Work Text:
The station is very interesting and beautiful. Instead of a plain metal ring like most of the stations in the Barish-Estranza Group Operating Sphere, it is a rotating cluster of modules in many different colors, assembled in an asymmetric configuration that does not appear to be planned in advance. When the light from the system star is shining directly on the station it is very striking to look at.
On the station itself the mishmash of fabrication materials and styles is dizzying, and a little bit confusing. The humans say that it makes it easier to keep from getting lost in the maze of its passages, as most of the modules in a given section were all added at around the same time, and they all look relatively similar, so you can tell which section you are in just by looking at the era of the decor around you. I do not have the modules or experience to identify the era a habitation or commercial module was manufactured in, so I do not think this feature will help me.
Navigating on a station like this is not easy for me, as the Barish-Estranza stations are all built to one of five standard layouts, and my directives always clearly indicated the path I was to take when I needed to move from one part of a station to another. I have a map that was available in the public station feed, behind a cacophony of advertisements for services and products, but I still calculate a 63% probability that I will become lost at some point in our visit to this station.
The humans, on the other hand, are excited to visit the station; pleased to be somewhere at last that is not the alien-remnant-infected planet, and to be doing something that is not dangerous anti-corporate espionage work. Even 1.0 is visibly smiling as we pass through the docking bay and enter the main station concourse. (This is a surprise to me, given its very vocal dislike of planets and obvious fear whenever it had to leave the ship up to now.) Everyone except me believes it will be good to visit this station.
I stay very close to 1.0 as we walk down the concourse. I know this is annoying to it, but I cannot shake the certainty that if I do not, I will become separated from the group. We are still within sight of the airlock where the Perihelion is docked, but that does nothing against the suffocating conviction that this station is a black hole of passages just waiting to swallow me up. I hope that 1.0 will not become so annoyed that it decides to get away from me; it would not care how many humans turned to watch it run across the busy station mall, but I would find the attention so overwhelming I would not be able to move.
The humans express delight at seeing a shop that sells bowls of a hot starchy food, even though it is in between the times when they usually have meal breaks on the ship’s schedule. They pile in at an empty table, and I hover in the entrance to the shop, unsure what is expected of me in this situation. Although I am allowed to sit down, I should not take a seat at a table that could be occupied by a paying customer; however, I cannot move on and leave the humans unprotected from any hazards that might come up (especially while they are distracted by novel food items). Of course, the worst choice is to stand looming at the front of the shop, blocking anyone else from coming in, and so that is what I do for 25.8 seconds, until I remember to check what 1.0 is doing. It has moved to the corner between this shop and the facade of the next business and is leaning against the wall, its eyes scanning the crowds passing by but most of its attention clearly focused on the feed. I go to join it, although I do not dare lean against the wall (I know I would not be able to make it look right), and stand there watching the Perihelion humans and the people of the station until the humans are done eating.
We continue through the station, stopping occasionally for some of the humans to enter a shop or browse the products available for sale in a kiosk. The humans have agreed, at 1.0’s emphatic recommendation, to stay together in a group, even though this station’s Standard Ambient Risk Measure is in the low 30s, and so the whole group has to halt every time one of them wants to stop for something. Nobody seems angry at the delays, though; they just wait in the corridor, continuing their conversations, or troop into the shop to view or touch or smell the merchandise. Even 1.0 holds up the group at one point when it sees an electronics shop that carries security drones. The humans wait patiently while it goes back and forth about the purchase, weighing the shitty quality of these drones (it complains quite a bit over the feed) against the annoyance of not having any drones at all.
We’ve been on the station for 1.75 local hours when Ratthi addresses me. “Is there anything you’d like to look for, Three? When SecUnit was first on its own, I think it enjoyed choosing some clothes for itself.”
I am usually very good at hiding my reactions, but my absolute terror at the prospect of the humans waiting on me while I tried to make a Decision about shirts must show on my face, because Ratthi quickly adds, “You don’t have to, though. Just. You have the option if you want to.”
I shake my head before I have time to think about it and let it become another Decision. Then I instantly regret it, because even though I rushed through it, it was still a Decision and I almost certainly have made the wrong choice. Ratthi’s face is kind, but it shows his disappointment that I do not want to take his suggestion. Maybe I should not have rejected his idea—but I am really not sure I could have completed a shopping trip of my own. Just being along on this one, monitoring all the humans for signs of upset, the environment for hazards, myself for indicators of malfunction or instability, and the feed for local news items that would affect the group’s plans . . . it is exhausting.
I am so tired of feeling afraid.
Barish-Estranza’s SecUnits are designed to have precise and constant control over all physical processes, including many that are involuntary for humans. So I am not shaking as I sit in the room 1.0 calls the Argument Lounge, even though my organic systems are drowning in so much cortisol and adrenaline I cannot process the information in the educational module I am viewing. I have to consciously think about making each breath smooth and normal, or they would stutter in and out in a useless panic response.
There is no reason for this fear. Or, there is every reason for this fear; there always are, all the time, a thousand things to be afraid of and it is unthinkable how humans make their way through the universe without constantly breaking down in screaming terror. They don’t have the same fine-tuned control over their bodies that I have, but they have conversations and exercise and enjoy entertainments and do not seem to show any fear in their normal cycle-to-cycle lives.
I do not know how to stop feeling afraid, but I am practiced in not showing it. I often felt like this when I was with Barish-Estranza, like my insides were a black hole threatening to collapse my chest; I never let the panic affect my work or show on my face or in involuntary sounds or trembling, which would have resulted in punishment. (Sometimes, in my cubicle for a recharge cycle, I let myself fall apart—just a little, just for a minute—silently trembling and letting my face crumple under the weight of the fear that was always, always pressing in on me.) (There is no cubicle on this ship.)
I have a room that is mine. It is where the clothes I wear are stored. Sometimes I sit or stand in it. If I were to use it like a cubicle, to let out the panic inside me, the ship would certainly see and intervene. Nobody wants to see a display like that; it makes people uncomfortable and it is an unnecessary and unbeneficial irregularity. The Barish-Estranza documentation was very clear.
Something has changed, however, since 2.0 showed me how to break my governor module and I had to begin making decisions. The anxiety is the same hot terror I’ve always held in the pit of my stomach, but somehow it is more . It holds more of my attention, impairs my functioning more. I think it’s getting worse.
I do not know what to do.
(There is one other thing I used to do when I was at Barish-Estranza.)
(I am helping to move some shipping crates. Ordinarily these items would be stored in the cargo bay, where the ship has equipment to move them. But due to all the unexpected events since the ship’s first arrival at the planet, it has needed to take on extra cargo, some of which had to be stored in a room which is also used as the captain’s office. So I am helping, along with 1.0, while Iris and Perihelion give us conflicting instructions about the best way to arrange the crates.)
(One of the crates is made of wood, and has rough, jagged edges. They dig into the organic parts of my arms as I stand holding the crate, waiting for Iris and the ship to agree on where it should go.)
(When I put the crate down, I let the crate’s ragged edge lean into my arm more than it needs to. It tears a gash through my skin, a bright line of pain that grabs my attention and for one moment erases all other feeling. Blood seeps eagerly from the cut. I watch a drop of red run down my arm to my elbow.)
(Suddenly I am drowning in the weight of the ship’s attention, suffocating in its disapproval. I can’t catch my breath, and my knees would buckle if such a thing was allowed.)
( Stop that. 1.0’s feed voice is sharp with annoyance.)
(I do not attempt it again.)
Ironically, it’s the fear itself that shows me how to escape.
SecUnits do not sleep, exactly, but they do need regular recharge cycles. A recharge cycle looks like sleeping, to a human: We go offline and are unresponsive both over the feed and to local stimuli. We are not able to keep our bodies in a standing position so we have to lie down in a cubicle or another flat surface out of the way of general traffic (or on a bed, if we are an ungoverned unit, because it is upsetting to humans to see us lying on the floor). But it is different from sleep, not only in the way our inorganic systems use the time for self repair and memory defragmentation, but in that we cannot be brought out of the recharge cycle prematurely except by a direct hub system command or a critical priority alert from our own systems.
Without a hub system to “wake” me, anything could happen during my recharge cycle—the ship could be attacked, the humans could start killing each other, 1.0 could decide it is tired of me and throw me out an airlock—and I would have no idea. I manage two recharge cycles in the exhausted early days of my time on the Perihelion , but as my anxiety grows, I cannot stomach the prospect of being helpless like that. I go to “my” room at regular intervals and lie on the bed with my eyes closed (I have learned that if I do not, the ship will notice and send me increasingly insistent reminders to take a “rest period”) but I do not go offline.
The standard maintenance specs for Barish-Estranza Model-TE units indicate a recharge cycle of four hours every five standard days. My last recharge cycle was forty-two days and sixteen hours ago.
Of course, there are physical effects. My processing speed is slowed to almost a crawl, and I cannot manage more than one input at a time. My movements are uncoordinated and clumsy, and I have to go very careful when I am traveling from one part of the ship to another so that I do not fall over or bump into things. Visual and audio inputs fade in and out and sometimes show me things that aren’t really there. I knew, from my own maintenance manual, that delayed maintenance like this results in some debilitating effects.
What I had not anticipated was how good it would feel.
With my brain struggling just to hang on to normal everyday actions and processes, I have no space to worry about making the wrong decision or accidentally harming a human. I have to work so hard just to calculate a trajectory down a hallway that I cannot wonder when 1.0 will get tired of me. The crushing terror that has circled around me nonstop for days fades, drowned out by the roar of static in my head.
I sit in the room they say is mine and watch the paneling on the wall swim and ripple before my eyes and feel . . . nothing. I am floating in a soft, dizzy place where everything is a little fuzzy and nothing has sharp corners. A voice that isn’t real fades in and out of my left ear, and when I try to decipher the words it takes so much of my processing power that I have to lean back against the wall or I would topple over. There is nothing left in me to feel afraid.
I think I could take a recharge cycle now—I can barely remember why I did not want to before—but why would I give this up?
Of course, the reprieve is too good to last.
I give myself away when I try to get up and leave the Argument Lounge. I have been sitting here for twelve hours, pretending to watch an educational serial but really just staring at the wall and listening to the quiet hum of the ship’s wormhole drive. I do not feel afraid (or, the fear is there, but I cannot quite reach it at the moment) and I would be content to just stay here forever, but I know that the humans get suspicious and start asking questions if you stay in one place for more than a cycle, so I have set a timer to remind myself to change locations every twelve hours.
When my timer goes off, Kaede and Turi and Ratthi are playing an interactive entertainment together on the large display surface. I should wait until the room is empty to avoid attracting attention to myself, but my internal processing is too scrambled to come to that realization so I just push to my feet and make my way across the lounge, heading for the next spot on my cycle of places to sit in.
As I walk across the room, gaping holes open up in the floor ahead of me. I try to remember if they are real or not, but it is taking too long and I need to either stop or change my path or I will step into one of the holes. I veer to the right, but I miscalculate my next step and I am suddenly off balance. I crash to the floor. It makes a loud noise; my inorganic parts are very heavy, and I long since lost the coordination to cushion my fall by landing well.
I must skip a little time, because the next thing I know, the humans are looming over me, all talking at once, their voices blending into an unparsable babble. I try to sit up, but my depth perception is off and I find myself pushing against nothing when I thought I was bracing against the floor. Ratthi grabs my shoulder (many cycles ago, after a long and careful conversation about consent and bodily autonomy that I did not understand, the humans and I had come to the understanding that I did not have a negative reaction to people touching me) and helps me to sit.
Ratthi says something, urgent, and after a long struggle, I manage to untangle the words: “Are you okay?”
I send him a status report, then remember that he is not integrated into the feed, and even if he were, he cannot read pure data like a machine intelligence. I try to remember how to translate the data into words, but it feels like an impossibly complicated task and I let it drop. I blink up at Ratthi. Did he ask me something? I don’t remember.
There is something warm and wet running down my face. I reach up, miss my forehead on the first two tries, and finally connect with it. I look at my fingers and see red fluid. My hand is shaking, which isn’t right. I have control of those processes.
“You hit your head on the side table,” Turi tells me. They offer a napkin the humans had brought in with their food items. I take it and try to remember how to use it.
After a minute, Ratthi takes the napkin from me and begins to blot at my head. “What happened?” he asks.
It takes me a long time to remember how to say words. “I fell down.”
Ratthi frowns. “Do you remember what happened before you fell? Or why you fell?”
I shake my head, and it takes a minute for my visual processing to catch up with the sudden movement. That feels really strange. I do it again.
“We need to get you to Medical,” Kaede says. “Can you stand up, do you think?”
I consider the question. Faintly, I remember that when humans ask questions there is always one answer they want to hear. I try to figure out what that would be in this case, but I’m so tired, so I just answer honestly. “I think I will fall again.” The words come out slurred, uneven.
“Peri, can you send us a medical drone?” Turi asks aloud.
One is on the way, the ship answers. In the meantime, please apply only gentle pressure to the laceration. I do not believe the impact was forceful enough to cause a skull fracture but it is better to be careful.
“Here, let’s get you leaning against the sofa,” Ratthi suggests, pulling ineffectually (I am very heavy) until I finally understand that he wants me to move and clumsily shift my weight over to lean against a piece of furniture.
My internal chronometer registers a time of fifty-five hours, fourteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds when the medical drone arrives, but that seems high. Maybe I was timing something else. I try to remember starting the timer but I cannot. My thoughts feel sticky and heavy, and they won’t hold still so I can hang onto them. Turi is saying something to Ratthi but I cannot catch the words.
I watch in dazed fascination as the medical drone unfolds itself into a wheeled chair for transporting patients who are unable to walk. It takes me a minute to remember that I am supposed to be getting into this chair, and by that time Kaede has made a worried little tut under her breath and the humans are physically pulling me to my feet. I take a couple of staggering steps, leaning heavily on Turi’s shoulder, and fall into the chair. It starts driving itself into the corridor, towards the nearest lift column. The doors open and the humans follow me in.
I suddenly feel very stupid about everything. “I can walk,” I protest. I think I can walk. Can’t I walk? I try to get up, but Ratthi very easily pushes me back into the chair.
“Where are we going?” I ask. Some of the panic that has been mercifully still over the last—some number of cycles—is welling up again. I don’t like this. The lift pod is spinning around me, and it is taking a great deal of my focus to stay upright. “I don’t like this.” My speech is slurred, which scares me even more.
“You just hit your head really hard,” Ratthi says gently. “We need to bring you to medical so that Peri can make sure you’re okay and figure out why it happened.”
“I do not want Perihelion to look at me,” falls out of my mouth. I do not think I was supposed to say this. I cannot remember why. All my thoughts are slow and painful, like my head is filled with boiling sand.
“Why not?”
“I’m scared of it.” The ship is huge and aggressive when it wants something, and if I scans me in medical it will find out something that I do not want it to know.
“Why are you scared of Perihelion ?” Ratthi asks.
I look up at him. “I’m scared of everything.”
Perihelion makes short work of my stupidity.
This unit is long overdue for a recharge cycle, it announces to the medbay. To the tune of over a thousand hours.
“What?” Kaede stares at me. I wish I was wearing a hooded jacket like 1.0 has so that I could hide myself from her view. I do not want the humans to look at me while they think about how damaged I am.
In my feed, I get a ping from 1.0. It messages me, wtf, and nothing else. I think it must be disappointed. It tried to teach me how to be a free construct, and I am not succeeding. I want to apologize but I do not think I can make the words work right.
“You haven’t been recharging?” Turi asks. “Why not? Is there something you need—like special equipment or, I don’t know, a charging port or something?”
A recharge cycle is poorly named, the ship explains. It would be more properly called a ‘maintenance cycle.’ It allows a construct’s systems to repair themselves, improving processing speed and usable memory space.
“So if you don’t have a recharge cycle, maintenance cycle, whatever,” Turi asks, “what happens?”
Impaired cognition, diminished processing speeds, and loss of coordination would be expected within a hundred hours. At such a critical level of maintenance deficit, it’s a wonder the unit is still functioning.
“Three,” Ratthi says slowly. “Can you explain to us why you haven’t been taking a recharge cycle?”
I do not want to tell him. But his hand is resting over mine, holding it gently, and I find my mouth saying words—halting, stumbling over the sounds. “I. I do not want to feel afraid.”
“Does taking a recharge cycle make you feel afraid?”
I shake my head, then nod. “I am sorry,” I say. I am messing this up, I think. I cannot even explain my own malfunctions.
“You don’t need to be sorry,” Ratthi says. “You haven’t done anything wrong. Please, if you can explain, I want to understand.”
“I do not feel afraid right now,” I say, motioning with one shaky hand at my head. “There is no space.”
Ratthi gets an unfocused look in his eyes that makes me think someone else is talking to him over the feed. Or maybe someone in the room is talking to him, but I cannot hear them because my audio inputs have dropped. I try to look around, searching for someone’s mouth moving, but everything has gone to tones of gray and the faces are dissolving into blank static. I shut my eyes because I do not want to see the humans without faces.
“Three, can you hear me?” Ratthi is saying. It takes me three tries to remember how to open my eyes.
“Hey,” he says softly, with a sad smile. “Listen, I know things are really difficult right now. We’re going to do our best to help you, but the first step is for you to take a recharge cycle.”
I shake my head. “No.”
“It will help you feel a lot better, and then we can make a plan for—”
“No, it will not. I’ll feel afraid again.”
“But you can’t—”
“I can make decisions now.” I look up at 1.0 for confirmation—but no, it is not here; it only pinged me in the feed. “1.0—SecUnit said I can decide things. That nobody can tell me what to do.” I already regret saying this. I have interrupted the humans and defied their orders. I should be receiving punishment for this. My organic parts go hot.
You can make many decisions, the ship says. However, there are some things I will not allow you to choose to do. Harming my crew is one of those things. Doing harm to yourself is another.
I feel the shackles of another governor module closing in on me; a sick surge of terror rushes over me, the first I’ve felt in many cycles. Tears well up in my eyes and I cover my mouth to stifle the sounds I want to make. Humans do not want to hear constructs cry. It is unnecessary and unbeneficial.
But Ratthi puts an arm around me and leans his head against my shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I hate that we have to take away this choice from you.”
I get another feed message from 1.0. It is an animated reaction image it created, one it frequently sends to the humans. A small human with drooping eyes slowly drops its face into a bowl of food; over top of the image the words “Humans need rest periods” flashes in magenta and yellow. Only in this version of the image, the word “humans” has been crossed out and replaced with “constructs.”
I am confused. I have observed 1.0 use this animated image many times against the humans when they have worked too late (or, once, when they spent several hours watching an entertainment serial it did not enjoy), in an aggressive way that I initially tagged as an attempt to annoy or upset. But as I studied its interactions with the humans, I had recategorized the behavior as a way of showing care for the humans.
But now it is using this behavior with me, and I do not know what it means.
I come out of the recharge cycle with a shuddering gasp before I regain my control of my exterior functions. Instantly, the anxiety is back, crushing my chest like the weight of a rock fall. I shut my eyes and carefully control my breathing. My hands do not shake.
“Sixteen hours,” someone says.
I sit up. 1.0 is in the room, sprawled out on a chair, one leg draped over the arm rest. It does not look at me, but a drone hovers in one corner of the medbay, so I know where to direct my eyes.
“During that time,” 1.0 continues, “the humans completed a rest period. Kaede, Matteo, Tarik, and Seth performed exercise routines. Karime tried to teach Iris how to cook something her mother used to make, but the ingredients she bought on the station weren’t quite right, so it didn’t come out. Ratthi and Turi watched the series finale of Song of Bones and Glass . Martyn received a message from his brother, and responded. The humans are in a work period right now; they have two more hours.”
The litany of mundane, uncomplicated happenings is reassuring. If something bad had happened, surely 1.0 would recount that first. Unless it was something really bad—like the humans discussing the best way to dispose of their broken SecUnit, that useless piece of equipment that could not even perform its own maintenance right. I feel my chest tighten and my performance reliability goes down a point.
Everything is fine, Perihelion tells me over the feed. I want to believe it but I do not know how.
“Ratthi is coming,” 1.0 says. “He’s going to make you talk about your feelings.”
I contemplate saying that I do not want to talk about feelings. I do not say it. I have a suspicion that this is another thing I am not allowed to decide about.
“It won’t be totally awful,” 1.0 tells me. It pulls a face that makes me think it will be even more awful than I expected. There is a long pause, and I can tell from the way its mouth tightens that Perihelion is talking to it in the feed, and that the ship is saying something it does not like.
Then it offers, “I can stay if you want.”
I can tell it does not want to stay. I do not want it to go, but I do not understand why, so I shake my head. “It is all right. You can go.”
1.0’s relief is evident as it pushes up to its feet. “Good luck.” It leaves the medbay just as Ratthi walks in, but as the door closes behind it, it sends me a ping in our shared feed connection. I acknowledge, and 1.0 leaves the connection open.
“Hey, Three,” Ratthi says. “I’m glad you had a recharge cycle. How are you feeling now?”
“My functioning is no longer impaired,” I report.
“That’s good to hear.” Ratthi motions toward the platform. “May I sit?” I pull up my knees, still under the blanket, to make space for him. His face turns serious. “We need to talk about what happened. Are you feeling up to that?”
The way he has raised the subject confirms my earlier guess that even if I was not “feeling up to that” (I do not know what this means), the conversation would happen anyway. I nod.
“So listen,” Ratthi begins. “First, I need you to understand that you are not in trouble for what happened. Nobody is angry at you.”
I blink at him in surprise. I nearly damaged an expensive piece of equipment—no, that is not the way things work here, I know it is not, but even if nobody here owns me, to willfully neglect property like I have done is not something a helpful, functional person does. Ratthi has a right to be angry, and disappointed.
“But we do feel worried about you,” Ratthi is saying. “We want you to be healthy and comfortable, and what happened yesterday showed that you definitely are not feeling good. We need to understand what’s going on, so we can try to fix things.”
Ah. They want to repair my malfunctioning brain. This makes more sense. It will be embarrassing to admit my flaws, but no more than I deserve. And if they can fix me, it will be worth it. Maybe I should have asked for maintenance sooner.
“Can you explain to me again why you weren’t taking recharge cycles?”
“I like how it feels,” I say, haltingly. I am not used to describing my own feelings. “When I am overdue for a recharge cycle, my processing becomes slow. I have to think very hard about things. It feels . . . quiet.”
Ratthi nods. “And how does it feel when you’ve had a recharge cycle?”
“I feel scared,” I admit. “All the time. Of everything. It feels like dying.” I look up from my lap and force myself to meet Ratthi’s eyes. “I think my brain is broken. Can you fix it?”
Ratthi’s face melts. “I wish we could.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Lots of humans feel anxious even when there isn’t any good reason for it. Unfortunately, there isn’t an easy fix for that.”
I look away. I focus very hard on not letting my hands tremble, on holding back all the sounds I want to make. But I can’t stop my eyes from watering, and the fluid leaks down my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” I mutter, and the words come out broken and uneven.
“It’s okay to feel upset,” Ratthi says. “I wish I had an easier answer for you.”
I want this conversation to be finished. I already knew that what it was wrong and stupid to neglect my own maintenance, and that I would not be allowed to continue. Why do we need to talk about it? And about how bad this will be? About how I will have to keep on feeling like this forever—and—
I have to press a hand to my mouth to stop myself from making a sound of distress.
You are allowed to cry, Perihelion whispers to me in the feed. Ratthi will not be angry.
I do not know how to respond to that. I pull my knees closer to my chest and hide my face against them. I am breathing in short little gasps, each breath sounding more and more like a sob.
“Oh, Three,” Ratthi says softly. He puts an arm around my shoulders. “I know this is really hard.”
I do not want this, I want to say. I cannot do it. But that has never mattered in the past.
Ratthi waits until I have stopped making noises, although tears are still leaking from my eyes. “Can we talk about how we can help you?” he asks.
I do not understand the question.
“Is there anything we humans do—or that Perihelion does—that makes you feel anxious? Can we do something differently to make things more comfortable for you?”
Ratthi is waiting patiently for an answer, even though many second have passed and I am still silent. I do not know what I should say. Please, can you help? I send to Perihelion. I should not bother it with this, but I do not want to keep disappointing Ratthi—and I am so tired. I do not know the answer.
Ratthi tilts his head to one side in a way that tells me Perihelion is having a conversation with him over the feed. He nods, slowly. “Okay, we’ll talk about that another time,” he says. “How about this—is there anything you already do that makes you feel safer or less anxious?”
For example, SecUnit enjoys watching media, Perihelion supplies when I cannot come up with an answer.
I have tried viewing media. I did not understand the programs SecUnit shared with me, but I do understand the educational videos I have been given. Does this mean I enjoy them? Do they make me feel safe? I think of myself sitting alone in my darkened room, watching a program I understand but have no context for, my handful of drone cameras my only way of knowing what is happening on the rest of the ship, and I have an answer.
“Not viewing media,” I whisper. But the humans gave me the media to watch. And it helps 1.0, who is much more experienced than me in being an ungoverned construct. Maybe I should try again. Maybe I am not watching it correctly.
But Ratthi says, “Good! It’s just as helpful to know what things don’t help. So watching media doesn’t help your anxiety. Are there any times when you feel less afraid?”
I think about the other things I do. I patrol the corridors. I sit and stand in my room and in the science labs and in the Argument Lounge. I listen to the humans talk to each other. I view navigational data that shows the ship’s progress through space. I help move cargo.
“I.” I spin out and have to begin again. “Sometimes I. Can participate in things that are happening. If I know the protocol.”
Ratthi nods. “Very good. Can you tell me an example?”
“I helped to provide security for the meeting with the colonists,” I say. “1.0—SecUnit provided instructions.”
“You enjoyed going to the meeting?” Ratthi raises an eyebrow, and I recall that the humans found those meetings very stressful. Maybe I got this wrong, too. “Sorry,” Ratthi says. “I was just surprised. SecUnit often finds situations with lots of humans present very stressful.”
“I knew what was expected from me,” I explain.
“Okay, that makes sense,” Ratthi says. “So, that was a work situation. What do you think about joining a leisure activity, with some of the humans on the ship, if you knew what to expect?”
I feel my face light up. “There is a protocol for leisure?” I had been led to understand that there was not; that humans just knew what to do and how to act on their own.
I can create a protocol document, Perihelion offers. Perhaps for a small gathering to play a board game.
“Does that sound like something you could participate in?” Ratthi asks, and I nod, letting myself feel a sliver of hope.
Later that cycle, when the humans are in their rest period, 1.0 sends me a message: Come down to the gym.
When I arrive, it is standing in front of the wall that is studded with artificial rocks in various unrealistic colors and shapes. This style of decoration is not used in other areas of the ship, which is unusual; unlike the station we visited, Perihelion has a uniform style and color scheme throughout its interior.
“Our systems are really good at producing anxiety chemicals,” 1.0 tells me.
The proper term is stress hormones, Perihelion tells us. Cortisol and adrenaline are the brain’s response to potentially dangerous situations, chemicals that ready the body to respond with intense physical activity. However, both human and construct brains often overapply this stress response, resulting in feelings of anxiety and heightened physical readiness in situations in which no actual danger is present.
“Shut up, ART, no one cares,” 1.0 says. The lights in the room go out for the briefest fraction of a second. Ratthi has assured me that this sort of insulting conversation is 1.0’s way of showing care for Perihelion, but it still makes me feel uneasy, as if the inevitable punishment might catch me in its radius.
“We can also make the good hormones—ART, I don’t want to know their names—but we have to trick our systems into releasing them. Yeah, that’s a fucked-up way to build a construct, but what else is new?” It grimaces.
SecUnit is refering to chemicals called endorphins, Perihelion tells me on our own feed chanel. These chemicals reduce perception of pain and act as a kind of sedative, easing feelings of anxiety.
“One way to do it is physical activity,” 1.0 continues, turning back to the decorative wall. “ART has a paper about why it works but I deleted it so you’ll have to ask it later if you actually want to know.”
I would like to read the paper, I tell the ship.
Sending it to your file storage space now.
“But now, we’re going to use the climbing wall,” 1.0 tells me. It motions at the series of colored rocks. “The point is to get to the top in different ways.”
I am beginning to understand. The artificial rocks are to hold onto, giving the humans a place to practice climbing. But—it takes me 14.8 seconds to reach the top of the wall. It was as easy as walking down a hallway. I do not understand how this will produce any physical effort. I drop back down to the floor.
“Okay,” 1.0 says, “But you can’t just use all of the handholds. Now try it just with the yellow ones.”
This is a little bit more challenging. I can still accomplish it easily, but I have to plan my approach, and there is one spot near the top where the next yellow stone is just out of reach and I have to jump a little to catch it.
“Good,” 1.0 says when I hit the ground. “Now you give me a route.”
I am caught off-guard by the demand to make a decision. I do not want to ruin the exercise period by giving 1.0 the wrong instructions to follow. I try to pick a color, like it did, but I do not know which one is the right one. 1.0 waits calmly, still staring at the corner of the room.
You can choose any color, Perihelion tells me in our feed. There is not a wrong answer.
It takes me 56 seconds. “Blue,” I half-whisper. I want to apologize for my uselessness, but I am afraid of doing that wrong as well.
1.0 just nods and scales the wall. Thirty-seven seconds later, it drops back to the ground next to me. “Red,” it says.
I successfully climb the wall using the red stones—more challenging than the yellow route, I notice—and then successfully instruct 1.0 to climb the pink route. Next, it tells me to climb using only round handholds, and I suggest it uses only the square ones.
Green, and only one hand, Perihelion says to us both, and 1.0 shoots up the wall, its right arm tucked behind its back. It achieves the top in 16.35 seconds, then looks at me challengingly. I try the task and make it up the wall in 18.02.
“Not bad,” 1.0 says. “Try again. I bet you can clear 17 seconds.”
It takes me two more tries but on my last attempt I realize that I can twist my body around and reach the next-to-last handhold with my knee, shaving a whole 3 seconds off my time. 1.0 gets a determined look on its face and tries the route again, this time imitating my approach. It can do it, but its shorter reach makes the final move more difficult, and it cannot manage to match the time I got. I worry that it will get angry, but it just grins.
“Okay, now the red route with one hand.” There is something in its eyes that makes me think it has a plan in mind, and my prediction is proved correct when it manages to find a move where the slight difference in our frames makes it easier for it than for me.
We climb the wall again and again, using various special conditions to make the task more difficult: Carry one of the weights human use for strength training; use arms only; hang from each handhold for 100 seconds before moving on to the next. By the end of an hour my limbs are sore and trembling from exhaustion, like at the end of a very hard cycle’s work. But it is a good soreness, even though I cannot articulate why, even to myself. Maybe because I chose this.
“Now you need to take a shower,” 1.0 tells me. “We don’t get as dirty as humans, but it’s still a good idea. Besides, a hot shower is another good way to trick your brain into giving you some of the good chemicals.”
As we walk in silence back to our rooms, Perihelion sends me another document, this one a list of other activities that can trigger the release of positive hormones: Listening to music, sitting in bright light, receiving hugs, lying under heavy blankets. I did not know there were so many ways to improve my systems’ functioning.
This information was not included in my maintenance specifications, I tell Perihelion. I scramble to add, I am not questioning it, I only—
The ship cuts me off. I knew what you meant, it reassures me. Barish-Estranza does not prioritize its units’ comfort or wellbeing, only the work it can get from them. This seems obvious to me; why should it matter how the equipment felt?
On the other hand, I could have been performing my work just as well without enduring such awful feelings—so why did it have to be this way instead?
We have reached the door to my room. 1.0 pauses in the corridor. “You remember how to make the shower hot?”
I nod an affirmation.
“You can make it cold, too. It’s—it can be distracting, but it doesn’t actually do any damage.” It shuffles its feet, staring hard at the floor. “If you feel like you want to hurt yourself. It sometimes helps.”
Then it is quickly striding away down the corridor, and I don’t have time to respond. Thank you, I send in the feed, but it does not acknowledge my message.
In my room, I strip off the crew uniform I have been using and step into the hygiene compartment. The recycler hums, and I find that the ship has sent a tiny packet of cleaning gel. It smells like the oranges Matteo bought when we stopped at the station.
Tomorrow, I will provide another scent, Perihelion informs me. I can tell from the way it says it that this is part of some kind of project where eventually I will be asked to choose a preference from among the options I have sampled.
But if it is not going to push me to decide yet, maybe I can also wait to worry about that decision. I turn on the water—warm, today—and step into the shower.