Chapter Text
It had all started after I'd been complaining to ART about its trauma modules telling me that it was okay to have emotions sometimes.
I know.
I had spent most of my existence with a literal torture device in my brain and that singular idea somehow managed to be a million times worse than anything my governor module had ever done to me.
Okay that might be an exaggeration. ART tells me I exaggerate a lot whenever I say things like “We’re all going to die,” or “That's the stupidest idea I've ever heard.” It had a point–I always thought I was going to die. It came free with having human neural tissue. Also, I had heard a lot of stupid ideas so it would be hard to actually determine which one was the stupidest.
Still, I did disagree with what its trauma module had said about emotions for a few obvious reasons. One being that applying that statement to myself would require me to have emotions which I didn't, and two being that even if I were to have, say, a few emotions, sometimes, it wouldn't be “okay” at all for a lot of other obvious reasons.
Mainly my role as security consultant. The last thing ART's humans need when they’re running for their lives is a mopey useless emotional mess of a SecUnit that can't clear its head long enough to come up with a plan to save them from becoming hostile target practice.
You know, things like that.
I made the mistake of telling this to ART, and then joking, (okay I'm not really sure it was a joke,) that it would be more effective to tell myself it wasn't okay to have emotions at all because then maybe the emotions would give up and stop being there.
Or something like that.
There was a sustained period of silence in the feed.
Then ART said, I often regret picking you up on that initial cargo run.
I snorted–that was probably half true and also probably half of an exaggeration. (It was prone to them too).
Then I tapped its maintenance drone with my foot from where I was watching it buff the tile flooring in its corridor.
Why? Because you got an outdated piece of shit SecUnit instead of one of the fancy ones? I asked.
It took a moment to respond but when it did it sounded more annoyed than usual. Which was saying a lot because I didn’t even think that was possible for it.
No, it said, because you are an idiot and I fear having you aboard is lowering my intelligence at a rate that could be considered catastrophic.
I shrugged.
You knew I was a complete fuck up when you signed my contract.
That is not something I have ever been aware of.
I fell silent.
Something in my organic parts was telling me I was about to be hit with the urge to curl up on the floor and hide my face (that definitely wasn't doing anything weird) from ART’s corridor camera. I pushed it down to some place in my systems out of my immediate reach. I hoped it would stay there.
Because if it didn’t, that would kind of be like breaking my whole new “no emotions” rule. And that would be fucking embarassing when I had just made it and told ART about it.
So now you’re an asshole reasearch transport and a lying one too. Great.
What am I lying about, exactly?
Telling me I’m not a complete–
It was at that point that threat assessment took a massive spike and then my leg was being pulled out from under me by the arms of the maintenance drone. I hit the ground hard which was technically my fault because I’d withstood far bigger hostiles than ART's dinky little drones.
What the fuck, I said.
I struggled momentarily to sit up and retracted the energy weapon I hadn’t even realized I’d moved to deploy.
Oops, was all it said.
Then it turned on its wheels and started down the corridor as though nothing had ever happened at all. There was a distinct sound of it beeping as though it were attempting to mimic a whistling human from its speakers as it rolled away.
I watched it go, mildly dumbfounded and thoroughly annoyed from where I was still sprawled in a pile of limbs on the floor.
Then I yelled, “You know you're really living up to the asshole part of your name, asshole!”
ART sent me back a message in response over the feed.
We’ll see.
I had no idea what the fuck that was supposed to mean and I didn’t really want to find out.
I was going to anyway.
Because usually when I don’t want something to happen, it does.
And no that is not an exaggeration, okay?