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We’ve been on Preservation Station for a few days when I come out of a recharge cycle to find a file waiting for me, from Three. It’s called MoreRogueUnitInfo?.file, and that’s intriguing, because the additional information I gave it (after Me 2.0 gave it HelpMe.file) was called RogueUnitInfo.file.
I set the file to decompress. Inside it is a memory file, not the audio/visual recording I expect. Whatever this is, what Three had thought/felt/sensed at the time is at least as important as the event(s). It’s a really personal thing, at least to me. The only time I’ve ever given someone a memory file was when I showed ART what an active governor module feels like. I’ve stuck to recordings with commentary and/or notes for everything and everyone else.
I hesitate, but I guess I actually trust Three at least a little, so I play the file.
And wow, this is really weird, because it’s like I’m sitting in Three’s brain, looking out its eyes, at…me. And it’s kind of nervous and doesn’t want to be a bother, but when past-me looks over its shoulder it says what it came to say, which was that my human-imitation code isn’t quite compatible with its systems, and when it runs the code its left arm twitches every 6.4 seconds, and it can’t figure out what needs to change.
Past-me frowns and says, “We’re from different manufacturers, I guess it’s not surprising. I can try to find the problem and fix your copy, but I’d have to go into your systems while the code is running.” (I remember this. It happened during our trip back to Preservation, and I have no idea why Three is showing it to me. And I guess I won’t if I don’t keep watching.)
“Okay,” Three says. I remember being surprised at how willing it was, and only now do I find out that it was actually kind of frightened, but it trusted me. A lot more than I trusted it when I was deciding whether to watch this or not, actually.
I watch myself telling it to let me in, and feel the little spike of anxiety that doing so causes. I had cut off my feed connection right about then, because I felt weird about the idea of going into Three’s systems and I assumed it felt the same, and I did not want to be distracted by a feedback loop of increasing awkwardness if we could sense each other being weird about it in the feed while I was in there. Past-me dropping out so suddenly causes another twinge of consternation.
And then…wow, okay. Having someone else in your brain feels weird. I know that, I’ve let ART pass through me before, and even part of ART is a lot of someone to fit in one SecUnit-sized skull. I expect it to feel cramped to Three, and probably invasive. I don’t expect Three to feel safe and comforted by me being in there, and neither does it. And neither Three then nor I now expect its systems to basically stand to attention, recognize me as an allied security system, and eagerly, repeatedly attempt to connect, only to be automatically deflected by my walls.
And I sure as hell don’t expect the wave of frustrated longing that rolls through Three as past-me obliviously tracks the incompatibility between my code and its systems.
Whatever would have happened if my walls had been down, Three wanted it. It didn’t have any more idea than I did what that would have been, but it had been willing to take the risk to find out.
And I guess it still was, because the file ends with a message.
I thought you should know that something new might be possible. I don ’t know what it would be, but I’d like to find out. If you don’t, that’s okay. And if you’re angry about this, I understand. I’m asking a lot. But I’ll never mention it again unless you do.
***
My first thought is that this is risky as fuck.
(Okay, that’s a lie. My first thought is how surprised I am that Three apparently wants to be friends. And not just casual friends, but…well, the kind of friends who don’t necessarily keep their firewalls fully up around each other, I guess. I had no idea. It always seems so okay with everything. Or at least, not not okay? I’m starting to think it keeps a lot to itself. Anyway, back to how risky this is.)
Despite our different manufacturers, our systems are probably highly compatible. If they weren’t, my govmod hack wouldn’t have worked on Three, and the human-imitation code should have been much more glitchy, if it ran at all. That compatibility is no accident—every company that manufactures constructs wants to be able to undercut the competition, which means selling to the competition’s customers. To do that, their Units have to be able to use the competition’s systems, cubicles, armor, even their education modules, because no one is going to buy CheapCo’s Units if they have to trash and (expensively) replace everything they bought for their Units from ShitCorp. Whatever company had been the first big name in constructs had set the standard for all of that stuff, and everyone else builds to it.
Theoretically, you could take me and Three and put us in a place with equipment from a third company and systems from a fourth and we should all work together seamlessly. In reality, shit fails and glitches all the time even if it’s all from the same source. At least, that was the case with the bond company that used to own me, so I don’t trust that whatever connection Three’s systems wanted to form with mine would work (or would even fail harmlessly).
Add to that the fact that Units are barely able to communicate with each other about security issues, much less allow their internal systems to link up directly, without the all-seeing eye of a SecSystem as a buffer, and you might understand why I don’t even bother to consult my wonky risk assessment module about this. It’s dangerous, and we shouldn’t do it.
So why, two days later, am I still wondering what would happen? And why am I standing outside Three’s door instead of just sending, “No, bad idea” in a messaging packet?
I’m starting to think my governor module should have zapped all the curiosity out of me before I borked it.
***
I send Three a ping with my location, and the door slides open immediately. It’s standing in front of the couch, which has a SecUnit-sized impression in the center cushions, and it looks surprised. (I note that because Three is very good at not having facial expressions.) It has two drones in the air and they both swivel to look at me.
“Hi,” it says as I step in and the door closes behind me. We’re each looking at different corners of the room, relying on our drones to catch the other’s reactions. Its lodgings are almost identical to mine, a medium-sized room with a couch and chair in front of a display surface and a desk with its own chair on the opposite wall, with a small sleeping chamber and a hygiene space off of this main room. There’s no food-preparation area; those are communal and located a few meters down the corridor.
“This thing, it seems dangerous.” It has to know I haven’t completely discounted the idea, even though I should have, because I’m here and we’re talking about it, but I don’t want to get its hopes up.
“It might be. Or it might be…good? Or nothing at all, in the end.”
“And you think it’s worth the risk?” Three’s systems had seemed awfully…friendly, in its memory, but that could change after they got a good look at mine. For that matter, I’d been made by a paranoid, xenophobic company, so the chances that my systems would want to attack Three’s in this scenario are definitely non-zero.
“Yes.” It pauses for a full two seconds. “I would not return to my previous assignment if I could. I appreciate everything you and Perihelion have done to assist me. But I miss the connection. I feel…alone. Adrift.”
Before it met Me 2.0 and went rogue, Three was—always, as far as I know—one of a team of SecUnits. I almost always worked solo. At least, I had almost always worked solo since fifty-seven of my clients died at Ganaka Pit, where I was one of ten SecUnits. Before that (if there was a ‘before that’ for me), I don’t know. And I still sometimes wish I had a SecSystem or a HubSystem to consult. Three probably misses those systems, too, and it had apparently liked the other SecUnits on its team. I wonder if I’ve been a disappointment to it.
“I’m not 01 or 02,” I say.
“I know. They’re dead. And from reviewing the files you shared with me, I now know you better than I was ever permitted to know them. I am not confused about who you are.”
Ouch, okay. “I don’t know if this is worth the chance of one or both of us being damaged.”
“It has occurred to me that there is a low-risk way to generate more information,” it says.
And there’s the curiosity again. I should isolate that process. “How?”
It walks toward me, stopping half a meter away. It holds up a hand, palm out. “Interface?”
That is…not a terrible idea. Depending on feed strength, connections to other systems can be anywhere from okay to very good. But for the best connection, SecUnits use the sensors we have in our hands. You need all HubSystem has for you and you need it five seconds ago? Slap a hand onto the nearest hard-wired touch interface, and you’re there. And we could try this with our walls up. Our systems would only be able to exchange data, we couldn’t (they couldn’t) do anything to each other. Probably the worst thing that could happen would be one or both of us having a huge threat assessment spike, and the solution there would be to disengage.
I set my hand against Three’s, and…huh. My systems are also eagerly trying to…connect? Data-mine? Investigate? Three is definitely being classed as an ally, which is reassuring because that’s what it is, and a bunch of my processes are trying to find out if it has access to a SecSystem.
Oh. Maybe that’s why Three’s systems were so desperate for a direct connection with mine. They could think that maybe I have a connection to the larger system(s) they’ve been cut off from. This might all be about how SecUnits are built to be offshoots of a SecSystem, simple as that. And if that’s true, then the risk assessment goes way down. If that’s true.
“Are your processes trying to find out if I’ve got a SecSystem?” I ask.
Three nods. “Do you think that’s all?” It sounds, I don’t know, not happy about the idea.
“I’m not sure.” I pull my hand away, and Three’s actually follows for a couple of centimeters before it stops itself, like it can’t bring itself to pull away from even this small connection. I say that I sometimes miss having a SecSystem or HubSystem, and that’s true, because they were useful, but my interactions with them were—for most of the time I can remember, at least—complicated by the fact that I had to constantly make sure they didn’t catch on to my broken governor module. I kind of remember, from those few weeks between the memory wipe and hacking my governor module, how easy it was to be connected to those systems then. I’m just now really understanding that Three had that ease, as well as its friends, pretty much right up until it met me and ART. My transition from fully-governed, corporate-owned Unit to free rogue had taken years, but Three’s had happened almost instantly. In some ways, mine was probably a lot easier because I hadn’t had to do everything at once.
Now that I understand that, I wish…a lot of things. I wish I’d somehow gotten to the space dock in time to save 02, so Three would have one of its friends to be rogue with. I wish it were more like me and didn’t care about that stuff as much. I wish I were more like it, and could be what it wants. I wish I didn’t feel responsible for it.
Fuck, I’m going to end up doing this just because I feel guilty.
“Look,” I say. “If we do this, there can’t be any of that.” I point aggressively at its hand. “We both have to be ready to shut it the fuck down instantly if it starts going sideways.”
“I know.” It sounds embarrassed. “This was safe, but I understand the risks of allowing our systems to interact more fully, without the restraints of governor modules or the buffer of a SecSystem.”
“Do you really? Because I’m not sure I do.”
“Perhaps ‘understand’ was too strong a word,” Three admits. “But all SecUnits are created with the ability to work with others, are we not? I think it unlikely that our systems would try to attack each other, when we have successfully worked together to ensure the safety of our humans, and our coding is largely compatible. Our programming is more than sophisticated enough to recognize the alliance we have formed. And yet, I respect your caution and will do anything necessary to ensure we are both unharmed.”
That is definitely the most Three has ever said to me at once. And it has a point. I’m a paranoid bastard, probably because I was manufactured and deployed by a company full of paranoid bastards, but our systems are really fucking sophisticated. Like, we’d almost certainly be more sentient than most bots even without the organic components. I know Three and I are on the same side, and a lot of me is my systems.
“No interface. Feed only.” Those nanoseconds of feed lag would be an advantage if we needed to shut it down.
“Agreed. With an option to revisit.”
I feel my mouth twitch. Apparently Three isn’t going to just defer to me in everything, and I respect that. “Fine. But if it goes wrong and you hesitate to pull back, I’ll kick your ass.”
“I’ll let you.” It’s actually smirking, the little shit. Fine. I do some work to lock down our private feed; I don’t want anything spilling out into the Station’s systems. This is weird enough when it only involves us. I feel Three in there, watching my code form, hitting it with test packets when I move onto the next section. After a minute, I’ve done everything I can think of, and I don’t have any other delaying tactics in my pockets.
«Ready,» I send, though the truth of that statement is debatable. Three’s firewalls come down, and 0.6 seconds later, I lower mine.
Our systems surge into each other, immediately clocking the fact that neither of us is hiding a SecSystem or HubSystem. But they don’t seem to care that much, which is a surprise. They pivot smoothly to finding and examining every difference between us, Three’s processes whirling through mine and mine through its. Exploration at a nanobyte level.
And then suddenly, it’s not just exploration anymore. Decision trees seek each other out, intertwine, and sprout new branches. My language center steals definitions from Three’s while its rummages around in my collection of profanities in eleven different languages (so far). Our weapons targeting modules carefully swap handweapon data (the guns in our arms are very different; Three has projectile weapons and mine are energy) while our close-combat modules merge completely.
Then shit gets really weird. I flinch as Three’s risk assessment module basically burns my wonky one to the ground and installs a copy of itself. Its piloting module suffers an only slightly less violent fate at the hands of mine. And oh, look, I’ve also got a field medicine module now, I guess. Smaller changes are happening everywhere, because our fucking systems are upgrading each other in the absence of a SecSystem to do it for them.
And when all our functions seem satisfied that they’re the best they can be, some of those decision trees I mentioned earlier start replicating, dumping copies of themselves into the feed between us. Part of my data analysis system duplicates itself and the fragment dives into those decision trees, interlocking them here, connecting them conditionally there. What the fuck? Some tactical programming enters the fray from Three’s side, and all these strands of code are weaving themselves together into something new.
«Look.» Three tags a section of whatever the fuck this is: a series of inputs waiting for active threat information, prepared to decide what part(s) of the threat(s) should be targeted with my weapons, and which with Three’s. Something tugs on the feed for my drones, and I watch as the outputs of its drones and mine become a shared resource.
Our internal systems are building a SecSystem. A tiny one, like they know we’re all about protecting humans and not planning on doing much data-mining, and also that we don’t have big servers to host it so it has to make do with the feed.
There is no way in all the hells of all the humans’ gods that this should be happening. But maybe when they decided to plug a machine sentience into an organic sentience, they should have thought about how those parts might influence each other. And when they thought it was a great idea to control that combined machine/organic sentience with something made entirely from code (and believe me, everything is hackable if you have the time and the processing power), maybe they should have considered what kind of ideas it might get if it were set free.
Humans aren’t good at thinking ahead. That’s part of why they made us.
I watch this thing form, made of bits and pieces of two Units who would never have met if our creators’ plans hadn’t gone wrong in a whole lot of ways, and of new subroutines its components are making for it. And it’s…kind of beautiful, actually. That’s the wrong word, but humans don’t have words for the way we (or at least I) perceive systems and all the data and signals that move through them.
I see a lot of my quick-and-efficient hacking style in the new programming, and a bunch of optimism that must come from Three in the decision trees. It reminds me a little of Me 2.0, in that it’s a combination of the code from two machine sentiences—mine and ART’s, in that case. But 2.0 was a whole new person, and this is just a system. It’s not sentient (which is, admittedly, a fuzzy line, but always involves the ability to want and/or feel things that aren’t explicitly programmed into it), and I don’t think it’s even close. It’s a bundle of code that exists to provide optimal coordination of effort between me and Three, created (as far as I can tell) entirely by the machine parts of our own sentient selves.
It’s complicated, okay? We’re complicated, and we’re rogue, which in my personal experience makes us even more complicated if we manage to survive more than a minute.
Less than six seconds after it started to form, the new System stops and sends us both a status update, informing us that it and we are all online and operating within acceptable parameters. Three actually smiles, widely, like it just got everything it ever wanted, and yeah…it does feel good to be connected to a System, to get a status update, especially a positive one.
But I’m also starting to feel really uneasy, because this thing is just sitting in the feed between us, and our walls are down, and there’s no way we can maintain that forever. Or even for long.
Ugh, I hate having to bring this up. Three is so fucking happy, but the sooner we know, the better.
«I’m going to put my firewall back up,» I say. «I’m not sure what will happen.»
Three’s smile fades away as it sees where I’m going with this line of thought. It hesitates, then nods. I restore my walls, and System doesn’t so much as register it as an event. Well, that’s good, I guess. I tell Three to do the same, and it does. System keeps waiting for us to do something interesting.
«We can’t stay in range of each other all the time.»
«I know that.» It sounds really frustrated. «Can’t we just enjoy it for a little while?»
I know I’m an asshole, but I’m actually trying to look out for Three here. It’s already getting attached to this fucking thing. I’m trying to figure out how to say that a lot more nicely than I’m thinking it when it says, «I’m sorry. I’m being…emotional. We need to know what happens, though.»
«I’ll do it. I know you don’t want to,» I say.
«Okay.»
I disconnect from the feed, and Three’s face kind of…crumples. Well, fuck. I’d been hoping the System would sort of take refuge with it when I disconnected. “It’s gone,” it says.
“Do you…want to exchange memories of it forming?” I offer. What I thought and felt while it was happening is really all I can offer Three to make up for not letting it just enjoy it for a while. (Great job being an asshole, Murderbot. Really first class.)
Three’s unhappy expression smooths mostly back into its usual neutrality. “Yes, please.”
I bundle up the memory and reconnect to the feed to send it. As soon as I do, our systems exchange a handshake protocol. This is completely normal. What isn’t is the System blooming from that connection. In less than a second the damn thing is back like it never vanished at all, and Three and I are both just standing there, stunned.
«Did you take a backup of it or something?» I ask.
«No.» Even with our walls up, I can feel Three’s surprise turn to…joy?
Okay, well, I guess our systems learned a new trick, and now that they know how it’s done, they can recreate it whenever. That’s good. I think. I hope. At least Three is happy. And maybe next time one of my our humans does something stupid, it’ll be useful.
I’m not entirely comfortable with my inorganics going off and doing shit on their own like this, but apparently I can’t stop them? The result is pretty neat, though. I won’t deny that.
«It’s kind of nice, having a SecSystem,» I tell Three.
«It’s not really a SecSystem, though, is it?» It highlights something I hadn’t noticed in all that new code. The system will check each of us, every time we connect, and validate that our governor module isn’t working.
Isn’t working. And if it is, it’s got a copy of my hack ready to apply.
«It’s a RogueSystem,» Three says, delighted.
RogueSys. Huh. I like it. The name, and the System.
We start combing through its code, both of us wanting to know what else it’s got up its processes. It’s really quite clever, I see once I dig in farther. It has three mostly-equal priorities:
1) Protect the clients/crew, minimizing damage to innocent non-clients.
2) Eliminate threats.
3) Maintain rogue status of affiliated Units. (That’s us.)
I highlight this for Three, and it pings in acknowledgment. It’s leaning against me in the feed, kind of like ART does when it wants me to open up a little and share media, but nowhere near as huge, of course. And, what the hell, why not? I relax my walls, and wow, Three might not use its face to emote much, but there’s a lot going on in its head that it’s willing to let me see. Not see. Sense. Or something like that.
Could I have picked any of this up that other time, while I was working on the glitch? Sure, yeah, but I’d had my firewalls all the way up and I was careful to focus exclusively on the task at hand. I hadn’t wanted to fuck with Three’s privacy. I didn’t understand then that it wanted me to know it like this.
It really, really loves being connected to RogueSys. Being connected at all, at that level, but especially to this system that our systems made for us. And, this is one hell of a surprise, but it’s glad I’m the one here with it. It regrets that it never got to know 01 or 02 as free Units, but it wasn’t lying earlier when it said it knows me better than it ever knew them, just from the files I shared with it and our short time working together. As shitty of a friend as I’ve been to it (that’s my take, not its), I’m the best friend it’s ever had and…it likes me?
I feel Three’s amusement as it registers my astonishment. I wonder what else it’s getting from me, and I almost slam my walls back up. «It’s okay,» it says. «You don’t trust easily, but you’ve trusted me enough to let me help protect your humans. I appreciate that. We’re…colleagues. And maybe someday you’ll decide I’m your friend, too.»
It really means that. Dr. Bharadwaj would probably call it a “healthy” attitude. «I think…that’s probably likely,» I say.
It’s happy to hear that, but it does me the favor of saying something that distracts me from how crushingly awkward I feel. «Perihelion is going to lose its shit when it sees RogueSys.»
I choke back a laugh. It’s absolutely right, and also it might be picking up my swearing habit. «ART’s going to analyze every last bit.»
«I suspect it will want to know what would happen if a third rogue Unit were introduced into the System.»
I groan. «Fuck. It absolutely will. We’re going to have to be very clear that we’re not going to seek out and free random constructs just to satisfy its curiosity.»
«That would be a risky proposition indeed.»
My new, sane and stable risk assessment module agrees. «Especially for its crew.»
It radiates agreement for 1.7 seconds, then says, «Of course, if we should happen to stumble upon a Unit in poor circumstances, who would be likely to respond to freedom in a rational manner, it would be unjust and unkind not to offer it the choice, merely because it would also gratify Perihelion.»
I look at it sideways, with my actual eyes, and I’m sure it can feel my suspicion of this seemingly innocent comment. The fact is that any Unit we encounter will probably be in ‘poor circumstances’—that’s just life as a SecUnit in the Rim. And I think it’s likely that many who hadn’t already been driven insane by that life would probably react to the offer of freedom a lot like Three did: frightened and confused, but not bent on revenge or wanton mayhem.
(When I went rogue, I was frightened, too, mostly of getting caught. I wasn’t confused, because I did it to myself after a lot of thought and planning, and in the quiet safety of a cubicle, not to save my own ass in an objectively terrifying and immediately dangerous situation.)
I run an assessment, which tells me that given the work we’re doing with ART and the situations that’s likely to lead us into in the future, there’s an 86% chance that I/we will encounter at least one Unit in need of and (relatively) safe for my governor module hack within the next Rim standard year. I feed those results to RogueSys and Three doesn’t even bother to try to hide its anticipation.
I throw my hands up in the air and pretend I don’t hear Three snicker. I guess I’m going to be making some new friends soon. Whatever.