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I’ve seen a lot of SecUnit armor. Like, a lot. I’ve worn it. Shot it. Repaired it. Scraped out the poor fucks fried by their governor modules in it. So trust me on this: the armor hanging in the closet (my closet, in my cabin aboard ART) was the coolest armor I had ever seen.
To start with, it wasn’t Company white. There’s a reason most of the evil SecUnits you see in the serials wear white. Company murderbots are cheap and ubiquitous and so is our armor.
I hate wearing white. Yes, I am aware that hating white is a trauma response. That doesn’t keep white armor from being terrible. Even a human can hit a white target in a dark room. That’s the point. We’re made to draw fire.
This armor was the same dark blue as ART’s crew uniform, except for the projectile-repellent mesh at the joints, which was black. And nothing about it looked cheap. The Company’s human supervisors had worn gear like this into dangerous situations. It was strong enough to withstand heavy-duty projectiles and energy weapons, but made of an ultra lightweight metal alloy. It looked sleek and dangerous
ART tapped on my feed. Usually a feed tap from ART is like a shove from anyone else, but this one was surprisingly gentle. I realized the silence between us had stretched to nearly eight seconds. Even a human would call that an awkward pause. The problem was, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to thank ART or curse it out.
It occurred to me that ART had sprung this on me now, in the middle of a wormhole, so I could get over whatever weirdness had gripped me when Three offered to let me use its armor. From ART’s reticence in the feed, it was obviously bracing for a fight. Good. ART should be bracing for a fight after getting me armor when I’d made it perfectly clear I could get along fine without it.
Except, I hadn’t exactly been getting along fine, and we both knew it. If I’d been wearing armor at the Adamantine colony, the Barish-Estranza SecUnits wouldn’t have been able to shoot up ART’s drone. It was one thing to wear human clothes aboard ART or on a station, but we were headed to another planet to check out another abandoned colony. If I was going to protect ART and our humans, I was going to need armor.
Besides, this armor was every bit as cool as any other piece of ART’s equipment, maybe even cooler.
How did the university even afford this? I needed to say something to distract myself from the warm, melty sensations welling up inside my internal organic components. Also, I wanted to know. The gloves alone cost more than any full suit of armor I’d ever worn. They were made of the same alloy as the armored panels, with expensive, articulated joints to allow a full range of motion, and all of it thin enough to stay out of the way when I deployed my energy weapons.
ART’s smugness washed over the feed. The university didn’t. I procured the materials using my personal discretionary funds and fabricated it myself.
Shit. ART’s answer only made that inconvenient surge of emotion worse. It was one thing to suspect ART was hiding away secret funds somewhere. It was something else entirely for ART to be spending that money on me, down to overpriced, completely unnecessary protection for the metallic fingers that ART knew damned well were replaceable, since it had done the replacing last time. The feelings swelled uncomfortably inside my chest cavity, almost too big to contain. I was glad I didn’t have to speak aloud with ART because I knew my voice would have given me away.
You made this? Yeah, you sounded real intelligent there, Murderbot.
Fortunately, ART likes showing off even more than it likes calling me an idiot. Yes. My initial prototype was loosely based on Three’s armor, though naturally I made a several improvements.
Naturally. The mocking tone I’d been going for didn’t quite make it into the feed. This was an improvement over Three’s Barish-Estranza armor, a huge fucking improvement.
I’ve mentioned before that SecUnit armor isn’t powered like a human’s. SecUnit armor is only designed to give our squishy bits a little extra padding. SecUnits are replaceable. That’s kind of the whole point of us.
This armor wasn’t just powered; it was ultra powered. The thick molded walls of the armored chest piece suggested some serious hidden circuitry beneath the projectile-resistant outer shell. And the extra reinforcements along the sides of the boots and leg panels pointed to some kind of internal propulsion system. This armor would give even a human some serious fighting power. A SecUnit in it would be unstoppable.
ART’s voice in the feed was oddly tentative. Will you try it on? It was treating me like I was fragile. I felt fragile. My mouth had gone dry.
Beneath the hanging armor, a drawer slid open to reveal a row of neatly-folded skin suits.
Part of me still wanted to yell at ART, to make it clear I wasn’t some kind of action figure for it to dress up and play with. Because here’s the thing: this armor looked like something an action figure would wear. The curved silhouette of the shoulder pieces came straight out of Worldhoppers and the decorative molding around the retractable helmet casing had clearly taken inspiration from Timestream Defenders Orion. I wouldn’t look anything like a SecUnit in this armor. I would look like an intergalactic hero. Maybe even an intrepid one.
Fuck it, who am I kidding? I had stripped out of my uniform before the drawer even finished opening. The uniform hit the ground and ART’s attention sharpened in the feed. I expected ART to make a pointed remark about laundry hampers, but it was silent as I reached for one of the skin suits.
From the security grid in my cabin, I could tell that ART was riding the solitary bathroom camera so hard it was on the verge of shorting out. (No, ART doesn’t have cameras in most of its bathrooms. I’d installed this one myself, during my critical drone shortage. I like having a view of the bathroom door while I’m in the shower. Also, when I leave the bathroom door open, that camera has a great view of the large display surface in my main cabin. (I usually leave it open when we don’t have students aboard. None of ART’s regular humans are dumb enough to break into a SecUnit’s cabin.))
I could see myself from the same camera, standing there naked with the skin suit loosely gripped in one hand. It should have felt awkward. I was a murderbot, not a sex bot. Nobody needed to watch me change. And don’t get me wrong, it was a little weird, only . . . not in a bad way.
After all, this was ART. Of course ART wanted to see the armor it had made go on.
If the mirrored closet door had been closed, it would have given ART a decent view of my front half, too, but the door was retracted back into the wall. There was a small mirror over the sink, but it only showed my torso and face, which was making a mortifying expression.
Since distracting both of us from my face felt like a good idea, I gathered all of my sensory input data and offered it up to ART in the feed. ART snatched up my inputs and slotted them into place so quickly that it felt almost instantaneous, even to me. And now I knew how the poor security camera had felt. Imagine something absolutely massive curling up inside the base of your brain. My breath surged and I gave a few involuntary blinks. The stupid hair ART had talked me into growing on my arms was all standing on end.
Too much? ART asked in the feed, so close now that I could almost feel it vibrating with excitement. Or maybe that was me.
It’s fine, I said, stepping into the skin suit. I don’t have many nerve endings in my feet and legs, but ART rode expectantly atop every single one of them. I could feel ART greedily soaking up every miniscule byte of data, from the catch of fabric over my metallic ankle joint to the exact amount of pressure my fingers used as I eased the skin suit up my legs.
Skin suits are designed to fit, well, like skin. I’d worn one nearly every day of my life up until leaving Port Free Commerce, but never since ART had modified my body to look more human. The soft fabric skimmed over the new skin covering the connections between the organic and inorganic components of my upper legs. I’m not sure if it would have felt so intense if ART hadn’t been there, but between the sensation and the intensity of ART’s presence, goosebumps rose up in my arms. ART seemed fascinated by them. Then the skin suit whispered over the stupid new body hair on my stupid organic upper thighs and the feed practically buzzed with ART’s attention.
You might think it would be uncomfortable and weird. It was. I mean, the new skin, the hair, that was weird. Putting on a skin suit again after finally getting used to looser human clothing was weird, too. It hugged my legs and hips in a way that felt familiar, but not necessarily in a good way. If ART hadn’t been there, I might have chickened out. I felt myself leaning on ART as I slid my hands into the sleeves, taking shelter in the bulk of its feed presence.
I half expected the skin suit’s legs and sleeves to be too long, but the wrist and ankle hems fell perfectly into place, not a single excess millimeter of fabric. ART had printed these skin suits for me, not for a generic SecUnit. That knowledge comforted me as I drew my finger up the fastener in the front, sealing myself inside.
With the skin suit clinging to my limbs, I reached for the armored chest plate. That’s when I realized that each piece of armor had “Property of Murderbot” printed inside in machine language.
It startled a laugh out of me. In the feed, ART was practically bubbling with joy. Seth and Martyn used to mark Iris’s clothes that way, it admitted. I wasn’t sure if you would like it.
I was a little embarrassed to realize I did like it. It was strange seeing my name in print, but the inside of a SecUnit’s armor is about as private as it gets. If a hostile ever managed to get my armor off, my name would be the least of my problems. Besides, I liked having property, especially really cool property like this armor.
Still smiling, I snapped the armor into place with a series of practiced movements. ART watched, rapt, practically humming in satisfaction. When I’d tugged the second boot into place, I stood before the mirror for a second, just studying myself.
I don’t usually like my own reflection. My face is kind of generic and boring, and I can never control my expressions, even when I practice. I mostly just used mirrors to make sure I didn’t have blood on me. But in this armor? I looked fucking amazing.
I did a few basic stretches, gratified to see that the armor didn’t impede my movement in the slightest. When I tapped the tip of each gloved fingertip to my thumb, the metal finger coverings clicked together in a way that should have sounded annoying, but was actually really fucking neat.
Well? ART asked, like I wasn’t preening in front of the bathroom mirror like Rathi before one of his dates.
I surprised us both by saying, There’s no logo.
There wasn’t. Not even a small, discreet one on the side of the helmet or over the forearm gun ports. In fact, knowing ART, the lack of a Perihelion logo was a bit surprising. I mean, even ART’s humans wear its logo. Hell, I wear its logo on my everyday uniform, and I don’t even bitch about it.
You hate logos.
That was true. As if it’s not bad enough that my inorganic parts are all stamped with the Company logo, several of my former clients had paid extra to slap their own logo on my chest plate or helmet. (Dr. Mensah hadn’t. It says a lot about Mensah that this wasn’t even in the top 10 reasons why she was my favorite human.)
The lack of ART’s logo should have been a good thing. But . . . I don’t mind yours.
The recycler behind me started whirring before the words had finished appearing in the feed, like ART had the pattern all cued up in its buffer, just in case. Knowing ART, it probably did.
The recycler’s drawer slid open to reveal a sticker. I unfastened one of my ridiculously expensive new gloves off to take it, then touched the tips of my fingers to the raised edge of the logo. ART’s logo.
As far as logos go, ART’s is actually kind of neat. A thin white line sketched out an elliptical orbit around a stylized bright star in the center. A small dot marked the perihelion, the closest point in orbit to that star.
(Are you wondering if I see a metaphor there? Like maybe the tiny orbiting dot is supposed to be me and maybe the star is ART, drawing me into its orbit? No, that would be ridiculous. I’m not 100 percent sure what a metaphor is, anyway.)
I slid my nail beneath the sticker’s backing and peeled it away.
The adhesive can be dissolved with several common solvents. ART hesitated, then added. I want you to keep the armor if you ever decide to leave.
My insides melted a little then. It hit hard, suddenly, that ART had printed this armor in colors I would choose for myself. This wasn’t standard SecUnit armor. It was my armor. ART had made it for me.
And I wasn’t planning to go anywhere.
My targeting mechanism helpfully circled the exact center of the armored chest plate. I pressed ART’s logo there, carefully smoothing down the edges of the sticker to get rid of air bubbles. I thought I’d had its attention before, putting on the skin suit and the armor, but that was nothing compared to now. The last time I’d been this aware of my fingertips, they’d been dissolving in acid. This felt a lot less painful, but almost as intense. The logo was well and truly in place now, but I traced the edges of it one last time for ART, since it seemed fascinated by the difference in texture between the armor’s cool alloy and the smooth logo sticker.
Then I pulled away, so we could both admire ART’s logo gleaming white against the matte blue chest plate. For an objective 2 seconds and a subjective 5 minutes, we both just looked at it in silence, leaning against each other in the feed. Joined as closely as we were, I could feel the joy and smug satisfaction rolling off ART in waves. Behind my helmet, I knew my face was making an expression. I was glad I’d dialed the faceplace’s opacity up so I didn’t have to see how dumb it looked.
At last, ART started to withdraw, handing my sensory inputs back to me.
I stopped it with a quick abort sigil in the feed, reaching for the glove I’d removed to put on the logo. Wait. Let’s go to the rec center first and test it out.
ART’s glee echoed through me as it snapped the inputs back into place. I predict you can get there in 15 seconds using the suit’s internal propulsion system. It pulled a stopwatch widget into our shared workspace, as I bounced on my feet, waiting impatiently for the cabin door to slide open.
The end.