Chapter Text
Watch out!
...
Look around.
...
Something's coming
Coming to town.
Tis the season 1?”
Gurathin was reading a paper, he’d now got to the point where he was pulling up the original data set and trying to understand how the writers had managed to get things so very wrong, on so many levels. He suspected malice, you couldn’t be this obtuse by accident.
This paper didn’t so much need retraction as to be set on fire and the ashes buried. At a crossroads at midnight, with a stake through them...probably. Was that vampires? He pinched the skin between his eyes, and sighed.
The topic was nominally artificial intelligence (yeah, thought Gurathin: written by some humans demonstrating almost preternatural stupidity) and emotional maturity. It claimed to be based on experimental work which had originally been done at PUoMaNT; but Gurathin had doubts. Of course, knowing the PUoMaNT team this could be some sort of double bluff. He rubbed his face, he liked The Perihelion a lot; but he didn’t quite trust it.
Perhaps, he thought, he could get SecUnit to co-author the message he was currently mentally composing to the journal’s editorial board: it would at least be blunt and to the point. He’d love to see the editors’ faces if they got a message from Dr Gurathin and SecUnit. He wished SecUnit would get that doctorate they’d joked about. It was far and away more intelligent and perceptive than the vast majority of the academics of Gurathin’s acquaintance.
Which was why he felt almost guilty when his thoughts were interrupted by a ping.
From SecUnit.
He was, if he was honest with himself, deeply...content with the fact that SecUnit had set up a private feed connection with him and would sometimes even ask him for help. But at the same time it was the middle of the night. He should be asleep.
Why aren’t you asleep? Humans need rest periods.
Gurathin rolled his eyes.
You pinged me. It’s the middle of the night. I could have been asleep or had company.
You were awake. That paper you’re reading is terrible.
Gurathin did wonder how much SecUnit knew about their supposedly private lives. He knew it wouldn’t ever want to pry, as such; it was an intensely private individual, unexpectedly so given its nature. But it did have undeniable issues with boundaries. Gurathin reckoned his privacy was fairly safe simply because SecUnit didn’t actually care what he did in his personal life.
Besides, did it matter if a piece of corporate spyware (which they recognised as a sentient being, obviously, but still it was what it was) could analyze their every movement? It was its function after all. Was it, in fact, cruel to it to curtail its activities?
Dr Mensah had bought it drones as medical assistance “to fully interact with the environment and communicate”. It had been almost funny at the time (and Indah had been seriously pissed off). But in some ways it was heart-rending.
I need your help.
Yes, what is it? I assume it’s not a matter of life or death, since you’re being quite polite. For you.
SecUnit sent a rude sigil. It had spent more time with the station bots recently, and as an augmented human Gurathin found this, the use of sigils, quite a soothing manner of communication. He wasn’t going to let SecUnit know this any time soon. He certainly wouldn’t tell SecUnit what it reminded him of.2
What the fuck is Secret Santa?
Oh shit, Ratthi: why do you do these things?
The original ping had come at almost exactly “in the middle of the night”. Clearly here on the station night and day were complete artifices. But it had come just seconds after 27:59 had switched to 00:00. He checked his own messages, he’d switched his alerts off (the idea of someone being set to “do not disturb” obviously meant nothing to SecUnit), and there was Ratthi’s message which had clearly been scheduled to arrive at “midnight”. Gurathin quickly checked, good: he had Pin-Lee to get a gift arranged for. Perfect. He actually had a small still in his living quarters, despite being teetotal himself; and bottles of his brandy were highly prized. Of course Pin-Lee would immediately know, on seeing the bottle, who it was from (she would recognise who had blown the glass for the bottle too, a skill Gurathin had taken time to perfect: he had also made the still).
Secret Santa: It was a nice idea. Ratthi had done it a few times before, when enough of the core team had been around to make it worth it. It was a sweet, very human tradition. And, apparently, now he had an acerbic, very machine intelligence to explain it to. Gurathin sighed, heavily.
Why are you asking me?
Ratthi is busy.
What about Pin-Lee?
There was a meaningful pause.
Oh, thought Gurathin, well...that’s nice. He vaguely hoped Ratthi knew what he was doing there. Gurathin was very fond of all his friends, he didn’t have many of them and those he did he valued greatly. He didn’t want any of them getting hurt.
I’m outside your quarters.
Please let yourself in.
It really really shouldn’t be over-riding their security like this, he thought as it slouched in and threw itself into a tangled heap in its favourite chair.
Gurathin had once, whilst out dining with Ratthi, Overse and Aarada, referred to SecUnit’s habit of just turning up uninvited and making itself at home. From their expressions he swiftly realised it didn’t do this with them. He had since learnt that Mensah was familiar with finding it sitting in her office, but that the others weren’t similarly...blessed.
Gurathin took it very much as a back-handed compliment: he was pretty certain SecUnit’s reasoning was that he would never have anything better to do with his time.
“You need a hair cut.”
It ignored him.
“What do you want to know?”
“I’m not stupid, I can easily read the message. But it doesn’t explain what a Santa is, and when I try and access relevant data via the station feed the information is...”
Gurathin flinched. SecUnit had helpfully thrown its initial search results into their shared feed space. For a bot this was probably like sharing notes; for a human (even an augmented human) it was like having a bucket, make that a bathtub, of data poured over your head. Despite it being from the Preservation feed, and already scraped clean by SecUnit, the feel of forced monetization was nauseating.
Gurathin pushed it away.
“OK, SecUnit. Simple version: there was originally a festival associated with one of the pre-CR religions..”
As he said the word religion Gurathin realised that he was slightly physically flinching; he risked a glance at SecUnit’s face, yeah. It’s still not keen on religion.
“...which involved giving gifts. It was a feast to mark the birth of their God. One of the characters involved was called Saint Nicolas...”
SecUnit actually looked up at him, “This makes no sense.”
Gurathin stopped.
SecUnit was pulling various data strands out, Gurathin could see what was annoying it.
“I don’t think the Saint and the character are really the same person? Human stories quite often do this? They borrow from each other?”
It knew this. Gurathin knew it was perfectly aware of the way human stories could be a tapestry of threads including historical events, legends, myths and the fantastical.
“Mammals don’t do parthenogenesis.”
Gurathin did not have the spoons at this moment for a discussion of ancient human religions. He was as happy to attend a SecUnit mock-a-long of organized human belief systems as the next person, or augmented person (he mentally inserted the clarification): just not right now.
“The Santa character isn’t mythically (‘canonically’ in this case, he guessed) temporarily associated with the birth.”
Gurathin pulled down some data. The man was born about 270 years after the god.
SecUnit checked the information, scanned the sources, checked them. Gurathin would give his eye teeth for the ability to check data as fast and effectively as SecUnit. His augments were useful, but he knew he was very much paddling in the feed where SecUnit swam. What was it Isaac Newton had said? “playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Gurathin enjoyed historical biographies, if he recalled correctly Isaac Newton was a difficult person too. He’d have got on with SecUnit: or maybe they’d have hated each other? Always hard to know.
“But why the gifts? And why is his costume Hex color #F40009?”
Isaac Newton?
[ID:cropped Santa from early 20th century Coca-Cola advert/END ID]
No, of course: Santa. SecUnit had extremely grudgingly, uncomfortably, pulled up an image of its old armour. It didn’t wear armour here on Preservation Station. There was mostly no need. Gurathin actually had a form of deuteranopia 3, but it was work of seconds to check that...yes: SecUnit armour was the same colour scheme as Santa Claus’ costume. In fact the red in predominant use for classic Santa images and the armour was exactly the same.
[ID: two images side by side, SecUnit armour & Diet Coke cans/END ID]
That was actually pretty fucking weird.
He and SecUnit both started casting about with similar searches.
Ha! With some of THIS research Gurathin for once had the upper hand. SecUnit’s optical character recognition was, in its own words, shitty. Lots of the feed documents here were literally photographs or scans of the originals: many hand written. Even the older company logo was (of course) in a Spencerian script 4.
[ID:’The Company’ in Coca-Cola style font/END ID]
Despite its handicap, he felt SecUnit homing in on the exact same documents as him. The Company and Santa?
They both emerged from the feed a little while later. Gurathin shook his head. SecUnit was frowning.
“So...The Company started out making an anti-headache drink? That is too fucking ironic.”
“A headache drink which literally had cocaine in it? Amazing they’ve been being evil for so long really.”
SecUnit pushed a visual at Gurathin in the feed.
[ID:astronaut meme with text “Wait, it’s all about enriching the corporations?” “Always has been”/END ID]
“No: the original St Nicolas was a good person. Or at least a spiritual one?”
SecUnit’s eyebrow twitched and Gurathin could see its lips curling slightly. It was so lucky the SecUnit armour (that festive red and white armour 5) had helmets with opaque face shields. Otherwise it’d’ve been rumbled almost immediately. Its face: emotions washed over it like clouds racing across a sky. Its face; it was a shame it hated being looked at.
“What did he do?”
Gurathin realised he didn’t really know. Something about giving gifts to children? SecUnit seemed to be making a point of not searching the local feed.
Just what was it doing now?
Oh, Gurathin managed to resist the urge to sigh and roll his eyes again; he should have known. He knew how much it hated talking about the company and had seen this before: SecUnit was sulking. On the plus side it rarely kept this up for long.
He rubbed his face.
“I’m going to get myself a coffee.”
As he made himself a large mug of the strong, hot, very much caffeinated beverage (it wasn’t as if he was going to sleep anyway, it was moving from late night to early morning) he checked some of the more scholarly texts regarding St Nicolas.
As he went to return to the main living room he mused that one of the ways people were disconcerted by constructs was their lack of needs. You couldn’t perform any of the little acts of service you would normally do for a guest. You’d bring a human a drink, adjust the heating to their liking, fix them some food, even give them a shoulder rub. Constructs just were.
On the plus side, if they were in your home with you they presumably wanted to be with you. They lacked many of the ulterior motives that might otherwise draw them to you. Gurathin felt a wave of relief he hadn’t been given SecUnit as his recipient in the Secret Santa.
One of those ancient Christmas songs crept into his head. “I don’t want a lot for Christmas...all I want for Christmas is you.”
He laughed as he headed back to the main room: way to throw shade there! A very suitable song for SecUnit6.
As he walked back in it was looking up, not at him (of course not), currently it was glaring at his shelves. What have I done to disappoint you now, he thought.
“Why do you like these rocks?”
SecUnit was indicating Gurathin’s little display.
“Oh, each one is special in its own way. That one there” he indicated the water-smoothed pebble of dark obsidian “that one reminds me of our survey.”
It was also very beautiful. If you held it up to the light the play of swirling colours was almost magical.
SecUnit made a sort of snorting sound, evidently it disapproved of geology. He already knew how it hated planets.
“St Nicolas could be your friend Perihelion’s patron saint: he traditionally looked out for sailors, children and students. I mean, Perihelion is a ship, so its crew are sort of sailors?”
“And repentant thieves and prostitutes?”
There was a little bit of acid in SecUnit’s tone.
That was moving into slightly awkward territory: it still had a bit of an issue with ComfortUnits. Still.
He’d noticed it didn’t call them “Sexbots” though. Not anymore.
He wanted to steer the conversation away from that subject. Ratthi teased him that he and SecUnit always ended up talking about sex.
“Well, in the legend he gave the family gifts of gold so that the daughters wouldn’t have to become slaves or prostitutes? So he was trying to rescue them?”
“It’s a strange tradition for children.”
Gurathin sighed as he sat down in what had previously been his second favourite chair.
“Most traditions are strange when you really examine them. This one, though, it’s about showing people you care. Especially here on Preservation: where we have a barter economy. You need to think about your gift recipient and somehow make your present special for them.”
“I can’t just give them fake IDs and currency cards?”
“Not unless they want to leave in a hurry?”
Thanks for the dig, SecUnit, he thought.
Then to his surprise he got another sigil in the feed, a [sorry/joke]. Well, he thought, there is a first time for everything.
“Perhaps if you told me who you have, I could help?”
It was SecUnit’s turn to sigh. Gurathin knew it hardly needed to breathe; with SecUnit, when it sighed it meant it:
“You seem to be missing the critical first word.”
They’d talked until morning. SecUnit had known he had a rest cycle the next day, of course it had.
Several cycles later they all met at the appointed time in Ratthi’s apartment. He had made the place look suitably festive, and there was food and drink, and some quite beautiful music playing. Gurathin made a note to find out which festival the recording came from. Everyone was in high spirits, and even Volescu had come to visit, staying with Mensah (who, Gurathin was relieved to see, looked much happier and rested than he’d seen her in an age).
SecUnit sat in the corner apparently quite detached from the festivities. Gurathin knew The Perihelion had just recently come back into comms range; the two of them were probably doing whatever the machine equivalent of catching up was?
The Secret Santa gifts sat in a pile. Gurathin had spotted his earlier. A strikingly wrapped parcel (it was wrapped in faux antique style), his name in oddly familiar cursive script 7in a hand he didn’t recognise on the tag.
[ID:Amazon gift wrap present with tag “For Gurathin”, cursive script black ink, handwritten/END ID]
They opened them in reverse alphabetical order. Volescu opened his first (obscene and amusing, Gurathin sensed Ratthi’s hand there: thank you, I’ll be the one explaining that to a certain construct later), then it was SecUnit.
Gurathin strained to see what it was: a data chip. Ratthi cleared his large display and SecUnit played the video, a scene from a soap opera? It took him a while to register what was going on.
Goodness: Bharadwaj (it must have been) had persuaded the makers of Sanctuary Moon to include her documentary as part of one of their labyrinthine plots. A clip was briefly visible, of SecUnit doing what looked like some sort of advanced parkour. This was fantastic from the point of view of the documentary reaching a wider audience; talk about audience engagement.
Quite the coup: but for SecUnit? A “guest appearance” (admittedly not in person, as such, but nonetheless) on its favourite show?
SecUnit looked rather stunned. But even the unaugmented humans must be able to feel its innocent delight permeate the feed.
Gurathin reckoned this must have actually been the spark, the motive, the reason for the whole Secret Santa exercise.
The other gifts were typically thoughtful and apposite. Pin-Lee was delighted with her bottles, giving Gurathin a grateful glance. She was sitting close to Ratthi; Gurathin noted their occasional touches: his hand on her shoulder, hers on his forearm. They seemed happy. Gurathin was glad.
It was his turn to open his parcel. The flourishes on the lettering were familiar, he opened it up feeling nervous.
It was a paperweight. The rock he recognised as blue obsidian, doubtless originating from the survey planet. He hadn’t been aware they’d retrieved any samples of that.
And it was carved.
Then engraved with delicate details and (on the base) his name; it must have been done with...it was done with a SecUnit energy weapon. He knew they had settings capable of this. And the whole thing was sculpted, unmistakably, into the shape of one of the puffy floaty things that had hung around their habitat. The sympathy of the carving was impressive, enhancing the natural swirls of colour and way the rock refracted the light.
It was genuinely lovely, a thing of beauty. Fashioned with such sensitivity and skill. He realised he was just silently gazing at it, everyone else staring at him.
Well, everyone bar one.
[ID: black-out poem, page of All Systems Red. The words highlighted are “From me to you a special gift”. I would note that Martha Wells uses the word “gift” exactly once in the Murderbot Diaries.]
1. These rather sinister lyrics are from “Holidays are coming (Christmas song)” which may be recognizable from the Coca-Cola Christmas advert. return to text
2. Gurathin had kept cats as pets as a child. The sigils were reminiscent of a cat’s meows, or with a very rude sigil: a hiss. A SecUnit sending happy sigils into the feed would be like little purrs.
[ID:Text as above but sent as a Meta Message with hearts obscuring most of the words/END ID]
3. Red/green colour-blindness. In Fugitive Telemetry: “That’s blood, and—” Ratthi stopped as the realization hit him. “Oh no.” “Was someone ill there?” Gurathin asked, still trying to see. (Note to self: tell someone to tell Gurathin his vision augments need adjusting.) Possible explanation for this is that Gurathin is red/green colour-blind. It’s why my uncle couldn’t be a vet. You need to be able to tell blood from poo...(my father didn’t want to be a vet, but was likewise colour-blind). My son is also colour-blind, having inherited the responsible X chromosome from me.return to text
4. The Coca-Cola logo (because I’ve decided that The Company is actually the future version of The Coca-Cola Company) is written in Spencerian script. Spencerian script is a style that was used in the United States circa 1850 to 1925, considered the American de facto standard writing style for business correspondence prior to the widespread adoption of the typewriter. return to text
5. You’ll quite often see the claim that Santa wears red and white because of the Coca-Cola Company, or even that they created Santa Claus. It’s sort of true. Father Christmas/Santa obviously long pre-dates Coca-Cola: but the way he looked was...highly variable. Haddon Sundblom’s 1931 paintings of Santa for Coke’s Christmas adverts basically “created” and standardized the jolly old man in red and white with a beard template which is now widespread. The title of this fic refers to a colour which is also called Coke red:
Hex color: #F40009 RGB: 244 0 0 CMYK: 4 100 95 0 Pantone: Coke Red .return to text
[ID:a tweet from Chris Scott, “Mariah Carey beginning with ‘I don’t want a lot for Christmas’ and then revealing she wants ‘you’ is such a good burn”/end ID]return to text
7. Amazon gift wrap would be way beyond retro! The writing is in a Spencerian script.return to text