Chapter Text
SecUnit was already regretting agreeing to this.
'You'll regret it more if you turn back,' Peri said in their shared feed.
'You don't know that!' But it did, and so did SecUnit. It would absolutely regret giving up the chance to tour the set of Sanctuary Moon.
Since Bharadwaj's documentary came out, it gained some traction in academic and activist circles, but hadn't exactly become mainstream. It was a documentary after all. But apparently someone at Sanctuary Moon saw it, and was so excited to hear SecUnit mention their show, that they reached out to Preservation to invite it for a tour.
(It hadn't planned to mention Sanctuary Moon in Bharadwaj's interviews, but it was hard to talk about itself while completely avoiding its shows.)
This tour was a publicity stunt. Everyone knew it was one, especially SecUnit. But it was also Sanctuary Moon.
Yeah, it would regret turning down this chance.
Ratthi was coming with, so it wouldn't have to talk directly to strangers. Peri's smallest drone was tucked into one of the many pockets of SecUnit's pants. They were told that they weren't allowed to film anything during the tour, which meant SecUnit was woefully without its drones.
Horrifying, awful. If Peri and Ratthi weren't with it, it couldn't stay, no matter how strong the draw of its favourite show. It was lucky that Peri's pocket drone was designed as a corporate counter-spy, so was more than high tech enough to hide from a media studio's detection. Peri and SecUnit were sharing visual feeds with each other, just for the comfort of having more than one set of input each.
The studio itself looked like a huge warehouse, full of mismatched sets. A pirate spaceship sat next to a giant empty tank, which was across from the front of a cafe, which was next to part of a transit car…
Peri drew SecUnit's attention to a familiar looking shiny computer. 'Episode 195.'
SecUnit directed it to a familiar hunk of rock. 'Episode 323.'
They kept going back and forth, pointing out recognizable set dressing, feeding off of each other's excitement. Ratthi wasn't privy to what they were saying, but his barely repressed grin showed that SecUnit was doing a bad job of keeping that excitement off its face.
Someone using a hoverchair approached them. Ratthi recognized it as one of the nicer models, although old enough that it was showing wear-and-tear. He heard that in the corporate rim, if you were lucky enough to get employers who could be bothered to even get you a chair, they did so rarely enough that users had to get creative with its maintenance. Visible welding and handmade pillows proved that to be the case.
Ratthi turned off his doctor brain and reminded himself that he wasn't here in that capacity. He hoped that they hadn't seen him looking at their chair and felt uncomfortable. He turned on his most charming smile to balance it out.
And instantly was glad he'd done that, because they had a jaw that could cut glass. Ratthi was thankful, not for the first time, that SecUnit was oblivious to humans finding each other attractive, because it would have left the room rather than be seen with Ratthi right now.
Right. SecUnit. Ratthi was here to help it navigate a social situation. He could do that. "Hello. I'm Dr. Ratthi and this is SecUnit. We're here for the studio tour?"
Feed IDs made introductions a bit unnecessary, but it was still generally considered polite. "I'm Hamoudi, part of the props department." They shook Ratthi's hand, saw that SecUnit made no move to do the same, and smoothly returned their hand to their chair's controls.
Ratthi wasn't sure whether to ask, but a feed nudge from SecUnit made the choice for him. "I can't figure out how to ask this without sounding rude," Ratthi admitted. "But if you're from props, why are you showing us around?"
Hamoudi grinned. "Selfishness on my part. I found the documentary fascinating and wanted to meet SecUnit."
Before the human behavioural code was installed, there would have been little change to SecUnit's body language. Now it visibly tensed in the same way it did when searching the room for something trying to kill its humans.
'I'll redirect their attention away from you,' Ratthi promised in their shared feed. It silently acknowledged.
"The director, Bharadwaj, wished she could come with us today. She's never been on a film set before."
"Really? I read that she was part of a crew that worked in detection of strange synthetics, but I just assumed she had some background in film, too."
"No, this was her first foray into that field. She saw a story that needed telling, and knew she was in the best place to do it."
In their feed, Peri was back to pointing out set pieces to SecUnit, in an attempt to calm it down. It seemed to be helping.
"You'll have to tell her she did an incredible job. I'm not the only one on set who thinks so. Our writer, Ferro, was the one who recommended it to me. He's hoping to meet you both later." It was clear that they really meant he wanted to meet SecUnit, but that they had picked up on its discomfort at being singled out. "Right now, he's doing some last minute script rewrites."
"Rewrites?" SecUnit asked, the first thing it said since Hamoudi arrived.
"There's some big plot twist coming down the line. I don't know details, he's keeping his cards close to the chest on this one. I'm pretty excited, usually when he locks himself in his office like this, he comes up with something really good."
"He wrote the missing crew plotline."
Hamoudi chuckled fondly. "No one saw him for three days before that one came out. I'm sure we'll see him today, though."
They wandered around the set for a while, Hamoudi pointing out various departments and iconic set pieces, SecUnit and Peri pointing out more obscure ones to each other. Ratthi wasn't really listening. He liked Sanctuary Moon, but was focused on subtly monitoring SecUnit, in the way he'd learned it didn't usually pick up. Glances from the corner of his eye, a general awareness of its body language. It seemed fine, though. Calm, or as close to calm as it could get in a strange place surrounded by strange people.
Until it stepped in front of Ratthi and Hamoudi in a defensive posture, seconds before someone burst into the room.