Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Turns out that one thing I hate more than being stuck on a planet is being stuck on a stupid boat on a planet. All boats are stupid. This boat was particularly stupid as it was stuck.

We were just sitting there, bobbing like a child’s toy.  Well, we would have bobbed if there were any waves, but it was completely still and the lake’s surface was flat. At least I think it’s a big lake and not a small sea; or maybe it is a sea? When does a lake get so big it counts as a sea? Or is it down to the saltiness of the water? I don’t know or care, forget I asked. We were on the water, and not going anywhere.

This had been a stupid idea right from the start, but apparently our Team Lead had decided someone needed to complete this “pilgrimage” (that was the closest word in the language module) to keep on the right side of the humans on this stupid planet. I had been the obvious choice. It was only supposed to take about 57 hours, but here we were, almost 13 hours later and completely becalmed (that was a word from my educational module on boats, I’d like to point out that a lot of the boat module is about problems you’re likely to encounter with the boat; like, how is fire a common problem?).

We hadn’t even managed to reach the island yet, though I could see from the navigational package it was less than twenty kilometres away. 

The problem was with the lack of wind. This stupid, primitive boat was propelled by sails, or rather wasn’t propelled by them. They were just sitting there, all limp and apologetic. I was beginning to think it’d be quicker if I jumped into the water and pushed. We had an engine but its use was disapproved for pilgrimages. Not that anyone would know if we used it. Except for us. 

I couldn’t help it, I made a snort of annoyance.

“This lull in the wind was forecast, SecUnit. It should pick up again later and there’s nothing to stop us arriving before sunset, on schedule.” His voice managed to sound simultaneously extremely reasonable and almost unbelievably irritating.

So, yeah. I wasn’t alone. Not just was I on a stupid stuck boat on a small sea on a stupid planet, I was stuck here with the most annoying augmented human in the universe. And he had brought a book with him, an actual physical book, and he was sitting in the boat’s central open-room-well bit where the controls are (my language module calls it a cockpit, but I think that’s someone making an unfunny joke). He looked relaxed and content, as if he was on holiday.

Well, the words “relaxed and content” possibly need qualification: he looked relaxed and content for Gurathin.

He shifted on his seat, put the book down (he has a marker thing to keep his place, he’s almost exactly halfway through) and picked up one of the flasks filled with hot liquids which we had brought with us. Obviously they were all for him, the hot liquids and the cold liquids; as was the food, and the bedding, and all the other stuff. Which we could have saved on by just letting me go alone, but apparently that wasn’t allowed. For this voyage the ‘pilgrims’ had to travel in pairs.

Okay, so admittedly Gurathin was quite adept at controlling the boat. Which was more difficult than it had any right to be, even with the module ART had hastily assembled for me. I wish ART could have been here, even if it was just via comms. But that wasn’t possible. I started up an episode of Worldhoppers, and scanned the surface of the water. It was so flat, it was like there was a layer of oil lying over the top. When I stared at it I could change my depth of vision and look down into the water, but there was nothing there. Just a void. You could see beams of light disappearing into the darkness, and little spangles reflected from suspended particulates in the water.

Gurathin took a sip of his liquid; knowing him it was probably caffeinated and sweet. Which isn’t ideal, though not as bad as some of the intoxicants and stimulants my other humans enjoy. 

“It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it. So peaceful.”

Oh please don’t try and have a conversation with me, Gurathin. Maybe if I ignore him he’ll stop.

“I spent my childhood, well the start of it, on a planet with a maritime culture a lot like this one, the boats are very similar. I guess it’s like a sort of convergent evolution.” Yeah, Gurathin. I didn’t think the “being able to sail a boat” thing was something you came with a module for. He sighed, and his face briefly flickered with an emotion I couldn’t quite parse, then shifted again. Was he uncomfortable? The seats in the little well were uncushioned, just plain wood. Most of this boat was just plain wood, with some parts painted in bright primary colours. The only concession to human-softness were the mattresses on the bunks in the cabin. Not that Gurathin seemed to want to use them. 

“Once we get to the harbour we can drop anchor and then I’ll get some sleep.” He must have noticed my attention switch to the cabin somehow. He picked up his book, again.

Even with his augments he was reading so slowly. From their various vantage points on the rigging, my drones could view the pages he had open. How could it take him this long to finish reading them? 

He put the fucking book down again. He didn’t do anything this time, just stared out over the water. It was still utterly flat. I was watching his face with Drone Three, which was sitting on one of the…horizontal bits of wood, possibly a spar. Gurathin did that thing he does when he raises one eyebrow, which makes him look as if he’s asking a question. Then he said, “I think this is the longest I’ve spent in years without any feed connectivity at all,” he looked up and towards Drone Three, “it’s pleasant, isn’t it?”

No it isn’t, Dr. Gurathin. I’ve got plenty of stored media to entertain me but I hate the feeling of being cut off. He’s augmented, he wouldn’t understand. For constructs the feed is comforting; right now I was being reminded of my visit to Ganaka Pit. Not in a good way—there is no good way to be reminded of it.

“No. It is not,” I said, I wanted to get up and leave. But obviously I couldn’t. The boat was only 12 metres long, there was nowhere for me to go. I could jump overboard, just dive into the water; that might shut Gurathin up. 

“You could go for a swim if you want?” His mouth twitched into an almost smile, “There aren’t any strong currents and I’ll be right here.”

Like you’d be of any use if anything did happen, Dr. Guarthin. What would you do? Jump in and save me? Pull me out? Though Gurathin is lean he has a sinewy strength, but I don’t think he’s strong enough to haul me out of the water. I tried to stop myself rolling my eyes, and failed. I said, “I don’t want to swim. There might be hostile aquatic fauna.”

“No, no I checked. Apparently there’s nothing remotely dangerous in the water. I was thinking I might take a dip later. Probably once we’re safely at anchor, though.” He sounded very slightly amused; and what’s with this casual language, Dr. Gurathin, “a dip”? Drone Three analysed the way he was holding his mouth, he was definitely trying not to show amusement. I don’t know what he thought was so funny.

He looked out, casting his eyes from one end of the horizon to the other—there was nothing to look at. just water. Everywhere. Salty water, so not even any use for human consumption and we didn’t have a desalinator with us, apparently they’re not permitted on pilgrimages either. Even without marine life forms, this place was hostile to human life. He looked up at the sails, “You see, the wind is getting up again—we can get underway again shortly. We will be there before sundown.”

Annoyingly he was right, a breeze was stirring the sails. Not long afterwards there was enough wind for us to think about sailing again. He went to stow his book and drink (he is at least very tidy on the boat, you have to be otherwise stuff would roll everywhere and blow overboard—actually to be fair Dr. Gurathin is generally tidy) then he went about getting the boat moving again. I helped, but it’s stupidly difficult because the ropes and the wind and the water and sails’ relationships are complex; and we’d discovered earlier that it was simplest for him to do most of the work and occasionally give me clear and concise orders. 

Being on a moving boat is hugely preferable to being on a stuck boat. The sounds of water and the creaks of the timbers and ropes are soothing, and watching the wake of the boat spread out is strangely satisfying. As well as carrying out my tasks I was also watching Gurathin, and I was learning. If an augmented human could sail a boat it couldn’t be that difficult. After a while I began to understand how it all worked a little better, and could integrate this practical experience with the module ART had put together for me. Gurathin stopped having to tell me what to do, I was anticipating him.

We did arrive at the natural harbour, which was our primary destination, before the sun had set. We dropped our anchor, the noise the chain made as it rolled down into the depths was oddly comforting. Now we were almost motionless again, but not stuck. Gurathin did things with the sails and ropes (a lot of sailing seems to involve tidying stuff away neatly) and also, without comment, lowered a rope ladder over the back of the boat. Then he went down into the cabin and came out wearing…something. 

Drone Three which had been monitoring him almost shut down in protest. He was dressed in an item which I could identify as traditional wear for swimming on this planet, he must have bought it in one of the local markets. It is weird, but I have seen all my PresAux crew naked, and performing all sorts of biological functions (I was still mostly doing my job on the survey) but he looked more obviously undressed wearing this than he ever had with no clothes on at all.

I did NOT want to look at him.

He grinned and muttered something in his native tongue, which I now do have a limited module for. Then he dived overboard. 

I went and quietly pulled up the ladder. 

Gurathin swam around the boat several times. He is actually a surprisingly good swimmer. It’s not as if I know much about human swimming, and I wasn’t watching him very closely, but there was little splashing about and he moved quite quickly through the water. It was the first time I’ve actually watched one of my humans swim. I sat at the front of the boat, half watching Worldhoppers and partly keeping an eye on Gurathin (I know there aren’t supposed to be any hostile aquatic fauna, but I didn’t want to be surprised by anything). 

At some point I knew he’d realise I’d pulled up the ladder. I heard the exact moment, but annoyingly I didn’t actually catch his expression because Drone Three had its view blocked by a bit of rigging at the critical moment. He swam round to the side of the boat closest to where I was sitting. I pretended I didn’t know what was going on; I have a lot of practice staring into the middle distance. 

“SecUnit, please can you put the ladder back down?” Gurathin’s voice sounded slightly breathy from all the swimming. I couldn’t help it, I had to suppress a smile. He sounded so polite, and he was there treading water.

“Not until you take back what you said about me.” I watched his face as he reran the last few minutes (not literally, I mean through his memory; though he could have been literally using his augments, I don’t know). He looked up at me looking sort of half puzzled, and maybe a little concerned but also like he wanted to smile. 

“Take back what, SecUnit?”

“I am not a…” I said the word he’d used; it was in my language module, so I knew what it meant.

It was apparently his turn to laugh now. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry! But you looked so disapproving when I came out. And it’s not as if, well, you’ve seen it all before. It  was just unexpected…” he paused, treading water some more, “…I didn’t mean it unkindly.” He sounded sincere. I moved over to the edge of the boat, he swam closer. 

“I’ll pull you out.” No, I don’t know why I said it either. It just seemed the sensible thing to do. I didn’t want my top to get all wet, so I took it off and put it on the lid of the cabin (I don’t know what it’s supposed to be called) and reached out my arm towards his right, augmented, hand and he grabbed hold of me and…it was a shock. I should have predicted his skin and augments would feel cold from his being in the water, but for some reason it hadn’t occurred to me. My skin was warm from being in the sunlight. Usually, as a construct, my skin feels cool to touch to a human, and theirs feels hot to me. Instead this was reversed and it surprised us both, but that wasn’t the only thing. I can sometimes improve my feed connection with a bot by touching its shell, whatever from that takes— I’ve done this before, but I’ve never touched an augmented human’s…well, their augments. And we hadn’t just touched, he’d grabbed I had grabbed his hand and arm. 

There wasn’t any feed, but our systems didn’t care, they connected and I felt for a moment the unexpected warmth of my skin at the same time I registered the cool of his. I don’t know which of us was more shocked, I think we would have sprung apart, but we’d both committed to the manoeuvre (I could feel his puzzlement that we were doing this, equaled only by my own). Pulling someone from the water onto a boat is not the easiest thing to do, he’d never have been able to lift me out like this. We ended up almost clinging to each other, which would have been really embarrassing if anyone had been there to see it; but it was just us. So we stood there, him dripping wet, staring down at our hands.

Apparently neither of us had any idea at all what to do. I could feel his confusion through his augments, and then I felt his emotions somehow withdraw from me like a wave pulling back from the shore. Then, unexpectedly and very tentatively he came back; still confused, but warm. We stayed like that for a moment; no one was pulling away, no one pushing the other. But then we just both retreated; not far, but far enough. We were still holding each other, the water still dripping from Gurathin. 

Very carefully, we disengaged our hands and moved apart.

So, that was weird. I felt really odd, as if I had something constricting my chest, and I could hear my blood and fluids echoing in my ears. Gurathin coughed, and without saying anything went down into the cabin. He came back out just seconds later with two  towels. He handed one to me, and wrapped the other around him. He went back into the cabin and a few minutes later came back out, dressed in soft clothes which looked suitable for sleeping in, and hung his…swimming clothes to dry on some ropes. 

Okay, so we aren’t talking about what just happened? 

He retrieved a flask from the storage cubby and sat down. He sighed. Note to self: run an analysis on Gurathin’s behaviour: does he just sigh a lot, or does he sigh a lot when he’s in my company? Scratch that, I don’t want to know.

Chapter Text

I ran three separate analyses, the results of which were pretty unambiguous. Turns out it is not just my proximity that correlates with an increase in sighs from Gurathin, he sighs significantly more (at least he did in the stored footage which I had access to) when someone else (usually Ratthi) mentioned me. Well, fuck you Gurathin. Sorry I am so annoying. I wanted to tell him how irritating this was, but that would mean telling him about running the analysis in the first place. Which would probably make him sigh even more. I deleted the dataset. He was still just sitting there, looking out towards the horizon. The sun (this system had one primary) was setting now; the sky was red and orange, and the water’s surface was now gently undulating, its surface a deep dark blue occasionally tinged with the pink of the sky. There were clouds gathering now, after a largely clear day.

Gurathin had seemed a little tense, but as the sun set some of that tension seemed to melt away. It was rapidly getting dark, I had my vision filters; did Gurathin have dark filters? I doubted it.
“I’ve got a lantern, SecUnit” he said, as if I’d asked a question, “I’ll probably just sit without it for now. I won’t stay awake much longer, it’s been a long day. I also think it may start raining soon, looking at the sky earlier the clouds had that look to them. I don’t think clouds vary that much from planet to planet.” More amateur meteorology than necessary, but at least he wasn’t sighing.

The night wasn’t completely dark, the planet had a single large moon and its reflected light was clearly enough for Gurathin to sit staring at nothing by. From Drone Three I could see he was actually looking at the sky. The sky overhead held the moon and stars…so many stars. I should ask ART about the stars, in some parts of the sky they were so thick it looked like a splash of fluid across the black sky (which was more attractive than that sounds). I was conscious of Gurathin shifting slightly and for a moment I thought it was going to become amateur astronomy hour, but he appeared to change his mind. We both sat in silence, until one of the stars appeared to suddenly develop a death wish, tearing across the sky leaving a glowing trail in its wake. We both stared at it, my educational module told me it was a meteorite; from the intensity of light and duration of visibility must have been quite big.

“You should make a wish—it’s traditional,” Gurathin’s voice sounded a bit gruff, perhaps he was more tired than I’d realised. From my drone his face was largely concealed in shadows now, I didn’t bother to switch to my night filters, he’d still look like Guarthin. I didn’t say anything. Murderbot’s don’t make wishes. Anyway the only thing I wish I knew was why I was behaving so oddly earlier with the ladder.

After a while, he gathered up a few items from the cockpit, and went into the cabin. I heard the click and saw the glow of the lantern, then the slightly muffled noises as he got ready to go to bed. I stood watching the water swell and ebb and listened to it lapping at the boat. When he opened the cabin door and light came spilling out it surprised me a little. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said, as if it was funny, “I do think it’s going to rain later, so could you pass your top and my swimsuit?”

I’d actually forgotten I’d left some of my clothes lying on the top part of the cabin (I can’t be bothered to look up the proper name). Since I’ve not been wearing my armour, and wearing human clothes instead, I’ve found some people get a bit unnerved by seeing my inorganics. Especially the bits where they mesh with my organic parts. Gurathin isn’t one of them, he genuinely doesn’t seem bothered whether I’m clothed or not. I mean he always looks slightly appalled, so it’s not like it’s great, but at least he’s not afraid of me. I was wearing shorts and no shoes on the boat, and he hadn’t even looked askance at my feet and lower legs, and SecUnit feet are weird. In fact right now he was just standing there waiting for me to get the clothes.

I climbed onto the cabintop, grabbed the clothes and moved back towards the stern; until my feet were just a few centimetres from the back of his head. He put his hand out in front of him, palm up, as if he was utterly bored and I dropped them into it. He said, “Thank you, SecUnit,” and disappeared back into the cabin. I felt as if he thought he’d somehow won. I wasn’t even playing your game, Gurathin.

Alone again, I sat down on the cabintop (that’s actually what it’s called, I checked) next to the little tiny boat we were supposed to use to get to the shore. It was much cooler now, but not uncomfortably so (it has to get quite cold for me to be uncomfortable) and there was a gentle breeze. I looked up at the stars, but they were all staying put. At least all the ones I could see; the sky also had clouds, and as I sat there they got thicker, and closer and the breeze became more insistent; and then it started to rain.

I can bear the cold and I’ve stood in the rain, and worse, for hours, both in and out of armour, over the years (some humans think it’s amusing to make murderbots stand ‘naked’ in extreme weathers, jokes on them; it’s like a break for us). But right now I had no reason for my pants to get soaked through, and the cabin suddenly looked very warm and cosy. I went inside.

Gurathin was lying slightly curled on his side in the starboard bunk (or is it portside? It really doesn’t matter). I could feel that he wasn’t asleep. I grabbed a towel and rubbed myself dry. I had to crouch slightly, the stupid boat seemed designed for very short people; I’d noticed Gurathin had to duck a little bit too. My pants were kind of wet from the rain, so I took them off and laid them on the front bunk. They’d dry. I’m sure Gurathin radiated disapproval. I climbed onto the bunk opposite his and lay down on my back. I didn’t need to sleep, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to just lie there. The bunks were far more comfortable than I’d supposed and the cabin was warm. I could hear the rain drumming on the roof which arched over my head, and the more distant sound of it falling on the surface of the sea surrounding the boat. The noise could have been expected to be overwhelming but actually it felt strangely safe.

We were warm, and dry, and fastly (yeah, that’s a boat word) anchored. All the sounds were safe and reassuring sounds, and the motion of the boat was also soothing. I lay there staring up at the yellow painted ceiling and for a time I did nothing. I didn’t watch media, I didn’t think, I just was. I could hear Gurathin, his breathing and even the regular pulse of his heart. I don’t think he was thinking of much either, but he wasn’t asleep. After what seemed like a long while he spoke, “My augments have some compatibility with your systems.”

It came out clearly, but in a bit of a rush (for Gurathin, he is usually very measured). It wasn’t a question, he didn’t seem to want a response from me. This seemed to be like a “for your information” package. And, okay. It was information. He was augmented, I knew that. I’d not really thought much further than that. His augments set him apart on Preservation, not many humans there were augmented. But Ratthi had said he wasn’t from Preservation.

His augments had been useful at times (he’d parsed half the drone data for me on the survey) and a vulnerability at others (The Attacker could have killed him on the company gunship). We communicated using them over the feed regularly; when we worked together, we had a private channel set up. When we were somewhere with a feed, we’d stay in touch. So that was all stuff I knew, but he’d said his augments had compatibility with my systems. I remembered him back on the survey “What about your systems?”. My systems were company made, cheap and a bit shitty. I was designed to work alongside, in concert with, HubSystems and SecSystems—those are the systems I’m compatible with. I’m not supposed to be compatible with augmented humans.

I’ve never heard of a SecUnit being compatible with an augmented human. I thought back to how it had felt when I’d grabbed his hand, touched his augments. He was cold and wet, I felt warm, we were in motion; the data was all over the place. I tried to tidy it up, to make some sense of it. I have systems whose activities I can, well should be able to, map. The data was, uh, it was a mess; there were strands, tendrils, crawling all over. I picked some at random and puzzled away at them, they were reaching out towards… This was strange. At the time it had been so sudden, we had made physical contact (only the second time we had touched with no clothing as a barrier) and there had been the weird feeling of being aware of Gurathin’s sensations, and then…

Had he known this would happen? I looked over at his back, he was breathing slowly and regularly. My drones had come into the cabin with me, but none of them were in a position where they could look at his face. I checked his vital signs—he had actually fallen asleep! My initial response was outage, how dare he leave me alone like this after dropping this “compatibility” thing on me?

For just a moment I considered waking him up. But augmented humans do need rest periods too, so I let him sleep. The sun would rise in about six hours, and then we had to find the spring.

Chapter Text

I stayed in the cabin. It was still raining and there was no point in getting wet again. I watched the latest episode of Legends of the Fire. Then I went right back to the start, including the rather dubious pilot episode. It was odd, it wasn’t a series I’d ever found terribly compelling; truth is, I was suckered in by the title which sounded far more exciting than the series actually was. That, and the fact it had won a whole load of prizes.The plot itself was all about a group of humans and their relationships—and the first time I’d watched it a lot of their behaviour was wildly unpredictable. I mean, I enjoy plot twists; but only if you could reasonably be able to predict them. In Legends stuff seemed to happen out of the blue. But now, watching it again, at slow (1x) speed I began to see how, actually, there were foreshadows (I think that’s a word); they were just very subtle. I amused myself by applying some of my algorithms to the data—algorithms I’ve refined since becoming rogue and had opportunities to observe normal human behaviour and interactions. By “normal” human behaviour, I mean in situations where they weren’t under the sort of stresses you find in mines, and other places they deploy murderbots.The more I analysed, the more impressed I was with the series’ script writers and actors—the accolades it had won were fully deserved. It must be very difficult to act as if you’re pretending you’re not attracted to someone but at the same time show the audience that you have really (or the character you’re playing has) fallen in love. Not sure if I got my grammar right there, but you know what I mean.

The minutes turned into hours, and the hours passed. At some point the rain stopped, but the subtle sounds of the boat creaking and the gentle susurration of the sea was calming. I suppose I was trying to distract myself from thinking about the whole compatibility thing, and the fact that Gurathin was lying on a bunk just a couple of metres away from me, sleeping. How the hell had he fallen asleep? But then, Tapan had slept—and she had been in a far more stressful situation than Gurathin was now. Even if she hadn’t actually known she was in a room with a murderbot, she was alone with a stranger and someone had recently tried to murder her and her friends. The someone had been Tlacey, not me, but anyway: she must have been nervous. (I tensed briefly, but I think the risk of Gurathin ever deciding to come and curl up next to me is so low as to be practically in negative figures.) 

But Tapan had slept. Humans are weird about sleep. And Gurathin was asleep. It wasn’t just his breathing and other vital signs; I could tell he was in deep sleep. There was no feed, and I hadn’t set up a localised system for us to communicate over—but nevertheless I could catch hints of what were like faint whispers of…well I suppose I was getting some bleed-through of his dreams. There was nothing clear, but it reminded me of staring into the water earlier, the occasional glint of something; and perhaps there were shadowy forms moving just out of sight. I wondered what would happen if I went over and held my hand close to his facial augments. No! I had a sudden flash of the image of Gurathin waking up and seeing me looming over him. My performance reliability dropped by 3% and I must have physically flinched, or even made some sort of vocalisation (I’m not rewinding any footage, that would be too embarrassing) because Gurathin stirred, and I could feel him awakening. I checked the time, it was early but the sun would be rising soon. 

I heard Gurathin’s breathing change, and could sense him wake up and do that thing humans do when they sort of recalibrate; without seeing his face I could still “see” him remember he was on a boat with a murderbot. “Good morning, SecUnit,” I am sure he must have heard me flinch and whatever earlier, I don’t think his hearing is acute enough to hear what passes for my breathing but he clearly knew I was there in the darkness, “I presume nothing happened overnight which I need an update on?”

I was thinking about touching your face to see if I could read your dreams, Dr. Gurathin , I didn’t say. No, I don’t think that would go down well.

“Nothing. Sun will be up in 17 minutes,” I replied. 

He sat up, rolling over and swinging his legs up towards his chest and then down so he was sitting facing my bunk. He reached out and found the lantern and flicked it on. I was still lying on my back on my bunk, Drone Three was watching him. He glanced up at it, where it was perched on a shelf. “Are you okay with me making some tea? There is a gas fired ring in the galley.”

He sounded a little hesitant. It was my turn to sigh. “Do we have a container of fire suppressant onboard?” I needed to ask. Drone Three could see Gurathin’s face twitching into a ghost of a smile. He went over to one of the many cubbyholes (are all boats like this?) and pulled out a canister. He looked over towards me, I rolled my eyes. It’s not as if I need to hold the thing, I just need to know where it is. 

“Ratthi said you don’t like naked flames; honestly it’s okay if you’d rather I didn’t?” He made it sound like a question. “It’s fine.” I said, hopefully putting a stop to further conversation on the subject. I do not like flames. Until I had visited Preservation (the planet, not the station) I had never really encountered flames outside of an emergency. You do not want flames on a station, on a ship (a proper ship, not a ship that’s a big boat), or in a mine. They make me feel weird: they look alive—but they’re not. And they are hard to control. They make me feel like, I don’t know—part of me wants to reach out and touch them and the rest of me is screaming to run away. Which is a lot of emotion to have over something someone is using to heat water so they can infuse some dried leaves. Which is what Dr. Gurathin was doing now. 

The boat had a tiny food preparation area, which he’d moved over to (ducking slightly all the time) with a little cooking device which all folded up and away out of sight when not in use. What is it with hiding things on boats? I guess it’s for safety reasons, but honestly some of this seemed excessive. Drone Three followed Gurathin, I went out into the cockpit (it’s a stupid name). At least there I could stand up straight without bumping my head. It was still dark, but I could see the sky lightening at the horizon where the sun would be rising shortly. Gurathin was adding sugar crystals to his infusion. When did humans decide it was a clever idea to dry leaves and then later soak them in boiling water? How did they discover which leaves had stimulants? Why did the plants even make chemicals like that? 

Gurathin came out into the cockpit and sat down on one of the other benches, as far from me as possible. He’d left the little lantern back in the galley area. He was cupping his hands around a mug above which I could see water vapour condensing into clouds of steam. He held it up to his face and seemed to be trying to inhale it instead of drinking it. I looked at the horizon, the sun was going to rise soon. 

Chapter Text

I guess sunrises over the sea are pretty. Dr. Gurathin certainly seems to like them. Or at least this particular one. He sat and stared out across the water, sipping his tea occasionally. Then something odd happened; suddenly it felt as if there was a lifting of pressure and Drone Three reported data indicating he was flagging up fewer indications of anxiety than he usually does. Huh, I hadn’t really noticed how anxious Dr. Guarthin usually is, I had set my baseline data for him on the survey, and I didn’t have much data on augmented humans like him back then. There was a significant shift. Oh for fuck’s sake, Gurathin, you’re only now trusting me a little bit? That’s just insulting.

He stiffened suddenly, “Sorry, SecUnit—is something wrong?”

I checked myself for any signal leakage; I was uncannily reminded of Miki. It felt as if Gurathin was peering at me, even though his visual augments were set on the horizon, which was looking a lot less spectacular now.

“Is there something wrong with you , Dr. Gurathin?” I asked. As soon as I said it I regretted it. I didn’t want to hear about how he was.

“I was actually just thinking that I feel safer now than I have done in years. I may have left the Corporation Rim many moons ago, but the years I spent there weigh heavy. Which is ridiculous,” he seemed to shake himself a little, “what I went through is nothing compared to you. I suppose you’re keen to complete this exercise and get back.” Which, obviously, I was. The sooner the better. All we had to do was go ashore, find the spring and do the ceremony. Then we could head back, and I could put a bit more distance between us. I should have known to refuse to go on this ridiculous pilgrimage thing. But at the time it seemed the only sensible thing to do, Gurathin had experience with boats and I have more experience than anyone on this planet of stopping my clients get eaten by alien fauna or killed by alien geography. The ancient “priestesses” who had proposed the activity had seemed suspiciously delighted at our pairing; I had noticed them watching me. And watching Gurathin. Maybe this was some sort of joke they were pulling on us? I checked some recordings, and ran an analysis; it wasn’t conclusive but it certainly didn’t rule it out. Yes I do have an analysis to check for so called practical jokes, turns out that with some humans it’s an extremely valuable screening process.

None of this mattered, we just needed to complete the task we’d volunteered (or as I now suspected, been volunteered) for. Which meant getting to the shore. In the ridiculous tiny boat. I glared at it. It was painted green, like some of the little shiny fauna which flew about like drones on this planet. They were even armoured, the fauna, with iridescent wing cases. The tiny boat wasn’t as shiny, and was currently sitting the wrong way up, on top of the cabin much like a little insect riding atop a bigger insect. Gurathin was obviously monitoring where my attention was focused somehow (he definitely doesn’t have drones, I think he’s just very good at looking at things in his peripheral vision, maybe his augments are actually designed to allow this) because he said, “I’ll get the tender ready.”

I didn’t need to check my “stupid boating words module” to know he was referring to the bug-like little boat. It was small but it wasn’t light, it was ridiculous for Gurathin to try and move it himself, he could do himself damage. So I went to lift it down into the water before he did anything stupid. I got to it much quicker than he possibly could, but was then faced with trying to free it. The way it was attached was clearly part of the design of the larger boat; I hadn’t realised before quite how snugly the two fitted together, and there were what appeared to be almost decorative knots. It all seemed a combination of aesthetics and being fucking impossible to untie. I was considering getting my energy weapons out when, of course, Dr. Gurathin (apparently effortlessly) freed them. Just when I thought he had already hit maximal levels of annoyingness with his tea making and everything else.

At least once it was free he let me put it over the side into the water, he busied himself with making sure the rope attaching it to the big boat didn’t fall overboard with it. Which he did as if it was some sort of big deal. Then he tied it to the back of the boat, next to where the ladder was. 

“The oars are clipped inside, I’ll just climb in and sort them out. I’ll grab my backpack with water and other essentials for me. Do you need anything?” As soon as he said it he clearly realised it was a stupid thing to say.

“I’m a SecUnit? What are you expecting me to need?” I said it aloud, because his was such a dumb question. Are you actually an augmented human or a hauler bot in a really impressive disguise? He made a short humming noise, and muttered something about medical kits. I pretended I hadn’t heard. 

Forget what I said about the sailing boat being annoying, that was before I’d experienced a rowing boat. Which human came up with this idea? Wooden sticks with paddles attached, which you hold the other ends of and sit as you draw them through the water? With your back to the direction of travel. In a fundamentally unstable little wooden cup of a vessel. Apparently you’re not supposed to stand up in one whilst it’s moving, which I get from the stability point of view: but Gurathin didn’t have to be quite so forceful about telling me what to do. 

In the end I let him row.

It only took about 5 minutes to get to the shore, but it seemed to be the longest 5 minutes ever.

It seems you land one of these boats by crashing it into the beach. I wonder if this is actually true or just what Gurathin is telling me to cover up his own incompetence. Luckily nothing got too soaked, just our legwear; the backpack with Gurathin’s essentials was fine. I helped Gurathin pull the boat up the beach. Or tried too, he was apparently being all annoyed with me. Okay, do it yourself, augmented human.

“I’m not annoyed with you, SecUnit. I’m annoyed with myself. You are so remarkably quick to learn I forgot you have little to no experience with boats. I was short-tempered with you and I would ask you to accept my apology for that.” This would have sounded more convincing if he had said it less snappily. And his face certainly didn’t look sorry.

I didn’t say anything. Because I’m not going to pretend I have accepted an apology when he clearly didn’t mean it. Not that I cared about him being bad tempered with me. 

So, we were standing together on a beach. We both had the rough coordinates of where we were supposed to go, and had received the same instructions. There was no reason why we shouldn’t just make our own ways to the spring, and meet there. Gurathin would probably be delighted not to have me around. I could use a drone to keep an eye on him to make sure he wasn’t getting himself killed. Drone Three actually started circling his head in anticipation. 

He still hadn’t moved. What are you doing Dr. Gurathin? I know humans and augmented humans are slow but this was getting stupid. 

Still standing there. Have you had some sort of weird medical emergency, Dr. Gurathin? 

“SecUnit, okay. I’ll make my way to the spring and meet you there. I’m sure your drone will make sure to let you know if I get into any trouble.” He glanced up at it, “Come on, Drone Three, shall we go?”

Chapter Text

I know I have never referred to that drone as Drone Three aloud—I am very fucking sure of this. I was not going to ask Gurathin how he knew that’s what I called it; anyway he was now heading off in the general direction of the spring, taking what actually appeared to be the most sensible route for an augmented human. He was walking faster than he usually does, clearly keen to get away from me. Fine, that suits me too. 

I know it’s been a long time since I had to obey a distance limit, but I still get a bit angsty if I’m further than a hundred metres from a client (if there is one around, like Dr. Gurathin was now). And he was still tagged as a client, despite everything. I decided it’d be best to keep close to him, just in case something happened. I had a perfect visual from the drone, but that's no good if you’re too far from a client when disaster strikes—all it means is you get a front row view of them being dismembered. And as enticing as that idea might seem with Gurathin sometimes, well—he is still a client.

The flora of this planet looked much like a hundred other planets (well all the ones I have memories of, or have seen in media), mostly green and brown with splashes of bright colours here and there. This planet’s seemed to be more heavily armed than the norm, though. Thorns, some of them barbed, caught at my clothes and scratched my organic skin. I definitely should have worn long trousers. I really don’t appreciate being attacked by fucking plants. As I paused to detach another piece of apparently razor-edged botanical barbed-wire from my shirt (I really miss my armour sometimes) I checked on Gurathin. He didn’t seem to be being bothered so much by the foliage. I noticed he was in fact following what appeared to be a natural pathway, probably trodden by some local fauna. Local fauna which might be currently stalking him. 

My other drones were circling in a set perimeter pattern and weren’t detecting any threats, but if the plants were this heavily armed it was only sensible to worry about the fauna. There weren’t any creatures in my module on the planet’s indigenous life forms which would be a palpable threat. But if you think I trust some hastily cobbled together module you don’t know this murderbot. I decided it would be safer if I tracked back to the pathway, and followed behind Gurathin. At a safe distance. Preferably a distance at which conversation would be impossible.

I checked my inputs from the drone I’d assigned to him, it was in a surveillance pattern over his head. He was walking, head tilted slightly down so the brim of his hat obscured his face. Then, with a lurch my view changed, the drone lifted and realigned and instead focused on a patch of the side of the ravine we were moving into, and then zoomed in closer in on a patch of movement, and then in on a blur which I knew was my own face. Then there was a sense of relief and the drone swung back to its previous pattern. I slowed down and reoriented myself. I realised I was clenching my jaw so hard my teeth actually squeaked. Okay, I’ve just about had enough of this; whatever this is. A tendril wrapped around my arm, in annoyance I tugged and it dug in; its edges were slightly serrated and drew blood. I stopped, and calmly unwound the curling stem. 

I made my way down, carefully, to the track (it had to be an animal track) that Gurathin was following. I resolved to follow him at about 75 metres distance.

He, of course, at this point (just to be as annoying as possible), decided to slow down his pace—ambling along as if enjoying the scenery. It was almost painful going this slowly. I caught up with him, the pathway was wide enough for the two of us to walk side by side. I walked at what would be a sensible pace for a human group over this sort of terrain, and luckily he got the hint and kept up.

He didn’t say anything, and nor did I. There wasn’t anything to say. We walked in blissful silence for a a few minutes. 

“I have some cream in the medical kit which will stop those scratches getting even more inflamed, if you would like some.” Gurathin’s voice I could recognise as his “being calm and reasonable” one. I glanced down at my arms, and my legs, where the plants had scratched me. It was true that my skin was looking a little red, and I could feel it tingling. I checked my module on the native flora, some of them did have toxins designed to deter animals from eating them. Great. It’s not as if I ever want to eat anything, let alone weird alien plants.

“I’ll apply some when we get to the spring,” I said, there wasn't any point in wasting time stopping sooner. I could feel Gurathin’s disapproval radiating off him. He managed to resist the obvious urge to sigh. 

We walked on in silence. Dr. Gurathin’s face was still largely obscured from my view by his hat, his mouth looked set—as if he was purposefully trying not to show any emotion. That’s something I’m familiar with humans and augmented humans doing. He was also keeping up with my pace, which I had increased a little. The last thing I wanted was to end up having to spend an extra day with him. Dr. Gurathin is more of a desk scientist than Ratthi is, and I think he was beginning to get a little out of breath. 

“It knows you call it Drone Three,” He said it with absolutely no introduction, just suddenly announced it; I didn’t ask you, Dr. Gurathin. “Would you mind if we stopped so I can have a short rest, drink some water and,” he paused, his vital statistics fluctuated slightly but that might have been down to talking whilst walking, “I really think you need some cream on those scratches.”

I rolled my eyes so hard it hurt, not as much as my arm did, admittedly. I was about to turn my pain sensors down when I remembered something that Bharadwaj had said to me, which suggested this was not a good way to handle things. The way she’d said it made me think she wasn’t just talking about injuries to my organic parts. One of the drones (yes, it was Drone Three) showed a small clearing which we’d reach in a few minutes. I upped the pace a little bit, and found it amusing to note Dr. Gurathin’s slight discomfort as he tried to keep up.

When we reached the clearing he sat down on a light grey, chair sized, rounded rock (perhaps this gully used to be a river bed?) and immediately started rifling through his backpack. I stayed standing a few feet away from him. He pulled out a small, sealed, canvas bag which was obviously something one of the planet’s inhabitants had made. They have a fairly distinctive aesthetic—very different to standard PresAux kit. Then Gurathin took his water bottle and, well I guess he really had needed to rehydrate. Then he just sat for a while until his breathing went back to normal. 

“They gave me this medication for injuries caused by the local flora, clearly it’s made for humans but I think it would be effective on your cloned tissue.” The way Dr. Gurathin said this sounded as if he’d rehearsed it, sort of like a human version of a buffer statement. “It’s supposed to reduce the pain and swelling, but you may need to get some attention when we get back, that cut on your arm looks quite nasty.” He was looking at me, at my arm, with a look I interpreted as disgust. “I have a medical hand unit, too, which I could apply.”

I know that lots of humans and augmented humans find constructs uncanny looking, especially when our inorganic parts are visible and it’s blatant that we aren’t just heavily augmented humans. You’d think Gurathin, being augmented, would find it less repellent, but he’s actually the one member of PresAux who seems most revolted by me. Like right now. He was now holding a smallish clay jar (which he’d removed from the canvas bag) in his hands, and he was carefully removing some sort of seal from it. As he opened it I could smell something herbal. Wait, he’d brought a hand unit? In the backpack? Those things were small but very dense, no wonder he’d got a bit out of breath. I assessed my injuries; I hated to admit it but Dr. Gurathin was right, it would be more sensible to do some repairs now. 

He was still sitting there holding the jar.

Suddenly this whole thing seemed fraught with possibilities of intense awkwardness. He had the ointment, which needed to be applied to my injuries (okay, so they were injuries). I went and sat down on a different rock, rounded like the one Dr. Gurathin had picked, quite close to him. Now we were both sitting down, he was holding the jar. He held it out to me and I took it, unavoidably brushing his hands as I did so. It wasn’t like the weird thing on the boat, when I pulled him out of the water, but there was a sensation almost like an electrical shock. He clearly felt it too, but was determined not to show it in the expression on his face. I took the cream, both of us pretending that nothing at all out of the usual was going on. I sniffed the jar. I honestly don’t know why, it’s not like I could analyse the contents based on their smell. It was actually quite a pleasant aroma. 

“Just apply a small amount with your finger tips to the scratches,” yes, Dr. Gurathin, I am not a complete idiot, “or, if you hold the jar I could put the ointment on for you? It might be easier, I can see what I’m doing without using drones and…it would just be easier.” I could tell putting cream on my wounds (now that I looked at them properly, some really were inflamed) was a pretty disgusting idea for him. Normally I’d get damage seen to, nowadays, by a MedSystem. Of course before that it was the job of company cubicles, and I was sometimes practically poured into them. An augmented human doing it wasn’t really that much different, was it? He had helped take care of me before, usually helping Ratthi. 

I held the jar out to him, he stood and came over and scraped a little of the cream onto the fingers of his augmented hand. He approached my arm very warily, as if I was a wounded fauna which might bite. He applied a little to the cut on my arm, lightly stroking it into the skin and then the wound itself. It felt very weird.

“I’m sorry, does it sting?” He had flinched away from me, I must have made some sort of noise. It didn’t sting, it had just been a surprise when he touched me. The ointment felt cold, and soothing. Like ice. The cream wasn’t cold, in fact even on Dr. Gurathin’s augmented fingertips I knew it must be either at or slightly above my resting temperature. But it felt cool. “No,” I said, “it was just a surprise.” He made a brief huff of acknowledgement and then continued. He worked his way methodically, carefully tending to each wound. Every time he touched my skin there was an initial jolt, almost like a tiny electrical shock. He didn’t seem to feel it, or rather he acted as if he didn’t. I was beginning to suspect that how Gurathin acted was not always a true reflection of how he actually felt. He’d said back on the boat that our systems were compatible, was that what this was? Some sort of attempted system to system handshake?

By now he had massaged the salve into most of the cuts. It really was working, the ones he’d treated felt cool and tingly—a sharp contrast to the hot, painful throb of those he hadn’t reached yet. It was a relief to feel the cooling balm doing its work, and Gurathin was so careful, and so unexpectedly gentle. And with him so close it was almost as if I could sense his emotions, not revulsion as I’d supposed but a quite different feeling. Each time he made physical contact there was that slight jolt. Back on the boat Gurathin seemed to suggest it was our systems trying to synchronise? In the absence of a feed network, was it possible this was how it was manifesting? Or was this just something I was feeling? I had been so much alone, as a rogue SecUnit, for so much of my existence I frequently didn’t know if something was truly a SecUnit thing or (in reality) just a me thing. If I asked Gurathin and it turned out to be a me thing, would he find that funny? Laugh at me? He was the one who had mentioned the thing about our systems; but I wasn’t sure.

“That’s all of them done. I think if we leave them for now, and I apply the hand unit when we reach the spring your skin should have the best chance of healing with minimal scarring. Unless you’d like me to try applying the unit now? You likely know best.” He sounded slightly odd, almost apologetic; perhaps he was feeling guilty about the whole drone thing? Whatever that was. Or perhaps he had just had enough playing at being a nurse and wanted to get going. Whatever, it’s not my job to analyse confusing augmented humans. 

I handed him back the little pot, and he wrapped it carefully and showed it away in his backpack with the rest of his kit. I started walking again, at a slightly slower pace than before and he followed without another word.

Chapter Text

The pathway Gurathin had been following was almost definitely (now that I had a chance to follow it too) something maintained by some sort of fauna. And looking at the ground underfoot it was also almost certainly an old riverbed. My risk assessment kept doing the equivalent of tugging at my sleeve (something small humans do sometimes do—I am getting much better at responding to it, even Mensah commented on it). I scanned my module on indigenous life forms (humans are stupid, but generally not so stupid as to actually introduce big fierce animals to planets they colonise, the only apex predators they tend to arrive with are themselves, which is bad enough); they seemed to be largely herbivorous and reported to be docile. I was still uncomfortable, and I wasn’t sure why. I kept checking my inputs.

I watched Dr. Gurathin. Now that I knew about the medical hand unit in his kit I had adjusted our pace a little. I could have offered to take the backpack, but Gurathin always likes to carry a bag. The one he carries habitually has his tools in it and I think he finds having it reassuring. I assume the tools have something to do with his augments—I mean they’re not like hammers or the tools they use in mining installations. Actually they remind me more of the tools the techs used on units at the company station. Drone Three was still assigned to monitor him, and it indicated his vital signs were all in a safe range. I had been a little mean earlier comparing him to Ratthi. Ratthi is physically very fit. Gurathin is just in the normal range for an augmented human. He looked up at Drone Three, as if he knew I was watching him. You’re better off keeping an eye on the ground you’re walking over, Dr. Gurathin. I didn’t want to end up with him hurting his ankle and me having to carry him or something stupid like that. I am pretty sure his mouth twitched slightly as if trying not to smile as he turned his eyes down to look at the gully floor.

Quite suddenly I was aware of input from four of my other drones. I hadn’t realised I had been dedicating quite so much of my processing power to Drone Three. Shit. There was something coming towards us through the plants, it was a way away still but it was moving surprisingly fast. It must surely be in armour to be moving through the foliage like that, else it was getting ripped to shreds and didn’t care. Neither of these options was reassuring. I reached out and touched Dr. Gurathin’s arm, and was quietly delighted to see him start slightly. Without thinking what I was doing I sent him the drone data. 

Stop. There was no feed connection. I had sent him the drone data.

Dr. Guarthin? What the fuck is this? I said, over the nonexistent feed.

I said our systems have compatibility, we seem to automatically interface and create a sort of localized feed between us—I’ve noticed it before but it was really clear on the boat because there’s no interference. 

He didn’t actually say that as such, it was really weird. I was close to him and even without drone footage I could see he wasn’t subvocalising. It was like the way I’d communicate with a bot. Also, it clearly didn’t come naturally to him and that meant he was probably giving away a lot more information than he knew he was. Like that “before”, that was a heavy word. For fucks sake Gurathin, this is not the time and place for this. He stopped.

I stopped too. I pulled my hand away from his arm. I am not interfacing with you unless I want to.

“When would be a good time then?” He said it in a way which sounded not angry (and actually I don’t know that I have ever really heard him angry), but like being angry was a real possibility.

“Like when there isn’t some huge alien fauna heading straight for us.” I probably sounded quite angry too, but it was just that I was concerned I was about to lose my first client (well, that I can remember) to an alien fauna attack. I like my uneaten client stat the way it is, high. We had both stopped now, he was almost facing off to me and stupidly I was actually staring at his face. He looked as surprised as me about this. I watched his eyes track my face in disbelief before looking at my own. My eyes. We were staring at each other. We had never done this before and now that we’d started I had no idea how to stop. 

Dr. Gurathin folded first, actually closing his eyes and shaking his head. It was like some sort of spell had been broken. He looked down, apparently at his feet, “It won’t bother us.” He said very quietly, almost a whisper,”apparently they are curious but will just want to sniff us. They’re almost entirely blind, but have a highly developed sense of smell and their hearing is excellent. We just need to stay still and it’ll soon get bored.” The “it” in question was only a few metres away now (this thing was fast) so I really hope Gurathin’s information was correct. Sensitive hearing? We probably didn’t want to upset it. I (slowly and deliberately) put my hand out and rested it on Gurathin’s forearm.

This time the connection was much gentler; it felt almost natural. 

How do you know so much about it? 

For someone who was new to this sort of communication, Dr. Gurathin certainly got emoting an eye roll off incredibly quickly; I asked, he replied, managing to get the subtext of “ unlike you ” in there…which was fair. He sent me, or tried to, the information he had about the life-form which was going to be in visual range in a matter of seconds. He had literally asked the priestesses what fauna I was likely to think were a threat and they’d asked him if he meant which ones I would decide were going to eat my…I switched to vocalised speech again, “They called you my what?”

“There isn’t really a word in our shared vocabulary, it refers to a story about one domesticated animal which is protected by a much fiercer guard animal. It isn’t very flattering to me.” He said it quietly.

“You are not my pet.”

“That’s not what it means.” He was stifling a laugh, “Not exactly—anyway if anyone should be offended it’s me.”

At which point we were both distracted by the arrival of “the creature which apparently wasn’t planning on eating Dr, Gurathin”. It was huge and was covered in massive shiny looking interlocking organic plate armour; most of its body was concealed by this adaptation to the planetary flora. It stopped a few feet from us. It clearly knew we were there. Then it raised its head.

Gurathin laid his hand on mine, he was trying to emanate calming thoughts: because it had absolutely huge fucking teeth! The Hostile One on the survey had cilia or teeth which were like something from a nightmare (not that SecUnits have nightmares) but this was worse. The teeth were enormous and looked to be razor sharp and…

They are used in courtship rituals and for clearing pathways and nesting sites: for rooting in the soil for grubs, they have never been known to attack a human. He had moved back to speaking over our “localised feed”, Dr. Guarthin was clearly concerned I’d get my energy weapons out and start blasting away. Like the killing machine that I am, of course.

Never been known to attack a human, yet. I replied, a little testily. Dr. Gurathin’s eyes had moved to the casing in my left forearm and his face had an expression which I interpreted as…I started to assign an interpretation but realised it was completely at odds with the emotion I was detecting from him via our weird synchronisation thing. He had been concerned I might fire at the creature but the feelings he had weren’t the expected disgust and revulsion. He seemed to feel almost protective of me, wanting me to know I didn’t have to do that. It was a sense of understanding but also, I looked at him via Drone Three trying to integrate the two sets of data, of affection? Just what the fuck was going on here?

Luckily the creature (I wasn’t assigning it as Hostile One because I just knew Gurathin would roll his eyes if he found out) judged this was the moment to get really up close and personal with us. When I said it was huge, it was huge for an unexpected potentially hostile fauna—almost three metres tall and must have weighed more than 8 thousand kilos. Which is massive for a land animal. It moved its face, and now I wasn’t just focusing in on the teeth I saw it had a sort of vaguely nose like proboscis thing, which it was bringing towards our faces. 

Don’t move, Gurathin’s used his feed voice (I’m guessing because he thought he could control the emotions in that better). 

I wasn’t planning on it, I said, keeping my own voice very calm. It was bringing its proboscis up to Gurathin’s face first. It was actually going to touch him. It was touching his face. He stood frozen. Through our connection I tried to pull down the data, almost treating him like a drone (I did it without even really thinking). Note to self, augmented humans are not drones, and the effect was more like the weird confused jumble of emotions and attempted connections I’d felt when I grabbed his arm back on the boat and again we both sort of pulled back from each other a little—not physically but over our sort of feed thing. But we were both less shocked this time (which I guess was good) and the connection was still there. Mind you there hadn’t been an enormous alien fauna with us last time. A fauna which appeared to be trying to inhale Dr. Gurathin. 

Gurathin was radiating calmness in a way that made me suspect he wasn’t feeling very calm at all (I know this doesn’t make sense). I could hear the creature breathing, or making some other slow rhythmical sound which I assumed (hoped) was breathing. It was obviously sniffing Gurathin, I hoped it wasn’t going to decide he smelt edible because this would be about the most embarrassing way to lose a client; eaten by an alien fauna whilst you stood holding their hand. I squeezed his hand, he squeezed mine back. I think that meant he was okay.

Chapter Text

The thing, the creature, was taking its time checking out Gurathin. I felt him shudder and very tentatively I tried reaching further into our connection; I don’t know why I was so curious about what he was feeling (I really didn’t want to be sniffed like that, but at the same time the emotions I was picking up from him weren’t negative). We had both pulled back from each other when I’d stupidly just tried to drag down the data from him earlier, I felt sort of embarrassed about that now. I was more careful this time, slow and deliberate (deliberate but slow) and I tried to check that what I was doing was okay with Gurathin step by step as I went. I say tried, the last bit (checking with Gurathin) wasn’t easy, he was extremely distracted by a lot of sensations and emotions; the tickling on his skin (the sensitive skin of his face and neck) of little sensory vibrissae on the fauna’s trunk; the warmth of its breath; the feel of my hand on his; the sound of its respiratory and circulatory systems; the almost earthy smell of its, well of it. And his emotions were a complex tangled mess of excitement and nervousness, and joy and other things which I was failing to parse because he was now aware that one of the major sources of his sensory focus was not the fucking tank like behemoth (which had his head if not in its mouth then pretty close to it) but my hand holding his. And now I was focusing on that too, and any second now we were going to have to actually talk about this.

Luckily the creature decided to break the spell by switching its attention to me, moving its trunk-like thing towards my face. Before it got too close, it stopped and took a loud sniff, and then pulled back and away. Then it made a weird noise as it exhaled. Dr. Gurathin’s emotional state shifted and it was as if he was…I realised he was trying not to laugh. Apparently I had pulled a face; with our current connection it wasn’t as if I could actually see via Gurathin’s augments (though I was genuinely wondering if that was a possibility) but I could absolutely feel his awareness of how he perceived me. Currently I was apparently highly amusing to him. To be fair to him, humans will laugh in situations of high emotional stress, but actually no: you’re not getting a pass on this, Dr Gurathin.

Don’t look so offended; I  don’t think it likes your smell , he said, it is quite distinctive and non-organic. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s you, not the cream, he meant the lotion he’d put on my injuries, because I must smell of that too.

What the fuck, Gurathin? I don’t smell. His response to this unspoken thought was to send me some data. Huh, so apparently I do smell. A very faint smell slightly reminiscent of artificial fruit flavours; according to Dr. Gurathin. He theorised it was something in my fluids, and that it was a sort of ketone not everyone could detect. He (unlike the creature) liked the smell. You are so weird, Gurathin.

The creature shuffled around. Now that my threat assessment had calmed down a bit I could take a closer look. My drones were giving me inputs too, one of them had taken some initiative and explored the gap in the foliage the creature had emerged from. The thing was massive, but it had now moved down to a quadrupedal stance and was less towering. It had scales all over its back and flank, and reminded me of the fruiting bodies of some of the preservation trees. The drone (Drone Three, which I was going to run a full diagnostic on when we got back to ART) had found a network of tunnels in the surrounding flora. It hadn’t explored far, but it was clear they were part of some sort of much larger system built and maintained by the creature, and others like it. Why the fuck had no one mentioned this to me?

Did you ask anyone about the planetary megafauna? As in ask the actual people who live here? 

You know perfectly well I didn’t, Dr. Gurathin. 

It (the creature; if it hung around much longer I was going to have to name it Creature One or something) was snuffling at our feet. I think we were both hoping it would lose interest and wander off. It seemed to find Gurathin’s knees fascinating for some reason, and then it moved lower to his calves and ankles and the top of his feet and I could feel his attention suddenly shift there. I followed his focus and—it was a sensation I was utterly unfamiliar with. It was not exactly painful but it was not pleasant either and it was acutely intense; so much so I pulled back again. I glanced at his face with my organic eyes, to see his eyes watering and creasing. At least he was too distracted to see me looking at him.

It’s okay, SecUnit. I’m just ticklish. Don’t look so worried. I wasn’t worried, Dr. Gurathin. 

Finally the creature had had enough of Dr. Gurathin. Well, for now at any rate, and took an interest in the gully floor; snuffling at stones and occasionally picking them up with its proboscis (which was far more prehensile than I’d realized) doing whatever it did with them and then dropping them again. The noises it made were strangely soothing. We just stood there, Gurathin’s hand was still in mine.

We had approximately two hours to walk, at a Gurathin’s walking speed, before we would reach the spring. Then there was the ceremony to perform (I had left figuring out that bit to Gurathin, I hoped it wouldn’t take too long), and then we needed to walk back to the beach and the boat. The sun was already pretty high in the sky, we were not going to get back to the boat before dark at this rate. Especially not if we just stood here holding hands like idiots. 

We just stood there.

I wasn’t just standing there, I was also making a bit more sense of all the data I had amassed about this connection compatibility whatever this thing was between us. Now that everything was a bit calmer (Creature One was still very much unmistakably with us, the sounds of its activities providing an audio backdrop to the scene—was it rearranging the stones? Eating stuff growing on them? I had no idea, and wondered vaguely if it was actually Dr. Gurathin who was asking these questions, not me) I could examine them more closely. And one thing was becoming very apparent.

What are you hiding? You’re holding something back. I did try not to sound too accusatory, but I guess it came out that way. Dr. Gurathin even pulled his hand slightly away from me, just slightly. I held on. You’re not getting away that easily, augmented human. You started this.

(Actually, maybe I did? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, it started.)

SecUnit, I think we need to sit down and talk about this. Calmly. Not try to discuss it right now, the situation is far from ideal. He sounded placatory, almost apologetic. 

I was not having this, I pulled up my logs from just a few minutes ago:

“When would be a good time then?” 

Yeah, I played it back to him via my buffer. His voice coming out of my mouth. Okay, I’m not proud.

He sort of crumpled a bit. “Can we get to the spring? Then we can talk.” He said it aloud, but also (over our connection) he sort of sent waves of, of warmth and acquiescence? It was like a heavy, soft blanket, comforting and safe. It was so strangely reassuring and familiar it almost didn’t trigger my threat assessment. But my threat assessment isn’t falling for something like that, whatever it was: I felt him notice, and Drone Three caught a shadow of a smile. The waves stopped. He stood up straight again and moved as if to start walking. 

It must have felt as if he was a ship tugging at its anchor. Not so fast, Dr. Gurathin. “We will talk when we reach the spring,” I confirmed, “on the way we can stay in touch like this.” I lifted our hands up. We could walk just as fast with this physical connection in place, and I could stop Dr. Gurathin from falling over. Or wandering off and getting eaten by giant fauna which like the way he smells.

Chapter Text

We walked along the gully, his augmented right hand held in my left. With Gurathin walking next to me I was very aware of the possibility of him tripping and stumbling on the stones which made up the gully floor. Now that I looked at them (the pebbles, rocks and boulders)  I could see they weren’t randomly scattered; it was almost as if the floor of the gully was paved with them.

I think the creatures maintain this as a pathway , Gurathin said, I realised the arrangement had to be deliberate earlier. Did you really, Dr. Gurathin—I didn’t notice you notice. He sort of shrugged.

At least it made our progress easier. We walked on. We were making quicker headway than I’d expected. Creature One had not tried to come after us, but the occasional rustle and rumble from the nearby foliage indicated it, or others like it, were following our progress. Gurathin was mostly quiet, walking at a good pace; present in our shared pseudo-feed, but quiet: just sort of there. I went back to sorting through the whole nest of inputs and outputs and…just strands of data which represented our connection. Firstly, Gurathin was right that we had compatibility, at least of sorts. There were places where our systems quite clearly meshed almost seamlessly, or they would if we weren’t both constantly sabotaging their attempts to do so. Not that all the sabotage was even conscious; we both had automatic defence systems which were designed to repel unexpected systems’ attempts to synchronise. Dr. Gurathin had, I realised as I poked carefully, much stronger defences than I had ever appreciated. In addition he had…well, sort of the opposite of defences working alongside? Systems which seemed intent on trying to pull in other systems? This was unlike anything I’d ever seen in another construct, or an augmented human. It reminded me of something, but it was hard to—

I felt his presence in our shared area change. It reminded me of when we’d jumped out of the rowing boat into the shallow water and the waves had retreated, sucking the sand and shingle away out from under my feet. I checked his face from Drone Three, there was a tiny hint of a frown. No, Gurathin, you aren’t doing that. I sort of fell after him in the feed, and tugged him back. He seemed surprised, but allowed me. From the drone I saw his eyes widen, just briefly. We walked on. 

I carried on sorting through the data. Gurathin seemed intent on just thinking about putting one foot in front of the other. Yes, you do that—I don’t want you to trip and hurt yourself.

How are your injuries? Gurathin’s question caught me by surprise. I’d been focusing on trying to understand what this connection between us was. I checked; there was a small level of pain returning to some of the deeper cuts, I think the effect of the lotion was wearing off. Should we stop and I can reapply some cream? Over the feed I could feel Gurathin’s nervousness about asking me this, afraid I would rebuff him. I guess I could just take the jar from him and use it myself. I felt a wave of something that felt like resignation and sorrow building up.

“Yes, let’s stop and you can apply more cream.” I spoke, aloud; I suppose I wanted to keep the words as neutral as possible. “Some of the wounds are quite painful.” Now who’s surprised, Dr. Gurathin? He wanted to look at me, I could feel it, but instead he just stopped very deliberately and looked around us instead. Oh, he was looking for a rock-chair. I spotted one, and basically dragged him over to it. He sort of laughed. 

“You’re going to have to let go of me so I can get the jar out of the backpack.” He was probably right. But I don’t know why, I didn’t want to let go of his hand. 

I made him get the cream out of the backpack one handed. It was stupid, and ridiculous—and we both knew it. Then we sort of reined ourselves in, and both became almost artificially calm; but it was as if it was a still surface of water with things writhing beneath it. I helped him open the jar, and held it for him; as he put the cream on I tried to allow my sensations to flow into the connections. He was being as careful as before, this time using his free (unaugmented) hand; again there was the almost electrical tingling feeling of connection when he touched me, and the cream, strangely cool against my skin. And so soothing, as the cream took effect, and the gentle pressure as he rubbed the skin around the damage. I could sense his emotions, seeping back to me across the connection. Not disgust, as I’d imagined, but care and concern and something else which flickered and which would not let me grab it to analyse it properly. He breathed in, he was so close to me I could feel the warmth radiating from his body. I knew that he knew I could feel it. 

“We can use the handheld kit when we get to the spring, it can’t be far now.” He sounded absolutely normal, even slightly bored. How had I never before realised how much Gurathin was concealing from me? How did he get so good at concealing his emotions? Why was I only now realising that he was doing this? I really wished I could talk to Ratthi, I bet he would understand. 

Gurathin was clumsily stashing the jar away in the back pack again, I saw a flask in the pack. Probably of water, or something else he should be drinking. Wait, “Dr: Gurathin, have you eaten yet today?” I knew the answer to that. He’d only had coffee. 

“I’m fine, I don’t need anything. I’ll drink some water.” He wasn’t fine.

“Why aren’t you eating?” I checked back, “You didn’t eat last night either.”

“I am fine, I’m not hungry.” He sounded annoyed. I often think he sounds annoyed but this time he did actually sound annoyed. 

“You need food, do you have something in your backpack?”

Now he really was getting agitated, he wasn’t pulling away from me but I could feel his anger pulsing. But then there was a wave of cool calm, and he relaxed, I felt his hand ease and he said, “I will eat something when we get to the spring. I’ll drink some water now. You don’t need to remind me, it’s not your job.” 

There was something being left unsaid here. I looked back through my logs, not far but far enough. “Why don’t you eat in front of me?” Okay, I was reassessing that wave: not cool calm, icy chill. 

You don’t like human biological processes, I would rather disgust you as little as possible. 

Fuck’s sake, Gurathin. How long can humans go without food? I know I have that information somewhere. It’s a lot longer than you’d expect, but I was pretty certain it wasn’t good for them to go without for more than a couple of cycles. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen Gurathin eat.

I am fine, he really has the speaking through clenched teeth effect down perfectly. Ironic, given the topic of conversation.

“You don’t mean ironic,” His stance shifted again, tension flooded through him. I probably didn’t, he was right; it was something else, possibly the opposite of ironic, “are you doing this on purpose?”

He really was agitated now, and I realised I wasn’t sure at all whether I was doing this (whatever this was) on purpose or not. Was I trying to provoke a reaction from him? Wasn’t that what he did to me? Wasn’t he the one asking me pointed questions about my systems? About where I had been? What I had been doing? Always poking at me. Poking around in my logs. 

I said I was sorry. Gurathin jaw clenched, he practically spat the words at me over the feed.

“No you didn’t. You never said you were sorry.” Okay, so now I’d actually said it. I guess we had both been provoking each other? Perhaps this was just what we were like, every time we got at all close we had to push each other away? Like the way children’s toys with little magnets spin away from each other. But he was still holding my hand, and I was holding his. We both just stood there. From Drone Three I had an aerial view, our shoulders—even the tops of our heads—looked tense. I know hair shouldn’t be able to look tense, but it did.

“I am sorry,” he said, and I waited for the conditionals, for the “but”, for the qualifications. There was silence, our pseudo feed hummed with tension, it was Gurathin who broke it, “I thought I’d shown you by my actions, but I was mistaken. I should have said it, I apologise for that too.”

Right, that’s fine. But don’t think you’ve distracted me from the other thing we were discussing, Dr. Gurathin.

I don’t find you eating disgusting, I felt his disbelief swelling in the feed, okay, so maybe a little bit disgusting? But it’s you, so it’s not so bad? 

Not so bad? He replied, and this time I was aware of his smile over the feed, it felt…nice. We started walking again. After about another 5 kilometres the gully bed began to slope upwards, and the sides became less green and more rocky. Gradually the scenery shifted so we were walking through a sort of tunnel, carved through sedimentary rocks (I was getting a lot of this information via my connection to Gurathin, so blame him if it’s wrong; I know nothing about geography or geology or whatever this is), and then (finally) we reached the spring. It was easy to spot. It was, in human terms, beautiful. Apparently an appropriate word would be picturesque or idyllic. It was a large pond, with clear water and a sort of sandy shore to it. Gurathin was very pleased to have arrived. I suppose I was too.

Creature One had clearly taken a short cut and was already curled up on the sand, apparently asleep.

Chapter Text

Gurathin stood there, seemingly transfixed by the view that greeted us. I looked at it too, at the water (it was almost eerily clear and blue) and at the sand. Covering the ground around the spring was sand, dotted here and there with some rocks (the way they were rounded made me think they were from a riverbed or even the sea); but mostly it was sand. I realised the surface of the sand looked raked; there were swirling patterns in it, as if a human had been arranging it. The whole effect was one of serene order and calm. The patterns ran in great even sweeps of parallel grooves, circling the stones in some places and undulating like waves in others. And Creature One was lying there in the middle of it all, apparently oblivious to our arrival. It appeared to be asleep. Seen like this, its fangs no longer looked so terrifying. Well, objectively they did but my threat assessment had calmed right down, especially since it had now apparently (having done some rapid calculations) classified the tusks as gardening equipment. 

It’s made a garden? I said, over our feed. It was less of a question, more of a statement looking for confirmation. Gurathin just nodded, dumbly. Apparently he hadn’t been expecting this either. It was beautiful. I called it a garden because I’d seen similar places called gardens on the feed, but made by humans (sometimes as havens for meditation). None of them were anything but pale reflections of this. And this one was clearly untouched by human hands. Except for where we had scuffed the edges with our feet (so touched by feet, and neither of us were technically human—so whatever).

Is this going to interfere with the ceremony thing? I had to ask, that would be quite funny I suppose, “Sorry we couldn’t do your ceremony—there was a beautiful garden made by a huge alien and we didn’t want to disturb it”. But Gurathin shook his head. “First things first; I need to use the hand unit, it won’t take long.” He was sort of whispering, I could understand it; I didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere here either. “You’re going to have to let go of my hand so I can…” He was wrong, it was perfectly easy for me to get the backpack off his back and onto the ground without letting go of him. I didn’t have to dislocate anything even, the thing did have buckles. Gurathin sighed anyway.

He pulled out the portable medical unit, I still can’t believe he carried it all this way. It’s not as if I always get injured. Gurathin sighed again and pulled up some data in the feed; he must have used one of Mensah’s children’s maths programs to present it. Ha, ha, very funny. Okay, so I do quite often get injured. He started the healing process, moving competently around me, ensuring each wound received attention. I just stood there. I tried to parse my own emotions. I felt slightly awkward but safe, cared for.

After a while (the process is effective, but not exactly quick) we put away the kit and he motioned for me to sit down. I sat down on the sand with him. In doing so we smudged some more of the edges of the patterns, I hoped the creature wouldn’t mind. Sitting on the sand was far more comfortable, it was warm and dry. Because we were still holding hands (it was very much now a thing, and neither of us was letting go) we were sitting close together. I had my legs crossed under me, Gurathin sat similarly, but his knees stuck up more. 

And now we need to talk, Gurathin said it over our feed connection and it sounded a whole lot less ominous than it does written down. It sounded more as if he wanted us to communicate, which is I suppose what talking is supposed to be about. It’s just that so often it seems to add a layer of misunderstanding. Especially when it’s me and Gurathin doing the talking. Gurathin seemed to understand this was how I felt, I could sense it. Then he continued, I need to explain what I am. Which was a surprise, he’s an augmented human? I looked at him, not just with my eyes, I felt his presence in the feed; he is definitely an augmented human. He’s not a construct, he doesn’t feel act seem like one, he just isn’t. He smiled, his face smiled, but it was a sad smile, No, I’m not a construct; I am an augmented human but my original augmentation was for a specific purpose which is, I believe, why you’ve found me difficult, why you don’t like me.

He managed to convey this information remarkably non-judgmentally. As if the fact I didn’t like him wasn’t my fault at all. I was about to start to argue that a) it was at least a little bit my fault, and b) that it wasn’t entirely true, I didn’t not like him. But I didn’t get a chance. He was explaining, and it seemed for now I had to just listen, or rather be explained to. I knew he’d been augmented at a young age, and that his augments were non-standard; but hadn’t realised quite how bespoke his original modifications had been. He had been part of a research project whose ultimate aim was to replace some hugely expensive SecSystems and HubSystems with far cheaper and more adaptable augmented humans. Augmented humans who would also come with other handy built-in features such as company loyalty and obsolescence. 

The project he had been a part of had been shelved, its funding dried up—probably the victim of some completely unrelated boardroom schism. It had been the simplest, lowest cost, option for them to just burn out parts of his systems, rather than actually remove or replace them. Leaving him with what appeared to be relatively normal augments. Gurathin supposed he was lucky not to have been disposed of in a more permanent manner, he had been just a child at the time. Eminently disposable. Of course, Gurathin had known hardly any of this back then, and hadn’t discovered many of these details until much more recently.

It wasn’t until his teenage years that he had begun to realise something odd was going on. Apparently they’d botched the deactivation. His augments were, he came to realise, trying to synchronise with other systems; specifically with constructs, and other machine intelligences. This had been both valuable to him as a systems analyst (and nascent hacker) and potentially extremely dangerous if the makers of his augments had found out. (The makers of his augments whose logos he had hidden buried deep in his cerebral tissue, the exact same logos I had failed to remove from my own components.) Gurathin also provided some information about his personal relationships with certain augmented humans and constructs which I don’t want to think about right now. Nor did he. I filed them. So that was fine.

He explained all this without expectation of anything from me. He’d used his unusual abilities, these potentially dangerous abilities, to escape the Corporate Rim and make his way to Preservation. And, safe on Preservation, he’d thought that was all behind him. And then came the survey. Of course he’d detected “anomalies” in the feed. His augments had originally been designed to work with systems just like mine. Earlier (how could it only be earlier today? it seemed a lifetime ago) he’d said “we seem to automatically interface and create a sort of localized feed between us—I’ve noticed it before” by that ‘before’, he meant on the survey. As Mensah had tried everything to get out of taking a SecUnit, a company SecUnit, little did she know that Gurathin had been quietly desperate; terrified he’d be found out. Dragged off to some facility, charged with—he hardly knew what? Theft? They’d left these things in his head. What would his life even have been like without them? He’d always felt different, always had difficulty making friends, fitting in. Again I felt this wave of sorrow building.

Dr. Gurathin, are you sure that isn’t just because you’re you? 

There was a tense moment that seemed to stretch on for an infinity, a cold clear moment and then he smiled. A proper smile this time, a warm smile. 

You’re quite right, SecUnit. It’s pretty stupid of me to try and blame all my personal shortcomings on the company. I mean, they made you, and you're eminently likable. 

There was another moment, but this one was much less tense. This was all a lot to take in, but it all sort of made sense. Thinking back to the survey, things that hadn’t even struck me as weird at the time now added up. His questions, “What about your systems?” His ability to just simply parse my drone data—I should have taken more notice at the time. Even making that video for him on TranRollinHyfa, why hadn’t I seen that was a strange thing to do? “Or you could just show them where you were when this person was being killed.” So many occasions, I had thought so little of at the time. 

And now here we were sitting, hands still clasped, together on the sand; he had sort of stepped back from me in the feed. His face looked deliberately blank, a slight hint of a smile still, his eyes lowered. I considered our connections. He wasn’t trying to control me in any way, I’d know if he tried that. I could feel his restraint, though. Again, Dr. Gurathin? You are still holding something back from me?

It’s a human thing. He was dismissive. No, he was trying to be dismissive. I could feel agitation beneath the surface calm. I didn’t think it was, didn’t think “whatever it was” was, a human thing. I think this was Gurathin’s mistake here, he was trying to make some things his augmented things and others his human things. When they weren’t, they were all Gurathin things. I should know, I do this sort of thing all the time too. I told him, I think you need to tell me.

“Please, I don’t think this is helpful.” The sound of his voice made Creature One stir, Gurathin looked over at it. I think he was hoping it would come over and interrupt us, come to his rescue. It took a few deeper breaths, made some deep snuffling growls and appeared to go back to sleep. I pulled his attention back to me.

“I think it is.” I wasn’t actually sure it was helpful (or who exactly it was supposed to help), but for some reason I needed to push him.

“If you insist, then, I’ll say it:” his voice sounded as if he was finding it hard to speak, “I love you.” His words hung there for a moment.

“No you don’t.” Yeah, probably not the best response I could have made. I switched back to the feed. Say it here, I paused, please?

I…he started to speak over the feed, I could feel his defensiveness, like he was going to use the words to push me away.

Not like that! I stopped him, I hadn’t meant to sound so urgent, but this was important, Don’t use human words.

“I don’t know what you want!” He switched back to speaking aloud, his eyes wide open now—looking at anything but my face. I held tight to his hand. I was suddenly afraid he was going to run away from me. 

So I replied, “Human words like love don’t work. Love is a human thing and we’re not, not humans,” I didn’t quite know where I was going with this, I hoped it would start making sense as I went along, “most of them don’t even know what it means most of the time. This isn’t love, it’s not a human thing or an augmented human thing or a construct thing—it’s an us thing.”

Yeah, I know. Pretty dumb of me to try and explain it with human words, when it was words which were half the problem here. Or perhaps it wasn’t. Gurathin’s presence in the feed was suddenly quite different. There had been sorrow and defensiveness, and a little bit of anger; now suddenly there was hope.

“You said us?” I think he half expected me to deny it.

“Yes, please don’t act all weird about it.”

Chapter Text

Thiago had arrived just a few hours after SecUnit and Gurathin had left. He’d not been immediately aware of their departure. Well, that wasn’t strictly accurate; the fact that a small festival was being performed to mark some sort of event was pretty clear. There were little strings of flags flying from the temples (not that they strictly speaking qualified as ‘temples’ but the word was the closest thing they had) and incense (orange, green, and purple smoke with citrus scents) being burnt and brightly coloured foliage adorning doors and people playing music, and intoxicants were being imbibed. But from Thiago’s experience this was pretty much par for this particular course; this culture celebrated anything. Enthusiastically. Every event; births, marriages, deaths and everything conceivable in between. So, he hadn’t really thought much of it, other than to make a few brief notes.

When he’d gathered from other survey members that the activities marked the departure of his sister’s security consultant along with that particular survey academic he’d even joked briefly that he understood why people would be celebrating. The realisation had dawned slowly. And when it did dawn he initially denied the evidence of his own eyes and ears. 

“You are quite certain this is the ceremony they’re going to perform?” He was asking Maedal, who was looking pretty confused and slightly scared at this point (Thiago was trying to remain calm, but he could feel himself losing his grip just slightly).

“Yes, the priestesses were insistent.” Maedal used the word ‘priestesses' which was again not strictly accurate—in more than one way; for a start this place had no what you could correctly call religion. The priestesses held considerable status but it seemed to be not due to any position in…Thiago shook his head. It wasn’t worth even thinking about now, it wasn’t the important thing. Bringing this potential clusterfuck back to its basic points, the bare bones of the matter: powerful members of the local community had chosen SecUnit and Gurathin to go on this little expedition. 

Of all the people they could have chosen.

Was this their idea of a joke? 

Of course no one else on the survey team had realised the significance. He knew this was covered in the briefing packages. Okay, so it was in an appendix; he’d never thought it’d be an issue.

And the citizens who had perhaps seen SecUnit and Gurathin working together—he thought about it. They did spend a lot of time together. From an outsider’s perspective they did act like a pairing (even in the privacy of his own mind Thiago wasn’t using the word couple). But the priestesses were nothing if not well-informed, highly intelligent and intuitive. Thiago had been part of the first team to study this culture and had found himself very aware at the time that this particular academic exercise had been very much a two way street. Thiago thought about the priestesses (the word was stupid, implying gender the way it did—but it had stuck), he recalled their lined, painted faces; eyes seemingly perpetually smiling, as if they understood a joke you’d missed. They were clever and old. Extended life-spans were hardly unknown in the CR, but there it usually went hand in hand with an obsession with remaining youthful. In this culture you celebrated your age. They were old, and they looked it; like they’d seen it all. They’d not have missed the fundamental basis of the SecUnit/Gurathin dynamic? No, they couldn’t have? 

Thiago thought about them. The constant sparring; Gurathin’s disapproving expressions as SecUnit demonstrated some new obscene gesture; SecUnit’s dismissals of Gurathin’s suggestions…obscene gestures he was always around to witness, suggestions it was always there to argue. 

“Did we get something wrong?” Maedal sounded plaintive.

Thiago paused. He suddenly wasn’t at all sure. The face of the chief priestess gazed at him from his mind's eye, grinning.

“No.” Thiago said, and then more reassuringly (who exactly was he trying to reassure), “No, Maedal. I got it wrong. I am sure they’ll be fine. It will all be fine.”

Chapter Text

Stop, you are making this weird. He sounded amused, not upset. I wasn’t going to stop just yet.

I want to understand tickling? That’s not weird. You mentioned being ticklish, so you brought it up. If anyone is being weird, it’s you, Dr. Gurathin.

Please let go of my arms. It still feels, well, weird to disobey a direct request.

I let my consciousness flow into his very briefly to check, to confirm, he was okay with this. He didn’t really think I was weird (well, he did but not in a way I categorised as negative) and he didn’t want me to let go of him (again, he did—but he also sort of wanted me to hold on, so I did) and he did want me to explore tickling (he also really, really didn’t want me to tickle him, but also he sort of did). Genuinely, it’s not such a huge fucking surprise we find communictaion difficult, Dr. Gurathin.

No . To be clear, that was me, not Gurathin.

I feinted, as if to tickle the area of skin over his intercostal region whilst holding on tight to his wrists with my other hand. His shirt had sort of fallen undone at some point, so I could see his skin stretched over his ribs. He wriggled. He actually gets sensory responses which register as inputs (tickles) even if I don’t touch him, which is interesting. I was learning that the areas where he is most ticklish are largely the same ones which are highly vulnerable to physical attack. I’ll ask him about this when he isn’t so otherwise occupied. It might be an evolved adaptation. Why hadn’t I ever really even thought about tickling before?

I’m not sure how we’d ended up like this, to be quite honest. We’d been trying to understand certain aspects of the way we interact, primarily trust; and now I was kneeling over him, threatening to tickle him. Drone Three was sending me aerial footage. We had made a whole new pattern in our little area of the sand. Creature One had woken up at some point. Again, I’m not sure when—I think we were both distracted— but it seemed far from unhappy about our activities.

I sensed Dr. Gurathin trying a defensive (possibly shading into offensive) sortie of his own, purely feedbased—it was subtle and I think he was hoping I’d be distracted by Drone Three’s inputs; hah, not so fast! 

Okay, so that was fast. And not entirely feedbased afterall. I was unexpectedly on my back. How had he done that? 

What exactly do you intend to do now? I had to ask. It’s not that I wasn’t impressed that he had managed to pin me, but this was very much a stalemate not a check (to use one of his own gaming metaphors). I was also looking at countermeasures against the code he’d just deployed.

“Can we call a truce? Just for now?” There was a slight pleading note in his voice. He probably knew he couldn’t hold me for long.

“Fine.” We both relaxed our grips, physically and in the feed, and he (gratifyingly) sort of fell on top of me. Which was nice. He didn’t stay there, instead getting up and starting to rearrange himself, buttoning his shirt. “Why are you doing that?”

Over the feed he sent me a file, my reaction when he came out of the cabin to go swimming. It’s not like I meant for my face to look like that. Things were different then. I hadn’t  I didn’t I just 

“I’m sorry.” I got up too. I went over and touched his augmented hand. I’m sorry. I said it again over the feed, in case I’d got it wrong the first time. I thought we’d sorted that all out. Perhaps I still had it wrong. 

“No, I’m the one who should be apologising. I’m being stupid, please ignore me.” He said it quietly. I did still have it wrong, and Gurathin sounded sad. He’d not been sad just a moment ago, I should have just pinned him down again. He was happy then, when I’d been holding him down. Rather than try and explain it to him, I just pushed that thought at him. 

Hah! Now who’s a prude, Dr. Gurathin (the word in his language wasn’t exactly synonymous with ‘prude’ but it was close enough)? I absolutely did record the expression on his face and I sent that to him, too. He was shocked. I reached out to him through the feed, but he pushed me away. Okay, Dr. Gurathin, stop with this behaviour right now. I pushed back. Hard.

“You don’t understand!” He said it through clenched teeth. Well, no (or yes?), I think that’s probably true; but I don’t think it’s the comeback you seem to think it is. 

“I can’t understand if you push me away like this.” Genuinely, Gurathin? I am not having our first breakup within a timespan most sensibly counted in seconds. That made him freeze and his whole presence went crystalline, very still and angled and precise and sharp. 

“Stop trying to make this like a scene from your media.” Well, Dr. Gurathin, that was below the belt, to use another stupid human metaphor. 

It’s an idiom. 

“Fuck you, and not literally.” I said—I was getting irrationally angry. I didn’t even know why. I suppose that’s the thing with irrational anger. Suddenly I felt something brush my neck, I checked my drone inputs. Something as big as Creature One shouldn’t be able to move that silently. It was standing behind me, sniffing my hair. I felt like I was suddenly pulling back and seeing the whole scene from a distance, which given my drone inputs I literally was. Dr. Gurathin was still glaring at my hand on his arm. Or maybe not glaring. I have trouble understanding his expressions. Did he look angry or sad? I reached out my other hand and brushed it over his forehead, pushing his hair away from his brow, then down his cheek (which was interestingly textured, rough with short blunt cut hairs), over to his mouth—which relaxed a little as I touched it.  

“If this was my media I would kiss you now and it would cut to an advertising break.” I said it softly. I was not going to kiss him. Unless he asked me to. Which was an interesting idea, perhaps I’d like that? “Why did you get upset with me just now?” 

“Because,” I could feel his heart pounding, “because I want things that you find disgusting.” He was finding this really difficult to say, “I am not sure if I can do this, not without damaging what we have irreparably. I think that by chasing something I can’t have I’ll lose what I do have.” He was talking about sex, why do humans always bring things down to sex?

“It’s not all about sex, SecUnit!” Creature One had been investigating my back, apparently having overcome its initial dislike of my smell. It startled at his words, I don’t think it liked us arguing like this. Were we arguing? “I tried to explain earlier, my augments are designed to make constructs, make units like you, want to please me. I could make you want to kiss me. You thought about kissing me just now, about me asking you to kiss me. That was me, my influence. And that’s why this can not work.”

“You think you can just make me do things?” I did feel a little insulted. More than a little. “I hacked my governor module, I took over a gunship—I think I can stop you turning me into some sort of puppet.” But, at the same time and much as I hated to concede it, he did have a point. Always there figuring out things will fall apart, aren’t you, Gurathin.

He had pulled right away from me now in the feed. It left me feeling horribly alone. Physically we were still so close. I had one hand on his face, the other clasping his arm. I checked myself for leakage; Gurathin was clever, but he was an augmented human not a construct. There was a difference. All the time we’d been talking (and doing whatever else we’d been doing) I’d been continuing to tease apart exactly how our connection worked. I’d been thinking about it, just not on exactly a conscious level. I didn’t think about it any more; I slammed down my walls completely destroying all my local connections. My drones plummeted out of the sky, falling safely (I hoped) onto the sand. Sorry, drones, but I think you may have been compromised.

Now the only inputs I had were my eyes and ears and nerve endings. Now the only way the two of us could communicate were the human ways. Now let’s see how things go, Dr. Guarthin.

“What are you doing, SecUnit?” He spoke after a pause, during which I can only assume he was trying every single trick in his (I am now going to assume extensive) book to reconnect with me. Good luck with that, Dr. Gurathin, I’ve spent time with ART and target-fucking-ControlSystem, my walls aren’t going to be a pushover for some augmented human. I watched his face; this close I could watch a series of emotions express themselves subtly. I still didn’t have a clue what some of them were. Surprise and frustration were in there, though. “You’ve blocked me, we are bad enough at communicating anyway. What is this supposed to achieve?”

“Why are we here?” 

“I’m going to take it that’s not an existential query?” I think he was making a joke, I’m not laughing Dr. Gurathin. “We have the ritual to complete, which we should really be getting on with.”

“Why did they choose us?” A question I should have asked before.

“I don’t know, I don’t even really know what this whole thing is about.” And now I think you’re lying Dr. Gurathin. I had expected removing our localised feed connection would make it more difficult for me to read him, not easier. But his face looked much clearer like this. His eyes were still averted from mine. I usually don’t like to make eye-contact, but this was an exceptional situation. I used my hand to lift his face to mine. “You do have some idea, which is why you didn’t refuse to do it. Tell me.” His eyes were trying to look anywhere but at me.

“It’s for those seeking reconciliation or rupture.” I didn’t need the feed to know those weren’t the exact words. The emotions on his face continued to swirl, embarrassment, sorrow, even humour, “It’s usually for couples, for those seeking divorce.” 

Okay, so that was kind of funny.

He must have seen my face start to smile, because some sort of reciprocal feedback loop started and soon we were both grinning and he was doing that human thing when they laugh but soundlessly. And crying. We were possibly a little what I’d call hysterical if it wasn’t us I was talking about.

Chapter Text

“We are not getting divorced.” I think of all the things I’ve ever said this has to be the least likely. “We can’t, we haven’t even been married.”

It was (in part) a human words thing, but in this case I felt I was on pretty solid ground. I might not be a Pin-Lee, but I am certain marriage involves a legal process; there are documents.

“It’s not like that.” He said. He, Gurathin, was now sitting down next to me on the sand. He was actually sitting with his back to mine, leaning against me. It felt nice. I could feel the warmth of his skin through the fabric of our clothes. We were not getting divorced.

“How is it not?”

“They don’t have legal marriages here, not the way they do in the CR or even on Preservation. It’s more of a commitment between two people recognised by and involving their whole community. This culture is based on networks, complex ones.” He sighed, “Even Thiago thinks they ‘celebrate’ things excessively. So if two people want to end their commitment they need it to be recognised. Same goes when they want to formalise the relationship.” If I’d have had access to my drones I would have watched my own face at this point, because I am pretty sure it was doing something interesting. But I didn’t have my drones. I said, “How are you suddenly an expert on this?” Also, did you just ask me to marry you? I didn’t say that last bit.

“I read Thiago’s information packages. Admittedly not all of them, that man has a thing for appendices.” As he said it I felt his back tense and then relax, and I felt my eyebrows move; the latter quite involuntarily; please don’t start laughing again Dr. Gurathin. “Some of my personal entertainment files got corrupted in transit here. Most of my books were rendered inaccessible. I don’t really watch media.” How do I even like this man?

“So, the priestesses chose us because they thought what exactly?” Talking like this was hard, the words weren’t actually the ones I wanted, but it seemed that this was the way we were going to do this.

I think Gurathin understood. “They saw that we had a relationship, a valuable one. Which we were, are, failing to recognise. Or at least that’s what I think. Humiliating though it is, I’m pretty certain they recognized my,” he was still finding this difficult, “my unrequited feelings for you. And saw those could be harmful. An assessment you know I agree with.”

We had been talking for some time now. Circling round, using different words, still coming back to the same points.

“They called you my pet.” I hadn’t forgotten that, I knew Gurathin thought that this was more about him than me but I wasn’t so sure, “I do want to keep you safe.” It was true. But it was more than that. I wanted to keep all my clients safe, this felt different. “Why do you think your feelings are a problem?”

He sighed, he really does do that a lot, “SecUnit, I keep trying to explain.”

“You keep saying you’re explaining but I don’t see the problem. You just go, I have strong feelings for you, this is a problem.” Which was a little unfair of me, but also: true. 

He’d said “could be harmful” not “would be harmful” this time. 

I tried a different tack, “If we’d both been human, what would you have done?” 

“Traditional human things? Things one doesn’t ask a SecUnit, which doesn’t eat or drink and which has specifically and repeatedly told me it doesn’t like me, to do. I did send you some files.” Yeah, I don’t think I want to look at those. Not yet.

“So now we do the ceremony and we are, what? Divorced? Married? How do we know?” 

I was conscious that he was aware that I kept trying to reach out in the feed; to him. I wasn’t letting myself, and I wasn’t letting him try and initiate any contact either. It was very odd for both of us not having feed contact. Sitting back to back had turned out to be the best way to talk. Sitting facing, looking at each other, had proven problematic because—well, it was just too much. Sitting like this just talking was odd, but also strangely liberating. I was having to force the concepts in my head into inappropriate words. I couldn’t check in on Gurathin visually or on the feed. And because I couldn’t communicate properly it was, ironically, helping me understand what I was trying to say.

“We are already doing it. This, and the journey here, the whole thing is part of the ceremony. We are doing it right now.” I suspect Gurathin was finding something similar about the communication situation. At any rate he sounded annoyed enough for this to be the case.

We both sat silently for a moment as Creature One walked over to me and delicately deposited another drone on the sand in front of me. It seemed ever so slightly reproachful. Then it sort of bumped both of us with its head, and went back to raking the sand.

“Is that all your drones now? Are they okay?” Gurathin sounded genuinely concerned. I like that he cares about my drones. When this is over I’m going to give him some of his own, teach him to use them properly. 

I picked up a drone and turned it over in my hand. I was toying with a question, and wasn’t sure if it was a good idea or not. I thought it probably wasn’t. “It’s not found a couple of them yet. What do you think I’d find so disgusting? If it’s so important to you I think I deserve to know.” I leaned back into him as I said it, so that he couldn’t even think about moving away from me. “I liked what we did earlier, you liked it earlier. That wasn’t a problem.”

He made a sound, an exhalation of breath, “How much of that was my influence on you, though?” He sounded sad. He also didn’t answer my question.

“How much of it was?” As I asked I could feel him drawing his knees up and putting his head on them. 

“I don’t know.” 

“We’re completely disconnected now? Yes? What if I said I would like you to touch me—it felt nice when you put the cream on my injuries. I like that you want to take care of me. It’s not me wanting to please you,” actually, I knew some of it was, “it’s about what I want you to do.” I could feel him tense, he was going to say no. I really didn’t want him to say no. 

“You want me to do what, rub your back?” This is not going to be easy, is it Gurathin. 

SecUnits look a lot like augmented humans when fully dressed. Without clothes there are some parts of us which even a hauler bot wouldn’t miss as “unlikely to be the result of augmentation”. Our feet are the most obvious, so I started unlacing my boots. I felt Gurathin make to move away from me, I grabbed his hand. Quite gently, I just didn’t want him running away. Okay, I was a bit twitchy about this whole thing.

“I was just going to offer to help.” He sounded really nervous too, perhaps even slightly afraid. I twisted myself around to look at his face, moving in a way no human ever would. As I did so, I dropped the rest of my human imitative code; he definitely noticed. He was a bit afraid of me like this. Actually, is he a bit afraid of me all the time? I thought about it. I didn’t want him to be afraid of me. Did I? It was one of the things I like most about Mensah, that she isn’t afraid of me—it’s something precious to me. Why would I like the idea that Gurathin was a little bit afraid? That was wrong. He was still looking at me, trying to parse my emotions; good luck with that Dr. Gurathin—you figure it out, you let me know.

“Will you let me? Unlace your boots?” He sounded a little bit incredulous, like he really didn’t believe this was happening. Gurathin, I really think you are a bit confused. I was gripping his hand, I knew my systems were completely shut down, so why did it feel oddly tingly?

“Gurathin—I don’t think we are being honest with each other. Not intentionally, I don’t think we are being honest with ourselves. I think we are getting tangled up by what we want and what our functions are.” I could see he was going to argue with me, so I continued before he could, “You know that your function is, was, to control other systems like me. My function is to be a part of a system, to follow orders and protect my clients. But we have both rebelled against our function,” I expected him to deny this, I wasn’t going to let him, “you ran away to Preservation to stop having to be that person. But the way we interact, our relationship ,” I used the ‘ ship ’ word, “is troublesome for both of us. You’re attracted to me but you feel ashamed of that because I’m supposed to be subservient to you, and you rebel against that. It’s why you’re always baiting me. Making me push back at you. You like it.” It was lucky I was still holding on to him, I thought he might really try and get away. “And I like it. I like that you’re my client and part of me wants you to be afraid of me.”

Probably the most words I’ve said out loud in one go, ever. I waited for Gurathin to tell me I’d got it all wrong. Because it did all sound a bit weird. There was a long silence. 

“I am not disgusted,” I felt I had to make this clear, “and you should stop being so judgmental about how you feel. It’s not disgusting. No matter what we’ve both been told to think.”

Creature One ambled over to us again. It was odd how something so huge could sort of melt into the background much of the time. It had another drone, this one it dropped in front of Gurathin. Drone Three. His drone. Part of me, definitely his. I wondered how much of our interactions the creature was understanding. It turned its attention briefly to my boots. Its trunk might be prehensile but laces were definitely beyond it.

It sat down next to us, it seemed expectant.

I moved Gurathin’s hand to my laces. He seemed to understand. I’ve had humans and augmented humans undress me before, but not like this. SecUnit are never really naked, because the word is inappropriate—we aren’t humans. Nakedness is a human thing. I could have told you this with certainty. It was also, I realised, not true. I stood there, naked. Gurathin looked at me, all of me.

We just stood there in silence. Until Creature One made what sounded like a happy sound and started raking the sand with a sort of shuffling enthusiasm. It took us both a stupid amount of time to realise that it was marking out a pathway from us to the water. It was fascinating to watch, but even we (in our admittedly distracted state) couldn’t miss the implicit instruction. 

“We are supposed to swim in the water, it’s part of the ritual.”

Yes, Dr. Gurathin I am not completely stupid.

“Did Thiago’s notes mention,” I said as I moved closer to him and started unbuttoning his shirt, “any of this stuff with the creature?”

“I honestly think,” I swear I could hear repressed laughter in his voice, “that he thought its involvement was a metaphor, or idiom, or something? He will want to hear all about this.”

“You are not telling him all about this.” I said. 

Chapter Text

We left our clothes on the sand, Gurathin did a better job of folding mine that I did of his. I hoped Creature One wasn’t going to bury them or eat them or something; not that there’d be much point in trying to stop it. It snuffled around our feet as we walked towards the spring. The water was cool, not cold. Gurathin waded in and did a sort of standing dive, and swam underwater for longer than I expected; then was apparently amused by the expression on my face when he re-emerged. I was not worried. I swam over to him, where he was treading water. The pool was deep here, but so clear the sandy floor was visible far below us.

If there was any dangerous fauna in the water I suppose someone would have mentioned it. And Gurathin would have listened to them. It felt good to swim; my skin which Gurathin had recently used the hand unit to heal was still sensitive, but not in an unpleasant way. I looked down at my arm, there was still a faint red mark; it would soon fade. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon be flawless again.” Gurathin had noticed me looking. He was always so quick to criticise—I stopped there. Was he criticising me? Or was that actually his way of trying to be nice to me? I really needed to get better at reading him, our connection could help with that, I supposed. I was beginning to wonder when it would be a good idea to let my walls down again, not quite yet.

“You were right about one thing,” I said, swimming closer to him, he looked at me surprised, “I should stop trying to make this like a scene from one of my serials.”

He smiled, “I thought that was a masterful stroke of self-sabotage.”

You do this a lot, don’t you Dr. Gurathin?

He lay back and started to float, I copied him (I can regulate my density in water to mimic that of a human). We both sort of hung there in the water, I missed having my drones, I wanted to capture this scene. I supposed I’d just have to imagine what a drone’s eye view would look like.

I was close enough now to reach out and touch him, if I wanted, it was strange floating like this—so near but still apart. 

“Why do you think the creature does this?” That was typical of him too, I’d not really given that much thought at all. I guess that’s why he’s a scientist,“I mean, from all the evidence this sort of thing has been going on for, well for centuries at the very least?”

“Perhaps it just likes humans, or human shaped things?” I didn’t think he meant the same creature had been doing this for hundreds of years, I don’t think their lifespans were that long? I didn’t know, I could find out when I got back, “Maybe it sees them as a form of entertainment?”

“What do you think it expects us to do next?” The way he said it made me think he was actually asking me what I wanted to do. I reached out with one of my hands and with just my fingertips stroked his arm. I smiled, obviously not just our systems’ compatibility and also not just me feeling this. 

“Does it matter?” I was enjoying this, “What anyone expects us to do? To you?” I paused, “Please don’t sigh.”

He didn’t sigh, he moved closer to me. He reached out and traced the fading pink lines where the lacerations had been. “No, but I am slightly concerned that if we disappoint it it might hide our clothes or something.”

“How does it even know what we’re doing?” This had been puzzling me. Gurathin had said it had sensitive hearing? Maybe like sonar? If so the frequencies it was using weren’t in the range I could detect. I swung my body into a more upright position, Gurathin sort of mirrored my movements. I put out a hand and he held it, gently.

“I’m going to let down my walls,” I said, I looked at his face. He didn’t seem surprised. 

It felt completely different this time. I think we’d spent enough time trying very hard to understand each other using the blunt tools of human language that it was such a relief to just fall into each other’s thoughts. And Gurathin seemed to have taken my rather awkward comments about him not being disgusting to heart. About us not being disgusting. Some of his ideas were actually rather intriguing.

At some point Creature One decided we’d had enough, or at least that’s how we interpreted its sudden trumpeting noises. We swam to the shore to find it had laid out a new pathway, this one lined with little white pebbles. It led back to a little mound where the creature had placed our clothes, our drones (well, there was still one missing) and Gurathin’s bag, on top of some coloured, richly scented foliage and, also, a beautiful stone. The outside was rough and sort of knobbly, and dark grey; but it must have been tumbled by water and eroded to reveal an inside full of startlingly purple glittering crystals. I suppose the textural contrast made it precious to Creature One. Or perhaps it had found previous humans liked this sort of thing? Gurathin certainly had no idea. This was a surprise to him too. He went over and, slightly gingerly, stroked Creature One. It purred, a low thrumming that I felt rather than heard. 

I reached out to my drones, waking them up one by one. My suspicions were confirmed when I sent a vibrate command to the one I was failing to get any audio or visuals from as Creature One sneezed and shot it clear out of its proboscis. I went and picked it up, and then went over and held it out to the creature. Yes, it’s pretty and you can keep it. It seemed to understand, and even be slightly embarrassed. Genuinely, Creature One—I’m already giving Gurathin Drone Three; after all you did for us the least I can do is give you one too. It reached out and snuffled it out of my hand. I wondered if it had a little treasure trove of similar souvenirs somewhere.

We sat together for a while, all three of us not really doing anything, just being. Gurathin pulled out a couple of packages filled with some sort of processed vegetable matter from his bag, he took a little out and offered it to the creature which wasn’t impressed. I watched him eat some. It’s not disgusting, eating. He had a flask of coffee in the backpack too, the smell of which Creature One certainly found interesting. I think I rather like the smell of coffee, but I am not sure if that’s just because it reminds me of Gurathin. We both knew it was time for us to get back to the boat. Gurathin packed everything away into the bag, wrapping the stone in some of the foliage. Then we set out for the return journey. Creature One walked with us and kept snuffling at us, and occasionally bumping into us, head-butting us. 

The walk back to the beach was quicker, we were going down hill and I carried Gurathin some of the way—because I wanted to. Creature One found this highly entertaining, or at least that was how we both interpreted its behaviour. I think all of us were  a little sad when we got back to our little boat exactly where we’d left it, on the seashore. Well, where Gurathin had left it. I felt a bit bad about that now. 

“SecUnit, I behaved quite poorly on the journey here. If anyone should feel bad, it is me.” I like the way Gurathin will sometimes just say what he feels aloud, I think this is important in a way I don’t quite understand. He doesn’t understand it either. I just went and stood next to him, and sort of bumped my side up against his; a bit like the creature had been doing to us. He laughed, and we dragged the boat into the surf together. Creature One watched, and was still there on the shore when we reached the boat (I did let Gurathin row, it still seems a fucking stupid method of locomotion), but then it turned and trotted back off along its track. I suppose it would carry on with its normal megafauna life; would it even remember us?

It seemed like a lifetime since we were last on the boat together. Pulling the tender out of the water was stupidly awkward, but Gurathin let me do most of that part, and I left him to tie it to the cabin top. He promised he’d explain how the knots worked, later. He made tea and I was much calmer about the naked flames this time. I still don’t trust them. We sat in the stupidly named cockpit and watched the sun set. Gurathin’s visual augments don’t have the same settings as mine and he, very tentatively, allowed me to access his inputs. Which was possibly all a little more than we had both expected it to be. 

Neither of us freaked out.

After a while we both went back to watching the sunset. Together but separately, which is how humans do it all the time. It was…nice. It got dark; we both watched as the pinks and oranges faded from the sky and slowly the stars came out. The planet’s single satellite hung in the sky. Initially we sat together, side by side. But then as the air temperature dropped I just pulled him over to me and upped my own core temperature so I was warming him. He initially tensed, but before I could say anything in response he relaxed. That felt nice too. We stared up at the sky, and I wondered if we could just stay like this forever—that would be okay. Then, as if it was a show the sky was putting on just for us, a shooting star blazed across the sky. 

I made another wish. The first one had worked out okay, even if it hadn’t at all been what I was expecting. 

I knew Gurathin must be exhausted. So after a while I took him down into the cabin. I sat on ‘my’ bunk and watched him pad about, changing into his soft sleepwear and making up his bedding. We were neither of us thinking much about anything, and I could feel his sleepiness weighing on him like a heavy blanket, which was fascinating and new. When he curled into his bed I moved over and curled around him. There was room on the bunk for both of us. I’ve watched hundreds of humans and augmented humans sleep, but this was very different. With our connection I could feel some of his emotions; he was so vulnerable and trusting; which was both terrifying and—something else. I knew the connection was two way, I hoped he understood my emotions better than I did. Despite his exhaustion he took some time to fall asleep, and when he did it was dreamless.

The next morning he woke up surprisingly early, but seemed very much refreshed. I should run an analysis on his sleep patterns, but not right now.

It did mean that we got to watch the sunrise together. Rise over what Gurathin informs me is indeed widely regarded as a sea (though some would classify it as a really large salty lake; apparently it is about both size and saltiness, as well as some other things). It's like a metaphor for the way humans try to apply words to things: sometimes it’s not just a big lake or a small sea, it’s something else altogether.

Then we sailed back to the settlement, far quicker than we had on the outward journey. Which seemed both unfair but also—well it had probably been necessary. They were waiting for us. I sent a couple of drones scouting ahead. “They have garlands made of coloured vegetation.” I said to Gurathin; I looked at him and his face looked a lot like my emotions felt, “And Thiago is there.” He started planning on tacking, and I moved to help, so quickly that we actually sort of fell into each other. I like it when Gurathin laughs. We realised we couldn’t actually run away from this. 

When we arrived at the harbour it was two of the priestesses who were first to greet us. They were wearing complex robes and makeup and they looked somehow expectant. Gurathin pulled out the stone Creature One had given us, still wrapped in the now faded foliage. One the priestesses took it and peeled back the leaves, gently. I was worried that here it would look less impressive, less special. But it glittered in the evening sunlight, sending off little scattered rays of light which danced on the faces of the crowd making them emit spontaneous “Oohs!”. The priestesses here smile a lot anyway, but this development made them grin, showing a lot of surprisingly white teeth. Apparently we had done well and there was lots of dancing and some people even hugged Gurathin (no one hugged me, the people here were enthusiastic but also respectful—or as Gurathin put it “prudent”). The priestesses also, prudently, gave our stone back to me.

Apparently there was no avoiding something of a celebration. The planetary survey team were all there too, Maedal seemed hugely relieved to see us again. At one point I heard Thiago say “I guess this means we are family, after all?” and I swear I could actually hear the sound of Gurathin’s teeth grinding; but over our feed he sent me the equivalent of an amusement sigil. So I think he was actually okay.

I don’t want to have to rescue him from Thiago too.

Chapter Text

I absolutely adore this artwork by Beeayy, who also writes the most incredible, wildly imaginative and utterly delightful Murderbot fanfics! Check them out here on AO3:

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