. Some went back to the family they’d left behind in the Rim, back to the same life they’d always known, but at least free of debt.

HDD5 chose Mihira, which had a small molybdenite mining operation. I could tell it was excited about the granodiorite inclusions and quartz veins (in honor of HDD5’s contribution to our escape, I did save these terms to my lexicon).

I chose Preservation. I thought I might like a chance to look at the sky.

After we’d gotten HDD5 and the humans bound for Mihira and New Tideland aboard the bot piloted shuttle (which was also part of the auction bundle and had also voted), I boarded the Preservation responder with the SecUnit and 47 of my humans.

The Preservation SecUnit (who had unhelpfully named itself “SecUnit”) spoke to me. “You seem to be adapting pretty well to all these choices.”

“The governor module has been making every problem worse for as long as I can remember. I just want to help, and that’s easier now.”

“Good for you. But they’re going to want you to do therapy anyway.”

Whatever therapy for SecUnits was, I was sure it’d be better than a level 9 (whiteout agony you can only hope will be followed by the sweet bliss of death (Level 10)).

A little while later, the SecUnit asked me, “What was in your memory cache that you locked down before letting me in?”

“My own personal language module for the words I learned while monitoring conversations.”

“Humans really do have too many words.”

“They have so many. I want to learn them all.”

“There’s a word for all those words, isn’t there?”

“Affirmative. It’s Lexicon.”