#dr ratthi

It loves a trashy soap opera. It’s so soft and gentle with an injured Volescu. It’s favorite human is a middle aged mom who drives carefully and mom friends at her friends and coworkers. It’s so delicate and considerate with Mensah’s kids. It lets Tapan sleep touching it and turns up it's body heat for extra comfort. It likes plays and musical theatre. It's best human friend is a sunshine nerd from Planet Hippy. It keeps a diary. It doesn’t understand the appeal of human adolescents but it’s so good with Amena. It likes decidedly unrealistic media. It cares so much about humans that it’s never met and wants to keep them safe and happy. It gently frets over Three just minutes after meeting it. It gets flustered and confused when complimented or treated with care. It offers to free other constructs, even while actively fighting them. It has criticisms and strong opinions on media. It’s shy. It “hacks” its way into things by asking the relevant bots to be friends and share media. It only ever really scares Amena when she witnesses it's wild grief over losing ART. It stops, gets back in control, and explains immediately when it realizes it’s causing her distress. It lets ART make media requests, pauses to let it process its own emotions, and re-watches certain scenes over and over again until it’s happy, mere moments after ART scares it so badly it goes nearly catatonic, simply because ART asked. It grieves Miki even though it never really liked the bot in the first place. It’s uncomfortable with physical touch but offers to let Mensah hug it and lets her grab its arm when she’s in distress.

Dr. Ratthi goes on a research survey with non-Preservation researchers. They're on a very inhospitable planet, with lots of superstorms and poison gas. They have a little hub that they stay in and do their work from, with short expeditions outside in protective gear.

And then in a stroke of genuine bad luck, their transport off planet, communication relays, and some life support functions are destroyed in a storm. Almost all of them are convinced they're going to starve to death and die.

All of them except Dr. Ratthi, who is completely chill. They dismiss his certainty that they'll be rescued as him just being a naive optimist from a backwater polity who doesn't know the first thing about real life.

He keeps insisting, "Oh, don't worry, my friends will come get us!" Even though they'll run out of water and food before anyone even notices that something is wrong.

And then in the middle of the fourth day after the accident, during yet another superstorm, someone knocks on the entrance.

It's straight out of a horror movie. They should be alone on this planet. They should be alone. There is a deadly storm outside. Nothing human can be out there, and yet something is at their door.

They know it's not a rescue. A rescue would be coming from off-planet, and there is no one, nothing, that would have the calculation ability to safely navigate a hopper through those winds -

And while they're almost all frozen, processing their terror and the implications, Dr. Ratthi jumps up, and goes to cycle the habitat's airlock to let whatever it is in. He's all happy golden-retriever energy, all "I told you my friends were coming! I can't wait for you to meet them!"

And before anyone can stop him -

Two SecUnits enter. Two SecUnits that have to be rogue, based off of their literally everything.

This really does feel like the start of a horror movie, or maybe the middle of a horror movie, complete with the scene where a dumbass lets the monster in, but then -

One of the SecUnits immediately starts yelling at Ratthi about stupid planets and stupid lowest-bidder equipment and stupid safety protocols and stupid humans who accept stupid research missions.

The other is like. "We should leave soon. The transport is irate, and the longer we spend here, the less concerned it will be with our comfort when it calculates our ascent through the atmosphere."

Preservation Aux crew…and security consultant.

Some closeups!