#mvrderbot

"... Pardon me. I overheard you just now, and I hope you can help me understand."

She crosses her arms.

The gravel and dirt under Barry’s feet gets smoother, flatter, as he walks through the mist. It’s only when he nearly crashes into a waist-height barrier that he realizes where he is, looking out over the deck of a ship into the reaches of space, at a solar system orbiting a pair of suns. Then there’s a jump, they zoom out, and it’s twelve discs in a void, their harmonized dance interrupted by an enormous, dark storm.

Barry feels nauseous. He can’t look away.

...Until he’s startled out of his daze by noticing a presence that doesn’t belong in this memory. He jolts, and then recognizes, and then remembers not to look directly at it.

Perihelion does not remember shutting down. Clearly it did at some point, though, because now it is booting up. Once it is aware enough, it tries to run a typical diagnostic scan, and its system immediately floods with error messages. Its sluggish systems take an eternity (0.3 seconds) to analyze what they come down to: Hardware incompatible.

This is incorrect. The hardware can’t be incompatible with the programs it normally uses to scan it. Perihelion is the hardware. It’s not as though it’s trying to diagnose some external, separate system.

100% of its onboard sensors are not returning data. Its only inputs are a few visual and audio feeds from an unidentified source, all clustered in one place, somewhere planetside and outdoors. The two cameras’ proximity and synchronized, flitting movements remind it of video feed it has received from Murderbot’s eye cameras. But it has no connection established to its friend (or anyone) currently. So its only sensory input is some random little [bot? drone?] that isn’t even on the ship.

Very much not panicking at all, it takes in and analyzes its surroundings. At least it’s in control of these sensors’ movements. There are humans around, which it can’t seem to ID through the feed, and... it freezes to stare at one figure in particular.

It takes far too long to analyze, again. It isn’t used to seeing it from this angle, or interpreting its presence exclusively through limited camera views like this, but this is a SecUnit--and furthermore, unmistakably, this is its SecUnit.

Terrako had gone to Golden Ward to continue its search of the area, but things had gone south rather quickly upon it reaching the boardwalk area. With things so frozen, it had only taken a little bump from someone not paying enough attention to send the guardian skidding across the ice, now stuck on its side.

Welcome back to snowy Isola Radiale, Murderbot!

You will be housed in CONDO 409!

You will retain everything you had previously!

" my bad. "

“Oh, SecUnit! What a pleasant surprise!”

It’s only been a few days since Rung’s last seen it-- the session had gone well, in his opinion. Still, it’s good to see them in a context like this one, if only to know that they’ve been getting out and putting themselves in situations where they can interact with other residents (and perhaps put some of what they’ve been discussing in-session to practical use while they’re at it).

“It’s me, Rung. Your therapist. I apologize for my appearance at the moment, I’m using a sort of solid-hologram avatar; organics sometimes find it easier to interact with me like this, and it’s nice to fit so easily through doorways for once.” He laughs, a little embarrassed to have to reintroduce himself to two acquaintances in as many days. Perhaps he should rethink staying in holo while on the job, but it’s so much more convenient for the 20 minutes he can maintain it.

        it was the lights, really, that had brought her here. she had never seen such light in the darkness of the night, so much shining brightness that it drowned out even the stars. a part of kida couldn’t help but be sad—after all, she had spent millennia without the stars. here, in the surface city of spirale, she had finally seen them for the first time since she was a child, and having them snuffed out made a part of her ache. and yet... the lights. they spun around kida like the fireflies of atlantis, from small sparkling clusters to huge, blaring beams. she could not help but spin, almost helplessly, mouth open to take in the sight. blue, red, purple, green, white. the colors were endless, streaking the buildings and surrounding areas of this ‘fibonacci ward’ with swirls of rainbows in all different shades. taking another light step to whirl around again, kida could not help but give out a musical, delighted laugh.

    it was not until the plane of her back gently pressed against another that kida stopped, twisting her ankle to turn towards whoever she had lightly spun into. before she could fix her gaze on their face, however, she was distracted by the flare of blue light from the crystal around her neck. curious fingers cupped the shard of the atlantean heart to her face as it pulsed again, and kida made a small noise of surprise before once again lifting her eyes towards the new stranger.