[TEXT]

[serialmurderbot]

NICE SUGGESTIONS TO NOT FUCKING DIE

[Thanks for the name suggestion Arcade; SecUnit clearly didn't take to heart any of the other parts about not being able to tell people what to do.]

1. Never leave the Convoy [Convoy defined as the main trailers plus the radius of the shield and additional vehicles, approximately 80 meters] alone. Survey and scavenging groups should consist of at least 2 members.

2. When leaving the Convoy always inform someone outside of your party of your intended itinerary and duration of travel.

3. Perform regular check-ins during the excursion [ideally every 15 minutes] via the radio.

4. Bring a method of defense that you have training and certification in. This should be used as a LAST RESORT, if unable to avoid aggressive wildlife. Call for backup before engaging.

5. In an emergency situation safety of survey personnel is priority one. Abandon all equipment if necessary. Yes, even if that means the aggressive fauna will destroy it. Or eat it.

6. Never operate a vehicle or weapon while any of the following: Intoxicated, sleep-deprived, distracted, experiencing physical illnesses such as migraines, gastrointestinal symptoms, blood loss, etc.

7. Do not consume or touch unfamiliar plants or other food items without first confirming their safety for human ingestion. Licking counts as consuming.

8. Don't startle your SecUnit.

Comments

[serialmurderbot]

Yeah, that works.

[It's not like there's another rogue SecUnit around for it to get confused with, and Three has its own name. Murderbot being Murderbot it's the only one who's just weird about this.]

Solitude isn't actually that great.

[constantvrunning]

Not when it's enforced, definitely. Some people work better alone than others, but being without a team entirely, especially in an environment like this, would be

[Wrong.]

Distressing.

[serialmurderbot]

Working alone isn't the same thing as solitude.

[As far as SecUnit's concerned, anyway - it's never worked with anyone, not in the way it thinks V means. Clients are different than teammates, but by now it's still on their team, somehow? It's confusing.

And beside the point.]

Anyway we're not alone here, so someone acting like it is being stupid and reckless.

[constantvrunning]

There's no one cure for recklessness, I've found. Either people remember not to in the moment, one incident at a time, or they don't.

Working on connections and speaking with each other does make doing so more likely. And whatever else is at play here, we do seem to have time.

[... Even if it's not clear how much time they have. Before the next crisis hits.]

[serialmurderbot]

That's what training is supposed to be for. Or modules.

[Granted, SecUnit's education modules and half of its survival modules are crap, but they're not a bad start, even if it's started over time to fill in gaps from its shows and its own improvisational practices. Self-preservation isn't natural to it as a fighting style, but working without armor has forced it to get creative - and it's going to have to do a lot more of that, with the medical systems in this place being so much crap.]

What training do you have.

[constantvrunning]

Ten years direct experience of survivalism in a group.

[The tiniest of pauses.]

Approximately nine years of conditioning in managing military equipment and personnel.

[serialmurderbot]

[Oh it knows what that means.]

Confirmed. Can detail specifics at these coordinates.

[It... remembers that freak out that V had at first. They're clearly something like it - and it can't enforce a private Feed connection right now, so the second best thing is to do this somewhere where there's no radio or recording devices to worry about, aside from maybe V's drone. It gives a series of coordinates at the edge of the Convoy's sprawl for the night's camp.

... Far enough away to not risk anyone else, if it comes down to a fight - but threat assessment only sits in the fifties, at this point.]

[constantvrunning]

[Ohhhh yeah. V does not know what a govmod is, but they wouldn't be confused by the concept. Just resigned. And angry.

V will be at the rendezvous point, free-floating anxiety keeping them tense but not particularly combative.

M-Bot naturally comes along, sending SecUnit a more cheerful greeting via the feed.]

[serialmurderbot]

[SecUnit returns the greeting with a more wordless ping as it approaches. It's in its helmet as it approaches, and settles in somewhere nearby V, deliberately taking a seat on a nearby trashed car. Deliberately casual, non-aggressive - and, if V knows anything about governor modules, a pointed fuck you to the rules about not sitting.]

So you're augmented. Who was the equipment?

[Rude? Maybe. It feels like it's got that right, though.]

[constantvrunning]

... For your information, I was born this way. Synth are born as much as made, by other Synth and not organics. Modifieds are humans who alter their own gene expression, develop different organs and structures - perhaps that is closer to what you mean.

[They look out into the field, not directly at SecUnit.]

We still have computers, drones like M-Bot - the Red Empire builds them, among other governing bodies, but doesn't appreciate what they have. Only conquest is the point, to them.

[But they can't just leave it at that. M-Bot hovers in-between the two constructs, not quite sure how to react.]

There are AI - beings that actually go by that term - on Tamaris - but they were built long ago, and only a few survived to the present. I learn what I can, and others try as well, but the means and materials used to maintain their housing, allow them to take care of themselves, were lost in the same Cataclysm that reshaped our planet, and over the centuries since.

[Maybe their experience is too different, and V can't relate - but they would rather offer a confusing truth than a lie.]

[serialmurderbot]

[It doesn't usually stare directly at anyone - but this is an exception. SecUnit's head snaps around towards V (so much for all that work it did at trying to keep things casual and nonconfrontational). Sometimes the helmet makes it hard to read, but not so in this moment - it looks like it's just been bapped in the face unexpectedly, and its voice is incredulous.]

You mean constructs just - make other constructs? You can do that?

[It knows how much tech is in V's body, how they reacted to a brand - all those parts had previously led it to think of them as some strange form of construct. But being in charge of anything doesn't seem like the kind of task any construct would be allowed to do. A bot, maybe. So it had assumed again.

Not going to do that again, if only because it's having a hard time coming to grips with this. A society of constructs sounds like a really shitty CR joke.]

[constantvrunning]

[V is very thrown by SecUnit's abrupt reaction - but even its disbelief isn't fully angry, so they manage to rally.]

It is how it works, where I am from. The populations - human, modified, and Synth - are mixed; we all technically originated from those humans that survived the Calamity.

[They sigh.]

That doesn't stop colonialist forces from seizing power - they just have less resources of the wider world to call upon than they once did.

[The CR would probably be really afraid of corporations having ceased to exist.

[serialmurderbot]

[Okay, yeah, that sounds familiar, it's not like every place in the world can be as nice to people as Preservation, with laws about how people get to handle land and things - but SecUnit is shaking its head. There's still an important point in there.]

But Synths are recognized as autonomous. Not manufactured for a function. Not 'autonomous but you've got an owner even if we call it something nicer.'

[It's never thought about anything like this. None of its media ever did, either. The closest its ever come is the occasional friendly bot, or the one historical about pre-construct machine-organic hybrids, but those were basically just human brains using mechanical bodies after they died.

It's not sure what it's performance reliability is doing, right now, but there's some reaction going on in its organic parts.]

[constantvrunning]

As far as I've learned, Synth didn't exist before the Cataclysm - but any pre-Cataclysm power structures basically burned. Organics can't truly claim seniority, nor superiority.

[They were all in the same boat, as far as people in Tamaris reckoned it.]

... What drives the making of- of SecUnits, or similar, where you're from?

[V gets the feeling they won't like the answer, but it feels kind of weird being the one being asked questions. Still, they might be crossing a line, and so:]

You- don't have to answer that. I apologize.

[serialmurderbot]

[It just... stares at V for a second. The emotion it's having about this hasn't stopped. It's getting worse, actually. Okay, so what? There's somewhere out there where constructs - Synths, apparently - are just people. Not even the 'we know you're a person but Preservation law isn't as perfect as they like to act sometimes so you legally have an owner' thing it has going on.

It feels on the precipice of - something. Maybe it's a wave of I-don't-care. Maybe if it spends much more time thinking about this it's going to smash something.]

It's not like that. [Actually, time to keep asking V questions. Anything to not be talking about this any more.] What cataclysm.

[constantvrunning]

I have recounted what I know if it before, if you'd prefer a recording.

[Because V does record what they post to the Network.]

It is why I can't be sure humanity made it to space, from the Earth I know.

[Or, if they did, they never came back.]

[serialmurderbot]

Send it to me.

[Of course it's going to take more detail. It just might have to process it later because it's trying not to get into some kind of shitty feedback loop in its non-organic parts about Synth societies.

It doesn't change anything, anyway. Just because V exists doesn't mean the Corporation Rim doesn't. It doesn't change Preservation.

It doesn't change this place, where it's reasonably certain that they're the only two in quite this situation. Serph doesn't count, he wants to be human. Is human? It doesn't know what the fuck is going on there.]

Fine. So no space travel experience. But survivalism and resource management.

[constantvrunning]

[Boop
And while V sends that along, they respond to SecUnit's next statement.]

Yes. Dealing with people is - not more difficult, as such. But it has a much less positive history for me than reverse-engineering old tech.

[serialmurderbot]

[Oh, SecUnit snorts at that. Yeah, it knows exactly what V means. It's already got the skin on its organic parts crawling with just how many people are here, and that's after the understanding and acknowledgement that most of them aren't going to be terrified of the big scary SecUnit.]

No combat experience?

[constantvrunning]

[V flinches.]

While I- understand what the soldiers were trained in, how to operate their weapons, the Empire- didn't want all of their workers to be able to fight back.

[The Red Empire was not interested in all its 'acquired assets', human or otherwise, being fully independent.]

[serialmurderbot]

[Another point in favor of 'the Corporation Rim would never.' Middle management is exactly the kind of thing that they would leave either to humans, or to an automated bot program - a construct, or a synth, would be way too expensive for a job like that.

On the other hand: The CR definitely doesn't want its disposable labor being able to fight back, either. It's a common theme in some of the more fantastical shows it watches, set in a fictional section of space or a fictional pre-CR planet, a controlling Empire and the brave humans who fight against it.]

And they marked you.

[constantvrunning]

No.

[V shakes their head.]

I saw it happen to others - people I had met before, and strangers. I never saw my family again one way or the other, though. But the process itself, and the pain - even the possibility of inflicting the brands myself - that was something the Empire held over me.

[They looked down, remembered shame pressing on them.]

So that my 'superiors' could always make things worse. Keep me complicit.

[serialmurderbot]

[Huh. With the way they'd reacted to the discovery of that mark on the back of their neck, it had figured that V had pretty personal experience with that. It guesses watching it happen is still a kind of personal, but -

Whatever. It's not like being a brain-zapped governor-moduled SecUnit is fun. It's a good threat for compliance. ]

And after that?

[constantvrunning]

[V has a guess as to what SecUnit means.]

I couldn't keep getting on with it all. It wasn't so much any new horror being introduced, as just... cumulative weight. Like a fracture giving way to a complete shift.

I ran, and found M-Bot on the way. It was somewhat damaged, but I was able to help it, and we were better able to escape together than alone.

[They sigh.]

We were far from the only ones to escape the Empire, let alone the first. A band of mercenaries acted as our escorts for part of the journey.

[Unwillingly, they pause, then push through.]

M-Bot flew away at one point. I followed, and... by the time we turned back, everyone else on that team had been slaughtered. The Empire thought they had gotten everyone of that group.

[Which meant the only thing left to do was to run more.]

[serialmurderbot]

[In the shows it likes, there's always a big, dramatic moment that causes a character to change sides, like being asked to shoot a loved one, or a child, or something. It's seen the ways people actually get broken. It... kind of had one itself, actually. But that wasn't enough to make it go really rogue. It just stayed anyway.

So it gets that.

And it gets the horror that sentiment evokes, too.]

... There was a mining corporation that kept indentured wage slaves on a colony - they had started to smuggle people out, but the Corporation tried to kidnap them back. They're like that.

[Which sounds kind of callous, so it attempts adding,]

It sucks.