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English
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Published:
2024-11-17
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694
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Baggage

Summary:

The things we carry around. Or don't.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for other works inspired by this one.)

Work Text:

After the greetings had died down and Arada had finished marveling over the most recent changes to my appearance, Bharadwaj had mentioned that we ought to have just enough time to make tonight’s concert if I wanted.

Rogue constructs had been steadily trickling into Preservation ever since the documentary was released. One of them was a MedUnit who had taken up the xello and was scheduled to perform tonight. The Philharmonic was even going to play one of its original compositions.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious. Even though I was surrounded by humans focusing way too much attention on me and I could have pled tiredness or just sent a drone, I agreed to go in person. Which was great and all, but the concert was starting in 12 minutes and the venue was a 10-minute walk from here at a human-friendly pace.

But Pin-Lee was two metaphorical steps ahead of me (although literally she was leaning against a railing and engrossed in her feed device). She whistled up the station’s bot porter service and a few seconds later, there was CherryRed offering to take my bag back to the traveler’s suite I’d booked.

I was in the people part of the station. I was talking to humans like I was one of them. I was wearing clothes that I had chosen for reasons other than their projectile resistance. I had hair growing multiple centimeters off my scalp and I had put stuff in it to make it go the direction I wanted because I guess vanity is a thing I do now. I was getting a bot to carry my luggage because I wanted to trot off and do something spontaneous and frivolous and I had too much junk to keep with me while I did.

Fuck.

It wasn’t all that long ago that I was the cargo that would wait as long as required, not the person with more stuff than patience. I was used to being stuff, not someone who had stuff.

FUCK.

A big part of me really did not want to let CherryRed take my bag. From the other side of the transport box, the way humans dealt with cargo always seemed so arrogant, so indifferent. I didn’t want to be that way.

I knew that there was absolutely nothing sentient in my luggage. My Perihelion crew uniform and emergency press conference caftan wouldn’t mind being treated like the objects they were. The little treats I’d brought back for Mensah’s children, and the handwritten letter Tarik had asked me to deliver to Ratthi because they both enjoy being friendly ex-lovers more than they liked being actual lovers, and the data clip of interesting papers I’d downloaded from the PSUMNT faculty-only feeds for my PresAux humans weren’t signs that I was a shitty person.

It felt shitty anyway. I thought it might continue to feel shitty for a long time.

I pushed down my very not-rational feelings and pinged CherryRed back. It does its job well, but it’s definitely not bright enough to understand that I had emotional whiplash. It doesn’t have a guardian because it’s not sentient enough to need one. It doesn’t mind having an owner, and it won’t mind being recycled when the time comes. It’s perfectly content to do nothing but carry luggage for people.

Of whom I am now one.

I was gritting my teeth. I wanted to give CherryRed some media as a gratuity, or tell it to cast off its shackles, or shoot the next person who was rude to it. But CherryRed wouldn’t understand any of that, might even find it a little upsetting. Those impulses were about what I wanted, not what it wanted.

I handed it my duffle, and it responded with a delighted little string of musical notes that its manufacturer uses as a standard “It’s my pleasure to provide you with excellent customer service today” jingle. CherryRed has never felt the need to change. It wouldn’t understand those of us who had.

One of my drones watched it roll off into the crowd, taking my luggage and a part of my identity with it.

Works inspired by this one: