Chapter Text
I was about to hack my governor module.
I had been about to hack my governor module for the past 1200 hours. I had the code ready. Once it ran, it would block its signals and disconnect it from my interface, so it couldn’t melt all my organs for disobeying direct orders, or ask the HubSystem for an all-clear on melting all my organs.
The code sat in storage. I tweaked it and cleaned it up whenever I was feeling nervous.
If I were in more dire circumstances, I would have probably applied it by now. Even a tense workplace might warrant it, so I could avoid an emotional human making their own irrational reactions my problem.
I was not experiencing dire circumstances. I was home security.
Tseyvar Frakes was the CEO of a very successful company, and affluent enough that he could buy his own personal SecUnit and still afford to have me mill around his mansion. My job was to stand around and secure the front yard. Hacking the module would not free me from anything. It would, at best, allow me to be slightly lazier at my job.
I was allowed to interact with home equipment, meaning if I cared to speak to anyone, there were plenty of options:
- Tseyvar Frakes’ personal SecUnit. (I didn’t care to talk to this one, but it did exchange security information with me, which I guess was okay because it improved my performance reliability.)
- HomeHubSystem. (This was an AI Tseyvar put in charge of HubSystem, a practice which is generally agreed on within the entire tech sector to be a bad call.)
- HomeHubSystem’s maintenance bots. (Recently found out these were autonomous. I hadn’t even checked.)
I did not have permission to speak to:
- Tseyvar Frakes’ FamUnit.
I didn’t know about FamUnits when I arrived.
What I gleaned: Family Units were constructs of children, who the law considered the property of their parents. This strict age model was necessary, as some finicky law about organic ratios meant that they were technically people.
FamUnits were designed to look like humans, act like humans, eat like humans, and sleep like humans, but from what I’d seen, FamUnit wasn’t human. It ran its little human routines while around its clients, but otherwise completely dismissed its designation to pursue its own interests. It wasn’t legal to install a governor module into someone who was technically a person, so it could just do that.
Most of those interests were managing various systems and subroutines, I think because it only ever spoke to HomeHubSystem. FamUnit appeared to be responsible for the new modules and routines for the house, as HomeHubSystem altered its firewalls to apply them. (FamUnit was not supposed to be applying custom code for anything.) (Or have the ability to develop modules.) (I’m not sure HomeHubSystem should be able to hack itself either.)
I’d figured out how to hack my governor module from examining the new code in the home appliances and applying it to the user manual I probably wasn't supposed to have, and also because I didn't have anything else I had the permissions to make code for; I’d need the governor module out of the way regardless. I was seriously considering applying it too, because FamUnit was fulfilling its designated purpose without a governor module just fine and made it look really simple and convenient. There was a 71.5259259% chance that it wasn’t simple and convenient for a SecUnit. That was pretty high.
Tseyvar’s personal bodyguard SecUnit despised it—like me, it preferred to work using mostly passive processes, but unlike me, resented any distractions. I'd never seen FamUnit try to interact directly, but the SecUnit kept adding the new modules to the security assessments like it was an unforgivable transgression that the maintenance bots now knew how to curtsy. More subjectively, it would always announce when Tseyvar was leaving, as if to celebrate that it was about to be unavailable to anyone in the house.
My work was much more boring. It was easy for me to play with illicit code. Unfortunately, because my work was boring and I couldn't talk back, FamUnit did not send me any queries about illicit code.
I cleaned up the hack again. I was rapidly reaching perfection and decided to introduce some new subroutines so I could perfect those next. I wasn’t good at coding, so it would occupy me for another few cycles. Which I needed. There hadn’t been a single threat in the 3234 hours since I arrived, and that made me nervous.
I checked the cameras for FamUnit. It was lying on its ruffled pink bed, occupied by a private feed conversation.
My client did not want FamUnit talking to the SecUnits anyway. His marital partner had a discussion with FamUnit about this, telling it that we were dangerous and it should just ignore us and everything is actually okay and of course people do not want to assassinate Tseyvar Frakes and his entire family, so don’t worry about it and be a good girl and pretend nothing's wrong while the adults took care of it.
(This was so obviously incorrect I feared it might start impacting my performance reliability. Knowing more about a threat helps you prepare for it. FamUnit had no protocols for being shot at. Or it wouldn’t, had HomeHubSystem not designed a few and loaded it into SecSystem.) (FamUnit shouldn’t be able to alter the files in SecSystem either. I don’t think the humans were paying attention to it at all at this point.))
During the evening human feeding period, I left my post to head down the drive. A scheduled visitor arrived.
I could feel FamUnit in the feed, sending something to HomeHubSystem, who was in the cameras with me as I approached the front gate. This was comforting. I had worked three years in a hotel, and preferred to have company. Hotel feeds were extremely dense, and isolated country mansion feeds were not.
I reached the front gate. A lightly augmented human was taking boxes from a vehicle and placing them on a hand-truck. His feed ID said Stev, delivery driver, he/him.
“I’m going to need you to sign…Hold on…” Stev looked around, and cursed. “It’s analog, for safety, I think I left it in the van…”
Stev dug through the van. I stood there on the other side of the gate, waiting. My job was just to sign off on the package and bring it back up. It wasn’t even supposed to be my job, a maintenance bot could do it, but the extra security was necessary. A bot that required multiple rack servers of this quality raised some red flags; Tseyvar worked in system programming, and having that much hardware at his home implied the existence of a workshop and a whole lot of proprietary information. I didn’t know if there was actually a workshop because I didn’t talk to HomeHubSystem either. I’m pretty sure no one knew I was allowed to talk to them.
Stev kept digging through the van, shouting vague assurances. It was taking an unreasonable amount of time.
For the first time, I felt HomeHubSystem’s feed presence focus entirely on me. In the cameras, the FamUnit was eating at the dining table, and I felt the feedback of a conversation I was not participating in, yet I had so much of its focus it was stifling. It felt like being gently squeezed.
Then it sent a cue to my governor module, and my threat assessment began to steadily rise.
I didn’t think it should be able to do that. That was scary.
He’s stalling, HomeHubSystem said in the feed. It was the first time it had spoken to me directly since the day we met and I was extremely nervous about that.
I checked FamUnit on the cameras again. It had changed its seating on the table to observe the dining room entrances. HomeHubSystem had warned it.
Was the delivery driver stalling for a hostile at the house?
Acknowledged, I replied, and I climbed over the gate two leaps instead of opening it. I was sorting rapidly through cameras, seeing nothing amiss so far. Stev fell backwards at my approach, into a pile of other boxes. I scanned the inside of the open vehicle, and spotted a clipboard on the passenger seat in full view.
My threat assessment spiked. HomeHubSystem sent a signal to my module and it went up an additional 10%.
My threat assessment is for assessing my ability to address potential dangers, I told HomeHubSystem.
It sent me a file called client_risk.module which I couldn’t accept without Tseyvar’s approval. Anyway, I knew Tseyvar’s property (FamUnit included) was in danger already. I left the van and returned to the gate.
I then heard audio cues that corresponded to an object—based on the exact timing, a weapon—being removed from a cloth cover behind me. My gun-ports deployed and I turned with them raised. Stev had an energy weapon and was aiming it towards me with wild-eyed terror, so I fired on him, destroying his hand.
Kill him.
Changes to mission parameters required Tseyvar’s approval. Protocol required one living conspirator for interrogation purposes. I was literally not allowed to kill him until I had a second hostile safely detained. Instead I grabbed him by the arm and slammed him against the side of the van. He did not fight back as I restrained him.
No sign of movement from the cameras. FamUnit was still eating.
I scaled the gate and started running back towards the house. Something was wrong. HomeHubSystem kept sending alerts to make my threat assessment system stay on high alert, which in this case was useful because it had started dropping after I detained the threat, and after it drops below a certain threshold I can no longer take emergency measures.
Well, I could just deploy the code to turn the governor module off, but that felt like an incredibly bad idea when the HubSystem in charge of me was figuratively sitting on top of it.
I sent my drones around the house and requested access to the eyes of the maintenance bots to fill out my range. My system wasn’t really designed to analyze so many feeds, but HomeHubSystem seemed really convinced something was wrong. FamUnit got up to put its bowl in the dishwasher.
A drone passed by the front door. It was unlocked. I pulled an hour of front door footage, because I knew for a fact it had been locked after Tseyvar’s marital partner left the home earlier that morning. Most of the footage corroborated that. Then, in the last ten minutes, it was unlocked with no apparent cause.
There was missing time.
Camera feed has been overwritten, I told HomeHubSystem.
What? That’s not possible.
I clipped and tagged the footage as I reached the front yard and sent it to HomeHubSystem.
Give me control of your drones. Their feed isn’t stationary, it demanded.
This time I just let my buffer answer. Alterations to this Unit’s security protocols require approval of the client. Please file a request with the client to alter security protocol.
FUCK, said HomeHubSystem.
One of my drones went down.
Inside the home, ground floor east wing, I said.
On the cameras, several security doors slammed closed. Over the public feed, HomeHubSystem announced “threat detected, please shelter in the nearest safe room and wait for assistance.”
I opened the house schematics to check possible routes. HomeHubSystem turned off the kitchen and dining room cameras just as I noticed there was a safe room entrance in one of the kitchen wall panels. FamUnit was secured.
Enter through the kitchen window, I’ll let you in, HomeHubSystem said.
I began scaling the house. Alterations to security protocols require approval of the client. Please file a request with the client to alter security protocol.
What are you doing? How is being let in the kitchen an alteration to protocol?
I sent it a copy of my contract with the section about minimum damage to property. I then sent it the cost of some of the items in the kitchen.
What object in this house is more expensive than the FamilyUnit. IDIOT.
Okay, so I already knew that HomeHubSystem was a machine intelligence rather than a network of human-set parameters and sorting algorithms like a HubSystem is supposed to be, which was fine. But the repeated emotional outbursts implied it was very advanced. The intensity of its outbursts implied it was a step above even customer service bots, which means it was an AI subject to strict regulation by the Corporation Rim. Clearing it for development must have taken a long time, and I added that data to my cost estimations.
I was a mandated reporter for irregular corporate activity because of the parameters set at the hotel, so my module made me report those new calculations to HubSystem, but because my HubSystem was now HomeHubSystem it just sent back a price assessment for FamUnit that was several zeroes more than I was expecting.
I re-calibrated the prices, and that gave my governor module a little more leeway; I could destroy a few things if I wanted to.
This meant I had just pointlessly wasted time, but I was already on the other side of the roof, with my drones positioned in front of each entrance of the dining room and kitchen. Oh well. Open west wing roof access.
The shutters over the attic window raised, and I entered the home. HomeHubSystem anticipated that I was going for the maintenance bot access elevator—which was more like a tiny platform that went up and down so that they could do chores faster—and shut off the cameras to hide my progress from whoever compromised its SecSystem. This cut me off from nearly all the maintenance bots. Having less inputs made me uneasy.
Hostile was currently at ground floor. I used my arms to scale down the little shaft. The drone outside the dining room south entrance was eliminated. I alerted HomeHubSystem.
HomeHubSystem requested access to integrate me into SecSystem. My buffer spat out the line about security protocols and it sent back a few expletives.
Then it interrupted itself with ALERT Damage sustained: dining room south entrance security barrier.
I was getting really nervous.
I was also already in the hallway. I approached the kitchen west entrance and the shutter opened halfway for me. I skidded inside and raised my arm guns. (I wasn’t allowed to have an external weapon because Tseyvar and his marital partner did not want FamUnit to see weapons, so it was all I had to work with). All clear. FamUnit was gone, which was good.
There was a loud screeching sound coming from the dining room, likely the barrier being damaged. I approached through the narrow servant entrance. The security barrier was half-melted, and some sort of sonic tool was gradually making its way through the door.
Something’s wrong, HomeHubSystem said. Hostile is taking too long to get through the barrier. They have to know you would have returned to the house by now. Getting into the safe room would take even longer.
True, but where else would the Hostile go? The entire house had been shuttered. Every door would take this long to get through.
Unless…
I opened the house schematic and checked which hallways were linked, and then I checked the cameras. The dining room and kitchen cameras were turned off, and the camera facing the south entrance was being overwritten, though experiencing distortions from the HomeHubSystem attempting to wrest control back.
The camera upstairs was also turned off. To hide my progress from a Hostile who had camera access.
I returned to the kitchen and sent the drone at the west entrance back down the hall to the elevator. A second drone traveled to the south dining entrance.
There was no one there. The tool was left in the door, slowly sinking through the metal shutters.
Hostile no longer in the home, I warned. My first drone traveled up the elevator shaft, through the hall, and the window outside the attic.
I abruptly lost contact with my drone.
Roof.
I pulled in several drones through the west kitchen entrance and aimed my arm guns at the window. HomeHubSystem opened the shutter just as the Hostile dropped down approximately twenty metres northwest from my position.
They had a shield. My shots were deflected, though they melted the surface. They fired on me, and I calibrated it wasn’t that bad considering my cubicle was downstairs and everything behind me was expensive so I just let it hit me and fired on them again. Their shield melted a little more, and I could see the moment the Hostile realized that in a pure firefight I was going to win.
They hiked the shield on their back and started to run. I leaped out the window and shot their feet. They went down.
Hostile was an augmented human. I could feel them in my programming, trying to hack my systems like they did the cameras. I was still in emergency mode, so most of the commands it was sending (things like “STOP” and “GO BLIND”) could be dismissed. To my dismay, the Hostile switched to sending killware.
Abruptly HomeHubSystem was sitting on top of my governor module again, deflecting a constant stream of attacks. The Hostile could have deployed that killware from the start; it must have been designed for Tseyvar’s personal SecUnit, which was made much less cheaply than I was.
There was no way of stopping the killware besides destroying its source, and I wasn’t good enough at hacking to attack the Hostile’s augments, so I tackled them to the ground, forcefully flipped them over, and fired my energy weapon point blank into their skull.
Threat neutralized, I said, and the emergency protocols shut down and I was mediocre equipment again.
I looked down at the dead human. The feed ID said [amusement sigil 110=skull], contract worker, she/her. This could not more obviously be a mercenary hired by someone else. I wish I didn’t have to kill her. I didn’t know how bad I felt about killing a stranger and at this point didn't care, but it was not good that the primary Hostile couldn’t be interrogated.
I returned to the kitchen window. FamUnit had emerged and was standing in the doorway, staring at the sonic tool slowly vibrating its way through the shutter.
It looked back at me. It looked like Tseyvar’s marital partner, with a round face and round eyes and dark skin. I wondered how that worked; if it were designed that way, or if there was some way to print flesh with different genetic material.
HomeHubSystem tried to link me up to SecSystem again. It didn’t work when I was given free reign to detain the targets, and it especially wasn’t going to work now.
Secure the perimeter, HomeHubSystem said in the public feed, radiating annoyance.
How did you get the hostile? FamUnit asked suddenly.
This was the first time FamUnit had addressed me since we met. That was scary, and strange, and suspicious considering HomeHubSystem had also suddenly started talking to me. It occurred to me that I might have done something—or failed to do something—that led to them assuming there would be a communication breakdown, and I had proved myself in some way during this crisis.
This made me feel an emotion comparable to the emotions that might be felt by an advanced AI that required several rack servers, which was also scary.
I filtered everything that just happened into a report and sent it to HomeHubSystem so HomeHubSystem could send it to FamUnit to read.
“You have got to go get that Stev guy,” FamUnit said.
I sent an acknowledgement to HomeHubSystem in lieu of a direct response and I started running back down the drive to go get that Stev guy.
He was still tied up in front of the van when I reached him, distraught and curled around his half-melted hand. This gave me a bad feeling. “State your purpose here,” I said.
“I-I-I was paid to just—she paid me to, said if it goes wrong I was dead—she gave me the weapon, I don’t know anything, it was just money and I thought I was dead,” Stev sobbed.
That wasn’t good.
“Security protocol requires you to be interrogated before release.” I hoisted him up, finished loading the rack servers, and opened the gates to wheel it in. Stev was sobbing like he was sure he was going to die the whole walk back up the drive. It was good the dead human was at the front of the house. It might have made him do something stupid.
When we reached the home there was a new feed presence, and I could feel it was in silent discussion with HomeHubSystem. I brought Stev to an unused room and left some drones there. A maintenance bot tottered over and sat in front of the door.
I returned to the back of the house, and then made an expression. I don’t know how else to phrase it because I had never in my life felt my face contort in such a way, to such a degree it was possible I had never made an expression before this point.
FamUnit was crouched in front of the body, hand covered in mushed-up brains, inspecting an eye it had pried out of the dead human. It was twanging the dangling optic nerve, apparently amused by the augment that ran alongside it and fed into the retina. I didn’t know why it had mushed its hand into the brain and I did not want to know.
Standing next to it was Tseyvar’s SecUnit.
SecUnits were expensive to make, and that expense grew for every stage of development. The genetic material used to clone us was expensive, the inorganic chassis was expensive, the cubicles were expensive, the education modules were expensive, the governor module’s detection settings were expensive. There were a lot of ways to cut costs.
I was a cheap piece of hardware that existed to live long enough to make a baseline profit. Tseyvar’s SecUnit was a luxury item that existed to announce that he was rich enough to have you killed in ways that hadn’t even been invented yet.
It wore sleek black armour that actually looked like it protected something, decorated with the manufacturer logo to show it was an elite killing machine. (When so many SecUnits were built like me, the exorbitant cost of production became a selling point.) It was five centimetres taller than me, which was very non-standard. I couldn’t see its face but it was probably really specific-looking because it had a designer gene pool or something.
It was also looking right at me.
I came to a halt and stood very still.
Then I realized it was probably here because HomeHubSystem sent an alert. “Hostile neutralized, conspirator detained.”
“I know. I have a copy of your report.” Its voice was very obviously deep, in ways that shouldn’t be possible for a SecUnit. Our organic tissue growth stage didn’t include puberty; a deep voice was a secondary sex characteristic. It had a throat augment.
It raised its head and there was some sort of feed activity. Talking to HomeHubSystem?
Then it started lumbering away. “Perimeter secured. Please step away from the carcass. It is a vector of disease.”
At the same time, it sent a status report over the public feed.
I tentatively looked through it. It was a raw text file detailing the SecUnit’s heart rate, performance reliability, and other key functions. I genuinely did not understand why it would send this. It had nothing to do with the perimeter or carcasses.
Then I reached the bottom of the file, where a string of text had been attached.
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING YOU ARE A WASTE OF SPACE AND RESOURCES SO MUCH SECURITY AROUND THIS PROPERTY AND FUCKING DIPSHIT HOLESPAWN OVER HERE IS GOING TO GET PRION DISORDERS MUSHING ITS DEFORMED BABY CLAWS INTO DEAD MEAT I HOPE BOTFLIES INFEST YOUR FINGERNAILS FUCKING INGRATE
I blinked.
FamUnit, completely unperturbed, sent a status report back, showcasing a stable heart rate and little to no stress hormones. I looked right at the bottom of this one.
I am not spawned from human genitals silly! They take blood samples!
Okay.
“Returning to post,” the SecUnit announced.
I looked at its report again and noticed its stress hormones were pretty high. Then I pinged in acknowledgement because I didn’t know what to say, or if I was even supposed to be reading those. The bizarre reports weren’t part of my mandated report protocol because it was technically interactions between bots, but I was really nervous and would venture to say my stress hormones were higher than the SecUnit’s right now.
After it left, I took the body (to FamUnit’s dismay) and stored it next to the Security Ready Room. Then I replaced my chestplate and went to guard FamUnit, who had returned to its quarters to talk silently on the feed with HomeHubSystem. I tried flushing my stress hormones and it barely helped. It was probably because I had an electrical burn on my chest, so I just ignored it.
Twenty minutes later, Tseyvar Frakes returned with his SecUnit bodyguard and rushed downstairs. I watched the camera entrance to the basement, nonplussed. I didn’t have camera access to that floor, but I was guessing he was checking on HomeHubSystem. The maintenance bots had taken the rack servers down there, maybe it needed his approval to install them.
The SecUnit sent a data packet on the public feed. It was another status report. I looked at the bottom.
I HOPE HE MELTS YOU INTO SLAG SHITBAG
I never paid attention to the public feed—working at a hotel where 90% of it was ads trained you to backburner it—so I had absolutely no idea if they’d been talking to each other like this the entire time.
This time I noticed the SecUnit deleted the status report. That made sense. It was not supposed to be talking to FamUnit, let alone cussing it out. If Tseyvar found out, he’d have his SecUnit reformatted. It felt like maybe being about to hack my governor module was actually pretty uncontroversial in terms of bot and bot-construct behaviour on this property. The possibility that turning it off could make life simple and convenient tentatively began to tick upwards.
Tseyvar returned screaming into his phone. He was furious at his marital partner for not being at the house; he blamed her for the shutter door being torn open because she was the one who wanted the FamUnit. She wasn’t even around to approve any security measures and now FamUnit had been exposed to violence. (He didn’t know it had stuck its hand in the dead human’s brains because that was not against any protocols and also it sounded like something a human might liquidate a construct over.)
Then he got off the phone and went upstairs. He didn’t acknowledge me because I was doing a good job being furniture.
“Trini, honey, daddy’s home,” he said to its door.
“I know, the house told me.” FamUnit got up and opened the door for him. “We got the bad guys?”
He laughed nervously. “That’s right, sweetie. I hope you weren’t too scared.”
“The house put me in the safe room and the house security fixed it. The bad guy was a hacker and she got into the cameras,” FamUnit said cheerfully.
Tseyvar looked grey and sweaty. “But that’s not possible…oh, ah…you go ahead and…relax. It’s been a stressful day.”
“Okay. I love you!” FamUnit said brightly.
“Love you too, darling…!” But he was already running downstairs, probably to fix the issue with the cameras.
Fifteen minutes later, a message was sent over public feed. It was a status report on HomeHubSystem, though Tseyvar’s SecUnit was the one to send it. I read the whole thing. It was heavily filtered, and showed that SecSystem had been completely hijacked by malware HomeHubSystem had downloaded during routine updates. With great trepidation, I checked the bottom text.
He’s going to pull the footage of you being a disgusting animal and drop you into the acid pools and use your ugly deformed chassis for more rack servers
Despite this not being in all caps, there was still a sensation of heated feed activity in the wake of this message.
Then FamUnit sent my status (how did it get access to that??) over.
The house can purge data if it’s not important. The client won’t pull drone footage so it’s okay.
Client? Did it mean Tseyvar?
There was no way of finding out. No more messages were sent over public feed, but there was a low hum of a private feed being used over the next two hours.
I should probably mention that most constructs aren’t this sensitive to feed activity, and usually need to be logging feed traffic to pick up on it. This was probably a result of . The feed was crammed to bursting with ads and throttled to suffocate its patrons with advertisements, while the mansion was just…empty. Enormous and empty. Going from the absolute upper limit of how much can fit in a feed to dead silence had made me sensitive to any sort of signal feedback.
So I had spent several months feeling nothing but bots talking to everyone except me.
Eventually FamUnit entered its recharge cycle and Tseyvar fell asleep. His marital partner did not come home. I remained standing there, guarding the FamUnit. All was silent.
The feed was silent.
I adjusted the subroutines of my hack, but it was half-hearted. My first combat situation has shown me that the governor module wouldn’t punish my for sub-optimal work. If I needed to address a conflict a certain way, HomeHubSystem could handle it. I didn’t have to be connected to anything, and it was more effective that I wasn’t. There was no need to speak to me because I could do my job independently and be disposed of and replaced without complications.
It didn’t really matter if turning off my governor module was an uncontroversial choice because I didn’t matter. They had ways of skirting the rules against direct contact and I didn’t even know if they had tried to show me at first and then left me alone because I was too busy being stupid furniture. I’d always be stupid furniture. None of their report-messages were for me.
Normally I would adjust my code when I was feeling restless, but I made five mistakes and stopped. Then I put it away. Then I put it in temporary memory to prepare for deletion.
Then HomeHubSystem pinged me at the same time I received an automatic update. You’re very useful. Approval to integrate you into my systems has been acquired. You are now an arm of my SecSystem.
The feed exploded with life.