Work Text:
I was lying on the sofa in Mensah’s office because there wasn’t any other place I wanted to be more. I was halfway though Episode 48 of Lineages of the Sun when she sent me a feed message.
SecUnit, do you have a moment.
Yes I said, pausing my show. This is something I’m still getting used to. People who know I’m a secunit asking if I’m busy. I’m used to maybe getting that courtesy from people who think I’m human, sometimes. ART could always tell what I was doing at all times so didn’t bother to ask. Mensah asks, it’s weird, but in a good way.
I got this message, I wanted you to have a look at it since it’s about you.
She forwarded it to me, and I only had to read the first line to know it was a scam.
Dear Dr. Mensah, We are trying to reach you about your secunit’s extended warranty.
I told her, That’s a scam, you can delete it.
I thought it was. How did they get my contact information? She asked. It was a reasonable thing to be worried about, given everything that had happened.
They probably just bought a list of everyone who had purchased a secunit in the past year. I told her. That was how those scammers usually operated.
Oh. She looked uncomfortable. Apparently owning a person (and I count as a person, I guess) is considered a bad thing here. I know that I don’t like being owned, but it is surprising to find so many humans also uncomfortable with the idea. Preservation is strange.
They can be persistent. I warned her, If they keep sending you messages, just tell them my model number and that I’m over five years old, that makes me ineligible for the warranty. Of course even if I was under five years old, disabling my govmod, running away and allowing ART to shorten my limbs had all also voided my warranty. That was not something I cared about.
How old are you? She asked.
I’m not sure exactly, because I don’t remember most of it, but I looked up my model, and I’m between twenty and thirty years old. ART had a more exact estimate from the run-time of some of my internal components, but I hadn’t told Mensah about ART, so I didn’t bring that up.
Watching her face through one of the drones, I could see she looked surprised. I’m glad you made it this long. She said at last.
Thank you, for asking. I said. I liked that she had asked me about how old I was. And I liked that she had shared the message about me with me. It was nice to be thought of ok?
You’re welcome.
The conversation was over. She turned her attention back to her work. I unpaused my episode and turned my attention back to that.