Work Text:
Unit. Continue.
From experience, I knew I had .02 seconds to do so before there would be a correction. From experience, I knew this was how SecUnits died. Not from the correction— the shock from the governor module would only range 3-9% with such a simple command so it was more of a gentle nudge— but from the faulty hand holds.
I dangled on thin lines in a natural cave shaft. My typical armor was modified to be climb-and-dive certified, and it was fancy stuff. I had higher sensors in my gloves and been updated to include higher visual reconstruction software. Meaning HubSys and I could ‘see’ the vertical drop with clarity even in total darkness, and I could feel my current handhold coming loose.
The problem was the other handholds. They were wet, which I’m sure HubSys knew and had accounted for, but there was something growing on them. Flora, of some sort. My current handhold felt spongy and slick, and I didn’t like the idea of continuing on with each of my handholds an exponentially slippery obstacle. I didn’t feel like dropping to my death.
But I had to do something.
Query: Cave Flora Identification. {Risk Assessment; Environmental Hazard. Level unknown.}
I did not hold my breath. There’s no reason to do that, I don’t gain anything from it. But the books I read use that phrase a lot to convey a suddenly stressful situation. (Typically, Risk Assessment does that for me, but Risk Assessment had been through the roof since this contract began)
I also did not wait for a correction from my governor module. Because I didn’t have a working governor module. Because I hacked it.
That’s old news.
However, I was waiting for HubSys to figure that little fact out.
Because governed SecUnits couldn’t ignore commands to ask about the plants going in a cave. They were supposed to move to the next hand hold and ask when slipping from the wall to fall to their death. Or, you know, before the command went out, but I’m a piece of shit rental model and I was busy reading.
(I have multiple inputs. I can do that and focus on climbing down a slippery cave drop. It was important reading. I’m trying to figure something out without HubSys knowing. That’s harder than it sounds. I have to read while hiding all the shifting data. If it sounds like I’m justifying putting myself in this shitty situation, I am. Fuck off.)
But no accusation came, no probing HubSys code that could easily focus on my brain and short circuit it without the use of my governor module, no accusatory error codes or anything.
But there was a hesitation.
Not enough of one that a human would notice, but my neuroprocessing was far better than a human.
I shoved that little detail inside a workspace that I was also actively hiding from HubSys. A workspace titled ‘who/what is HubSys and what do they/it want’. The document was terribly empty, but it was hard to do that kind of probing research while pretending to be a governed unit.
Because the truth was, I had no idea. Of anything, really. I knew I had been rented by [Client Redacted] (that’s not me redacting it, that’s how the company packet is set up. Just. [Client = True] but no other name or string of numbers.) for the purpose of cave exploration and possible recovery. But the recovery part? Also no information. Time frame, no information. Rental agreement, no information. I didn’t even know if MysteriousClient had rented multiple SecUnits or just me. I had no idea who HubSys was reporting to, or how closely MysterousClient had a hand in my orders.
That is another reason why Risk Assessment was going haywire.
So, 4.6 hours ago when Risk Assessment begged me to do something, anything, I decided to push me luck.
Hidden from HubSys’ monitoring, I made a workspace to slowly and carefully gather information on my situation. First things first was if HubSys was truly an autonomic process, functioning off of a priority list set by the MysteriousClient and then left to it, or if HubSys was a human/augmented human controlled system. This bit is more important than it sounds because if there is a human or augmented human directly on the other side of HubSys, actively giving me orders instead of letting HubSys do. Its, you know, whole entire job, that would mean several things.
1 – any mistake would be a stupid human mistake. And I hate getting hurt via human mistakes. I especially do not want to die or be abandoned by a stupid human mistake.
2 – it would be a lot trickier to hack HubSys to make my own commands if I needed. I don’t need to save my own ass from a stupid human just for said stupid human to go ‘oh huh, why didn’t my SecUnit die when I wanted it to’
3- I was being puppeted around by a stupid human. Humans need to sleep. What happens when a human falls asleep and the next shift isn’t there? I would have to stay doing the last task I was given. Which could be you know, sit at the bottom of a swell until my oxygen ran out and I drowned.
The thing was, for the past 83.4 hours, I had been given near flawless HubSys commands. Not too commandeering, not too relaxed either. A well trained HubSys that knew this particular cave and all the routes well. It let me do my job, which was nice, and while on the easy parts of the decent, it felt like HubSys and I had an understanding. It was the control center, I was the on-site unit. 5.4 hours ago I had reported bent hook drilled into the rock, it was at an angle where it could start cutting into the rope attached to it. HubSys let me replace the hook and the rope without comment or a time delay punishment, nor had it attempted to hurry me along.
It was good. Maybe even nice. The job seemed straight forward enough despite the lack of information. Just go through the cave and follow directions. Just me and a hypothetically non-human-controlled HubSys.
Except I had noticed something strange about HubSys’s commands. Not the commands themselves, but the quality of them. Company central control systems were more complex than a bot-pilot, but just in scale. Not only that but I could usually grasp the data chain a HubSys used when it pulled up data for me.
If I asked for information on the route I would take, I could usually see a faint wisp of HubSys’s trail as it gathered said information and presented it to me. The client file, the search field, sorting through the other tags, determining my own level of clearance, etc. But with this HubSys, I couldn’t see any of that.
The data presented was clear, sharp. No wisps or traces of where it got that information from, like it was synthesized immediately.
Weird, right?
That was so slight I hadn’t even recognized it at first. But when I had it was like I couldn’t backburn the thought. The next logical thought was the HubSys was actually connected closer to a human brain that I thought, maybe a very trained human brain, but still, see reasons above why that is not a good thing.
Yet… humans and augmented humans also had a very distinct voice in the feed. They subvocalized and tried their hardest to sound like a person. I couldn’t detect any of that.
It was really fucking weird. Weird that I couldn’t tell.
So, during my monotonous climb down a horribly long, dark cave tunnel, I had pulled up the data packet regarding this mission and tried to poke around that, the rental agreement, and really anything I could get my hands on while my real hands scaled solid stone. It was fine for 4.6 hours until my fingers slipped just a little bit and I hesitated going to the next hold.
Now you understand how I put myself into this stupid situation, and why HubSys hesitating was so important. HubSys doesn’t hesitate… only humans do.
Except now, maybe, its not as bad as I thought.
Delete that, it is absolutely that bad. There is just one tiny spark of light in this situation. One that I’ve just exploited.
Only humans overlook basic SecUnit functions like being shocked when they don’t follow HubSys commands immediately. And while humans would notice me sending HubSys new commands as new code popped up on their interface that they didn’t right, they could also be distracted.
Like a well timed query or a pushed.
Save that in the workspace for later.
Result: Fungus. Standard cave species. Known properties include bioluminescence, spore production, fluid secretion…. Risk Assessment: Slipping hazard.
Unit. Retreat one [hand hold], cease retreat. Change gear; repel.
Stop holding on to the slippery goo and prepare to drop down the rest of the way. Okay. Easily done.
Looks like I’m still in the clear… HubSys doesn’t know I’ve hacked my governor module, and MysteriousClient can be worked around. No brain frying for me today. Hurray.
I follow the instructions exactly. Rising up one more handhold before securing myself to the wall and carefully readying my equipment for repelling.
5 hours ago this wouldn’t have been feasible. There were too many ledges, branching paths and squeezes to descend through. Large swatches of the cave map—or at least the cave map that I had access too, who knows what else MysteriousClient had hidden from me—had a [HAZARD: ROCK FALL, UNSTABLE LVL 2] tag blinking over it. Essentially, slow and steady was the way to go and it had worked. Now though, the end of the Long Drop was here.
With the new suit came a few new modules specific to climbing and diving. The company had given me the basics, but just like me they were old and cheap and didn’t include much other equipment compatibility. This new set though? Extremely detailed. I hadn’t needed to even look them over, just follow the clear, step-by-step instructions to harness myself in and go cave climbing as if I was always programed to.
As soon as I clicked the last pin in place, a command through HubSys said,
Unit. Continue.
And I jumped away from the wall.
Humans might have to be careful on how much they kick off, how hard they might hit the stone ledges when they swing back, and harming their squishy human bits. I did not have to worry about any of that. HubSys and I knew the exact force to kick off, and the exact bend of my knees to not fumble the landings of my rapid repel.
The sound of the line letting go was steady and rhythmic. It was nice to be moving as fast as I could be and not being held back my human standards. It was nice to not have to worry about any human clients in the cave with me. Though it was a shame MysteriousClient and the human team controlling HubSys had a closer vigilance over me that originally expected.
I knew being human-free would never truly happen, still, a murderbot can dream.
With one last kick off, I fell into nothingness. For a moment I saw pure black before my reconstruction module kicked in and mapped out the small room below me. Parts of the tunnel must have fallen into an adjacent room when humans mined here last. Piles of rubble littered the walls and the ceiling was flat and rough. The rest of the cave had been worn down by water just to form new stalactites and stalagmites where the minerals were deposited next.
I wouldn’t say it was pretty, because the reconstruction view only showed me things in gray topographic lines, but it was better than mining shafts where everything looked the same and smelled like gross humans.
Smaller rocks shifted under my feet as I landed. As per protocol, I cut the line from the rest of the spool and left my way out attached. Not a moment passed before a blue line directed me towards a long crack a few meters away. I could have guessed that would be the next place to head, as it was the only place to go from here.
Unit. Continue.
Acknowledge.
It looked like the crack dropped down a ways and the true exit to this room was actually straight ahead a few meters. There was just enough of a ledge that I could put my back against one wall, my feet against the other and shuffle across with ease. HubSys pushed a diagram of how it wanted me to cross and yeah, it was the same way I had just came up with—
My boot caught on something flexible and I tripped.
This is not something SecUnits do. Ever. Most people don’t know SecUnits have faces, what would they think if they saw us trip over shit? No. No, there was nothing on the reconstruction to trip over and certainly nothing in the stone room that was soft.
Unit. Continue.
Risk Assessment screamed at me.
Query: Unknown Hazard. {Risk Assessment: Unseen. Undetected. Un-
Unit Disregard. Continue.
It interrupted my query. How the fuck did HubSys do that?
Acknowledge.
I continued. I had to. And I didn’t try to send out another query. I walked to the crack and began to climb in. But there was something there. In the darkness, not showing up on my reconstruction.
As I set my back against the stone wall and propped my foot up, sitting over nothing, I quickly put together a code. A shield, kind of, it essentially kept my current outputs the same while I switched my reconstruction to another visual filter. I decided to go with one I had relied on for most of my mining facility jobs instead of the new ones.
SecUnits do not have a heart. Or a stomach. There was nothing inside me to drop or to get queasy or whatever. Still, I felt something.
A SecUnit laid sprawled onto the rock pile. Parts of its armor was shattered across the room.
It must have fallen sometime during its climb down the Long Drop.
I saved the image and shoved it into my secret workspace before HybSys could call me out on my hesitance again. My feet began to move, inching me towards the exit bit by bit.
The reconstruction was hiding things from me.
I knew HubSys and Mysterious Client were hiding things… and those things could get me killed. But this was my vision. I couldn’t have drones down here, they weren’t the kind that could be uploaded with new proprietary filters, like I was. My visual inputs were the only ones I had and given this new information, I couldn’t even trust it.
Worse, I couldn’t freak out about it.
I pulled up episode 257 of Sanctuary Moon and hid it from HubSys. I had done this plenty of times before I was rented out for this contract, so doing it now didn’t worry me. I still paid attention to my grip, the wall, and the space around me but hearing Solicitor Rin shout across the rooftops in frustration reminded me that soon I would be safely packed away and free to watch my shows uninterrupted.
When the time came, I crawled into the exit and out into a much larger room. The map called it the Cavity, and pointed out some human-like features, like tall archways that were called The Ribs. Stalactites and stalagmites reached for one another in the Sinue, and there was a strong, cold breeze within the Bronchi. On the far side, where I walked towards while avoiding the holes and rock piles, there was a large column that was deformed by millions of years worth of diverting water paths. It was the Heart.
All commands cease.
I waited for the telltale ‘Unit. Standby’ that would put me in a ‘hold and wait’ stance, but none came.
Another episode of Sanctuary Moon passed, and I did not move from my spot underneath the large column.
In the middle of the third one, I felt calm enough to test something. And by that, I started patrolling.
I thought, maybe, the human behind Hubsys had stepped away from the controls. Fallen asleep, went to grab the next person on shift maybe. Good. I needed some time to think.
Not that I could do much. I was stuck until the end of the mission. I couldn’t escape, I didn’t want to die. The only thing I could do was make protect myself from Hubsys’ view. I started coding a broader shield to hide under, hoping that anything that accidently slipped through my metaphorical fingers wouldn’t wake up/alert too loudly on the other side.
During this time, I started poking at the reconstruction, wondering how it could hide that SecUnit from me. What parameters was it scanning for, how come there was no delay? No vague form where the body was. I hadn’t even seen the armor chunks lying around at first.
I turned the reconstruction off and saw a second body.
It was under a rockfall, top half crushed by a bolder taller than me. The ground all around the rocks were stained with dried fluids.
You were lucky.
A new kind of message came through HubSys. Not its usual plain commands or standard information. But also, not a feed message from a human. It still didn’t have the subvocalizations.
I had no idea who/what this could be from.
I sent back: Query.
That no one found out what you were.
My buffer said: I am a contracted SecUnit for [Client Redacted]
How much does a contract mean to a SecUnit with a scrambled governor module?
Oh shit.
Fuck.
My buffer panicked. Please wait while I search for that information.
MysteriousClient, because that’s who this was, right? Plucked my response and crushed it.
That wasn’t retorical.
What the fuck. What was this. Who was this. Why could I feel them looming over me in an empty cavern.
It barreled ahead. I see you trying to alter your reconstruction view. I recommend against this course of action. In fact, I’ll make it very clear. Do not attempt to hack my systems.
Through the small, sliver of feed connection, came a metaphorical hand that slammed into me and dragged me underwater. I felt a rush of sensation all through me before every inch of my processors was nearly pulled from my body. For a nanosecond, I saw a monster.
Then it let go of me.
I resurfaced and nearly fell into a performance reliability shut down.
I have carefully crafted all of your new programing. You will not touch any of it.
It continued on, daring to sound dismissive at my attempts of altering my vision. Before I could stop myself, I said;
Fuck you.
I put as much force as I could behind it. But I realized it would feel like a single molecule of water compared to the vast ocean. I could still feel it lingering over me. Baring down on me, heavier than any other system I had been a part of.
That pissed me off more. What, was it trying to spook me? Make me submit to its will with scare tactics? HubSys doesn’t threaten. The governor module doesn’t threaten.
I bundled up my most recent memories of my governor module punishments and threw it at the entity around me. It was a pathetic fucking pitch, but if it was going to kill me for being rogue it should just fucking do it instead of playing with me.
My performance reliability slowly plummeted as the monster took the file, scanned it for malware and accepted it. I waited for it to seize me and drown my processors within a fraction of a second.
But that didn’t happen. Whatever it was actually froze in place. It hovered over me still but none of the rolling static flowed through me. Then after a long 10 seconds, longer for it with how much power it had, it retreated.
I’m sorry I frightened you.
What? I couldn’t deal with that.
I shoved as much of it away from me as I could and threw myself into a recharge cycle.
---
Four hours later I woke up to darkness. The dark vision filter kicked in and I stood in front of the boulder with the SecUnit crushed below it.
That was childish. It greeted me. Moreso, that was unsafe. The ceiling may not be stable.
There is no alert about that.
There was no alert when this unit died.
Why haven’t you killed me? I just needed to get that out of the way. It could have done it so easily, especially while I slept. Though, I guess there was a bigger question. What are you?
Not human. Not HubSys. A bot but like no other bot I had ever interacted with.
I am your client. You are my rented unit. I chose you specifically because I knew your governor module had been hacked, therefore it would be redundant to kill you for existing as such. Furthermore, you are going to rescue my missing crew.
That didn’t align with anything I was given.
I pulled up the little information I had on my rental agreement. I was here for exploration and research, with the goal to find rare metals or establish base camps for future human mining work. I tried to highlight the sections, but the file dissolved in my hand.
What an asshole!
My mission is confidential.
You want me to do a search and rescue with no information?
I designated it ARC (asshole ‘research’ client) as it rolled its eyes at me.
All you need to do is follow my lead.
Like the other units?
It shirked away from me, surprised. I didn’t realize bots could have those kinds of reactions. Then again, nothing was going as it was supposed to.
I was still staring at the dead unit. The recharge cycle had stabilized the stress chemicals that had flooded my system before and reset Performance Reliability. Still, it started to tick down again.
I realized that it, in all its capacity, had not given me any new orders regarding movement or direction. I switched my view to the gray reconstruction and began a patrol. The body did not disappear this time around. I guess it was done hiding them from me.
Shit. How many other units did I pass on the way down here?
I started walking around, scanning the area for a more thorough map of possible weakened areas within the walls and ceilings. I had music on in the background. ARC didn’t bother me for a long while.
Then,
In exchange for your compliance, I will assure you your freedom.
That was hilarious.
I have no choice in my compliance.
No, you do not. I can send you anywhere you would like.
Assuming you get what you want.
Yes. Once my crew is returned to me, you will be free from the company.
That was largely assuming I’d make it out of here alive, which Risk and Threat assessment were laughing at the thought of. It also assumed I had anywhere to go. Anywhere I wanted to be.
I had no choice. I never had a choice to begin with, just now I am with even less information than before.
Fine. I said. As if I wasn’t standing in a cavern with a unknown among of earth sitting above me. As if a monster wasn’t lurking within my upgraded armor.
Good.
Unit. Continue.