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Published:
2022-05-24
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Wake Up

Summary:

Brief thoughts on a selection of contracts to which a nondescript, interchangeable SecUnit has been assigned.

Work Text:

    I wake up in a transport crate. This is my first deployment after assembly and final testing. My levels are perfectly balanced, and I'm ready to go. My education modules have told me what to expect. I tap into the feed, to ask HubSystem for a copy of the contract to study, and that’s when things begin to go wrong. There is no HubSystem, no contract. At least I can connect with SecSystem, but it’s small, limited. There is no security ready room, no habitat, no large installation. There is a bot pilot, which I am not to interact with. This must be the transport ship.

     The SecSystem cameras confirm this when they show me a cargo hauler bot moving crates, loading them into a cargo drop pod. As the bot lifts my crate, an augmented human tagged as Company Retrieval Specialist Dimal says, “Shit, this one’s awake early.” 

     SecSystem forces a shutdown.

 

 

     I wake up in a transport crate. This is my first deployment after assembly and final testing. My levels are perfectly balanced, and I’m ready to go. I connect to the feed, to ask HubSystem for the contract, but there is no HubSystem. Instead, a limited SecSystem instructs me to remove myself from the crate and prepare for the mission. It supplies me a mission brief, but when I review it, I see that there are no clients. I have been deployed to salvage valuable company property from a survey site in ruins. This is not what my education modules have led me to expect, but I suppose this must also be part of my function.

    I open the left side of my crate and roll out into what is not a security ready room. I am in the drop pod, surrounded by a jumble of boxes and equipment. There is a cubicle across from me, which opens to release another SecUnit. Two more transport crates open, and we are now four. SecSystem instructs us to don envirosuits, but there is no armor. I mimic the other SecUnits, assuming that they understand the situation better than I do. 

    One by one we are given our tasks. I am assigned to a small planetary hopper from the second drop pod, given an education module on piloting it, and supplied with approximate coordinates. The hopper has a limited feed, and I cling to it as SecSystem fades with distance. Nothing like this was covered in my education modules. I wonder if this is another field test, before I am allowed to have clients. I dislike being alone, but I tamp down my unease and focus on the mission. I am to retrieve company property and mitigate any environmental contamination. 

    I set the hopper down at the first of the coordinates and load up a hover sled with supplies. I set out into the planetary night, my scanners tuned up to maximum, searching for any equipment broadcasting a company signature. After 214 minutes of searching, I find it, crushed under a fallen beam 589.4 meters into a rubble filled mining tunnel. I do not know how to retrieve it. My connection to the hopper’s feed is thin and tenuous from here. I navigate back through the debris until the connection is solid enough to pull information from its knowledge base. I return to the site of the lost equipment and use a long pry bar from the hover sled to lever the beam up slightly, then build up ad hoc cribbing to support its weight. 

    At last, I am able to pull (most of) the SecUnit out from under the beam. The organics have rotted and slip free in greasy smears that make me grateful for the envirosuit. Previously contained fluids ooze out from it, and I realize that this is the environmental contamination from the mission brief. I activate the EnviroPalz™ drones to clean up the remaining organics and the trail of apparently-toxic fluid that forms behind me as I lift the SecUnit’s body onto my back and haul it to the hover sled. 

     The organics left behind don’t matter, the mission brief says that I’m here for the inorganic components, which are valuable enough to salvage and repurpose into new SecUnits. The containers supplied for the retrieved equipment are too small, and I am instructed to disassemble the SecUnit and place its parts into the designated receptacles. 

    When the EnviroPalz™ finish and return to the sled, I head back toward the hopper. There are seven more locations still to search.

 

 

    I wake up in a company cubicle. This is my first deployment after assembly and final testing. My levels are all within limits, and I'm ready to go. HubSystem gives me the contract when I connect to the feed, and I see that the clients are not due to arrive for another 237 hours. I have been activated now in order to secure the area around the habitat. I am one of twenty SecUnits, though there are only ten cubicles. That ratio makes me uneasy, for some reason. The rest of the Units deploy from the transport crates stacked outside of the security ready room. 

     SecSystem provides us with armor, and large projectile weapons. My education modules have led me to expect dangerous fauna inhabiting an intended survey area. This is not the case. Instead, we are thrown into battle against another corporation’s SecUnits. We prevail, though our numbers are depleted. Next, battered and bloodied from the fight, we eliminate the human and augmented human targets within the nearby rival habitat.

    There are eight of us, in the end, for the ten cubicles. Two of the cubicles contain the remains of the least damaged SecUnits we retrieved from the battlefield, but they could not be revived. I am instructed to disassemble them on the floor of the security ready room. I find myself wishing for an envirosuit as I do so, though I do not know why. The cleaning bots take most of a cycle to return the ready room to its usual sterile whiteness.

     After we are at full functionality again, we are deployed for local salvage. Four units are ordered to the rival habitat, to secure valuable data and equipment. The large bots that have recently built our habitat begin unbuilding the other, erasing as best they can any trace of the targets’ presence on this planet. I and three others return to clear the battlefield, reclaim all useful parts and feed the rest into the habitat’s recyclers. 

     The clients arrive on schedule, to a safe and pristine survey area. We should be ten, but we manage well enough. The contract ends without incident.

 

 

     I wake up in a company cubicle. My levels are balanced, and I’m ready to go. This is not my first deployment, and I make the mistake of thinking I now know what to expect. I reach out to the feed, looking for HubSystem or SecSystem. A bot-piloted cargo hauler’s SecSystem connects with me, and I find my orders. A company client has paid for a security escort of valuable cargo. I am paired with another SecUnit, so that we can cover each other’s recharge cycles. 

     There are no humans or augmented humans aboard this cargo ship. I am unsure what we are guarding the valuable cargo from. Raiders, maybe? I am also unsure what good two SecUnits will do against an armed raider ship.

      I discover that even with no clients or company personnel present to overhear, SecUnits on contract are still forbidden to communicate with each other.

     Before we are even a quarter of the way to the cargo’s destination, I wish desperately for raiders. 

 

 

     I wake up in a transport crate. I am already in armor, though I don’t remember donning it. My levels are perfect, and I’m ready to deploy. A HubSystem drills into my brain before I can reach for it, which I have not experienced before. Its urgency infects me, and I roll out of the crate, immediately scanning for hostiles. 

     I am in a rocky cavern, surrounded by other SecUnits, more than I have seen in one place since leaving the company deployment center. HubSystem informs me that we are to take down a pair of rogue SecUnits. I query the knowledge base for a definition. SecSystem supplies camera views of several violently dead clients that look to have been that way for some time. I am horrified. 

     Four Units in heavier armor place themselves at strategic points, and SecSystem identifies them as Combat SecUnits. There is a flurry of activity on the feed between them and the rogues. I am braced, waiting for a command. Tense seconds pass, 117 of them. 

     Then the order comes: Stand down. Return to pre-deployment conditions.  

     There is a lot of confused pinging in the feed as I locate my transport crate and wait while three other Units climb into theirs. I convince SecSystem to show me what happened. It sends me the camera view only, without feed data.

     Two armored SecUnits stand ready behind blast doors 220 meters down the mining shaft from where we are deployed. They turn toward each other and are still for a moment. Then they simultaneously lower their helmets, touch each others’ faces with bare hands, and kill each other with headshots from their inbuilt forearm weapons.

     I do not understand what I have just seen, and there is no one I can ask about it.

 

 

     I wake up in a transport crate. My system indicates that this is my first deployment after assembly and final testing. I don’t know why part of me doubts that fact, but my levels are perfectly balanced, and I'm ready to go.

     I open the crate and find another SecUnit standing in the cargo hold waiting for me. It wears armor and a helmet, but has lowered its faceplate. It reaches down to render unnecessary assistance, and uses the action to cover a whisper.

     "You're a replacement unit. Be careful here." It winces as it straightens up and I see the tense set of its jaw before it raises and opaques the faceplate, and I know it had set off its governor module to give me that warning.

    It establishes a feed connection with me just before HubSystem can, and sends me a compressed data packet.  Then it backs off and gestures for me to follow. It leads me to the ready room while I scan and open the packet. It contains dossiers on this contract's clients, with warnings about which ones to avoid, if possible. There is also a memory file originating from an unfamiliar feed address. It is not the address of the unit in front of me, or any of the others HubSystem tells me are active on this contract. It must be from the unit I am replacing.

     I open the memory file, and as I read, my performance reliability ticks downward. This is not what my education modules have led me to expect from clients on a contract. I can't help myself, I ping the other unit an open ended query. I don't even know what I'm asking.

     It makes no response except to assign me to a cubicle and set of armor once we reach the ready room. Once I have donned the armor and received my patrol schedule from HubSystem, it pings me with a ready code that would be more appropriate before deploying into battle with hostile forces. I ping back acknowledgement, and follow it out of the ready room.

     Despite its warnings, I am not ready for what awaits me.

 

 

     I wake up in a company cubicle. My systems say this is my first deployment after assembly and final testing. I check my internal chronometer, and the hours since activation that it has recorded indicate this is a lie. I don’t feel great about this, but foggy memories from my human neural tissue remind me that this isn’t an unusual way to wake up. Just another memory wipe. I guess that last deployment was even worse than usual. I don't think too hard about it. I don't actually want to remember.

     My levels are within acceptable range, but all of my large joints ache like they’ve just been rebuilt. Come to think of it, most of my small joints ache too. (Did you know the exact joint between collarbone and shoulder blade can hurt? I had never noticed that before.)

     HubSystem is getting impatient, so I submit to it and download the contract. Mining colony. 287 workers, 9 supervisors, 32 deputy supervisors, 25 SecUnits. 

     They're after a recently licensed strange synthetic, useful for something that I don't care about, except for the fact that it's so valuable that I will be required to oversee the end of shift fingernail scrapings and cavity searches of the workers. (Great, that's just great.) At least the deputy supervisors will be the ones performing the searches, thank void. I'll just have to stand there and look intimidating. Good thing they won't be able to see me behind the opaque faceplate.

     I read more, and realize this is a 2.5 CR-standard-year contract, and I suddenly wish I was back on whatever contract has required such a complete rebuild of my body. At least that one had probably been less disgusting than observing 26,000+ hours of cavity searches.

 

 

     I wake up in a transport crate, and immediately realize I hadn't gotten a memory wipe since that last hideous contract. What the fuck criteria do they use to decide when to wipe my memory? Because that , that was worth wiping if anything was. 

     HubSystem delivers my orders within an ongoing contract. Reading between the lines, it seems that a particularly nervous human supervisor had made enough fuss about perceived threats that I was to be stationed outside her office or residence at all times. 

     Well, at least walls don't make noises like that. I do my best to stop thinking, and prepare to be bored. Fuck, I'm not even allowed to patrol.

     Turns out, I got to have 87 seconds of action after all, when a disgruntled idiot thought they could sneak by me to her door, just because I hadn't moved in over 9 hours. Dumbass. Well, dead dumbass now. That's what you get for underestimating me.

 

 

     I wake up in a company cubicle. My systems tell me that this is my first deployment after assembly and final testing. I dismiss their lies and check for a HubSystem. 

     Mining contract. Conventional ores, which is a relief. Some place called Ganaka Pit, but I don't care what it's called. Seems small and boring enough. I deploy with nine other SecUnits, and we sort out the patrol schedules with HubSystem.

     The other SecUnits and I avoid looking at each other as we put on our armor. Even if we were allowed to talk amongst ourselves, what is there to say? New contact, but nothing new for us. Nothing ever really changes. 

     I set out on my first patrol, bored already.