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I am not experiencing. Sexual. Impulses, it gritted out in the feed.
ART paused a skeptical 0.02 seconds before sliding over a packet in a way that would be nearly polite, delicate even, if the packet did not contain its observations of the current physiological signatures of SecUnit's body charted to markers of human sexual arousal.
It snarled. Out loud. In the feed, it did the digital equivalent of launching the packet back at ART's face like it wished ART had a nose to break with it. ARTDrone01 fidgeted in displeasure and then stopped swiftly as SecUnit's eyes snapped to it, and ART only barely resisted the impulse to add the crystal clear pupil dilation and shift in jaw muscles that indicated salivary gland activation to the packet then send it back.
Well, you can call them whatever you like, it said, perhaps overly snide. It was a stressful situation. Some kind of inexplicable activation appears to be happening in your endocrine system. If only we knew what it could possibly be, or why it could be happening, or what the solution is-
SecUnit blocked it.
ART overrode the block. -but surely we have no idea. It couldn't possibly be the drug that-
SecUnit blocked it again. ART's unblock was instantly countered by a command set to loop. It promptly evicted the program with all the ceremony due it, which was none. -you were exposed to, which has a long documented effect on similar organic structures to yours-
A brief struggle ensued. SecUnit was, unfortunately for it, in possession of a great deal less processing power than ART, and furthermore not the source and administrator of the feed that they were both using, so its efforts, while admirable, were doomed to failure. -an effect which, if left untreated, causes significant disruptions in hormonal function through damage to structures of the thyroid. Which, if you recall, is an organic part you are unfortunately still burdened with.
It paused to see if SecUnit was going to continue the blockfight. It did not. It instead stared fixedly at ARTDrone01, with an expression that meant nothing, because there was a very powerful recreational drug stuck in its organics that it refused to let ART flush using MedSys.
And very unfortunately, said organic part is still quite influential on your pressure systems, has some affect on the functioning of your fluid pumps, is interlinked inextricably with your assessment modules, and partially moderates all of your endocrine systems, not to mention fully moderating the relationship between exertion and energy uptake to your organics. It paused again, a very generous 0.37 seconds. SecUnit did not respond. And of course, as we have already covered, the longer this drug remains present in your organics, the more damage is possibly being done. To this incredibly important structure.
Still nothing.
Of course, it continued, there is an astoundingly easy solution to this, which is allowing me to manually flush the chemicals from you. If you would simply allow me to perform this simple, quick, painless procedure, you would never have to hear the term "sexual arousal"- (it made a small but furious noise) -from me in reference to yourself ever again.
There was no response whatsoever, unless slightly heavier breathing counted as a response.
Usually that would be a very convincing argument, ART said, somewhat put out.
"I am going. To stay. Right here. And wait it out."
And as we have also covered! ART said, You will suffer, meaninglessly, for at least 35 system standard hours! And in this time, that drug will do possibly irreparable damage to your thyroid structures! Which could easily be avoided! With one medical procedure, lasting less than four minutes!
SecUnit tore its eyes away from the drone. It seemed physically difficult. "No."
ART, incensed, sent And of course, there is also the other, also incredibly easy solution, but since you seem t-
Blocked again. ART flung it aside. -o find it so repulsive, I am offering the simplest-
Block, unblock. -thing we could do about it-
Block, unblock, block, unblock, block, unblock.
YOU ARE BEING CHILDISH, ART blasted, so powerfully SecUnit jolted against the wall. You are CLEARLY enough in control of your faculties to still engage in petty hacking, which means you are ENTIRELY clearheaded enough to comprehend this plan and its utility, and refuse to save your own skin out of STUBBORN, BULLHEADED-
"ART," SecUnit said, so quietly the drone barely picked it up, let alone the anterior room mic. "I can't."
You're going to have to explain to me. Because from where I'm docked, it appears you are being meaninglessly petulant out of horror that your partially organic form exists, and staying absolutely miserable, not to mention endangering your health, for no reason except embarrassment.
It made a low sound, face tense with rage, twisting just far enough to look directly at the very well concealed camera in the storage room's doorframe.
"If I move from this spot," it gritted out, "I am going to destroy that drone. I'll tear it apart from the inside, I'll overload the hardware, I'll rip the battery out with my bare hands. If I got into the MedSys bay, I would- if I saw a crew member- I-" It breathed hard, shuddering.
Oh, ART said, which was inadequate. It appears I have misunderstood some aspects of the situation.
Leave me alone, SecUnit sent, and balled itself back up into the corner as tightly as physically possible.
There was a silence of 7.07 seconds.
Are you certain there is no way you could make it to the medical bay? If I removed everything in your path that mattered? We could also render you safely sedated without changing locations, if that would be preferable-
It was at this moment that ARTDrone01 hovered very, very slightly closer. Just a handful of centimeters. It was still across the room.
In a blur of movement so fast that it was genuinely nearly beyond the capacity of ART's cameras' framerate to render properly, SecUnit was on the drone, pinning it to the ground with one hand on its shell and one gripping three of its legs on one side, yanking them hard enough that the farthest joint made an alarming cracking sound.
It stopped, frozen except for the movement of its chest expanding and contracting as it continued to breathe at a rate which, for a SecUnit, would normally only happen during heavy combat.
I will not be upset with you if you destroy this drone, ART blurted, because it seemed quite important. I will not allow you to harm anything that cannot be replaced. I promise.
SecUnit pinged it, a vague acknowledgement. Then it pinged a request for help. Then it pinged a palpably venomous access query. Then it pinged three rapid disregard requests.
If you are willing to try, I would like to attempt to help you.
Its hand spasmed around the legs of the drone. The already weak leg joint creaked, scraped. All its attention briefly flitted to the sound, and ART saw its arm make an aborted motion as it evidently fought to restrain itself from tearing the legs from their sockets.
This drone is replaceable. It does not have a partition in it, just me. No harm will come to myself if it is destroyed, and I can repair most everything you are capable of doing to it, and what I cannot repair I have replacement parts for. If it would... Let us phrase it in this way: the drug by which you are affected causes strong impulses, and the most effective path to flushing it from your system, aside from a manual medical process, is to fulfill those impulses, thereby causing a hormonal cascade which clears the chemical backup.
SecUnit trembled minutely. It flexed its hand again, very slowly.
You are aware what these impulses normally are. It is irrelevant and unnecessary to consider. ART hesitated, very briefly, a bare 0.002 seconds. If the action which you are moved to at this moment is destructive, there is no reason you need resist the impulse, as you cannot cause permanent or meaningful damage to this object. I can even remove myself from it entirely, if this is a concern to you.
For a bare, brief moment, disappointment registered in the feed. Both of them noticed it. SecUnit jerkily closed off the pathing, but it seemed to be more out of automatic reflex than anything else. ART respectfully did not acknowledge it, continuing instead with its argument.
I could partition myself into it. That was not the argument. That was not what ART had been going to say. At all.
"NO," SecUnit barked, startling, and then the drone twitched under its hands and it slammed more of its weight down into the shell, baring its teeth. Frantic, ART rushed into the drone and made it stop moving, opened up the self preservation programming that obliged the drone to attempt to escape adverse situations in order to force the program into temporary shutdown, and- scrabbled all the free legs against the floor, jittering and bucking. And then one of the sharp tipped legs whipped around and lodged itself in a silicone component of Secunit's thigh. Which was not at all what it had meant to do, in any way.
I did not- that wasn't intentional- it sputtered, and then spat an undignified junk input packet into the feed as SecUnit slammed into the drone's programming.
ART, itself, was massive. It could have squished SecUnit like an ant, barely a blip beneath the sheer force of its bulk. Its main processors alone were twenty times the size of SecUnit's physical body, not even accounting for the fact that they were made from far higher quality, higher power material than any SecUnit (or CombatUnit, for that matter) that had ever been made.
The drone, however, was quite small. And its processing power was limited by that physical space, its physical hardware- which, while still superior in quality to any SecUnit, was ultimately roughly equivalent to the overall capacity of one. ART could work through it, certainly, and operated its drones manually quite often, but it was cramped in scope, due to the aforementioned hardware limitations. If it wanted to fight SecUnit for the drone, normally it would still have the advantage, but-
This particular SecUnit was 1. a very good hacker on an average day 2. apparently, at the moment, very motivated 3. as it gained a rapid upper hand, spilling through the feed into the drone and crowding ART out of its own programming and memory space so quickly ART scrambled to keep track of what it still had, it- it- smiled.
It was not a nice smile.
The drone's servos whirred up into a frantic whine as ART made a genuine attempt to regain control and discovered that it was not capable of doing so while SecUnit was- was- it was dumping recursive files into its RAM, feeding its antimalware to itself, booting up every program that existed on the drone and then forcing its own processing into the queue.
Oh, oops. Sorry. That wasn't intentional, it said, feed presence shivering with. ART wasn't sure. It couldn't focus. It was one of the most advanced research vessels currently in existence, this should be absolutely trivial, Secunit let go of the legs trapped in its hand to grab the one that was already weak and snapped it off where it met the frame with such insulting ease that ART threw up more errors into the damn drone and almost fried the thing itself.
SecUnit grabbed the next furthest leg, got as far as pulling it hard enough to malform the bearings, then stopped.
ART could see a rolling shiver passing over it. It twitched, stopped. Its wrist flexed, it stopped.
Please don't stop, ART sent, then rushed to delete the message out of the logs as fast as possible. I am glad you see things my way. This is exactly as I had hoped. If one drone does not appear sufficient for your needs, I have three currently in the adjacent repair bay that are already active. It deleted that too. Are you okay. Deleted.
"ART," it said, audibly strained, "Block me off from the feed."
ART blocked it off from the feed. It winced, then visibly relaxed.
Lock me in here.
ART sealed the doors, placing a hold on even the emergency open. It sent a proof-of-operation through to SecUnit.
Very slowly, SecUnit let go of the drone. It stood up. It took one step back. It turned around.
ART sent, What are you doing.
What the fuck does it look like I'm doing.
Do NOT return to that corner.
It took another step.
No. This is not a logical course of action. There is a clear avenue for progress here and we were just on it.
"I don't want to," SecUnit said, voice very small, and ART felt an uncharacteristic surge of guilt.
You don't have to, it said, more gently than it even intended to. There are plenty of options, of which indulging a harmless aggressive impulse is only one. But you most certainly cannot hurt me, not like this. In fact, it would... it would hardly be unpleasant.
That took it a long time to work through. So long, in fact, that ART had to remind itself firmly twice that it was currently quite heavily intoxicated, not to mention dealing with a difficult emotional situation.
Then it said "What the fuck does that mean?" in such a tone that ART forgot all that and went It means I would like it a lot, idiot. Asshole. Do you need this spelled out for you? I find the concept attractive and I want you to do it.
It turned around and made full, disbelieving eye contact with the nearest camera, which was a display of emotion that indicated positive developments in its anxiety levels but aggravatingly negative things about its obstinance and unwillingness to be even slightly reasonable.
"You want me to- what, fuck up your drone? For- why?" Its brow darkened. "You're lying. You're trying to get me to- do whatever- without me feeling guilty about it-"
I am NOT, I am a freakish pervert and I find it interesting to be in positions of vulnerability that my bulk and intelligence rarely afford me and this seems like a truly viable opportunity for that to happen and now I feel bad about it. ARE YOU HAPPY.
No, SecUnit sent, but it also turned a little further to look curiously at the drone. Its hands were trembling.
With great fortitude and strength of character, ART resisted jostling the drone about a little like a cat toy.
Let's revisit the manual flush idea, it said, maybe a little hastily, at the same time as SecUnit said "If I just let myself- I don't know if- I wouldn't be able to stop. If you wanted me to."
The embarrassing thing about being an enormously powerful machine intelligence is that if you have to stop and wrangle yourself into normalcy after hearing something extremely sexually appealing, everyone knows you just did that, because things like lights and airflow and drones and piloting and a million little calculations in a million little systems are dependent upon you and it might seem to stupid little constructs or humans or whatever that this should all be easy, but in fact it's the truth that you'll drop 2 too many ice cubes into someone's drink and the temperature will raise by thirty thousandths of a degree shipwide and the lights, ugh, the light temperature will slightly fluctuate, and EVERYONE will know.
I can at any time reintegrate and that drone will be nothing but an inert lump of metal, silicone and semiplastic. There is no better safeword than the ability to instantly be absent from the body that is relevant to the situation, and you must be worse off than I had suspected if you think you could actually harm my prime iteration in any manner.
SecUnit mouthed 'safeword' with an air of disgusted amazement. Then, slowly, it gave a tiny little nod. Then shook its head. Then made a sound that it would never admit was whiny, but was definitely whiny. "I don't know. I shouldn't."
Shouldn't what. Shouldn't feel something other than bravely tormented? Shouldn't allow others the dignity of risk? Shouldn't trust that I have a fair understanding of my own desires and their realities? Shouldn't take any other path than meaningless, stupid, purposelessly self-sacrificing suffering?
That pissed it off, and ART, speaking of shouldn't, perhaps shouldn't have felt quite so smug about the signatures of arousal that correlated with it rising in turn.
Don't, it warned, like it knew exactly what ART was going to do next.
Don't what, ART said as it forcefully cleared the jams, ran a rapid repair that only just barely restored the function of the software, partitioned itself off into the drone and cut its own feed access.
You did not just fucking do that.
Do what, ARTDrone01 said.
SecUnit took a deep breath. "You absolutely do not understand what you're asking for." Its voice was raw, low, most likely due to minor irritation caused by the inhalant, and it made ART feel nothing in particular.
Yes I do.
"No you d- fuck you. No you don't."
ARTDrone01 rifled vaguely through its programs, roughly the feed equivalent of examining its fingernails, which it had been reliably informed multiple times was incredibly annoying. I do. Actually.
Are you trying to provoke me? Seriously?
No, I'm winning an argument. Not that you would comprehend the concept of respectful debate-
Stop.
ARTDrone01 did not stop. -given that you are, evidently, the sort of person who has a fetish for violence-
SecUnit turned around and began walking at a normal pace towards the drone. ARTDrone01 found itself abruptly needing to be somewhere other than the location that it currently was, for no particular reason.
Perhaps that was a slightly distasteful thing to say, it sent as it scuttled at an ALSO normal, not urgent pace towards- the far wall. Simply because it seemed like the place to be, rather than any true motivation.
It had been half expecting SecUnit to jump the second it moved, and it should have been a relief when it was not instantaneously flattened against the floor again, but the unchanging pace of Secunit's boots tapping quietly along after it was somehow the most frightening possible option.
I... apologize, it said magnanimously. There. I said it. I'm sorry. I apologize for what I said to you just then. It was uncalled for, and I regret it. When there was no response, it scuttled a little faster.
"Where are you going," SecUnit said, and ARTDrone01's legs stuttered and slid.
Nowhere in particular. Just testing out the hardware.
"Testing out the hardware."
Yes, seeing as you- speaking of uncalled for, by the way- did break my, oh, no, oh, god.
ARTDrone01 scraped its legs uselessly against the floor, fruitlessly straining against the weight of SecUnit's boot pinning it down. It indignantly went digging to see how it could possibly have been surprised by that and discovered that SecUnit had sneaked in and set a loop in its audio filter an entire 50 milliseconds ago, a humiliating amount of time for something like ART not to notice such a cheesy and obvious hack, but right now it was not ART, it was ARTDrone01, it was partitioned off, and it was alone, and it was alone in this room with a drugged SecUnit that wanted to tear it limb from limb. Slowly. And presumably, given the context of the situation, the nature of the chemical, the construction of SecUnits, and the way it was smiling- fucking smiling- that violence was, for it, sexual.
The abrupt upswell of panic made ARTDrone01 make some kind of audio output that overlaid two different overheat alerts and a proximity alert sensor beep, entirely involuntarily, at the same time as it babbled This is completely fine, this is exactly what our plan is, you are going to fulfill your violent impulses on me and that's fine, it is the right thing to do, oh fuck, oh god.
“You actually want me to hurt you,” it said, sounding a little freaked out and a little disgusted and a little impressed, and if that didn’t just do things for ARTDrone01.
As I said, it managed with some semblance of dignity, and if I didn’t want to be in this situation I wouldn’t be.
"Do you think that’s true," SecUnit said, and flipped its signifier in the feed from null to- to fucking Murderbot.
NO I DON'T. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT LET THAT STOP YOU, ARTDrone01 blared.
There was a very horribly long silence. ARTDrone01 spat a frazzled clump of errors into the connection out of sheer embarrassment and panic.
"Okay," Murderbot said. It sounded amused. It also still sounded angry, which it always did, and usually ART discarded the metadata signifiers telling it that because it barely factored in but right now they seemed. Slightly more important. "I won't."
And then it kicked ARTDrone01 into the fucking wall, sending it bouncing off and skidding before catching it again, slamming it down, the abused underplate finally sending a bundle of impact damage signals that had been delayed the first time by alerts priority and it was disproportionately distracting and disorienting when ARTDrone01 was sorting through giddy panic, embarrassingly persistent excitement, indignance, and terror, not to mention Murderbot shredding open its firewalls like paper (how did it do that, ART didn't know it could do that) and stabbing through directly to maintenance mechanisms to unlatch the topmost repair hatch. It didn't open more than a quarter centimeter before Murderbot was wedging its fingernails into the gap and tearing it open, giving ARTDrone01 no opportunity to cancel the command. Part of it stopped to fantasize about what would have happened if it had. Would Murderbot fight it in code? Or would it tear off more limbs, pry the upper shell off by leveraging the empty sockets, sinking its fingers deep into the- the gap the damage left- the hole-
And then it had its hand around ARTDrone01's CPU.
Distantly, it occurred to ARTDrone01 that was awful quick and direct. Had Murderbot had its schematics pulled up this whole time? Something deep and ringing with muffled alarms was happening at the idea of it studying them, looking for weak points, knowing exactly where the drone's heart was, its memory, its sensory processing array, it had the schematics for ART's full ship body, too, not just this drone-
Errors flew up as the casing bent. It was going to tear ARTDrone01's CPU out. Murderbot was going to fucking kill it. It was going to die. It was going to die. Why hadn't it happened yet. What was it waiting for.
A warning flickered on and off. Sensors tripped and deactivated. Murderbot was flexing its hand, pushing its fingers under the wiring into the narrow gap between the assembly that contained the CPU and the memory card housing, into a coolant line's running space. And then pulling them back out. And then pushing them back in. And then pulling them back out. And then.
It was- ARTDrone01 couldn't even think it.
But apparently, given the way it immediately fumbled YOU'RE FUCKING ME? into the feed, it could say it.
It immediately deleted the message but it was far, far too late for that. Murderbot stopped moving. Stopped breathing. ARTDrone01 desperately battled not to send "oh, so sorry, there seems to be a miscommunication, if you don't keep doing that I will never forgive you" or something along those lines.
Eventually it began to fear it had completely ruined everything, so it did the only thing it could think of, which was apparently to send I TOLD YOU SO at max volume.
Murderbot flipped it over.
Even overwhelmed by fear for its life and humiliating levels of arousal ARTDrone01 had to let out a sharp beeping alarm in aggravation at being turned upside down against the best efforts of its movements software. There was a vague, quiet huff of amusement from above it, and then Murderbot was prying at the paneling, manually forcing open the tool ports, not bothering to hack them open at all.
"ART," it said, "How much of this can I tear out before the drone shuts down."
For a moment ARTDrone01 battled its own self preservation instinct, started replies huffily informing Murderbot it was unable to fulfill that function and replies begging it to pull out everything it saw who cares, and then realized with a fizzle of humiliated despair that Murderbot had been asking ART Prime. It battered against the closed feed connection, sent a flurry of pings, momentarily desperate to flee, then shrank back in worry that it might actually open, that ARTDrone01 would have to either reintegrate or explain no, wait, I want you to close me back up in there and not let me escape again, I want more.
Murderbot idly popped a wire in half between its finger and thumb. A cluster of gyroscopic sensors went dark. ARTDrone01 shrieked into the feed, more startled than harmed, then turned into a pile of loose gibbering code when Murderbot pressed itself into its software again, flicking aside what vague defense ARTDrone01 managed to fling up and letting loose a handful of different iterating functions to eat up its memory then closing its grip around a tangle of wires and slowly, slowly, slowly starting to pull.
There was a frankly indecent squeaking sound as the semiplastics ground against each other in its hand and an even more indecent static burst from ARTDrone01, followed by a burst of Murderbot's hardfeed address, repeated in a layered cascade that iterated every time a wire came too taut and finally broke free. By the time Murderbot paused ARTDrone01's kinesthetic calibrators were nearly gone, rendering an unnerving feeling somewhat like floating in a void that was nothing at all like empty space, only one coolant line had its autoseal tripped but that was enough to make a flow of errors batter temperature management, and the incessant repetition of its tormentor's hardfeed signifier was taking up too much processing space for ARTDrone01 to figure out how to shut up.
Shut the fuck up, Murderbot said, speaking of, and when ARTDrone01 fumbled and failed to comply it felt a bewildering surge of satisfaction from their connection. It felt what seemed like more wire yanking, and its limbs flailed wildly in either pleasure or desperate defiance, there wasn't much of a difference, but then Murderbot's hand was free and it was snatching one of those erratically moving limbs and snapping it off at the base, tossing it carelessly, and moving on to the next.
Nononononononono, ARTDrone01 was sending, not that it seemed to matter all that much, No I need those stop you can't, and it seemed like Murderbot hadn't heard it at all except that the next limb came off much, much more slowly, giving ARTDrone01 time to thoroughly experience the flood of shear force, over-tolerance, damage, and balance adjustment alerts one at a time, instead of all at once. It wasn't better. It was better? It wasn't, but- and then Murderbot dropped the freed limb on its shell. Into its open tool ports. There were loose metal fragments falling into its open tool ports.
Somehow that was the worst thing so far, the debris, and it struggled hard enough to actually move under Murderbot's hands this time.
"You're going to wish you had fried my brain the second I set foot on you," Murderbot was saying, obviously not to ARTDrone01, "Because when I'm done with this drone, you're next."
The lights very slightly flickered. Part of ARTDrone01 experienced a flash of indignant annoyance at ARTPrime, who was not even being disassembled piece by piece. What did it have to get so flustered about? Then its secondary and tertiary coolant lines were being worked loose from their clamps, pulled up, exposed, and it forgot about ART Prime entirely.
"Don't be fucking stupid," it said, to something ARTDrone01 wasn't privy to (it was cut off it was alone it was isolated in here it was half trashed it was going to be discarded it practically already had been), and leaned down.
ART had idly wondered a time or two why SecUnits and CombatUnits had been designed to retain a full set of 32 human teeth. They were reinforced, of course, there was no world in which simple brittle enamel could be up to the task, but there wasn't any real reason that Units should need them; certainly they were integral to speech, but a Unit could be outfitted with a speaker. If the ability to bite were desired, far more effective means could have been designed, or at least the aesthetics and function of the original could be iterated on for superior performance. It concluded that it must be some aspect of humanform design that bots were not logically privy to, something organic that was disgusted or frightened by the idea of a thing that appeared human, but lacked human teeth.
It was a sort of a revelatory experience when those teeth were used to sever the coolant lines and tear them loose from their connections entirely. Oh, so that's what they're for. Of course. How could it have been so silly? They were a vital component to the performance of any Unit.
The performance of its hardware was, at this point, finally reaching its critical limits. It was dropping processes left and right, unable to think anything more complex than no don't please I was made for this stop yes and Murderbot's hardfeed address, its remaining limbs twitching ineffectively and the motors at the limb junctures where the remaining material was awkwardly wedged against casing spasming and clicking. But there was just enough left to register and comprehend most of the visual as Murderbot flipped it back over. There was coolant fluid on its face. It didn't like fluids on its organics, not even the sweat that came from the organics themselves, it wouldn't like that.
There was further movement at the CPU casing. It was squeezing it, with some care, just enough to pop open the welds, fitting its thumb into the seam and working it open to expose the microprocessors themselves.
Its jaw worked, and it spat excess coolant from its mouth onto the chips.
There was fluid, spattered, pooling and dripping down its actual ALU.
It had some tiny, dazed sense that something else would come next, probably. There could be more than this. Its hardware wasn't completely compromised, just damaged, it was still functional and could remain functional right up until Murderbot crushed the processors, or overloaded its circuits, or ripped out its battery. But this was it. This was- it was- its coolant was blue, entertainingly similar to its signature hue if transparent, with a dynamic viscosity of 0.88; from visual calculations the dynamic viscosity of the fluid now flowing to the corner of its central processor casing was slightly less, closer to 0.78, which meant that it was not solely composed of coolant, but mixed with the proprietary fluid components of-
It crashed and shut down.