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Ratthi took one step into the safety of Perihelion's dock, saw Amena standing there grinning with her new wasp mandibles and her vestigial wings fluttering in excitement, and became suddenly aware of the last bare dregs of his composure draining away.
On the bright side, that awareness gave him time to reassure everyone of his non-injured and relatively non-traumatized status. SecUnit, returning from accompanying Perihelion's drone to wherever it would be repaired, had only given him a tiny nod of acknowledgement as it passed him in the hall. It was Perihelion who opened a feed connection to ask him if he was alright.
Well. Perihelion had informed Ratthi that a need for privacy was understandable after such an arduous mission but that it (and its trauma-rated MedSystem) would always be available to fulfill any requests he might have, but Ratthi got the message. It was, he supposed, being thoughtful in its own way.
Ratthi sat on his bunk with a whoof. Stars, it had been a long day. He pulled up his copy of SecUnit's documentary on his interface, intending to watch it again in an environment that wasn’t so fraught. It was an absolute masterpiece, a miracle SecUnit had spun up out of nowhere that had saved an entire colony from corporate predation. Ratthi wanted to take the time to appreciate the artistry and effort his friend had put into it. Then he hesitated.
Ratthi had contributed significantly in organizing and creating the documentary’s contents. There wasn’t any information in the video file he wasn’t already excruciatingly, intimately aware of.
But he couldn't bring himself to click play.
Right before they had gone on the mission, they had held Amena’s imago ceremony, to celebrate the beautiful, strong body her lastbirth had revealed. As tradition, it had been held thirty cycles after she had broken out of her cocoon, to give her time to get used to her new body. That usually gave the family enough time to tailor the formal, traditional imaginal stage garments and plan the ceremony with other families whose children had gone through lastbirth at the same time.
There were quite a few aspects of the situation that had, inevitably, led to a less than traditional imago ceremony. Amena’s transition to adulthood was certainly much more… dramatic… than any of her family had expected, or that Ayda had likely hoped for after her own dramatic year. But all in all, Ratthi thought, everyone had banded together to produce the proudly raucous and joyful atmosphere so common in imago ceremonies back home. The fabric of Amena’s clothing had been recycler-printed rather than the carefully dyed, embroidered, and hand-woven cloth waiting in a chest at Ayda’s house, but Ratthi figured the ungodly fuss Perihelion had put up about getting the cut and color exactly right kept to the spirit of love and care hand-woven fabric was meant to convey. And he had learned about Mihiran adulthood traditions too, which involved drumming and the singing of many traditional songs to welcome new adults fully into the community.
Amena had been flushed and beaming during the entirety of the ceremony, decked out in her new clothes with her new wings arced proudly behind her. Ayda and Dr. Thiago had stuck by her almost the whole time. Ratthi had even seen SecUnit quietly singing along with Perihelion and its crew as they celebrated Amena’s new adult status.
Afterwards, Ratthi had overheard Amena say, “I did kinda want to match Second Mom, once I finally grew up. But matching you is pretty cool too.” There had been the now-familiar snap-snap of Amena flexing her stingers. The angle had been wrong to catch her expression, but Ratthi had seen SecUnit’s tiny smile, as it clicked its own energy weapons in response.
That ceremony, the effort that everyone had put in to be there for Amena despite the crazy circumstances surrounding her podding, had smoothed over a lot of the awkward edges between Perihelion’s crew and everyone from Preservation. Ratthi was honestly still a little bit angry about the whole kidnapping thing, but Amena’s lastbirth and her imago ceremony had brought everyone together. To go from that determined sense of community despite the extenuating factors to what SecUnit had included regarding attitudes towards metamorphosis in the Corporation Rim…
SecUnit had shared an outline of the topics and clips it planned on adding to the documentary, with notes on what each detail was meant to convey emotionally speaking. There were recorded clips of families frankly discussing exchanging their indentured servitude in exchange for a safe environment for their children to pod. The families weren’t even allowed to take care of the pods themselves. In the outline, SecUnit had described it as “list of different discussions regarding cost of podding” and annotated it with “feelings of helplessness”.
And the way wasps were treated…
After everyone had gone over its planned outline for the documentary, SecUnit had requested Ratthi and the other’s opinions as its human test audience regarding a particular detail of corporate life it might include. The blunt, offhand way it brought the subject up already had Ratthi bracing for something particularly horrific.
Ratthi had really wanted to start screaming after SecUnit revealed that wasps were sometimes “processed” into SecUnits rather than just killed immediately out of the pod in the CR. He was sure everyone else had felt the same way.
Ratthi still remembered the wording SecUnit had eventually gone with, and he’d only seen that particular clip twice. “One in five new adults with imaginal stage bodies deemed undesirable for the corporate workforce have their organs harvested as a cost saving measure.” It wasn’t the focus at all. SecUnit had elected to bury it in a slew of information about all the other ways corporations basically farmed people for more money.
The entire thing had been paired with a clip of a thrashing, frightened boy struggling his way out of his pod alone. The wide shot highlighted the lack of family around him, the sterility of the podding facility. There had been a sign on the wall identifying the facility as one for the lowest ranking employees, impassive workers in uniform watching on below it because the boy’s family hadn’t paid for extra care.
The clip had been recorded from SecUnit’s eyes. It had been poised on a platform above all the pods. If one of the children had turned out to be wasps, it would have had to jump down and–
Ratthi was trying very hard not to imagine it further. He was trying hard not to imagine Amena or one of his little cousins in one of those facilities. He was trying not to imagine SecUnit as some nameless child crawling out of a pod somewhere, and instead of a loving family welcoming it and an imago ceremony a month down the line it had gotten–
Ratthi closed out of the documentary file and abruptly decided to ping Perihelion. It responded pretty much immediately, and Ratthi exclaimed, “Corporates are assholes!”
“Since I have met SecUnit, I am continually discovering new ways in which corporate leaders descend into depravity,” it replied. Ratthi got the feeling that it had also been eager for an opportunity to vent. “It is even more satisfying now to go on missions with my crew where we aim to prevent corporate predation and foil their excesses.”
“I can definitely understand the feeling.” When the underground colonists had rejected Barish-Estranza, Ratthi had felt a fierce, personal thrill of almost gloating victory that had dwarfed almost every other sense of achievement he had felt in the past. But even as he remembered their success, Ratthi felt his anger growing. He said, “But I am still so fucking mad. We won, but I can’t…”
He struggled to articulate it in his own head. SecUnit was such a private person. But it had shared so much of itself, of its motivation and what made it the skilled, protective, amazing person it was today. The colonists wouldn’t be able to see it, anyone who didn’t already know SecUnit wouldn’t be able to see it if they watched the documentary. SecUnit had carefully crafted the documentary specifically to de-emphasize its role in its own memories and center the experiences of the humans it had monitored for so long.
Ratthi said finally, “Perihelion, I am so glad you and SecUnits are friends, and that you and your crew do this kind of work all the time. You are doing such good work.” He didn’t exactly know what the point of his words were. But he felt it was important to say.
Perihelion said, “Thank you, Dr. Ratthi. I appreciate your encouragement and support.”