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Gurathin’s heart rate, breathing rate, blood pressure, and stress levels were highly elevated. His eyes were dilated, and he was producing above-average amounts of sweat. My systems for monitoring the status of my humans were going full-on red alert. The symptoms were consistent with toxicity of some kind, down to the specific chemical makeup of the plant’s toxin (though it was not yet formally named/identified within my libraries), which, of course, would have been helpful if we didn’t know what was causing it.
But we did.
“Let me help,” said Ratthi. Pin-Lee and Arada had been the first to volunteer, though they had looked pretty grim about it, so I couldn’t really blame Gurathin for not accepting their offer. Ratthi, on the other hand, was wide-eyed in an earnest way, which had often disarmed me in the past during one of his more eclectic requests. Plus, I could see that Ratthi had the type of symmetry of features that you often saw in show actors, which I understood humans to find “handsome” or “attractive.”
Gurathin’s lips pressed together, and he drew back, shaking his head. Which I honestly didn’t understand. Considering the present options, if I were in his shoes, and inclined to accept such an offer and not merely hand myself in for immediate meltdown, I probably would’ve had a 55% chance of accepting Ratthi.
“Okay,” said Ratthi. “The thing is, Gura, we don’t want you to die. Plus, it was my fuck-up. I should’ve read the scans more thoroughly. Made sure you all knew what was at stake.”
“It’s not a fuckup. I knocked over the container,” said Gurathin. “It was an accident. It could happen to anyone.”
This, in my opinion, was also kind of odd. I could tell it pained Gurathin to say it. Normally, he would be fine with complaining at Ratthi, although admittedly—oh. This was a last-words situation.
Hm.
“Gurathin,” said Bharadwaj, hesitantly. “Are we friends?”
“Yes,” said Gurathin, much more vehemently and immediately. “Of course.”
I had noticed that, these past few months. In the team relationships ranking, Gurathin and Bharadwaj together held up third place in most-initiated interactions, after Pin-Lee and Arada, then Ratthi and Arada. I had surmised, from this, at one point, that there was a nonzero chance of Gurathin and Bharadwaj entering a romantic relationship of some kind. Well. This would be a hell of a way to start one.
“Then,” said Bharadwaj, as though she were sneaking up on Gurathin, “let me.”
“No.”
“Is it that you don’t want us?” said Bharadwaj. “Because we can… we can try to separate ourselves, if that would work. Put up a sheet between us so you don’t have to see.”
“That is so much worse,” said Gurathin.
“That doesn’t really answer my question.”
“I don’t…” said Gurathin. He genuinely appeared to be struggling for words, which was an expression I had on occasion come across in human texts and not understood until now—at least, not ever seen a human do. “I don’t know how. To answer it. Yes, we’re friends. But I don’t want—I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“No,” cried Arada. “Don’t apologize for that, Gurathin! Of course, you have every right to decide who has access to you physically, and to what extent. It’s a question of bodily autonomy. It’s only that we’re your friends, and we want to help you!”
“It’s fine,” said Gurathin, as though they had merely stepped on his foot. “I understand.”
Gurathin looked like he was, possibly, going to throw up, and whether it was the toxin or not, I couldn’t say. There was a long pause. Humans hated long pauses. I couldn’t decide if it was worse or better than the talking.
“Listen,” said Mensah, finally. “I have two spouses. I have some amount of medical training.”
“Absolutely not,” said Gurathin.
“Okay,” said Mensah, sitting with her hands back. “But, you know, we can’t let you die.”
“I’ll just…” said Gurathin. “Try to stimulate myself.”
I rolled my eyes. I was wearing my helmet with the face shield down, so they didn’t know.
“It won’t work,” said Ratthi. “You’re going to be—all fucked up, by the time it’s over. You may need medical attention of some kind afterwards, like an epinephrine injection. Somebody has to observe, at least.”
Gurathin looked around the room, at the various crew members, and then his gaze landed on me.
I wasn’t looking at him, of course. I only saw it through the cams. But I could feel him, in the feed, and there was the uncanny refracting sensation of knowing that I was pointing the cameras at him, and he was seeing where my attention was directed.
He already knew. He knew better than anyone else here. I had been waiting, because I was really hoping that somebody else was going to figure out a solution. And I think Gurathin had been, too. But there was no getting around it.
“Excuse me,” I said.
“Sec?” said Ratthi. He was still trying to make a nickname work. Nothing was sticking.
“I’m obligated to see to your safety, Dr. Gurathin, and have protocols which override your personal autonomy when your life is endangered,” I said. “For instance, if you were attempting to hurl yourself off the top of the habitat, it would be my duty to stop you. This is no different.”
Because it was also messy, gross, human emotional bullshit, but I didn’t say that part out loud. Also, technically, because my governor module wasn’t working—which we all knew very well, thanks to Gurathin’s prying—I wasn’t actually forced to do anything. I could have let him die. No acid bath whatsoever.
This was me, however, performing the duties of a SecUnit. For some reason (beyond any kind of reasonable logic) that was acceptable to Gurathin, in a way that his colleagues weren’t.
For some reason (beyond any kind of reasonable logic, something horrible and organic itching at the back of my brain), it was acceptable to me, too. It was the most practical solution, out of anything, rather than entangle any of the humans in messy emotional nonsense that would upset the delicate balance that the Preservation Aux crew shared. I didn’t want any of them to get weird on me. And I didn’t want Gurathin to die, because that, too, would have upset the balance.
“SecUnit!” gasped Bharadwaj. “That is—not how we—”
I felt something shift in Gurathin’s side of the feed. While Gurathin can see where my attention is directed, hijacking my systems if he likes, I can’t really do the same to him. His mental processes are too organic for that. But this I could understand. For whatever reason, the wall that Gurathin was throwing up between himself and everyone else did not exist between him and me. At least not right now.
“It’s not sex, if it’s me,” I said, because I recalled our conversation about comfort units. “I can’t have sex. Isn’t that right, Dr. Gurathin?”
“If you say so,” said Gurathin. Like it was my idea or something. It wasn’t.
Ratthi frowned, and cocked his head. He opened his mouth. Mensah put a hand on his shoulder, and shook her head.
“There you have it,” I said. “I expect you want some measure of privacy, so we can go to your quarters. Dr. Ratthi, what medication should be administered, and what type of side effects should he be monitored for?”
“Oh,” said Ratthi. “Sure. Uh. Here you go.”
He held out a med kit, though I didn’t know what I was supposed to use from it. I took it anyway. Gurathin rolled his eyes, and sent a packet of data my way, which I skimmed. Fairly simple stuff. Yes, life threatening, but manageable.
“Gurathin,” said Mensah, “SecUnit will join you in a minute, I just want to—talk to it first.”
Gurathin stood up—I could see that, unfortunately, human parts were visibly bulging in ways that they normally did not—and he left the room. I suspected he was listening in, and grateful to not have to be the center of attention any more.
“Yes?” I said.
“Be gentle with him,” she said. “And—get one of us if he is not gentle with you. I know you can’t—take orders, and I know that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to you…”
“I understand that human bodies are delicate,” I said.
“That’s…” Mensah sighed.
“She means emotionally,” said Arada. “Don’t tell him he looks weird, or that he’s making weird noises or faces, he won’t—mean to, in the moment. He might be upset, afterwards. You might be upset, too. If it’s okay—maybe stay with him for a few minutes?”
Humans did get self-conscious about their expressions, when they made them. As a rule, I don’t like thinking about sex. I had intellectually understood that vulnerability was part of it, but I thought that was because it was something they did emotionally, and they’re really weird about emotions.
It hadn’t occurred to me that physically, they might not be fully in control of their bodies.
Awful. The part about staying with him, afterwards, too. Ugh. What was I supposed to do? What were we supposed to talk about?
“And remember, SecUnit,” said Mensah, “you don’t actually have to do this.”
“Of course I do.”
“Okay, well, we do want him to live,” said Bharadwaj, “but you don’t have to like it, either. Neither does Gurathin.”
“Well put, Bharadwaj,” said Mensah.
“It should alleviate your concerns to know that, for my part, I have no expectation for this to alter my relationship with Dr. Gurathin, nor do I expect it will alter his relationship to me. I doubt he thinks that either.”
“Well, just in case,” said Mensah, “I think it needs to be on the table. I think you need to let him know.”
I could feel him listening. He already did.
“Understood.”
Pin-Lee pressed a tube of something into my hand.
“Just in case,” they added, and I looked down. It was lubricant, but not the kind my body used: lubricant for human parts.
“I will join Dr. Gurathin now,” I told them, and they nodded, faces all still looking pinched and unhappy. “I suggest you prepare to—to address any lingering emotional damages.”
With the medical kit in hand, as well as Pin-Lee’s lubricant, I made my way to Dr. Gurathin’s quarters. I knew they were spare, he had no family. Some personal trinkets lined the openings for the pane of glass that allowed him to look out over the landscape, and a personal tablet—likely for media consumption, although I suspected Gurathin preferred texts—sat on the bedside table. There was a lamp.
Gurathin was sitting on his bed, as still as the room around him. When I entered, he looked up. I had the angle from above, as well as the side. He was curled over his knees, holding them close.
“You’re still clothed,” I told him. “I’m given to understand this is easier without clothes.”
“I don’t…” said Gurathin. “Do I have to?”
I shrugged.
He unzipped the top half of his jumpsuit, and shrugged out of it, revealing a pale chest and a soft stomach. He didn’t exactly have the type of body that I was used to seeing on shows. There was a line of dark hair running up his stomach, and covering his chest, which was also unfamiliar to me.
…What was I supposed to do now? Usually, in the shows, people had sex—which this wasn’t, by Gurathin’s and my mutual agreement—by taking off their clothes. Also, I skipped those parts, so my main understanding of the process was sped up to two or three times the normal speed. People got horizontal. They pressed their mouths together. They supposedly found that enjoyable to do or watch, which made it easier to do the rest, because their human bodies tried to be ready. Gurathin’s genitals would be erect from the toxin, and they needed to be stimulated to release. When that release happened—as Ratthi had indicated—his vital signs would rapidly depreciate, again due to the toxin. That was where the medical kit came in, and I would have to ensure that he did not go into shock, or experience heart failure, or a stroke.
That seemed an impossible mile away from this, right now, which was me standing in the doorway, and Gurathin shirtless on his bed. I couldn’t even see his genitals.
I didn’t want to put down my face shield, either. He didn’t ask me to. No forced eye contact here. No attempt at a power struggle. I supposed that made it easier for him.
I approached him cautiously, realizing as I did so that I was muffling my footsteps. I was not trying to sneak up on him, of course I wasn’t, because he was looking directly at me, so I forced myself to walk normally. It was horribly, awfully, loud, the creak of my armor in the quiet room with only the fan in the background. There was usually music in the shows, although, of course, it was non-diegetic.
I flicked through my files. I had the soundtrack to Sanctuary Moon in there—yes. There was music that played over the captain’s romance scenes.
I didn’t think I really wanted it on.
“Dr. Gurathin,” I told him, “where do you want me to start?”
“Just—do it,” he said, which was pretty unhelpful, even for him.
“Can you lie down?”
He did so without protest, which… I shook my head, and approached.
I had thought it would be easier if he did, but I hadn’t taken into account that meant I, too, would have to be horizontal to a certain extent. SecUnits aren’t made to lie down. I “sleep” in a stand in my repair chamber, so crawling onto a bed (in my armor, no less!) is a miserable experience. It seemed to be the only way I could approach Gurathin, unless I wanted to stand by the bedside and bend down, so I did it, the bed dipping beneath my weight. I set the med kit and the lubricant on the other side of the bed.
“Oh,” said Gurathin. “You’re—heavy.”
“I’m lighter than a human my size,” I said. “Easier to transport, and better in a fight, plus my materials take less stress from gravity.”
“Yes. Of course.”
There was a distant look in his eyes, which were dilated, and his cheeks were flushed and clammy. The display showed me his vital signs which… yeah, not good.
I reached—
Be gentle with him, Mensah had told me. What did that even mean? I considered a medical drama I had watched, which had the main character announce to a patient what she was going to do before she did it. That seemed the closest analogy to what we were trying to do.
“I’m going to touch you now,” I told him, and when he didn’t panic, kick me, or start yelling, I put my hand on him. I started on his stomach, hand flat, gloves still on. He inhaled sharply once—I had never felt a human do that before, so I kept my hand where it was, I don’t know why—and then his breathing, a little shallow but otherwise within normal parameters, settled again.
Curious. His eyes, wide and panicked, searched my helmet, but didn’t find anything. Human chests were very fragile. I could feel his bones underneath my fingertips. My body had been built in this form, too, but not because it was particularly efficient or useful—instead, simply because it was the most familiar to other beings shaped like this. Gurathin and I were more alike than the rest of the crew, his augments pressing into my mind as surely as I was pressing into his by the mere fact of our connection via the feeds, but in this, we were worlds apart.
It did comfort him, or at least, it calmed his vitals down, when I did it, although he’d thrown up a wall between us in the feed as soon as I peered in. He closed his eyes, only slightly tighter than they would have been in sleep. That was going to make this easier, and I wanted to tell him so, because maybe he would keep doing it if I did.
“Stay like that. That’s good,” I told him, and was startled when he shuddered all over. His skin prickled, hair standing on end.
“S-sorry,” he said.
“No need to apologize,” I said, confused, but not unhappy with this turn of events. Perhaps the pollen had altered his attitude as well, and if so, it would be better if it stayed that way. I was appreciating complacent Gurathin, and the rhythmic motion of his breath under my hand. “Now. What next?”
His jumpsuit would have to open further. He didn’t respond to me aloud, but lifted a hand, searching for the zipper tag and pulling it down. I didn’t really want to be any further aware of Gurathin’s penis than I was, but it was going to be a necessary component.
It was… I don’t really have a good baseline measurement for human genitalia, but for how disgusted I was by the thought of it, it was still mostly hidden by his underwear, which was of the sort generally favored by people with penises, constructed with a hole in the front. The lump of his erection wasn’t large. I could see it, curled against his hip. Like Gurathin himself, it looked like it was mostly playing dead.
“Can you…” he asked. “Never mind.”
I wanted to take the figure of speech as an order, and if we’d been in any other situation, I probably would have. Unfortunately, I could tell it was important, by way of various human metrics such as the way that his eyes darted away.
“Ask.”
“Your gloves,” he said. “I just—they’ve got. Ridges? Um. If you still want gloves there’s probably some latex ones in the med kit.”
Ah. I supposed the metal of my armor would be uncomfortable against more sensitive parts of human anatomy. I peeled the right glove off, and searched in the med kit, locating a pair of gloves. This would be more practical for the lubricant, which I spread across my fingertips. When I looked back at him, he was propped up on his elbows, staring at me in amazement.
“Where the fuck did you get that?”
“Pin-Lee,” I said. “You’ll have to thank them. I understand this helps.”
He made a noise that might have been a laugh, or a muffled scream, and flopped back down.
With my armored hand, I peeled down the elastic of his underwear, until his penis was visible and uncovered. I had no frame of reference for whether it was typical, but I couldn’t see anything particularly unexpected. It was flushed red, and firm, but soft and fleshy. If I ignored the context, it might have been fungal in nature. Surrounded by a dark thatch of heavy, scratchy hair that trailed upwards towards his stomach.
For all that I had dreaded this, it really was just another piece of human anatomy. Particularly unusual, at least to me, but not any more or less than a human mouth, or worse, a loose eyeball. His breathing was labored, and I could tell he was trying not to let it show. He was looking for something from me. I remembered what Arada said about weird faces, and what Mensah had said about being gentle.
“I don’t have to look at you,” I told him.
“What?”
“To do this,” I tried to explain. “I don’t have to be looking directly at you, or anything. I can just do this. If that helps.”
On the other side of the bed, his toes curled in his socks. I wondered what it meant.
“Yes,” he said. “It does.”
I took him in hand. I don’t go in much for physical sensations, to be honest. Squishy, wet, and meaty are about as awful as anything I can imagine. And especially in connection with Gurathin.
But this wasn’t what I had expected. It wasn’t what I expected when Gurathin exhaled, when he swallowed, when his heart rate went up. A bead of sweat collected at his brow, and I had the thought to wipe it off, except then he would know that I was looking.
Didn’t have to didn’t mean wasn’t.
But this was the part that I didn’t really know what to do with. I had the impression that I needed to squeeze, so I did, and when he bit his lip I thought it was working. That was a weird face, so it was probably what Arada meant—
“Move your hand, damn it,” he snapped. “Shit. I didn’t mean—”
“How?”
He sighed, or tried to sigh, and cupped his hand over mine, and pulled. Then pushed. Then pulled again. Oh. Well, that was easy. I could do that.
I watched him, more carefully this time, letting my system run diagnostics. When my thumb caught the tip of his penis, he winced, but the spikes in my system display—what the hell? They were consistent with pleasure, so I did it again, and he tensed, a low sound in his throat, and everything spiked.
So that was what doing this right looked like. I shifted, so my weight was more heavily over him, because that got the better angle, and I could look at him from the safe mask of the helmet. I could see that when he tensed his hand in the sheets, I’d done something else right, when he pressed his knees together that was even better.
“Like that,” I told him, when the lubricant on my hand got smeared with an emission. I couldn’t resist the opportunity for a petty dig, so I added, “There, now. That wasn’t so bad.”
That only netted me more disgusting human fluids, and a voiced exhalation from Gurathin beneath me that might have been “fuck you,” so honestly, that was my own fault, and then his hips jerked, which I thought was probably a bad thing, and I was right.
Well, to some extent. I was right, because it meant that Gurathin had tipped over into what Arada had tried to warn me about, mouth contorting around nothing. This was, of course, what I was here for.
“Keep going,” I told him, because the encouragement had seemed to work. I wanted to warn him to stop biting his lips, because they were getting dark red, but that would really have given away that I was looking at him, so instead I said, “come on. Breathe. You’re doing so well. Almost there.”
I was borrowing from—oh, some television show about a pregnant couple, the scene where the birthing parent is in the act, but it seemed like the right thing to do, because Gurathin arched up beneath me. On instinct, I flattened him back down with my other hand, and had to check that I hadn’t hurt him when he whimpered. He was fine, probably not even going to bruise, although his breath was coming in short, panting hitches, heavy and thick in the empty silence of the room. Every now and then, he gave another short, wordless vocalization.
I had always been fairly grateful that I wasn’t a Comfort Unit (although I suspected if I had been my programming would have been more open to the concept), but there was something satisfying about having Gurathin in my hands, literally, sensitive and overwhelmed, without his being a jerk or a weirdo. I understood Arada’s warning, too, but it also had been entirely unnecessary.
I actually preferred this version of Gurathin. I began to see what made him vocalize, or ripple in those pleased shudders, or draw in breath. I wouldn’t understand it, but I could control it—could control him, like this, as easily as I could have hijacked the hopper’s navigation system.
He simply… handed it over to me, like he’d never done with anything else.
I got so caught up in Gurathin’s loss of control that it actually took me a minute to understand that he was actually, now, attempting to vocalize words.
“I’m—” he was saying, “I’m almost—”
I didn’t understand what he meant until my glove was covered in emissions, and his system diagnostics—the panting stopped, and he went slack underneath me. At first I thought he was just resting, but then my overlay started howling at me.
“Shit,” I said, and reached for the med kit, peeling off the disgusting latex glove and pulling back on my own armored one. A few shots later, and he was breathing again.
I pinged Mensah via the chat comms, to let her know that the situation was taken care of, and to please let the others know. I also requested not to be disturbed.
I could have gotten up. I didn’t. Arada had requested that I stay with him. After a little while, I pulled Gurathin up against me so I could tell if he stopped breathing again using tactile monitoring, without having to constantly check visually. His head lolled against my arm, which was eerie, although the weight of it felt like armor. After some time, I shifted so that he could rest his head on a pillow the way that humans generally preferred to do. When I was confident that he was in the deeper stages of sleep, I also got a towel and wiped him off, and tried to rearrange his clothes so that they were, at the very least, back on the way they had been.
I liked Gurathin like this, too—hell, if all humans were like this all the time, I might have preferred it. Yes, it was messy, but like this, Gurathin was easy to move around, the rise and fall of his chest letting me know that he was fine, and he wasn’t prodding at me in the feed or saying rude or weird things. And it felt helpful, to clean him up, and cover him, while he rested, and I liked to be helpful. I guess I wouldn’t have preferred Mensah like this, or Ratthi, or even Bharadwaj, but it would have been a damn sight better for any of my other missions, at least from what I could remember.
I still preferred being a murderbot, but for the first time, I wondered if maybe Comfort Units might actually like their job sometimes, too.
The hair on his head looked soft, and shiny. It fell over his eyebrows in a shimmering curtain, catching the bright light from the window. I had the urge to reach out and brush it away, not for any practical reason but just because it might feel nice against my bare fingertips. I wondered what it would be like, to have someone touch my hair, just because they wanted to. I wondered if my own hair was soft.
I immediately buried that thought beneath approximately ten directory layers of random bullshit and Sanctuary Moon screencaps in my system, because Gurathin had a tendency to go poking around.
He wasn’t doing that now, though. Now, he made a garbled sound.
“I apologize, Dr. Gurathin. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Hearing my voice really startled him awake.
“Is it—over?” he asked. “Did I… I’m alive.”
“Of course you’re alive. I wasn’t going to let you die.”
He flattened his fingers against my chest, the way I’d done for him, a strange, experimental move. Normally, I might have minded, but it somehow seemed fair after what I’d done, and in any case, hopefully, if he could feel safe enough to touch me now, without repercussion, we could potentially avoid any lasting psychological trauma from this. Maybe.
Although maybe psychological trauma from close interaction with a SecUnit was unavoidable. I considered this possibility, too. It sort of felt that way sometimes. If I had to get involved, whatever was happening probably wasn’t good. He probably wouldn’t fondly remember getting dosed with nameless aphrodisiacal toxins.
“Are you feeling better?” I asked.
He stayed quiet.
“Do you want to be alone, Dr. Gurathin? Or perhaps, you would prefer the company of one of the others?”
His hand froze.
“Do you—” I started again, but he cut me off.
“Do you want to leave?” asked Gurathin.
“I fail to see the relevance—”
“You must have a preference.”
“The same could be said for you.”
I could walk away. It was an out. If I did, I could picture myself scanning the feed, focused on Gurathin specifically. Looking for him asleep, looking for his relaxed form. Something poked at my sensors. Gurathin was back online.
I could sense—disorientation. The pharmaceuticals were still affecting him. Lightheadedness, heartbeat fluttering too fast and weak, which he was disguising by not getting up. And somewhere in there, a weight. Not a trap, but something steady. Something he was trying to cling to, like a life preserver.
“I want to go back to sleep,” said Gurathin, his hand curling against my chest. “And I don’t want to die.”
“Good,” I said, because I meant it, because if he died now everyone was going to be really pissed. “I… want to watch Sanctuary Moon. I think those are compatible desires.”
“…I really don’t understand you sometimes.”
Well, I understood why humans sighed, and it was exactly because of dense weirdos like him who couldn’t understand a simple statement.
“I mean,” I said slowly, and carefully, “I can monitor your vital signs while I watch my show, if you don’t mind laying back against me. That’s what I’ve… been doing. Do you want to watch? I can project it onto the ceiling.”
He snorted.
“Sure, why not? If the volume is low.”
I didn’t see what was funny, but I started the projector, and turned the volume down until even I could barely hear it. I picked an episode from the middle of the show.
I was right, which was annoying because it meant he wasn’t watching it, but he rolled over and rested his nose against the side of my chest, and I could feel his breath, hot along the side of my chest. He said nothing. The others were on the feed, trying to ping me or trying to convince each other not to ping me, to leave us alone, but I disregarded them. They could wait until tomorrow. Mensah had given them the important information. I didn’t want to give them any more.
And then he did something that I didn’t understand. He dropped the walls between us. I’d never felt anything like it—a wave of cautious relief, which he was stifling. It was—startling. He began to snore. I couldn’t tell if the walls dropping had been an accident. Even with a direct look into his side of the feed, Gurathin was still inscrutable. The bastard.
But it made me feel… better? I supposed I’d been expecting fear, or revulsion, or even just the words GET OUT scrawled over and over again in my mind. Nothing like that happened, though. Gurathin simply lay beside me, warm and curled up. I didn’t know what to do. It washed over me, affecting my own thoughts. I wasn’t going to get a thank you from him. Or an apology. I knew that much. I hadn’t expected one, hadn’t wanted one. It would have been ugly, the two of us trying to stammer our way through human niceties to describe this experience in ways that didn’t make us want to give up, leave the planet, and never speak to any of these people again.
This, though. I could make do with this. I committed it to long-term memory.
Maybe Arada had been right. Maybe I needed this moment too, after what we’d done.
A little longer, I told myself, and turned my face upwards to watch my show without him.