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I should have known something weird was up when Gurathin tracked me down to where I had parked myself out of the way in one of the back service corridors to catch up on my serials, and then stood there, hands twitching, for an objective 12.7 seconds and a subjective hour.
“SecUnit. You remember that time,” he began, finally, “when you pinned me against a wall by my throat to prove a point?”
I remembered, and I knew that he knew I remembered, so I didn’t say anything. I remembered it quite clearly. In fact, I occasionally played it back to myself in times when Gurathin was being particularly irritating, so that I could feel a little better in those moments when I wanted to do it again. There was something oddly appealing about the look of shock on his face, his eyes screwed up against what he must have thought was certain death, and then his nervous swallowing while still being held there, waiting for the shoe to drop.
I hoped he wasn’t expecting an apology, because I wasn’t sorry about it. I’d had a point to make and I’d made it, and I hadn’t actually hurt or harmed my client in the process. With any other rogue SecUnit, he’d have been toast.
“Yeah,” Gurathin said eventually. “So. I was wondering if I could ask you to, uh, do it again.”
It took me several more seconds of processing to come up with a response to that. “What?” Not the most eloquent of responses, but it would have to do.
Gurathin started to babble. “It’s how I was feeling at the time. Scared, obviously, and surprised. But there was something else too, and I keep thinking about it at random moments. And I think now that I know you won’t actually harm me…” He shifted around on his feet, looking uncomfortable. “…I’d like to replicate that experience and figure it out. I know touching’s not a thing you really do, so I get it’s not a reasonable request, so if you don’t want to that’s fine, it’s just Dr. Mensah keeps telling me it’s good for me to ask for things even if—”
I shut him up by pinning him to the wall by the throat.
What? I felt like doing it, and he’d even given me permission to do it this time.
His eyes went wide in shock and his face screwed up in a moment of instinctual terror just like it had done last time. But once his back hit the wall his intelligence caught back up with him, realising that most of the actual force was against his sternum, with my fingers flush against the skin of his neck but not applying pressure or restricting his airflow. Monitoring his vitals, I could see that his heart rate remained elevated but, if anything, his body relaxed. That was weird. It was different from his physical reaction the first time around, though who knew what that meant.
A few seconds of silence passed, in which I looked very hard at the wall by his ear, wondering what I was supposed to do now. “Did, uh, did that answer your questions?” I asked.
Through the corridor’s security camera I saw Gurathin’s mouth twitch up in a shaky smile. “Yes, I think so.” I didn’t ask for clarification but he continued anyway. “It feels safe, I think, knowing you’re in control. Even over me and what I might do.”
I guess my confusion showed in my face, because he pursed his lips and nodded, then brought twitching fingers down to one of his pockets. He pulled out and flipped open a pocketknife, and within a second I had projected the motion of the blade. He wasn’t threatening me—he was bringing it towards his other wrist.
Gurathin wasn’t technically one of my clients any more, but multiple alarms regarding client safety went off anyway in that moment and within 0.3 seconds I had removed my hand from his neck and pinned both his wrists against the wall instead. He made a soft noise of surprise and the knife fell from his grip to go skittering off along the floor.
He had the audacity to grin at me then, just for a second. “Yeah. Like that.”
My face must have done something particularly concerning at that because he was quick to reassure me.
“I’m not in danger of harming myself, I promise,” he said. “I’m sorry for alarming you. But I’m glad that, if I was, you’d be able to stop me. It’s… I didn’t relapse back in Port FreeCommerce. I’ve not had… suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm that I was afraid of acting upon in a long time now. But I remember feeling that way. It’s like… walking a tightrope, feeling confident about it but still knowing that there’s a long drop below.” He took a wobbly breath. “It’s not your responsibility to keep me safe in that way. You don’t have to and I won’t ask you to. But this…” He moved his wrists a little against my grasp—I’d left him a little give but he wasn’t strong enough to remove them from the wall. “...this feels like a safety net. It’s nice.”
“So you’re not in danger now.” I released his arms and stepped back. Gurathin curled back in on himself a little and rubbed his wrists, though I wasn’t sure why as I’d been careful not to cause any pain.
“Thanks,” he murmured. “So, yeah, that’s stuff for me to think about. I won’t bother you about it any more.”
He turned a little on the balls of his feet as if to leave, but he hesitated in taking a step. I checked our positioning—I was still standing rather close to him but there was sufficient space for him to leave. It seemed that something else was keeping him here, something unresolved. I just wanted to go back to my serials, so I gave him five more seconds to work out what he was doing before giving up and asking, “But?”
Gurathin spun back towards me in a little burst, an internal blockage broken. “But I’m interested in knowing what you would do, if I came to you saying I was thinking of hurting myself.”
I thought about this.
***
So, SecUnits are absolutely not supposed to be able to tie up and gag their clients. If I could, in this way, restrain humans from making stupid decisions that would harm them later, I would have done it on a regular basis long before I hacked my governor module. So there was something weirdly satisfying about doing it to Gurathin.
We were in a cargo area, and I’d done a fairly unsophisticated job of wrapping his torso and arms to a support pillar with some bright orange tie-down straps while he sat on a crate. On our way down—I’d led without saying anything and thankfully Gurathin had followed without asking stupid questions—I’d looked up how to safely restrain humans without hurting them. SecUnits aren’t generally required to take prisoners, so I didn’t have any training modules that covered this. (In the process of searching I’d learned that humans actually do this to each other sometimes, voluntarily, with rope, for sex reasons. Gross. I was pretty sure this wasn’t what Gurathin was interested in either so I retained safety information and deleted the rest of that shit out of my storage.) The result only needed to be effective, non-harmful, and not too uncomfortable, which seemed to be a success.
The gag didn’t actually do anything since Gurathin was perfectly capable of being annoying over the feed, but it seemed to tie off the scenario. It was weird. Knowing that he was safe, the actual look of him in apparent mild distress, a little damp and pathetic like some media character in need of rescue, was sort of appealing to look at.
You ARE enjoying this, he said over the feed, proving my point that he was still capable of being, if anything, more annoying than usual.
“Shut up.”
Gurathin wriggled a bit against the restraints but it seemed more like he was testing them out rather than trying to break free. I wasn’t sure what to do next. In the hypothetical scenario he had brought up, it would make sense to keep him there for a time while the urge passed or more appropriate assistance could be identified. But I didn’t know what I was looking for, and the thought of just standing there and watching him was excruciating. Thankfully there was an ideal way to pass the time.
I sat next to him on the crate and projected my media library onto the wall in front of us.
NOT Sanctuary Moon, Gurathin provided, before I could even ask him if he had a preference. I have already had all 2000+ episodes in my head, I don’t need to see any more for a lifetime.
“Not episodes 420 to 568,” I replied, scrolling towards my recent restoration of them with intention.
Fuck you. Gurathin wriggled again in his restraints as if he could possibly break free and somehow make me select something else. It was funny how futile that was. I let him wriggle as I scrolled through all 148 thumbnails before backing out of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. I guess I didn’t want him snarking all the way through an episode of something I actually liked.
Gurathin settled down and didn’t offer any further commentary, so I finally selected a reasonably serious-looking historical drama about the early years of interstellar space exploration. Not entirely my thing but it was engaging enough and, after a couple of half-hearted snarky comments probably more out of principle than anything else, Gurathin too relaxed into it.
I continued to monitor his vitals as we watched and a few minutes in, there it was—his body began to go slack, his heartbeat slowing and eyes going lidded, his brain probably floating in some kind of endorphin soup judging by the reaction. The episode was long enough for him to experience a meaningful amount of time of whatever that was, and as the credits began to roll I figured he’d had enough and untied him.
Gurathin flopped forward a little and I braced a hand against his chest until I was sure he could sit upright. (There was an aborted movement of his arms, and I could tell that he wanted me to keep my hand there, but I removed it as soon as I could. He didn’t complain.)
“Thanks,” Gurathin murmured, his voice a little quiet and gummy.
“Do not, and I do mean this, mention it. Ever.”
“Yup.”
(We both knew that he might be back in the future for the same thing. Oddly, I didn’t feel terrible about the possibility. It was nice to feel useful. And if being useful meant tying up the most annoying man in PresAux and him somehow liking that, that was fine by me. Fine is what it was, and I didn’t want to give any more thought to the matter right then.)
Gurathin stayed where he was and stretched out his arms, his body shifting around in restless motion. I wondered if I’d missed something. Maybe I should have kept my hand on him a little longer.
“Sure you’re okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied, with an emphatic nod. “I might… go ask Bharadwaj for a hug, though.”
I processed this for a little over a second, then said something stupid. “Don’t do that. She might ask why and I don’t want to endure how excruciatingly embarrassing watching that interaction through the security system would be.”
“You don’t have to watch!” Gurathin snapped. And then, realising at the same time I did what I’d implicitly suggested, “Thanks for the offer, but it’ll be okay. I won’t tell her about this. And I can handle a slightly embarrassing request more than you can handle a hug right now.”
He gave a smug little smile because he was right (fucking Gurathin) and then his face went kind of soft and mushy. “Thank you,” he said again, and I made that shooing away gesture humans do because I didn’t want to look at it anymore. He nodded and left me in peace.
***
I cued up the next episode, but first watched through the cameras from the cargo room as Gurathin spent five minutes standing in the corridor wringing his hands, before taking a deep breath and walking casually into the room where Bharadwaj was making some notes about something I wasn't interested in.
“Hi.”
She looked up at him with a smile. “Hey Gura!”
“Hey. Uh. Can I get a hug?”
Bharadwaj immediately stopped her note-taking and got to her feet. “Oh, sure you can. C’mere.” Arms folded around each other, they rocked back and forth a bit, both looking very comfortable, their vitals settling under a wave of oxytocin. “Are you okay? Anything wrong?” She was nice enough not to comment further on the unusual nature of his request—maybe it was rare rather than completely unheard of, like it would have been for me.
“No,” Gurathin answered, squeezing her just a little tighter. “No, I’m good. Really good. Thanks.”
Weirdly, I felt good too.