Royce's Random Thoughts

So here I was on Preservation Station, in a conference room crowded with too many people (okay six, including myself) with food and drink along a side table that I can’t consume, and several boxes wrapped in brightly colored paper which I was dreading having to open.

They even made me a cake. I don’t know why, they just did. It had “Congratulations, SecUnit” written in large letters on it. Below that in much smaller letters it said, “We know you don’t care, but we do.” I suspect Dr. Gurathin put that in. I don’t know.

It was a double occasion. One, I had finally been officially recognized as a citizen of the Preservation Alliance. Which meant I was, very legally, a person. Which meant if I went around doing my job (ie: murdering anyone threatening someone I was hired to protect) I could be arrested for it instead of broken down for spare parts. Oh, and I also had what passed for Preservation’s government backing me up, which was actually kind of nice. I don’t know, it was complicated.

The other occasion was that I was going to be leaving on a Preservation transport tomorrow to rendezvous with Perihelion, aka ART, and its crew, to help them on a “research project” which was totally about charting a supposedly empty star system, and definitely not about beating certain corporations trying contacting any abandoned corporate colonies there, making sure the colonies had paperwork showing they had always been legally independent, so they couldn’t be taken in and made involuntary employees of whatever corporation found them.

But just in case someone got mad about it, ART and its crew wanted me along. Because the only thing more dangerous than a SecUnit doing its job, was a rogue SecUnit that actually cared about doing its job right.

Anyway, the party was incredibly awkward as everyone made chit chat and tried to be friendly while simultaneously not making eye contact with me. I used the conference room’s cameras to keep track of everyone. Dr. Mensah was there of course, as was Ratthi, Gurathin, Pin-Lee, Arada, and Mensah’s daughter Amena. They all kept glancing at me, then glancing at the boxes, and then back to me, and it was enough that I was considering writing a program to give canned responses when anyone tried to talk to me so I could safely start watching an episode of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon without being rude. Not that I cared about being rude. Ever.

After three subjective centuries and fifteen actual minutes, Dr. Mensah cleared her throat, and everyone started to quiet down. When the room was quiet, she began, “SecUnit, it goes without saying that we’re glad that you chose to join us here in Preservation. If you hadn’t been there for us, at the right moment in a time of crisis, everyone in this room would be dead, some of us several times over.” Which was true, but everyone knew that. I don’t know why she had to point it out. At least she left out the bits where I screwed up anyway.

“It’s even more impressive given the fact that you were often protecting us without the vital equipment you were designed to use,” Dr. Mensah went on. “With you leaving us shortly to travel with Perihelion, we would like to correct that.” She made a gesture towards the boxes.

I stood there frozen for a moment, until Dr. Gurathin popped in helpfully on the feed to state, You’re supposed to open them, idiot. There were three of them, two about the size of small shipping containers, and the other very large, about the size of a crate I would have been shipped in to one of my old assignments. I started with one of the smallest ones first. It was a box of two dozen surveillance drones, standard issue for any SecUnit. Except on just a visual scan I could see they weren’t standard issue. They were a unit design I’d never seen before. I wondered where Mensah had gotten them. Drones weren’t normally used on Preservation, and previously Dr Mensah has to specially order the ones I’d been using on the station.

The second box was an even bigger surprise. These were combat drones, another two dozen of them. Normally combat drones weren’t used by SecUnits, only by dedicated CombatSecUnits. And if surveillance drones were rare on Preservation, combat drones were unheard of.

“I know these must be a surprise to you,” Dr. Mensah said. “But given the sheer number of violent incidents you have been involved in, I thought it prudent you have to option to have them, if you needed them.”

“Both the surveillance and combat drones are unique designs,” Amena interjected. “They were all manufactured here on Preservation Station and have no corporate patented elements.”

“Most importantly the code controlling them was written by Pin-Lee and myself,” Dr Gurathin added. He sent a packet to me in the feed and I opened it. It was controlling software for both sets of drones, and as he’d said, none of it matched the standard architecture the company had used, or anything else I recognized. “I’m not going to say it will make them hack proof,” he continued, “But anyone trying to wrest control of your drones away from you would have a much more difficult job.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it. I was having a serious emotion right now. Amena, Pin-Lee, and Gurathin had gone to a lot of trouble to build these drones for me. I could do my job without drones, but these would make it a lot easier. And knowing they were mine, built especially for me. Well…

This why I hate having emotions. My efficiency rating was dropping into the low 90’s and I wasn’t even being shot at. But the worst was yet to come.

“Open the big one!’ Amena demanded. So, I started pulling the wrapping paper off. I don’t why humans insisted on covering boxes with the stuff. It just opening them more difficult. I pulled the top off and…

Inside was armor. Nice, normal looking armor that any SecUnit would use. It was colored grey, with darker grey at the joints, and the design was again unique. It wasn’t company armor that was for sure. Company armor would be dinged up, scratched, obviously used and probably patched in areas a client wasn’t supposed to see. Company armor was cheap. This… wasn’t… It was brand new, shiny, and didn’t smell of dirt, blood and leaking fluids.

“Again, this is unique,” Ratthi explained. “For one thing, with your body’s modifications, you actually don’t fit standard SecUnit armor any more, or at least it wouldn’t be very comfortable for you. This set is custom fitted for your unique body type. Also it has several features that aren’t standard.”

“The armor is thicker by several millimeters than your old company armor,” Dr. Mensah said. “I’m told it was a tradeoff between maximum protection and running the risk of slowing down your reflexes. It’s most noticeable in the chest and back, and your helmet.”

“Given the number of times you’ve been whacked in the head and forced into an involuntary shutdown, that seemed like a good idea,” Gurathin added. Given it was Gurathin, that was said sarcastically, but I think he really meant it.

“The helmet has an enhanced senor suite to complement your drones,” Ratthi added. “In the back of armor is a small drone hive, which can recharge and repair your drones as needed, and can also be used to manufacture unique, mission specific modules for the combat drones, replacing their weapons with whatever you think you might need.”

“As you can see, there are no logos on it. Not even for Preservation,” Amena said. “We… we thought that would be important to you.” She went on, “It does have a programmable surface on it though. So, if you want to show off Preseration’s logo, or set it to a camouflage pattern, or whatever, you could.”

“It is important to me, yeah,” I said, before I could think better of it and keep my mouth shut. Yeah, I was having a big emotion right now, and I was hating it, even as I fought the urge to strip off my hooded jacket and put the armor on right now.

“Bear in mind this is a prototype,” Ratthi said. “Once you come back from your job with Perihelion I’m sure you’ll have a dozen suggestions for improving it.” He sent me the armor’s full specs on the feed. If I gave them to ART, I’m sure the big research ship could make me a brand-new set from its manufacturing unit. Though ART would probably also snark about how it could have made an even better design if I’d just asked it.

“There is one last thing,” Mensah said. “It would have to wait until your returned from your mission with Perihelion, but I thought it would be another gift you would appreciate.”

“What?” I asked. I hoped that I didn’t sound ungrateful. The drones alone would have been a gift I could never pay them back for. I couldn’t imagine what else they could give me when you included the armor.

“I have been talking with our engineering and medical personnel,” Mensah said. “I know that the company logo is something you hate intensely, to the point of editing it out of your memories. But it is part of you, literally etched into your structure.” She reached out to not quite touch my arm. “We can’t remove the logos in your structure, but we believe it would be possible to cover them. We would add a micro-millimeter layer over your existing structure, to erase the logos, to point they wouldn’t be visible even on a scanner.” Mensah paused then asked tentatively, “Would you like that?”

I… was having an emotion again. The biggest, worst emotion I’d felt since I thought ART had been murdered. Except it wasn’t bad, it was just overwhelming. I couldn’t answer her. I couldn’t even think. All I could do was watch as my performance rating freefalled as I stood there like an idiot, everyone staring at me, waiting for me to say something.

Then, one by one, Dr. Mensah, Ratthi, Ping-Lee, Gurathin, Arada, and finally Amena turned away from me to look at the walls, look at the useless food on the table, look at the armor, look at anything besides me.

Because they were my friends, and they knew I hated parties, and they knew I hated being stared at, and they knew especially how I hated having emotions. And that was okay because they understood.

It was still too much. I had to step outside into the hallway. After a few moments my performance level began to rise again, and I was able to ping Mensah and tell her, I’d like that.

Thank you, SecUnit,she replied over the feed. I’ll let everyone know. You don’t have to come back inside if you don’t want to.

I didn’t.

And that was okay. Because she and everyone else understood me.