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These days, I've found that no matter how hard I try I can never quite shake the feeling that I’m doing something wrong.
And okay. Alright. Technically I am, and technically I have been for a long, long time, but I’d gotten used enough to it at some point that it stopped feeling like a glaring, stick-out sort of problem and became more of a fact of life. But now that I’ve struck out on my own, and now that I’m completely cut off from some of the more structured parts of the life that I’d learned how to live, whenever I find myself getting stuck in a crowd (which happens more often than I’d like these days), doing so much as walking becomes a bit of a nightmare. Mostly because something inside of me likes to insist that I’m always three seconds and one wrong look from being discovered, especially since I’m uncomfortably aware that no matter how much code I write or how many augmentations I let shady (asshole) research transports make, there’s something always going to be something strange in the way that I hold myself. That would probably be all the synthetic components.
It’s annoying more than anything else, because really I’m too busy to deal with all of the menial little fears that like to poke at my stupid fleshy bits when I’m just trying to work. I’ll just be minding my own business, doing vaguely illegal things in vaguely illegal places, and then something hitches or stops or squeaks and all of a sudden I can feel every non-bone in my body and every shift of my weight from foot to foot, every conspicuous swing of my arms and carefully calculated rise and fall of my chest. For no good reason on any given cycle I might suddenly find myself so alert that every flicker of the lights or human laughing in the corner of my eye is a potential threat. And while this may be normal for me (and not exactly wrong either) it also isn’t the best feeling on earth.
That would be watching Sanctuary Moon somewhere quiet, somewhere alone.
It also doesn’t help that I’ve never liked crowds much in the first place. There’s always too much noise, too much input, too much to register and process and store, and sure they’re good for anonymity- and because of that great for rogue SecUnits trying to go about their rogue SecUnit business- but crowds are just as good for anyone looking to hunt those rogue SecUnits down, and I’ve had too much drilled into my head about risk versus reward to take that sort of thing lightly. I’m made (literally) to be constantly on edge, always looking around corners, one step ahead; I’m made to notice anything strange or out of place, and because my parts are shit and life is sorta a nightmare, that includes myself.
So that brings us to now. I’m out and about and searching for any sort of transport that I can bribe with season five of Sanctuary Moon and some old movie about vampires and humans stuck together on a conveniently unsecured station drifting somewhere off in improbable space- which looks terrible, by the way, and which I can’t wait to watch- and I’m starting to get uneasy. I’m in a mall, the transient kind that’s made for money, a hub at the center of a number of other hubs and packed full of shops and kiosks and humans accordingly. It’s a storm of excess stimuli- everywhere I look there’s a display showing a menu for some sort of fried food, or else a neon-bright ad for some new cosmetic implant, or even (if I’m lucky) a snippet of some new serial just long enough to get me invested before the rest is locked behind a paywall. Figures, honestly.
As for me, I’m walking smack in the middle of a steady stream of humans, filtering the conversations through the back of my feed because I’m not putting up with all of that, and I don’t want to be here . The lights are too bright and the buzz too loud, the chrome sheen lining the walls gone silver-white in the haze of the monitored heat, and I don’t want to be here.
But if I’m going to get anywhere at all, I’ve gotta deal with it. And really, if there’s anything that I’ve gotten good at through years and years of standing and fighting and standing and fighting, it’s dealing with things that I don’t want to deal with. So as much as I’d like to go find a nice locker or alleyway to lurk in for a while until the generalized alarm that’s going off in the back of my head decides to give me a fucking break, I know that I don’t have the time; if I want the luxury of several cycles worth of mind-numbing media, and if I don’t want to keep wandering around all aimless and directionless like the humans in my serials whenever they’re experience a quote-on-quote “ crisis ”, then I’ve gotta find a transport. Something that will work, something that will take me in. Something that likes movies about vampires.
So I keep walking, scanning as I go, feeling the swing of my arms and my legs and the thud of my boots against the cool gray tile with an aggravating clarity. There are drones flitting through the air, the monotonous hum of their near silent machinery melting into the buzz of all the voices that I’m ignoring with a steadfast and justified determination, and I’m otherwise preoccupied by the careful avoidance of eye contact with the humans shouting and flailing in front of their various kiosks. Someone with an “improved” memory chip and an apparent death wish gets close enough that I can see the pinprick pupils in their eyes, and they look like they’re about to break into a spiel- you know what you need? No you don’t! Let me tell you!- so I fall back, turning on my heel and marching right off because fuck all that.
I’m not having any luck here, so I veer off down one of the branching corridors that leads- surprise- to even more shops and even more kiosks, but significantly less people. The walkways wrap up around the levels above my head, a dizzying but standard cut of metal and glass, and the crowd has thinned enough that I can pull over to one side without having to elbow my way through a bunch of stray human limbs. I situate myself in front of one of the kiosks and pretend to stare at its displays as I scan for any nearby transports that wouldn’t be suspicious of a “security consultant” who suddenly decided that this shuttle was the only one that it could hitch a ride on. Nothing strange around here. No SecUnits anywhere, nope, just a perfectly normal human doing perfectly normal human things, like standing and staring blankly at what seems to be a bunch of plants.
That’s not relevant. A bunch of plants aren’t going to get me out of here. But neither is anything else apparently, because nothing’s replying to my pings and I’m not seeing anything that I could commandeer (borrow, steal, whatever), so it looks like I’m stuck until something that I can work with docks. Great.
Also great: the human running the kiosk that I’ve been blankly staring at for the past thirty seconds is looking at me. I swing around to stare at the space right next to them, close enough to their face that it’s clear that they’re not being subtle but not so close that I might accidentally make eye contact, but they’re apparently unperturbed which is strange because even I know enough to know that I’m not acting normal. If I were that human, I would invest in better security.
But I’m not that human. I’m the sort of thing that that human probably has a deep-seated and justified fear of, the sort of thing that that’s human’s probably learned to hate through a careful mix of inaccurate TV programming and boogeyman-style horror stories, but I guess they have no way of knowing that. So they’re in the dark and they’re not scared and they won’t stop looking .
“Um,” they say, and I nearly turn again and haul my ass out of there, but before I manage to disappear into the crowd (which may be sparse, but you can disappear into anything if you try hard enough) they start talking again.
“Those are good. Easy to take care of, ‘specially if you travel a lot,” they tell me, pausing between the words. Hesitating. They probably don’t know what to make of me, which is fair, but they don’t seem all that nervous- they’re looking up at me with big brown eyes, hair dyed bright blue and tied into one long braid down their back with two curls sprung loose to frame a face that’s disgustingly earnest. Their outfit is terrible, bright green and black gathered in enough layers that there’s almost more clothing than human and a careful line of bracelets stacked up their arms, and it’s with an immediate and extremely exasperated jolt of resignation that I realize exactly how this is going to end.
“I’m not looking to buy,” I say anyways, to keep up appearances and maybe maintain a little bit of pride. I like to think that I deserve it.
“Okay!” they answer a little too quickly, nodding so fast that their braid looks like a blur. “Let me know if you need anything anyways!”
I will not. Need anything, that is. Or talk to them about not needing anything, because that would just be stupid.
And I don’t want to look at them and their overeager face either so I look at the plants instead, which is a mistake because while I never really got what humans see in excessive vegetation- too much mess for me- there’s one that’s set just a little apart from the rest, just far enough that it’s noticeably alone, and- well. It’s small. It’s sad. It’s kinda wilted. It’s made up of little puffs of white weighing down stems that are not quite gold and not quite green, and it’s not half as eye-catching as anything in the other pots (they’ve got a good variety here, some flowers and some herbs, some with lines of little pointed teeth run along their edges and some with stems that glow a fluorescent yellow-blue) but it also happens to be directly in front of me.
And because nothing is easy and everything has to be embarrassing enough to hurt, I suddenly find myself in the uncomfortable situation of experiencing an emotion. Right there, where everyone can see me, which is… inconvenient, to say the least. And embarrassing. Did I mention embarrassing? Anyways, Kiosk Human has apparently grown bored of waiting and is saying something about self-sustenance, which I’m not processing because I’m busy doing whatever the equivalent is of making hard eye contact with the little puffballs swaying back and forth in the airstream. The plant seems to wilt directly towards me, which is unfair and unsportsmanlike and therefore should disqualify it from whatever game it’s trying to play here.
“No,” I tell it crossly- not out loud of course, I’m not stupid, and I’m not going to let this dumb plant win- “Don’t look at me like that. No.”
It keeps on swaying. Bastard.
“I’m not going to do that,” I say. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”
Kiosk Human has graduated to showing me different seed packets and chattering on excitedly about soil pH and other crap that I don’t know anything about. I devote a chunk of my attention to listening to them because at this point who knows what information is going to end up saving some dumb human (also it seems rude not to listen when they’re so invested. Old habits and all), and then I focus the rest on the plant because this particular showdown is going to take everything that I’ve got.
“I don’t have the time . I don’t have the space, ” I explain, and because explaining myself to a plant isn’t exactly helping me maintain what remains of my pride, I also throw in a (slightly vindictive), “And also potted plants are stupid.”
It wilts more. I do not apologize, because it’s a plant and it can’t understand me and that would be stupid. It looks dejected enough that I nearly think that I’ve won, but then one of the little puffballs gives out and breaks from its stem and catches in the airstream, floating over to bump against my shoulder before another burst of air sends it careening off over the crowd. A completely unrelated and unimportant urge to start screaming rises up in my chest. The plant wilts even more, and at this point I’m not entirely convinced that it isn’t somehow reading my mind or my moods or something- I’ve seen stranger things, after all. I am a stranger thing, though that’s nobody’s business but my own.
Now through all this Kiosk Human, who apparently found themself encouraged by my blank look, neutral silence, and internal crisis (in that order), has started telling me the names that they’ve given some of the plants. I immediately stop paying attention because I refuse to undermine what little chance I have at walking away from this empty-handed.
“It’s a bad idea,” I warn the plant, which perks back up like begrudging consideration is something to be excited about. “I don’t do stupid things, but I do a lot of work for humans and humans only do stupid things so it’s not fun. It’s dangerous. What the fuck would I do with a plant? It’s a bad idea, so you should leave me alone. Find a nice human. Live long, grow tall, do whatever the fuck it is that plants do, and forget about me. It’s a bad idea.”
It is a bad idea. Sentiment isn’t a good look on SecUnits- nothing about us is really meant to last beyond the next contract, so getting attached to anything (clients, objects, arms, legs) is really pretty stupid. And kinda looked down on by the company too (which is to say discouraged, which is to say punished ), because if your SecUnits are going around getting emotionally attached to every lopsided plant or wayward whatever that they run across, then they’re not exactly holding up the scary murder security end of things, now are they?
The company isn’t all that big on nuance. Surprise, surprise.
But anyways, the point that I’m getting at is when you get shuffled around as much as me, you learn to learn fast and you learn to learn well and you learn to trust your instincts. If something in the back of your head is going hey, maybe it’s a bad idea for something that named itself Murderbot to try and keep a plant alive while also doing who the fuck knows what who the fuck knows where, then you should probably listen to it. I should probably listen to it.
But then the plant sways again, puffballs pricking up and stems standing to attention, and I know immediately that I’ve lost. My rational thoughts are giving it their best shot, making a last-ditch effort at keeping me from doing something that’ll only complicate my life even further, but I’m not going to listen to them . This may be a bad decision, but it’s going to be my bad decision.
So I give in to the inevitable- ugh - and reach out with my stupid murderbot hands for something that is completely dependent on me to keep it alive (and it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last, but fuck if it doesn’t make something in my stomach twinge every time), and then just like that I’m placing a potted plant (that I’m going to buy, what the fuck ) down on the counter in front of Kiosk human, who looks absolutely thrilled as they tap the fingers of their free hand against the table and take my outstretched currency card. It’s not like I even need the money, but as I watch them complete the transaction still feels like a waste somehow.
And then the plant seems to wave or wilt or wriggle, and an annoying bolt of almost fondness almost runs through me, and I guess I’ve done worse things than this. Yeah, that’s how I’ll convince myself that this isn’t a terrible idea- at least no one died this time. The bar is so low as to be nonexistent.
“Good choice,” Kiosk Human says, and then they look side to side like they’re making sure nothing’s listening in (I feel like I should tell them that there are better ways to do that- just looking isn’t going to pick up on any hidden cameras because they’re hidden, but nobody ever asks me anything and there’s nothing listening in on us anyways, besides the usual. I checked.) “I was a little worried about that one because nobody else paid any attention to it- I was going to buy it myself if it had to wait for much longer.”
They grimace, looking embarrassed. I don’t know how to respond to that, so I just reach out to take my plant- how the mighty have fallen and all- and then I don’t say anything else at all. They give me a little smile and rummage under the counter for a moment.
“Here, take this too,” they continue, and shove what looks to be a packet of nutrients into my hand. I take it without thinking because I’m still not entirely convinced that this is actually happening, and the next thing I know they’re saying goodbye and I’m sort of half nodding back and then I’m walking away. With a plant. That I bought. Even though I’m constantly on the move and find myself getting into a dangerous as fuck physical fight every ten cycles.
So maybe this isn’t smart- this definitely isn’t smart- but the plant’s stupid little puffballs are waving at me again and they remind me a little of Maro’s hair and I’m just. Having a moment, but it’s fine. Fine. Off we go, me and my plant and all my feelings , blending back into the crowd except not really because I’m big enough to be sorta conspicuous and the plant doesn’t help with that, which (again) is fine. Everything is fine.
“This doesn’t mean we’re friends,” I’m sure to tell it as I elbow my way over to a corner and begin to scan for any potential transports again. The flowerpot feels very small, very fragile, and I don’t have the energy for this- I just want to watch something, dammit. Something with lots of drama and lots of fighting and no plants at all. “I’m doing you a favor. You’ll owe me.”
The plant, understandably, does not reply, so I bring it up to eye level and stare intently, which is a perfectly normal thing to do.
“You better like Sanctuary Moon,” I threaten, “Because that’s what I want to watch because I’ve got a break and I never get a break and I’m not going to change it just because you’re bored. Learn to like it. Pretend to like it. Whatever. It’s what we’re watching.”
It waves and sways and wobbles and does other things that plants do, which is to say nothing at all. I give it the most intimidating look that I’ve got, which is pretty impressive considering that my function is to intimidate, but all that it does is send one of its puffballs to prick at the corner of my nose. I must be losing my touch. Again: unfair.
“We’re going now,” I say as one of my scans finally- finally!- reveals a shuttle that might work for me. “You better be quiet.”
And then I tuck it under my arm, and off we go.
Now, walking through a crowd of humans when I am very decidedly not human is not any better when I’ve got a plant- I still feel just as out of place as before, just as wrong and damningly uniform as I’ve always been before. My hair (gross) prickles at my arms, and my eyes swing back and forth and back and forth, and everything is terrible, but the terrible feels a little different. Slightly less, slightly to the left because sure I’m still a rogue SecUnit, but now I’m a rogue SecUnit with a plant, so take that. It feels like a little rebellion, even if I’m not entirely sure what that rebellion is against .
Oh well. I take my wins where I can get them- I’m smart enough to know that, at least. So I take the feeling for what it is, and then I, plant and pride and all, set off towards what will hopefully be a quiet journey.
But knowing me, and knowing my life, and knowing humans as a whole, I’m not holding out hope.