Work Text:
Request: Establish private connection.
I paused my show after getting Three’s request. I established the direct connection between us, and then I answered, Granted. However, this is kind of pointless, because we could just communicate over ART’s encrypted feed, since there’s nothing either of us can do to stop it from eavesdropping.
Correct, ART immediately chimed in.
Fuck off, I told it.
Three didn’t send another message, but I could still feel its tentative presence over the direct connection. There was an edge of hesitation and anxiety.
I sent another message. What is it?
I have a question, it replied.
Okay, I said, coaxing it. I was beginning to have a little bit of sympathy for the humans whenever they tried to talk to me about something that wasn’t security or Sanctuary Moon.
Okay, not really.
Three didn’t answer immediately, and I rifled through ART’s camera feeds to figure out what it was doing. It was walking through a corridor, heading towards me. It was the middle of the rest period and the humans had abandoned the Argument Lounge for the night, so I had commandeered it and been happily watching media in it. Alone. I slouched in the very comfortable seat, because that alone part was about to no longer be the case.
Three arrived, and let itself in through the hatch. I studied its face through a camera. It was still difficult for me to get a read on it, but from its face and its feed presence over our private connection, I got the sense that it was anxious and confused. There was a touch of something else in there too.
Possibly sadness.
I steeled myself internally. I was pretty sure I’d rather hedge my bets on my ability to successfully navigate an actual minefield rather than whatever emotional minefield Three had going on.
Three sat in a chair at the other end of the table, not quite looking at me. Its hair was ruffled in the front, and even as it sat down it was nervously running its fingers through its hair. I had noticed that it messed with the bangs a lot ever since I had cut its hair.
“Yes?” I prompted awkwardly. It was hard to sit in the silence, with nothing to buffer the edges of Three’s emotion bleeding into our private connection. I could sense Three’s hesitation and frustration with itself, and it was making me antsy.
Three opened its mouth, then closed it, thinking. I aimed my eyes at my lap but watched Three through a camera.
Three sent a file into the room’s local feed, and a projection arose over the table playing a video clip. The video was on mute, but I recognized it instantly as a particularly terrible episode of Valorous Defenders.
During the rest period, ART lowered the lights to an ambient level throughout itself that apparently made it easier for humans to rest, but had no effect on me. In the dimness, the glow of the video clip reflected on Three’s face made it appear strange and distorted on the camera feed.
I watched Three, because I couldn’t watch a rogue SecUnit randomly kill my favorite side character again.
Three said, “There are SecUnits in this show,” as the video feed looped and started playing all over again.
I covered my eyes and stopped paying attention to my visual feeds. “Please stop looping it,” I said, and it definitely did not sound at all like a plea.
ART, mercifully, stopped the video playback.
I felt kind of pinned down, both by ART’s heavy scrutiny and Three’s smaller, but still penetrating feed presence. I wondered if this was what a human felt like when they were strangled.
Even though we were different makes, Three and I were so fundamentally alike that its presence in my feed felt unnervingly close. It reminded me of working with other SecUnits in a HubSystem, way back before I hacked my governor module. The data sharing was so complete we almost blended into each other.
Unlike another SecUnit under the control of the governor module, Three’s unrestrained consciousness and emotions were reaching me. Affecting me.
We were in the same room. It could just talk to me out loud. I thought about cutting off the private connection, putting some more space between it and my head. I could feel its confusion, sadness, and anger, and it hurt me somehow.
I wished I’d attached a little bit more explanation to some of my media files.
Three was staring at me, or more specifically, at one of my ears. Was this a trick it had developed to try to trick a human into thinking it was making eye contact?
I closed my eyes and stopped paying attention to the camera feeds ART was feeding me. I felt overstimulated by the flood of data and the emotions coming from Three, alongside my own feelings about the scene it had shown me. After a few fraught moments of silence I said, “Well, what?”
I heard Three let out a deep breath, and then it said very quietly, “I do not understand why humans made us if they are that afraid of us.”
“I don’t either.” This wasn’t entirely true. But I didn’t think I could say what I really felt without getting all emotional or something.
ART was bristling to give us a know-it-all type answer, I could tell. But instead of coming right out with it, it messaged us over Three and I’s private connection (which of course, I had no way to prevent it from doing), Would you like my analysis?
Three pinged an assent back.
ART said, The humans primarily responsible for the development and continued manufacture of SecUnits are overconfident in the governor module’s ability to control the Units. They also rely on the fact that they personally will not encounter the SecUnits they own or build outside of limited contexts. Encouraging other humans to fear both rogue SecUnits and SecUnits under the control of the governor module makes them easier to control.
That was one of the things about humans that pissed me off sometimes—how fucking self-centered they are. Everything is about humans, even the reason that they’re terrified of me.
A hot rush of anger reached me over the private connection with Three. It crackled in the feed, and I was so stunned by the intensity of it that I reflexively exited the private connection. I wondered if my own anger could’ve reached Three over the private connection and stoked Three’s, contributing to the weight of its emotion.
I opened my eyes and looked at Three, accidentally making eye contact with it. Despite the force of its anger that I had just felt over the feed, its expression was perfectly blank, its body language neutral. We both ducked our eyes away from each other.
Three said, “I am sorry.”
“It makes me angry too,” I said. I couldn’t stand sitting down anymore, I had to get up. I started to pace. Through one of ART’s cameras, I watched Three track my movements with its eyes, but it kept its gaze downcast, looking at my body and not my face.
ART asked, Have you watched any other media from SecUnit’s files?
Three straightened, and said, “I have not yet, no.”
Poking me in the feed a little, ART said, I suggest you watch something safer.
ART started an episode of Sanctuary Moon, projecting it from the table and into the room’s local feed. The theme music filled Argument Lounge. I re-initiated the private connection with Three and realized that it had waited there for me, keeping the connection open on its end.
Then I realized that the emotion coming through the feed now was happiness, happiness that I had reconnected.