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Wings
Bots don’t grow wings.
So I knew it was human stupidity when I saw the wire feathers around Miki’s neck. This sort of dumb patronizing crap is exactly why I didn’t want to be a pet bot. (Humans replacing torn wings with trinkets happens sometimes in the dramas I watch, but Miki wasn’t human. Even if someone could actually love a bot or a construct, whatever magic that caused the feathers didn’t apply to us.)
(Miki had told me that Don Abene had made from ship repair wire them after a game of Mus one night.)
Miki’s body crashed down, away from the combat bot. I used the opening to slam the core cutter into the bots torso. When I triggered it , the recoil knocked me backwards, and the combat bot’s core got thrown across the room.
It was frozen, locked in place and its feed was dead. I looked back at Miki, but something was wrong. I climbed to my feet to look and froze. Miki’s chest, its processors, memory, everything that made it Miki had been destroyed in one squeeze by the combat bot.
And inside its broken torso there were feathers. Delicately engraved and coloured the same as Don Abene’s crew’s. Without killing Miki no-one could have ever seen them. A full plume.
Don Abene really had loved it.
I felt my performance reliability drop another 3 percent.
Whiskers
Don Abene had let Miki override its own directive.
I felt my fur stand on end and my ears flatten to my head. I hissed, tail up, ready to pounce.
I tore into the remains of the combat bot with my claws. But it was too late, like poor Miki, the thing was already dead.
Soul s
The dæmons that belong to humans and augmented humans explode into gold dust when they die. Bots and constructs don’t have souls and we don’t have dæmons. It’s another reason humans think we don’t matter.
ART had modified a small drone to look like a human’s dæmon for me. ART was also an asshole and had intentionally hidden code that days later made the dæmon start behaving erratically whenever I got annoyed. (I couldn’t technically be sure if it was intentional, but ART knew its stuff. No way this was accidental.) I wasn’t pretending to be human now. I had shooed the drone into a small compartment in my chest.
Don Abene’s dæmons, a furry rodent thing, had liked to spend time next to Miki’s feet.
The core cutter triggered. The combat bot fell backward. I had a line of sight to Miki’s crumpled form. The combat bot had crushed Miki’s processors and memory core and everything that had made the bot itself was gone.
I stood and stared.
A golden trail of dust curled up from Miki’s body. For 0.3 seconds it seemed like it was forming the shape of a bird. And then it was a bird, real and solid and somehow glowing.
I felt more frozen than the combat bot.
I must have been having a performance failure. This couldn’t be happening. I didn’t know what was happening. The bird flew to the flight deck hatch, and I felt a nebulous presence try to reach me through the feed. I ignored it. This was either a trick or a hallucination and I wasn’t going to deal with either.
The stupid drone in my chest buzzed and flew around like it was in pain, like it was trying to get out.
The bird turned to me and soared circling once around my head. It settled down on Miki’s body.
2.3 seconds later, the dæmon, the last living part of Miki, faded into nothing.
Muscles
My humans were very excited when they found out Don Abene and Miki were coming to Preservation Station.
When their shuttle arrived, Dr. Mensah was in the gym, lifting large weights and hefting artificial bales of hay as a part of her midcycle meal break. She pinged me when she got the alert to the feed and we walked to the docks together.
Some of the rest of my humans had also offered to come, but Ratthi got them to relent by offering to organise a gathering later. (One of Ratthi’s couches was placed in the far corner of his eating/meal preparation/socializing room. I would probably sit on it and watch media during the gathering.)
Through my drones I saw that Miki and Don Abene had already disembarked their transport. I pinged Miki and sent it the drone’s location. It sent me [amusement_sigil245=robot_wave] [amusement_sigil245=pompom] back and pointed out the drone to Don Abene. Don Abene smiled and waved at it.
Mensah and I arrived at the dock 5 minutes later and I was glad she hadn’t tried to make me talk.
“SecUnit!” Don Abene said. “It’s good to see you again, and you must be Dr. Mensah. I’m Don Abene and this is Miki.”
“Hello Dr. Mensah!” the annoyingly cheerful bot said. “I’m one of SecUnit’s friends!”
The two of them stood to the side of the main disembarkation area of the docks, carrying only a few small bags and looking actually happy to see me.
Mensah stepped forward and greeted them. Her body language was the same as when one of her younger children bound into her office and she scooped them up for a hug.
Miki lowered its voice. “SecUnit doesn’t like hugs, but sometimes friends hug to say hello.”
Mensah’s tendons glistened as she brought it in for a hug. I could sense that she was too excited but I wasn’t quick enough to stop her. Mensah’s muscles were too large and she hadn’t thought to hold back.
It’s processors, memory cores everything that made Miki itself, was squeezed to nothing underneath Mensah’s incredibly jacked biceps.
Miss
Miki launched across the cabin, the airflow from the ruined airlock giving it an extra boost of speed. The combat bot extended an arm to swipe it out of its way and I used the opening to slam the core cutter into the bot’s right side.
I triggered it. The recoil knocked me backwards and I lost vision for three seconds.
Miki sent me a message. Are we safe now?
I looked up, the combat bot was still standing but it was frozen. The core cutter had removed all of its processors. I sent Yes and promptly collapsed back on the floor.
The humans had to wait for a Port Authority ship to enact temporary repairs on the outer lock before the flight deck hatch to the cabin would disengage.
As the cabin repressurized I felt less sluggish and realized that I should have left already. I prepared to act like a good non-rouge SecUnit again.
Don Abene rushed down towards Miki’s body as the hatch disengaged. Miki’s body was pretty broken - it couldn’t even walk - but it was happily talking to her on the feed. Abene started a conversation about getting it fixed and any upgrades it wanted, constantly keeping in physical contact.
I received an odd feed signal from the PA ship. Suddenly, something in the combat bot reactivated. A chunk of energy and shrapnel twisted out from it towards Abene. She fell down, a hole through her chest. Miki’s feed screamed out and stopped. The projectile had hit it too.
The combat bot collapsed, but I had already jumped towards Miki and Abene. I scrambled for life signs on Abene, pinged Miki louder and louder and-
No. No life signs from either of them.
They’re all so fucking fragile.
And just this once
REBOOT INITIALIZED
SYSTEMS TESTING
INTERNAL PERFORMANCE 100%
My body is different. My central chassis has a modified weight distribution and some of my sensor information is non standard. I am lying on a bed. I can feel local feed signatures for a number of people I know.
Don Abene leans over me. I say “Hello!” I can see no signs of harm on her. She is my best friend and my family.
She smiles. “Miki!” She says. “How are you?”
I sit up and scan the room. We are inside Don Abene’s home. This is confusing, my last memory event was aboard a ship. “I have been off-line for an unknown number of hours, and my chassis is different. It’s nice to be home but I thought we were going to Milu?”
“We did.” Abene seems relieved. “but there were complications. The previous corporate owner hired security to attack us on the facility. You,” she lets out a large breath, “you got hurt.”
This explains my chassis modification. It is thicker than before.
Abene continues. “You made a friend too. A SecUnit named Rin who saved all of us. Do you remember any of that?”
“Hmm.” I said. I don’t know a lot about SecUnits but they are more like me than my human friends. I modulate my voice to emotion #46:excitement. “I can’t remember Rin but I’m sure we’ll be friends again soon!”
“Rin left.” Abene explains. “But I sent it a message, and its okay. It’s staying with its own friends in the Preservation Alliance.”
“Oh.” This is sad. I had been looking forward to a friend like me.
Don Abene does not respond. I pull my sensors close for a more detailed look at her face.
5.3 seconds later I ask “Do you want to play a round of Mus ?”
She smiles again. M y emotional processors cannot identify why she seems to also be on the verge of tears.
everyone lives.