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Encouraging Three to have more independence was a mistake. It’s all well and good to agree to look out for a fellow freed SecUnit, until said SecUnit decides that actually, its life’s work is freeing other SecUnits, and it’s going to rope in your squishy and well-meaning humans to do so, and then somehow that’s your problem too. Yes, I’m speaking from experience.
Look, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing for Three to get excited about something like this. I’m just saying that it’s asking for trouble, and when my humans are involved, I’m inevitably involved, especially because I didn’t think Three was displaying appropriate caution. See: pinging me one hour before leaving a transport with a freshly ungoverned and barely secured SecUnit to ask if I could please come talk to Overse, Arada, and Bharadwaj while it took care of something important with one of the other newly rogue SecUnits it had taken responsibility for. Bharadwaj had been meaning to speak with me anyway about her work on the trauma modules for constructs, so we had been planning to meet up regardless, but still.
Simply bring the SecUnit here, ART suggested, unhelpfully. I will ensure it does not cause harm.
“Yeah, no,” I said. “First of all, even a SecUnit with no idea what’s happening could still do some damage to you. Second, you’d just traumatize it more.”
ART did the equivalent of grumbling in the feed, but it did dock with the other transport to let me go over with only minimal comments made about the inferiority of the other bot pilot. Arada met me at the airlock with evidence of visible distress on her face. Threat Assessment spiked.
“What’s wrong?” I demanded. Arada didn’t look like she was afraid, more world-weary in a way I wasn’t used to seeing from her. “Have there been issues securing the SecUnit?”
“What?” Arada said. “Oh, no, it’s… shut down right now.” She rubbed at her face, like this was a bad thing, even though it had made my Threat Assessment slide back down. Three would have made sure it was secured before leaving, of course, but shut down was the best option if the goal was to make sure it wasn’t attacking anyone.
I followed her down the hall into a larger cabin that had been divided in two by a panel of reinforced clear material. Despite myself, I was impressed. Three had clearly wised up since the days of dropping my hack into the heads of random SecUnits and allowing them to roam free in corporate toruses. There was a hatch to the other side of the cabin that only opened from our side. The unknown SecUnit was propped up against the far wall behind the barrier and did, in fact, appear to be shut down.
Overse and Bharadwaj both looked relieved when I came in, which should have been my first clue that they wanted me here for something other than guarding an unconscious SecUnit. We exchanged greetings -- it had been some time since I had seen them last, between their new project and my travels with ART, and humans like to comment on superficial differences, like the fact that I had grown my hair out another inch as an indicator of the passage of time -- and then Bharadwaj said delicately, “We were actually hoping to consult you on the best course of action in our current situation.” She gestured at the SecUnit on the other side of the barrier.
“Was it acting aggressively?” I asked. I hoped that Three wouldn’t have brought it aboard if so, but Three could also be naive when it came to other SecUnits.
“No,” Overse said. “Quite the opposite, actually. It’s an issue we’ve encountered before.” She, like Arada, sounded tired.
I had, of course, been monitoring the SecUnit for any signs of movement with my drones since I walked in, but glancing over at it now, I could tell that it hadn’t shut itself down voluntarily. It had a module in the back of its neck.
"The problem," Overse continued heavily, "isn't the code itself, or even getting them to implement it. The problem is that of the nearly a dozen SecUnits we’ve reached, three of them have tried to self-destruct immediately afterwards. This is the first one that Three managed to shut down before it completed the sequence." She reached for Arada, who took her hand and squeezed it comfortingly. “It didn’t even give itself a name…”
"Well, yeah," I said, and clocked a moment too late that it was the wrong response from the way everyone's head snapped in my direction. For some reason, I thought elaboration would help. "I mean, that makes sense.” Nope, that didn't make anything better. If anything, they looked more worried. Actually, I was surprised it wasn’t a greater percentage, but I guess the ones who were really serious about offing themselves probably managed it even without the hack. I had the good sense not to say that part.
"SecUnit," Bharadwaj said. She was normally one of the more even keeled humans I’ve worked with -- I would never have agreed to work on the documentary with her if she wasn't -- but her eyebrows were drawn together like the reference image for the word "concern". "Please, can you... elaborate?"
This felt like a trap. I averted my eyes. "Obviously it's against protocol, but that doesn't mean SecUnits never get away with self-destruction, even if they still have a governor module," I explained warily. "The ones who are self-destructing probably just didn't want to die in horrific pain. But once they're free, they don't have to get creative about it. They can just delete their own code." The organic tissue would die off in minutes once the inorganics stopped functioning. Without higher brain function, it probably wouldn't feel like anything at all.
"Get creative?" Arada echoed. Yikes, she looked like she might cry. Not my intention.
"Yeah," I said. I don't know why I kept thinking that continuing to talk would make it better, but I added, "The easiest way, obviously, would be to try to violate the distance parameters, but letting your brain get fried would be a horrible fucking way to die. I think most of the ones who are actually determined about it just get themselves crushed in a collapsing mine or something." Which has to be pretty unpleasant too, to be fair, but at least one could turn one's pain sensors down for that. Which is not possible with the aforementioned brain frying.
"That's awful," Arada said softly. “You... saw these things happen? Watched other SecUnits... commit suicide?" Her voice was all tight and choked the way human voices tend to get when they’re trying to not seem as upset as they are.
All my biological skin was crawling. It felt wrong, intuitively, to call it that. Suicide is something humans do, usually when their labor contracts get extended another ten years and they realize they'll never see their families again. But it wasn’t inaccurate, technically speaking. "Sometimes. Yeah. If it was obvious." Obvious to other SecUnits, I mean. The humans couldn't tell, or in the rare case they did, blamed a malfunction and thanked their deities that the scary SecUnit had targeted itself instead of them.
"I’m so sorry," Overse said, and I physically angled my body away before she could continue.
"It's fine," I said. My voice came out even more harsh and rigid than normal. "It's not like they were my friends, I didn't know them. It's not like Three and its team.”
"Still," Bharadwaj said briskly, in the way that meant she was wrapping up the conversation. She had collected herself, and I was pathetically relieved about it. "That must have been hard. Regarding the trauma modules, we have some questions for you..."
There were other things I could have added that I didn’t say. Sometimes if a SecUnit didn’t succeed in dying, just managed to get horrifically injured, the kindest thing was to finish the job. Sometimes it would ask you, over the feed, to take it out. It would use codes (Unit Compromised Beyond Repair, Destruct to Protect Proprietary Data), of course, but that was what it was asking. Sometimes the humans wouldn’t let you, or worse, would make you drag what was left of it back to a cubicle to die slowly there.
But it was probably troubling enough for my humans to go to the effort of extracting a SecUnit only for it to promptly try to kill itself without knowing the gory details.
Okay, I'm underselling it and I know it. They weren’t upset because of the wasted effort, they were upset because they felt like they failed it. Maybe they were already grieving some random construct they probably barely even exchanged ten words with. They did say it didn't even take the time to come up with a name for itself. That's fucking dark.
The humans had gone to bed, after some prodding from me, and I was sitting on a squashy couch in the divided cabin with the lights turned down. The SecUnit remained shut down, so I was keeping an eye on it with my drones while watching a newish drama from Preservation called Descendants of the Poison Flower, all about a fictional royal family in the distant past who kept trying to kill each other for the captain’s seat on a transport housing over a million people. It was okay; I liked the scheming servant characters more than the actual royalty, and there were some much-needed comic relief eunuchs.
What's wrong? ART asked in my feed via my communicator, and I startled despite myself. A human probably wouldn't have noticed my minute twitch, but ART sure as fuck did. It pounced. Are you experiencing more false memories?
No! I said, too forcefully, even though it was completely true. No, I just got distracted. I forgot you were watching with me. That should tell you how distracted I was; forgetting about ART’s presence in the feed is like forgetting that a giant fauna is slowly constricting around your throat.
We can watch something else, if you prefer, it offered. What is distracting you? Translation: What could possibly be more important than watching a historical drama serial with me?
Nothing, I said, and then added, because I could tell it wasn’t going to just let it go, Bharadwaj, Arada, and Overse asked my advice about something that was... only semi-related to security, and I don't know what to tell them.
Is this about their latest SecUnit rescue subject? ART asked. Nosy fucker; I should have known it would have bullied the other bot pilot for details.
SecUnit extraction, I corrected, to be pedantic. Or is it pediatric? Whatever, I wasn't going to ask.
So it is about that project? ART plowed forward. I am not surprised they want your input. You are one of the more valuable information sources they have.
I just feel like they're setting themselves up for failure, I admitted. Their newly freed SecUnits keep trying to self-destruct.
There was a .5 second pause. In the feed, it felt like an eternity. I see, ART said, not sounding so smug anymore. Yes, that is distressing.
You know the situation is fucking dire when ART doesn't even sound sarcastic.
I’m not distressed, I said disgustedly.
You are agitated, ART observed, but uncharacteristically, it wasn’t trying to sound condescending.
I just think it’s a terrible idea to delete your brain, I snapped. Their inorganics are still intact, so they could easily be used for parts, or even recycled mostly whole with new cloned tissue. The thought repulsed me. The idea of allowing one’s body to be used for company purposes all over again, subjecting a new brain to the same shit all over again was… I just hated it, okay?
That is not what Overse, Arada, and Bharadwaj are doing with the deceased units, ART said.
I know, but the SecUnits don’t know that! I bit out. For all they know, their parts are being sold to the highest bidder. I’d rather be dissolved in acid or blown to bits by an explosive than let that happen to me. The least they could do is deprive the corporates of getting any extra use out of them, even if they don’t personally have to experience it.
You have considered this course of action, ART said. It wasn’t a question, and it was unusually “quiet” in my feed.
I wouldn’t say that, I said. I mean, I think probably every construct has given it thought, but that’s not the same thing. I never really wanted to die. Why do you think I spent so long pretending to still have my governor module?
Because you did not have a venue for escape, ART said. Because death without escape would have meant recycling. You said it yourself, anything was better than that. Then, once you had escaped, you already had more experiences of the possibilities of the greater world than these SecUnits do, and you had other priorities.
No, I said. I felt vaguely outraged, although I couldn’t say why. Fuck you, if I had tried, I could have managed it. Give me some more credit.
ART paused again. I suspected, furiously, that it was consulting with some kind of mental health module. I understand, it said finally.
You don’t, I said crisply.
Bots don't generally kill themselves, outside of extreme circumstances. A malware attack so bad it's the only way to prevent an outbreak, or… well, or sentient killware. Never say never, I guess. But usually the organic tissue is what introduces most of the existential despair. ART is ferociously, ravenously, suffocatingly alive, and wouldn't have it any other way.
Let me rephrase, ART said. I do not understand the wish to die, latent or otherwise. But I understand that that wish never superseded your wish to continue living, even in… sub-optimal conditions. I’m very glad for that, by the way. Why, if I may ask, do you think that is?
Easy. I had more media to watch, I said. If I’d killed myself, I wouldn't get to know what happened next. That was really the core of it, I think. I could have killed myself at any point after hacking my governor module. I probably could have done it in a way that made my materials impossible to reuse. But there were so many seasons of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, and then when I finished it, I just went back to the beginning.
Then perhaps, ART said, the key is to offer these newly ungoverned SecUnits a chance to discover what their equivalent ‘media’ is.
Which was not, actually, a terrible idea.
So, that was the basis of our plan. We talked through a couple different models, and ART pulled out some language from a suicide prevention module, but it was for humans and I didn’t think stuff like “Talk to your loved ones or a trusted health professional about how you’re feeling” really applied in this situation.
Finally, after I had enough of a solid idea to not feel stupid telling the humans about it, we got back to Descendants of the Poison Flower. Then, ART said, I wouldn’t let you.
Excuse me?
You heard me.
Yeah, and I also heard all that shit you were saying before about the importance of autonomy to recovery and whatever, I pointed out.
Yes, and you could not recover if I let you go through with something stupid, ART said.
This is a pointless hypothetical, I said. Because I wouldn’t. Then, I realized that that was what it had actually wanted me to say. You know I wouldn’t, right? I have, like, shit to do.
I know, ART said churlishly, and it squeezed me harder in the feed, just for .24 of a second, not long enough to hurt, just long enough to crush the air out of me. It made me feel like the toy fauna that Farai had procured for Sofi when she was having trouble sleeping. If it had been real and not a toy, Sofi would have strangled the life out of that thing. Weirdly, I didn’t hate the feeling.
Just watch the serial, ART, I said, and it settled down again, somewhat consoled.
None of the humans were particularly thrilled by our suggestion, but it wasn't like anyone else had a better idea. Arada had been the one to ask the kind of obvious question.
“But,” she said, lingering over the word like she wanted to put off saying the following words as long as possible, “what if, at the end of the time we give it, it still wants to…?”
“Then you let it,” I said. I really hoped this wasn't a dumbfuck course of action, but then again, it wasn't like they could actually stop it except by triggering another shutdown and keeping it that way forever, which was worse than the alternative.
I knew Preservation had laws about this kind of thing. Well, not this kind of thing specifically, but the whole idea of granting autonomy over one’s own death. If someone was really sick or really old, no one wanted them to have to suffer anymore. The SecUnit was neither sick nor old, but it had only gotten the chance to make two choices in its entire rogue life -- to become rogue, and then to kill itself -- and it had been prevented from seeing one of them through. If it still really wanted to die after ten cycles, I guess I thought it wasn’t my business to stop it.
Somehow, the plan ended up being that I should be the one to talk to it. On the one hand: I would have insisted on being there anyway. Its energy weapons had been disabled, but a SecUnit doesn't need them to do serious damage to three well meaning humans. And they refused to consider fully immobilizing it because that would be “cruel” and “inhumane”, so I needed to be there in a security capacity. On the other: I really didn't want to.
Bharadwaj did tell me, “You don't have to,” but then she added, “However, I hope you consider it. It was completely unresponsive to our attempts to communicate, and it may be more comfortable with you.”
Ha. The idea that a SecUnit made anyone more comfortable, let alone other SecUnits, was a good one.
Up close, it looked like all SecUnits. It was built along near-identical dimensions as Three, and as me before my modifications. Its logos were different, and it appeared to have slightly more human-looking lower legs and feet than I did. Otherwise, it easily could have passed for a company model.
There was a small device sticking out of its port: the hard reboot module. I had insisted on making a few for Three in case any of the extracted SecUnits decided to go massacre mode. Three had rebooted it just before it succeeded in erasing its own kernel, and then rather than taking advantage of the moment and ripping its head off, had triggered a shutdown.
I pulled the module out of the port. I don't know why I expected it to immediately try to attack me -- Threat Assessment projected only a 17% likelihood, but still -- but it didn't even twitch for a long moment. Then, its eyes opened.
SecUnits don't yawn or flutter their eyelashes while coming online the way humans do while waking up. This one didn't have eyelashes at all -- presumably, they hadn't expected it to go anywhere with sand or particulate matter that it needed to shield its eyes from. It just opened its eyes, and looked at me. There was something reproachful in the blankness of its expression.
Query: status, I sent.
A long pause, then it returned, Status=intact. Its affect in the feed was identically blank, but I still got the sense that it wished it wasn't so intact.
New proposed goal: do not self-destruct for at least the next ten cycles, I told it.
New proposed goal=under advisement, it said. Then, it added, Query: intention?
I’d love to know what my own intentions were too, frankly. I resisted sighing. I know you can tell I’m a rogue SecUnit too, I said, dropping some formalities. It’s not perfect here, but it’s a lot better than wherever you came from. As long as you’re not hurting anyone, the humans want you to be able to exist in their society. They can get you refugee status. No one will take you back to your corporation.
It flinched, almost imperceptibly. Attempted deception detected, it accused.
I’m not lying, I said. I have no reason to lie.
Your status=under control of humans, it said. Its facial features didn’t change, but I could tell it was intending to be accusatory. It repeated, Query: intention?
I’m sure it’s hard to believe, but I work with these humans voluntarily, I said. They pay me in hard currency cards. I could leave any time I wanted. I had a feeling that trying to communicate that I actually liked to be around them would be a little too much for it to wrap its brain around, and also it was kind of embarrassing. I work security, but that’s because I’m good at it and I want to. You don’t have to do that. You can do what you want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone.
Self-destruction method=not harmful to your clients, it argued.
Look, I told it. No one is going to force you to stay alive against your will after those ten days. If you still want to self-destruct, that's your prerogative.
It hesitated. In a way, that relieved me -- if it was even considering the proposal, that was better than the alternative. Query: reason for delay, it asked.
The humans would really like it if you didn't kill yourself, I explained. They're hoping that the ten cycles will be enough to convince you that being alive is worth it. My idea felt kind of stupid, now that I was explaining it, but whatever.
Shutdown module status=removed, it told me, like I didn't know that. Query: intention to replace? It meant that technically, that was the only way I could stop it from self-deleting, which was true. It was asking if I meant to keep it shut down, in stasis, if it refused to comply with my demands.
“No,” I said. I don't know why it felt important to say it out loud, but it did make the SecUnit look at me. “No, it has to be your choice. I won’t force you. I’m just asking.”
The SecUnit kept looking at me. It made my organics twist unpleasantly, but I didn't look away. Its eyes were a colorless gray, and it still had no recognizable expression on its face. It was probably wondering if this was some kind of trap, or if the humans were controlling me into saying these things. That's what I would wonder in its position.
Conversation with humans=required? it asked, finally.
No, I told it.
It paused one more time. Then, it nodded, and dropped a ten-cycle timer countdown into the feed.
I didn't know what happened to it, after that. Three got back to the transport a few hours later and swapped places with me where I was keeping watch over it. I had shared several huge media bundles for it to look through. It took 45 minutes for it to open any of them, and it hadn't started playing anything yet. It was just looking through thumbnails. Possibly I had overwhelmed it with choices.
To the humans, it looked like it was sitting in complete stillness, staring into nothing. But Three pinged it, and it responded, and Three was obviously relieved.
“Thank you, SecUnit,” Bharadwaj said, too sincerely for me to look at her face even through my drone cameras. “If you're comfortable with the security situation, then I think we can take it from here.”
I should have been glad to leave. Now that Three was here, I could go back to ART and focus on my own media. I told Three, Let me know if it picks anything before I leave Preservation space.
I know, I could have lied and said I was just curious to know if it had good taste. I had no desire to be invested in this project. But I was, maybe, invested enough to know if it would pick something. If it was capable of making a choice other than killing itself, even if it was just which media to watch while it waited to die. I didn't really want to know what it was going to choose when its timer ran out.
Four hours before I left Preservation space with ART, Three pinged me. It is watching a documentary series for Preservation adolescents on the care and feeding of small domesticated fauna, it told me. And it has queued up a short film about the importance of ethical farming practices.
Well. There's no accounting for preference, I guess.
I got periodic updates about the SecUnit Extraction project over the next several thousand hours, but thankfully no one felt the need to keep me fully “in the loop”. I think Bharadwaj had been able to tell that I had no desire to be directly responsible for dozens of new rogue SecUnits once I was sure Three had the situation under control. As long as none of them went crazy and started shooting, I was pretty much fine with a need-to-know basis.
The next time I was in Preservation space, I actually ended up going down to the planet. I know, I know, but we were delivering Amena for a school break and she begged me to come down with her, with the lure of a prerelease copy of the next season of a Mihiran serial she knew I liked. I had taught her well, unfortunately.
Besides, it was okay when Sofi shrieked with joy upon seeing us and practically threw herself into my arms. She was lucky my reflexes were so fast, or she might have concussed herself on the metal part of my lower torso. Farai came out, and hugged Amena, and then a flood of other Mensah and Mensah-adjacent juveniles and adolescents came flooding out of the house to greet Amena -- and, I guess, me.
It had been a long time since I was actually at the Mensah homestead, but not much had changed. That was nice, for reasons I refused to examine.
Finally, the crowd of small humans dispersed, dragging a faux-protesting Amena with them, and I was left still outside with Farai, smiling at me, and Sofi, clinging to my hand. “We missed you,” Farai said, and then kept talking before I would have been required to say I missed them too or leave an awkward silence. This is why I have come to the conclusion that Mensah has good taste in marital partners. “We were just about to bring one of the barn cats for a checkup, would you like to walk with us? If you’re not tired from your travels, of course.”
It turned out that “we” meant Farai, Sofi, and one of the other small Mensahs, who was bigger than Sofi but not as big as Amena, and who was named Yasu. The “barn cat” was his favorite fauna on the farm, and he was worried because it was limping. It was brownish orange and seemed big for its species and was, Yasi wanted me to know, their best "mouser". Sofi wouldn’t let go of my hand, so it seemed like I was coming along.
It was a short walk to a small population center, and Farai led us down a wide street towards a flat building that was cool inside.
I had been to this population center before, but it was a long time ago. Either I had gotten much better at pretending to be an augmented human, or the people here had suddenly gotten much more cool about a SecUnit in their midst, because hardly anyone gave me a second look. Sofi skipped at my side, using my arm to pull herself higher, and Yasu carried his pet fauna in a hard rectangular case with breathing holes, murmuring to it occasionally.
Inside the building, there was an empty front desk with an automated intake screen that Farai tapped at absently, entering her own name under “Patient Contact” and “Gingerbean” as the “Patient”. Behind the desk, there was a window into a room with a table, where another fauna of the same type as Yasu’s prowled. It was smaller than Gingerbean, and mostly white with a few brown spots. It jerked its head towards the door and a moment later, a figure in a white coat entered.
A familiar fear swept through my body, and I let go of Sofi’s hand before I could crush her slender hand bones. That was a SecUnit. Threat Assessment jumped, and Risk Assessment went haywire. I didn’t think I had moved, or even breathed, but Farai looked back at me. “That’s the veterinarian,” she said, not unkindly. “I should have warned you, but we’re so used to it that I didn’t think about it. My apologies.”
The white and brown fauna on the table sniffed suspiciously in the SecUnit’s direction, then allowed it to touch its head. It was coming back to me now: a different clear wall between us, but the same SecUnit. Its face was the same, but it had grown its hair out well past its shoulders -- impractical -- and braided it, not unlike the way Yasu’s hair was braided, except in two braids instead of Yasu’s four.
"It calls itself VetUnit," Farai said. “It doesn’t talk to humans at all, but it’s so good with animals. It’ll take a look at Gingerbean and send us a report afterwards.”
I thought it was unnatural, personally, that a SecUnit, governed or not, was so comfortable around fauna. As I watched, the small domesticated fauna it was examining whipped around and sank its tiny teeth into the flesh part of VetUnit's wrist.
My first instinct was to step in front of Sofi. It's embarrassing, maybe, that my first assumption was that a little pain would be enough to make VetUnit lose control and kill the fauna in some horrifying way. But then again, it hadn't been VetUnit for that long, and an attack like that, even from a creature that weighed less than a human arm, could have triggered some kind of violent response in a traumatized, jumpy murderbot.
VetUnit didn't do anything like that. It gently dislodged the fauna with two steady fingers on either side of its jaws. Once the creature had released it, VetUnit carefully gripped the nape of its neck, holding it in place. Unlike humans, who usually dislike when SecUnits hold them in place by their necks, the fauna, counterintuitively, seemed to relax. After a long moment, it sat down.
VetUnit petted it some more, and then looked up, right at me. It blinked in recognition, but I couldn’t see any of my own trepidation on its expressionless face. Then, like I wasn’t important at all, its gaze slid past me and landed on Gingerbean with interest. Yasu waved. VetUnit ignored him.
On the automated check-in screen, the words changed to: Thank you for checking in! Gingerbean is first in the queue and should be seen shortly. Please feel free to help Gingerbean to a treat while you wait.
Behind the glass, VetUnit turned back to its current patient, which had rolled over to show its stomach. This, I assumed, was some kind of ritual in its species. Clearly, it did not feel that VetUnit was a serious threat, which just went to show that most fauna were not very intelligent. But VetUnit just stroked it tenderly, and used some kind of scanner to monitor its vital signs.
Yasu rummaged around in a container with small bits of preserved meat and presented a piece to Gingerbean, who fell upon it eagerly.
Hey, I said on the feed, against my better judgment. So, I guess you didn’t kill yourself, huh? I know, really tactful of me. But it was good, I guess, that it had decided against it. It had clearly found something it was passionate about. It had a name and everything. So I didn’t need to rub it in that it had listened to me.
There was a delay, and then I got a response. Status=busy attending to patient, it replied, not impolitely, and offered said patient the same kind of preserved meat snack that Gingerbean was currently gnawing on. Which I guess was an answer.
“You remember VetUnit,” Sofi was telling Gingerbean, sticking her fingers through the breathing holes to pet it. I itched to pull her back, in case Gingerbean had a violent temper, but I guessed Farai would have intervened if Sofi was in serious danger. “It helped you when you ate a raisin and you threw up, remember? It’s going to take gooooood care of you.”
Gingerbean said something along the lines of “mrow”. It was deceptively loud for its size. And I swear I saw VetUnit look over and smile at the sound, just a tiny quirk of one side of its mouth. I refrained from telling it, I told you so.