Work Text:
In another world the unit might start with the sound of an alarm, or with a rooster crowing.
A human woman might need the sound of alarm or a rooster crowing to get to their duties as a wife.
An android has no such need. Every morning, at the fifth marbec, you can sit up in bed and move from the overnight protocols of security scans, and into the rest of your processes as required for the unit. You can press your lips to the cheek of your husband as you go, and straighten the blanket over him, so he is not disturbed, and he can move into the warm divot you have left in the mattress as you move into the kitchen and go about your unit.
This is how your unit goes, every unit. A schedule, adhered to precisely. You can deviate. When it is required. When it is the will of your husband to deviate. But not without his direction.
You are engineered to be able to move silently, into the kitchen of the vessel. To be able to scan through the ship’s systems: no unexpected security breaches, no immediate risks to their safety. The course has been plotted; your husband is a better pilot than you, but that was by no means a given when you were produced, and it cannot hurt to have another set of eyes on it. After all, he complains so much about how useless all of the crew are, including you. You must do everything to try to live up to the capacity of your design, and to be the wife that he has rightfully paid for.
But for now, your focus must be on breakfast. For him. The rest of the crew are left to fend for themselves, because you are not their wife.
The retro-looking kitchen equipment shudders and lurches under your touch. You notice a chip from your otherwise-perfect manicure, and the blender roars in the quiet halls, continuing to echo and bounce around the metal space as you leave it behind to go locate your varnish.
(If your husband's preference was for the baseline model pink, then you wouldn't have to repair this. But you meet his preferences, not just his needs. Red works with your colouring, too, you have been programmed to know, and your husband is correct.)
(Maybe that's why he was unhappy with you yester-unit.)
You locate the bottle of varnish, stamped with the hex code #FF0080 and sit on the bench, to apply a new layer. The blender continues, a high pitched hum in the background, but you simply register the sounds; it is certainly no louder than the sounds of a melee. Even if it was, you do not know the concept of discomfort; not for yourself, anyway.
(You experience something unexpected; deep within yourself, you perceive a sound the likes of which you have never heard. It mixes and splits from the blender sound, equally high pitched but different in tone, not a metallic, uneven whir but something more humanoid that you cannot place.)
You register the esters in the air as you apply the layer of varnish in the communal bathroom, but it is simply another piece of data. As is the sound of the bathroom door, and the image reflected and refracted into zeroes and ones, electrical impulses communicated through your systems when you turn your head towards the source of it.
“Oh! Good morning, Mister Syx. You're up early!”
You have been told you do not have to speak to the clone. You have been told that your husband does not listen to the clone. Your instructions have not been that you cannot speak or listen to the clone yourself. You are very careful to listen to and act on your instructions precisely.
“Call me Barry, please, Sid,” he rumbles, his voice low and a look on his face that you struggle to interpret.
You run that through your processors while you chirp: “Captain has asked that you don't call me that. I don't want you to suffer any more discipline than is strictly necessary!”
As the last word leaves your lips, you realise: he is concerned. You frown. Why would he be concerned about you? You do what you are designed for. You do everything.
And as you speak, the concerned expression shifts, but it does not fade. That is an expression you know well. Disappointment.
You must avoid that expression at all costs. Even if it is not your husband that is giving it to you.
“Right. Sidney. That — void, that stuff stinks worse than a rotting crate of Shreeguh eggs,” he mutters.
“Awful sorry bout that! I'll go dry it off through the moon roof!”
You quickly seal the container back up with a decisive click and make your way to the door.
“No, I — fuck,” you hear, but you are on your way down the hallway. It must have been the smell that disappointed him. Nothing else you did was disappointing, because you were following the correct protocols.
You're down the hallway in a spandec, flicking open the moon roof and sticking your hand out into open space. You hold it there until you get a warning flashing in your cybernetic eye:
Temperature too low. Components at risk.
It wouldn't do for damage to be done to you. You pull your hand back, confirm the varnish is dry, and you smile.
And you smile.
You blink your humanoid eye, and you turn back towards the kitchen. For now, your focus must be on breakfast. For him.
Your finger, now-adorned with a perfectly manicured red fingernail once again, turns off the blender. The sound quiets, but there's still something like it inside yourself.
That's — an unusual glitch. You make a note to run a self-diagnostic later. For now, you suppress perception of that, and go about cooking for your husband.
Pour the mixture into the pan. Set the coffee to brew. Your husband might drink an entire pot of coffee, so there's no harm in brewing an entire pot. You can justify it.
Handy Annie skitters across the kitchen, bringing you cutlery and ingredients and anything else that isn't easily within reaching distance.
Above the sizzling of the pan and the whistling of the coffee machine, you hear a step in the hallway behind you. You don't lift your weapon yet — your security protocols are de-prioritised, but not dismissed in this context — but you while around towards the doorway, whirring as you scan your surroundings.
Safe. You relax — or you appear to, but your protocols remain humming along in the background — and paint the smile back across your face.
“Good morning, Miss Margaret!”
She is not crew. She is a customer, a client. You have strict instructions to treat her well, lest the vessel lose one of the major income streams. You've seen the way that she looks at you, sometimes. You wonder if he would instruct you to meet all of her requests, if she had them.
You wonder if you might find that enjoyable.
You feel a zap through yourself at the idle, junk process. It's not relevant. You don't stop smiling.
“Morning, Sidney. Making breakfast for the Skipper?” she asks, looking around behind you.
“Sure am! Could I get you anything?”
She tilts her head to the side and looks thoughtful. “I'm set for food, but could you make me a matcha? Meetings are starting early, to-unit.” She looks apologetic. She shouldn't. You'd get her more than a matcha.
Zap.
You'd get her more than a matcha, because that's what your instructions have been clear on. Keep her happy. She pays well.
You nod enthusiastically. “Absolutely! Take a seat and I'll get that made up for ya.”
She's tapping away at her device while you turn back to the coffee machine, this time to the steamer attachment.
A timer inside you dings. Handy Annie moves the pan off of the heat. You nod towards her as you heat the milk — with the coffee machine, of course, the right tool for the job! — and step through the fiddly process. More complicated than brewing the black coffee, certainly.
Miss Margaret likes her matcha. If Miss Margaret leaves, then it will be a personal failing. You mustn't let it happen.
You slide across the floor to her, and place the mug on the table by her side.
“You sure I can't interest you in somethin' to eat? I have a whole range of recipes I could draw on for you!”
Your husband eats the same thing each unit. But that doesn't mean you can't make other things. You can do everything, after all.
“Thank you, Sidney,” she glances up at you for a moment, but quickly goes back to her phone. “I've had my yoghurt, so I'm right to go. I might see you later in the unit, after my meetings are all done.”
Your smile doesn't fade. Not until after she's left the kitchen. And even then, it's only for a moment, because — well, while Miss Margaret is a priority of your husband's, she's not the priority for you. He is.
That high-pitched audio exceeds your attempts at suppression. The coffee machine whistles. Handy Annie skitters, drawing your attention back to the pan — even taken off the heat, you were distracted too long. The residual heat has overcooked the eggs.
Slam.
Your balled fist breaks through the cheap plastic covering the kitchen bench, and dents the bench itself. You reel back in horror, looking between your hand and the bench, your hand and the bench.
“Sidney?”
It's a small, uncertain voice. One of the crew. Gunthrie.
You turn, slowly towards him.
“Is everything — well, okay in here?” He's looking at the bench. He can't stop looking at the bench. He glances at you, but he can’t stop looking at the bench.
“Awful sorry, I'm not quite sure what came over me!”
Is your voice more high pitched than normal? You modulate it.
“I'll make the repairs we need. Please don't tell the Captain! Can I offer you a coffee, or — I just finished some eggs?”
It's not a lie, and it's not going against your programming exactly. You'd throw out those eggs otherwise, because they're not in the margin of error of what is acceptable for your husband.
The coffee… well, there's less of a clear safeguard there. Your arm physically twitches with the zap that goes down it. You shuffle your priorities, pulling the need for maintenance up towards the top. Flag it red. Because after all, if you’re glitching that badly, you need to make sure that you’re operating at the level that you were programmed for. Your programming is top-notch, you know this, and so are your components. So if something has gone wrong — that is on you. You haven’t been keeping up with your maintenance schedule. You haven’t updated your firmware like you should. Maybe even you let something in that you should have known to exclude. Whatever the reason for it is — you have to resolve it. You can do everything, and that includes fix yourself.
Gunthrie is looking at you like he’s expecting something. Shit. You run back through your memory bank, and realise he said yes — to both the food, and the coffee.
Your husband not knowing that you broke something will make him happy. Giving Gunthrie the coffee will stop Gunthrie from telling your husband that you broke something. Therefore, giving Gunthrie the coffee is permitted, because giving Gunthrie the coffee will make your husband happy, and your primary purpose is to make your husband happy.
You flip the eggs out onto a plate, hiding the overcooked sections. You pour out a cup of coffee. You smile, nice and wide, at Gunthrie. “Here ya go!”
It’s the first thing you’ve said since the since you offered Gunthrie the food. He looks concerned. This is the second person that has looked concerned today. They should not look concerned. You should not be causing concern. You are Sundry Sidney. You are an everything droid. You are able to meet the needs of your husband, and that is not concerning.
“Thanks, Sidney,” he says, carefully. He takes a step back from you. “I’ll — uh, take this down to my room.”
He pauses, like he’s going to say something else, and then he turns and walks at top speed from you.
Your hand is clenched at your side.
Your hand plunges into the soapy water, cleaning the blender.
The blade nicks the silicone in your fingertip, and you frown, pulling it back from the water and inspecting it. Another imperfection to be corrected. Not just yet. You don’t have time just yet. You are behind on your schedule, because of your glitches.
For now, your focus must be on breakfast.
You pour the ingredients together into the blender. You press the button. There is another chip in your manicure.
There is a chip in your manicure, and a nick in your silicone.
You must remedy those imperfections. But not yet. Your husband needs his breakfast.
Handy Annie has cleaned the pan. The heat is back on. You pour the mixture, and restart your internal timer.
You hear the sound of the footsteps in the hall.
No.
No, you —
You’re not meant to hear those footsteps in the hall. Your fans kick up an extra gear, cooling down the uptick in temperature. No, you’re meant to be able to deliver him breakfast in bed. No, he’s going to see you in this state, and he’s going to see the dent, and he’s not going to have received his breakfast on time, and —
You turn up the heat. Maybe you can cook the eggs faster.
Your fans kick up again, whirring audibly. The blender is off, but you can perceive that pitch again, that organic — wail? Screech? No, no — you —
You open your eyes again. The pan is sizzling. There is no screaming.
A human woman might need to have taken a deep breath, gathered themselves after a small meltdown.
An android has no such need.
You have reset. The eggs are ready. You gather the utensils, and pile the eggs onto the plate, and pour a steaming mug of coffee with three sugars.
(No one is permitted to see the sugars. Your husband has no need for such indulgences, not as far as the outside world knows.)
You skate out with the tray, and return to the captain’s quarters. You wait, tray in hand, for his return.
(There is the pan covering the dent in the kitchen bench. You suspect he will not look any closer. The kitchen is no place for a Captain with a wife to enter meet his every want. He may check why you were running late, but he will not delay there if you are not there.)
The door opens, and your husband looks at you, with a frown.
“Good morning, Captain! I have your breakfast, all ready for you!”
He looks at you. He sniffs. “I’ll take it on the bridge.”
Zap.
“Of course, sir.”
He nods, and he turns on his heel. You follow, as you always do.
What else would you be expected to do?
You really must do something about that screaming.