Fallen Feathers
Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, AAA Murderbot, outside POV
Published: 21 March 2022
Word Count: 3,515
Summary
Alternate point of view one-shot of a scene that Murderbot didn't see itself from Clipped Wings. Mensah and the rest of PreservationAux come to some uncomfortable realisations about the SecUnit assigned to their survey group...
(This is a new, updated version to go with the updated version of Clipped Wings - the old version is here.)
“I didn’t even know it had a face!”
Mensah winced slightly at Ratthi’s exclamation. She’d known, after previously being shown the SecUnit they would be assigned for their survey when she’d tried to protest its inclusion. She had just… conveniently forgotten. In its armour, with its faceplate opaqued, its precise movements and its carefully modulated voice, it was easy to forget that it was anything more than a robot, a mobile extension of the SecSystem. She’d never wanted a SecUnit on this survey in the first place, so she had done her best to just put it out of her mind whenever possible.
She couldn’t forget now, though. Not after what she and the rest of the survey team had seen through Volescu’s field camera. The way the DeltFall SecUnit had shown its face, its expression reassuring, a bleeding and unconscious Bharadwaj cradled so carefully in its arms. The way it had gently coaxed Volescu to safety, had continued talking so calmly and warmly to Volescu to break him out of his panic, the way it had directed Volescu to get the emergency med kit that had, without a doubt, helped to save Bharadwaj’s life.
It had been so… human. No canned responses, no blank faceplate. And, in the glimpses they’d gotten of its expression while Volescu worked with the med kit, it had looked concerned.
Arada, Overse, Pin-Lee and Ratthi were gathered with Mensah in the main lounge area, going over the recording from Volescu’s field camera again. Bharadwaj was in the infirmary, Volescu sitting with her. Gurathin was in Medical, supervising the MedSystem as it treated the damage - the injuries, Mensah corrected herself sharply - that the DeltFall SecUnit had taken while saving Bharadwaj from the giant worm.
She still felt terrible that they'd all just… forgotten about it in the rush to get Bharadwaj to MedSystem. None of them had thought about it, or the damage - the injuries - it had taken while saving Bharadwaj, not until later. Not until after the MedSystem had finally finished treating Bharadwaj and confirmed that she would recover fully.
It was only then that Mensah had even thought to check on the DeltFall unit - and she was ashamed to admit that even at that point, she hadn't been thinking about its physical state. She'd only wanted to make sure that she knew where it was, that it hadn't wandered off somewhere or gotten into areas it wasn't supposed to be in, and to ask it if it had managed to get back in contact with the DeltFall survey group yet.
She hadn't expected to find it offline in the Security ready room, carefully laid out on a thin emergency blanket spread on the floor, where the PreservationAux SecUnit had obviously done what it could to treat it with wound sealant and a single, paltry, emergency medical kit. Its efforts had been obviously inadequate given the extent of the wounds, but it had tried, which was more than Mensah could say about herself.
She remembered the horror coiling tight around her gut at the sight of the DeltFall unit lying there, its distressingly youthful-looking face so slack and still and silent. When she'd asked the PreservationAux SecUnit why it hadn't informed her of the DeltFall unit's state, it had hesitated for a brief moment, then replied in its soft, polite voice, "SecUnit functionality is not an observed client priority." There had been no reproach in its tone, but Mensah's imagination had supplied it anyway.
"Why didn't you put it in the cubicle?" she'd asked, unable to tear her eyes away from the DeltFall unit's exposed face. It was better - only slightly better - than looking at the patchwork of torn flight suit, bloodied suit skin, exposed metal, wound sealant and stained bandages over its arms and torso.
"My cubicle will not work on it," her own SecUnit had answered. "That unit is not included in the PreservationAux contract." It had hesitated again, then added more quietly, "I don't have any standard protocol for this situation. I apologise for any inadequacies in my choice of actions."
"No, no, your actions haven't been inadequate at all," she'd hastened to reassure it. "I do wish you'd let me know earlier, but… I understand why you didn't." They'd spent the entire survey so far doing their best to ignore their own SecUnit as much as possible - of course it would think that it, or the DeltFall unit, wouldn't be considered a priority. "Will MedSystem work on it?"
"I'm sorry, I don't have that information," it had replied.
"Well, we'll find out." She’d then asked their own SecUnit to carry the DeltFall unit to Medical. It was too heavy for any of her team to move themselves, not without causing further harm.
She thought about how their SecUnit had carried the other unit like the DeltFall unit had carried Bharadwaj, cradled so carefully in its arms. Medical had been somewhat crowded once the two units had entered, and Mensah remembered brushing past the PreservationAux unit as she moved out of its way. She remembered some distracted part of her mind absently noticing that it seemed warmer than usual, somehow, but with everything else going on at the time, she hadn’t thought any more about it. She recalled how carefully it had placed the damaged - injured - unit onto MedSystem’s platform, helped to remove the ruins of its flight suit and suit skin, then moved to stand in a corner where it would be out of the way but could still watch over everything going on in Medical from behind its blank faceplate.
Had it considered the DeltFall unit a potential threat? Had it felt sympathy, compassion for a fellow unit? Had it simply defaulted to some standard procedure for lack of any other orders? Nobody had told it to do anything else until things had calmed down, until Ratthi and Overse had gotten the DeltFall unit cleaned up, until Pin-Lee and Gurathin had figured out how to get MedSystem working on the DeltFall unit’s treatment. Only then had it quietly asked Mensah if she had any more orders for it. Mensah had still been too distracted, too worried about Bharadwaj and the DeltFall unit to say anything more than, “No, no, it’s all right, no orders for now, you can do what you like.” It had simply nodded and gone back outside to its usual patrol route around the habitat’s perimeter.
Mensah found herself wondering if it ever got bored.
It was still out there, as it had been for the majority of their time here when it wasn’t accompanying them on survey excursions. Mensah couldn’t help but feel guilty about that now, and judging by the expressions on the faces of her team, they were feeling a similar way.
“... Maybe there are differences between the DeltFall unit and ours?” Overse put forth hesitantly in a vain attempt to justify their previous behaviour. “I mean, theirs has a flier, ours doesn’t. Maybe theirs is… upgraded more in other ways as well?”
Mensah shook her head. “I don’t think so. I saw it when the company was… convincing me to accept it as part of the survey package. Ours has a face as well. A different face, I think, but still. I just… let myself forget,” she admitted with self-reproach. “I didn’t want to think about it, about what we were being forced to accept. That was my mistake.”
“It’s one we’re all complicit in,” Pin-Lee said. “So don’t go trying to take all the blame, Mensah.”
Mensah gave Pin-Lee a faint, lopsided smile. “I won’t. It’s something we’ll all need to work on going forward, too.”
“But how?” Arada asked, waving her hands around until Overse began rubbing her back reassuringly. “How do we even begin to make up for treating it like an object? We’ve just been… ignoring it for the entire survey, except when we asked it to carry survey equipment, or something. We’ve been letting it ride around in the hopper’s cargo hold!”
“We take things one step at a time,” Mensah replied firmly. “No more letting it - or the DeltFall unit, once it recovers - ride in the cargo hold, for one.” Nods of agreement followed that. “And we can make it clear to ours, at least, that we don’t expect it to stay outside on patrol all night. We can invite it inside, let it know that it’s welcome to spend time with us.”
“We’re going to have to tread carefully though, I think,” Pin-Lee added, her brow furrowed slightly in thought. “I don’t think it’s going to know what to do with us suddenly changing our behaviour towards it.” She gave Ratthi a pointed look as she said that. Ratthi just looked sheepish, but nodded in understanding as Pin-Lee continued. “I doubt either of them have ever had anyone treat them like actual people before - the Corporation Rim barely treats its own people like actual people.”
“A sad truth,” Mensah murmured, then sighed. “I suppose the best we can do is just… treat them kindly. If they appear uncomfortable, back off, give them space. Take it slowly. Don’t push either of them any faster than they seem comfortable with.”
“What are we going to do about the DeltFall unit, anyway?” Overse asked. “We should at least let DeltFall know what happened, right? They’ll probably be wondering where it is by now.”
“I’ll call them once we have a little more information on what actually happened. First, I want to find out why we didn’t already know about that giant worm creature.” Mensah began pulling up the survey package in the feed. “It should have been listed in the survey information package under hazardous fauna. Did we just miss that entry, or was it not included in the first place? I want everyone to take a section and comb through it, just in case the entry was misfiled somewhere.”
The others nodded and began working through the information. Mensah tapped Gurathin over the feed to get his attention. [Gurathin? How are things going with the DeltFall SecUnit?]
It was a few moments before Gurathin replied, and when he did, he sounded distracted. [Ah, they’re going as well as can be expected. I’m… working on debugging its systems right now. It got pretty scrambled by whatever made it crash.]
[Do you have any ideas yet about the cause of its crash?] Mensah asked.
[Not yet. But I was checking the satellite map, and it looks like it’s missing a chunk around the area where Volescu mentioned seeing the DeltFall flier coming from.]
Mensah let herself frown, since nobody was looking at her. [A map section is missing? I’ll check that as well - right now, the others are going through the information package to see if they can find anything about the giant worm. If we’re missing map data as well as hazard entries…]
Mensah could feel Gurathin’s concern bleeding through the feed. [We could have even more problems on our hands.] He paused for a long moment. [I’ll help go through the survey package once I’ve finished with the DeltFall unit’s systems. I don’t want it to wake up still scrambled and confused.]
[That’s sensible,] Mensah agreed. [Keep me updated on anything odd you find.]
Gurathin hesitated, then replied, [Will do.]
Mensah wondered at the hesitation, then decided that Gurathin was probably just focusing on whatever debugging he was doing. She pulled up the planetary map in the feed and began going over it carefully, paying attention to the areas that were outside the survey zones they’d already covered. It didn’t take her long to find the missing section that Gurathin had mentioned, and she studied it with concern. She couldn’t tell if it had been deliberately deleted, or if the data had just gotten corrupted, or had never been there to start with. She tagged it for the others to look over later, then went back to checking the rest of the map.
Some time later, Mensah had found five other missing map sections. Arada, Overse, Ratthi and Pin-Lee had finished going through the survey data and had found no sign of any mention of the giant worm. Pin-Lee had noticed some odd formatting in one of the sections of the hazard report that she thought might indicate that something had been deleted, but she couldn’t tell for sure.
Gurathin and his augments might have been able to glean more information from the information package, but he hadn’t contacted Mensah with any updates yet. She wondered how badly the DeltFall unit must have been scrambled if Gurathin’s debugging was taking so long. She didn’t interrupt him though, not wanting to break his concentration.
Instead, she decided to ask their own SecUnit for help. It would be a good way to start including it more in their activities, Mensah reasoned to herself, and its processing power far outstripped anything else they had. She let the others in the main lounge with her know what she was going to do, then contacted their SecUnit over the feed. [SecUnit, can you please report to the main lounge? We would appreciate your assistance with some data checking.]
There was a brief pause that Mensah could almost have sworn was surprise before the SecUnit responded with a succinct, [Acknowledged.]
“It’s on its way,” Mensah told the others. “Remember, don’t push it, all right?” They all nodded, and Mensah noted with some amusement that Ratthi had been sandwiched between Pin-Lee and Overse on the couch. That would hopefully prevent Ratthi from getting too over-enthusiastic.
The SecUnit showed up more quickly than Mensah had been expecting, and she wondered if it had sprinted part of the distance to get to the lounge more quickly. She swiftly dismissed that distraction from mind and focused on the SecUnit, offering it a warm smile. “Thank you for arriving so quickly,” she started. “We’ve been going through the survey information package, checking the hazard report for this region to try and learn why the giant worm that attacked Bharadwaj wasn’t listed under hazardous fauna. Pin-Lee thinks the data has been altered.” She nodded towards Pin-Lee, then looked back at the SecUnit. “Can you examine the report for us, please?”
“Yes, Dr. Mensah,” the unit replied, its voice soft and polite. “One moment, please.” It remained motionless as it went through the data in the feed. A few moments later, it gave a slight nod. “It seems you are correct,” it stated levelly. “Something has been deleted from the warnings and the section on fauna. I cannot locate the missing data.”
The reaction to that in general was pretty annoyed, though Mensah noted that Pin-Lee especially seemed to be restraining her usual level of ire, probably for the SecUnit’s sake. She and Overse were still grumbling complaints though, and Ratthi threw his hands in the air dramatically. The SecUnit didn’t react to their reactions, and Mensah gave it another smile. “Thank you for your help,” she said gently to it.
The SecUnit hesitated ever so briefly before giving her another little nod and saying, “You’re welcome, Dr. Mensah.”
Mid expression of frustration, Ratthi broke in with, “So we have no way to know if that creature was an aberration or if they live at the bottom of all those craters?”
Arada said, “You know, I bet they do. If those big avians we saw on the scans land on those barrier islands frequently, that creature might be preying on them.”
“It would explain what the craters are doing there,” Mensah said thoughtfully, briefly distracted from the SecUnit by her team’s speculations. “That would be one anomaly out of the way, at least.”
“But who removed that subreport?” Pin-Lee demanded, before turning to face the SecUnit. “Can the HubSystem be hacked?”
There was a definite pause before the SecUnit responded. “The company systems are kept up to date with the latest security patches and firewalls,” it said with careful neutrality. Mensah waited for it to continue, but it didn’t seem like it was going to add anything else.
Pin-Lee let out a snort. “Now there’s a non-answer if I’ve ever heard one,” she grumbled, then eyed the SecUnit speculatively. “Are you even allowed to say anything negative about the company?”
Another hesitation. “The company provides the best available equipment for all survey and security packages.” It sounded like a rote reply, a canned, automated response. Mensah couldn’t help but feel disappointed, though she was careful not to let any of it show on her face.
“I’ll take that as a no, then,” Pin-Lee deadpanned. The SecUnit remained conspicuously silent.
Ratthi looked like he was about to burst, and Mensah cut in before he could. “Never mind that for now,” she said calmly. “We need to focus on the matter at hand.” She looked back to the SecUnit, addressing it directly. “Do you know if the DeltFall group has the same survey package as we do?”
“I don't know for certain, but it seems likely,” it replied, still polite but not sounding like a pre-recorded message this time.
Mensah nodded and leaned back in her chair, steepling her fingers. “All right, this is what we’ll do. I want you each to check the individual sections of the survey package for your specialities. Try to pinpoint any more missing information. When we have a partial list, I’ll call DeltFall and see if they can send us the files. I’ll also let them know about their SecUnit - hopefully by then Gurathin will have finished his debugging and can give us an update on its condition.”
The rest of the group nodded, and began focusing on the feed again, mostly. Ratthi still kept sneaking looks at the SecUnit, but he was refraining from saying anything so far.
“Dr. Mensah, do you need me for anything else?” the SecUnit asked.
She turned her chair to face it again. “Not right now, thank you. I’ll call if we have any questions.” She paused for a moment, then smiled gently and added, “You know, you can stay here in the crew area if you want. Would you like that?”
That got everyone else’s attention. Mensah could see out of the corner of her eye how they were now all looking at the SecUnit with welcoming smiles of their own.
It hesitated for a long moment. “Please clarify your orders,” it said eventually, its soft, polite voice sounding more uncertain than they’d ever heard it.
Mensah made sure to keep her expression warm and reassuring. “This isn’t an order,” she said gently. “This is just us offering you the opportunity to choose what you would like to do. Would you like to stay in the crew area with us, instead of going back on patrol outside?”
Its hesitation was even longer this time. “I'm sorry, I don't have that information,” it finally replied, its voice once again sounding pre-recorded.
Mensah resisted the urge to sigh. She’d warned the others against pushing their SecUnit too far, and here she was, ignoring her own orders. She carefully maintained her reassuring expression. “That’s all right. You don’t have to decide right away. But the offer is always open, all right? If you decide that you want to spend more time inside with us at some point, then you can do so.”
“We’re sorry we’ve been so rude and treating you so badly throughout the survey so far,” Ratthi interjected, his expression contrite. “We thought— well, it doesn’t matter what we thought, we were wrong. We’re gonna do better by you from now on, okay?”
The SecUnit just stood there silently, its only movement its head turning to look from Mensah to Ratthi and back again. Mensah wished she could see its face, get some hint as to what it might be thinking. The thought wormed its way into her head that she could just order it to clear its faceplate, retract its helmet. She firmly quashed that idea; she was not going to order it around purely for her own convenience. That went against the entire point of what they were trying to do here.
Finally the SecUnit spoke again, careful and hesitant. “I… don’t understand. Can you please clarify your…” It hesitated again, apparently thinking better of repeating its request for orders, given Mensah’s previous response. “Your… intentions?”
Arada leaned forward a little, resting her elbows on her knees as she looked at it earnestly. “We’ve been treating you like equipment, when we should have been treating you like the person you are.”
It actually shook its head a little at that. “I am listed as equipment on the survey package inventory, Dr. Arada. It is only logical that you should consider me such.” Its tone was as polite as ever, but Mensah could hear an undercurrent of confusion in it.
“Well, look, you’re… partially constructed from cloned human material, right?” Ratthi asked. The SecUnit nodded slowly in response, and Ratthi continued with barely a pause for breath, ignoring Pin-Lee elbowing him not-so-gently in the ribs.. “And you can think for yourself, and you have feelings, right?”
“I…” The SecUnit clearly didn’t know how to respond to that, and fell conspicuously silent.
Mensah gave Ratthi a reproving look. “Ratthi…”
“I know, I know, but–” Ratthi let out a huff and gestured in frustration. “This whole practice is disgusting, it’s horrible, it’s outright slavery! This is no more a machine than Gurathin is–”
“Ratthi, enough,” Mensah said more firmly, cutting him off. “Not now. We should be going through the survey package, anyway. The sooner we find out if we’re missing any more information, the sooner we can ask DeltFall for copies. All right?”
Ratthi subsided back into the couch with a sigh, as Overse patted his leg comfortingly. Mensah waited until she could see them all getting back to work in the feed, then turned to face the SecUnit again. It hadn’t moved, its posture still SecUnit-perfect and impossible to read. She glanced back at the others, then sent the unit a private message over the feed. [Are you all right?]
[I am at 97% performance reliability,] it replied promptly. Its presence in the feed was completely neutral.
Mensah resisted the urge to sigh. That was probably the best she was going to get out of it, at least for now. [If you have any questions about anything, please remember that you’re allowed to ask any of us, okay?]
[Acknowledged.] Whether or not it actually followed through and asked them anything remained to be seen, Mensah thought dryly to herself, but she didn’t let any of that leak into the feed. [Do you have any further orders for me, Dr. Mensah?]
[Not right now,] she replied. [Just remember that you don’t have to patrol outside all the time if you don’t feel like it, okay?]
[Acknowledged.] It paused for a moment, then added, almost apologetically, [I am due to do a security sweep of the perimeter.]
Mensah resisted the urge to ask it if it actually wanted to do said security sweep - she figured it had been asked enough questions for now. [All right. Let me know if you notice any significant changes, especially anything that might relate to more unknown fauna.]
[Acknowledged.] It turned neatly on its heel and strode out of the main lounge, presumably to return to its patrol. Mensah waited until it was out of sight, then sighed and rubbed at her temples. She had to remind herself that the unit had probably spent years being treated as an object, had never been asked for its own thoughts or opinions. Of course it would struggle with the concept to start with. They just needed to give it time.
She set aside thoughts of the SecUnit for now, and focused her attention on the survey information in her feed. The sooner they could figure out what other information might be missing, the sooner they could contact DeltFall.