Log01.entry

[ugh_emotions]

Who: SecUnit, Charles, and eventually other people depending on how things go lots of other people, everyone join in
What: SecUnit checks up Charles, no one has a good time
When: Just before the start of the Story
Where: The stacks
Content warnings: SecUnit getting accidentally bricked

Every time SecUnit or one of its drones caught sight of Charles, he seemed to look even more dead than the last time.

Which was weird. He was already dead (which was also weird), surely he couldn't get any more dead. You were either dead or you weren't.

Whatever. It wasn't SecUnit's problem. Charles wasn't one of its humans. It didn't need to worry about him.

(It worried about him.)

Eventually though, it gets to the point where it can't ignore it anymore, and it stomps over to where Charles is in the Stacks.

"What's wrong with you?" it demands.

Comments

[obeir]

K may not be able to relate to the experience of hiding one's true identity (an impossibility for him) and then having it unintentionally revealed, but he can understand why it might be upsetting. Especially for a fellow AI who'd been posing as a human; outside of this place, he knows that could mean the difference between survival and death for someone in SecUnit's position. That ruse had obviously been important to SecUnit, and K regrets not being able to get there in time to prevent anyone else from witnessing its reboot.

His normally nigh-silent footsteps have some deliberate weight to them now. He's not stomping around, just being loud enough to physically announce his presence as he approaches the door and knocks a couple times.

"Are you hurt?" he asks through the door. "I don't know what happened to you."

[ugh_emotions]

SecUnit had stationed a drone outside of the bathroom, in a out-of-the-way spot where it couldn't be easily noticed. So it knows, even before K knocks, that he's coming.

Inside the bathroom, it sits on the floor, curled up into a ball of SecUnit. It doesn't really want to talk to anybody. But at least K's not a human.

I'm...fine, it says, speaking through the feed rather than out loud. I don't...Charles did something. I don't know what. It knocked out all my systems.

[obeir]

K responds in kind, heedless of how awkward he knows he must look silently standing outside the bathroom door like this. Probably better to keep their conversation private anyway.

And there's no lingering damage?

Charles mentioned that ghosts like him can negatively affect tech. Whatever happened, I'm sure he didn't mean to do it.

[ugh_emotions]

I don't think so. I'm still running diagnostics.

And look, if K wants to stand in front of a closed door, staring at it, SecUnit isn't going to judge. It does that sort of things all the time. Though usually it prefers facing walls; there's no chance of a human suddenly walking through those. (Except Charles. Who can also knock it offline without even touching it. Fuck.)

He was...agitated, it says. Looked dead. Like, even more dead than usual, I mean. Threat Assessment on him, but I thought he might be a risk to the humans or SOBs, not...

Not it.

(Through the feed, K might pick up som] emotional data that’s bleeding through. Ones like [confusion] and [embarrassment] and [dread].)

[obeir]

Eventually K does move from the door, so it at least won't look like he's listening to someone using the bathroom to anyone who might wander by. He's seen enough bizarre pervert accusations flying around to not want to draw that kind of unwanted attention to himself.

The emotional data surprises him, and it isn't too difficult to decipher. The incident has obviously shaken SecUnit even more than it would probably ever admit. K lacks any sort of comfort protocols he could call on, since he's very much not a pleasure model, leaving his limited lived experience as his only guide for navigating this.

And, well. The majority of his lived experience has been as a cross between a detective and bounty hunter and cyberpunk equivalent of a police dog. It's debatable how much working out what happened and why will help SecUnit feel better, but those are K's strengths.

He said the not-friendly-to-tech effect worsens when he gets overemotional. Being overemotional might also explain his altered appearance... maybe making him look closer to the way he did when he died. So something had him upset and you just had the misfortune of being in close proximity. Or there was something upsetting about your interaction?

And because the term hasn't been defined for him yet...

SOBs?

[ugh_emotions]

Sentient Organic Beings, it says. It's an anagram.

(It was not, in fact, an anagram.)

There was something wrong with him, it says. I thought he needed medical attention. Or, you know, whatever the equivalent of that is for dead humans. I guess if that kind of effect happens when he's, uh, upset...he probably needs trauma treatment.

Which, you know. They didn't have here.