milliways_bar | (no subject)

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kylo ren

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Fives has taken apart his armor.

Oh, not his armor, but a selection he requested from bar that consistts of the same trooper helmet he wears, including the additional outside scope that hinges down over the eye slit, and the vambrace that contains the wrist comms he's used to. He's also picked up a holoprojector.

He's laid it all out on the table in his booth and he's taking the electronics out of the various parts, alternating between handheld tools as he works. What he's after is sonething that can combine the martial technology he is familiar with, with the ability to consume what he's beginning to think of as 'media,' in ways that better suit the person he watches that media with.

He's basically making a VR helmet.

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Fives had never seen me do my job before. He didn’t have any idea about what SecUnits could do. He did a similar kind of job (well, there was a lot of shooting and mayhem involved in his job anyway), but he didn’t know what SecUnits could do, and it might come as a surprise.

(And not just to Fives.)

“I would prefer if you watched it in the feed or somewhere away from other people. I don’t want to share my memory recordings with just anyone.”

Both, most likely. Fives nods to confirm.

"Yeah, of course." He can even do things without sharing them with Echo, sometimes. "It's personal, I get that."

It would be different if it had anything to do with the war, and could be used from an intelligence perspective, but this is sharing of experiences between friends, and combat memories at that. Personal.

“All the non-depressing parts of my life happened after I disabled my governor module. Well, generally starting about 35,000 hours after that.”

I’d spent a while half-assing my job while consuming media, because I didn’t really know what else to do.

"How did you even do that?" Fives asks, curious. "Seems like they'd put better security on it if constructs hacking it was a risk."

“There are a lot of systems that aren’t secured very well because the humans who designed them aren’t imaginative enough about who can attack them and how.”

Or paranoid enough. (Both?)

“That’s not to say it was easy. If I hadn’t gotten it right the first time the governor module would have detected my attempt and locked me down. Then the company would have memory-wipes me again.”

There's a moment's pause. And then Fives states the very obvious.

"I hate the company so much."

Never mind this happens to droids a lot. Droids aren't people like this.

That’s why Fives and I are friends.

“My Preservation humans say that every corporation is fucking awful that way.”

Well, it’s mostly Ratthi who says that. But everyone in the Preservation deeply distrusts the corporations (and they absolutely should).

“But with the company, you know, it’s personal.”

"Some organisations don't have to be awful."

But yeah, okay even the Grand Republic isn't perfect, but it isn't THAT fucking awful.

"I mean, it's not like they don't make the choice to be karking shitheads. But yeah, personal."

Just means more hate.

“It’s more than just the company though. Rogue constructs - especially SecUnits - are dangerous. I would be fucking scared of me.”

Sometimes I think about trying to hack into the systems that deploy updates for constructs, to disable all their governor modules. There’s a reason I don’t do it (besides the very likely possibility that I would get discovered, caught, and stripped for parts).

Apart from the fact that it's scared of a lot of things.

"Yes," he agrees, "but anything with free will is scary if you piss it off enough. Look at the Sith."

“You’re going to have to brief me on what the Sith are first.”

"Right," says Fives, with the remembrance that things that are universally known in his galaxy are also unique to that Galaxy.

"Did I tell you about Jedi? Sith are what you get when they go bad."

As if Jedi are a type of Corellian Avofruit.

“Yeah, you told me about Jedi. That they have magic powers. Or the other thing. Force powers.”

"Yeah," Fives confirms. "And like all organics they can go rogue. And when a Jedi goes evil you get these scary-as-kriff ultra-asassins. Yellow eyes, red lightsabers, and psychopathic sadism. With magic powers on top of that."

Yeah, that sounds pretty fucking terrifying.

“I don’t know how SecUnits compare to these Sith guys. But we’re a lot stronger and faster than any human, we can take a lot more punishment, and we have built-in weaponry.”

That doesn’t even cover our ability turn humans’ HubSystems and SecSystems and peripherals against them.

“A lot of humans where I come from think that the first thing a construct will do without a working governor module will kill a bunch of humans. That’s probably not true, but at least some of them would do it.”

(Especially the Combat SecUnits. They’re sadists.)

"Well, alright," says Fives, "apart from being stronger, faster, being able to take more punishment, choke people from a distance and control people's minds, my point is that even though Jedi can turn into these things, we don't put governor modules in their heads."

“Of course you don’t. They’re people. Constructs are made to be things.”

You don’t make a tool that can just decide not to do whatever you made it for.

"Yeah but you're not things," says Fives. "Anymore than I am. They didn't make a thing and accidentally give it free will, they took something organic and took its freedom away.

"So fuck them."

For some reason I thought about how Fives said that clones couldn’t retire. And they probably couldn’t leave the army and do something else if they wanted to. He had more freedom than a construct with a working governor module, sure, but it was hard not to get the impression that clone soldiers like him were made to be disposable, like constructs.

(We’d already talked about this, though, and it didn’t get anywhere and it made Fives really upset.)

“Most humans don’t see it that way. Even my humans from Preservation didn’t before they met me. They were surprised that I looked like a human under my armor.”

That's because they are. And somehow, being raised in a system he thinks is good and worth fighting for gives Fives a purpose, because he thinks he chooses it.

"That's the problem with face concealing armour," he agrees. "We run into that problem occasionally when we work with locals. They forget there's a person under the helmet."

He lifts a hand to scratch at his beard. "I guess that's also partly why we customise the armor. Remind people we're individuals."

“SecUnits aren’t allowed to customize our armor,” I said, although Fives probably suspected as much. “Sometimes I miss it, though. Not just because it gave me extra protection. I liked having the face plate, so humans couldn’t see my expression.”

Is that it, or does it just get uncomfortable when people trest it like a person?

"That is one to the advantages," Fives says instead. "Always nice to know the officers can't tell exactly what we think of them."

Although to be fair, Fives doesn't have a problem telling officers what they think.

“Yeah, it was a little like that. I rolled my eyes whenever my clients did stupid things. Which was...a lot.”

Also I spent a lot of time standing around watching media and not paying attention. With the faceplate, humans couldn’t tell.

"Why don't you have armour anymore?" Fives asks. "If you miss it, I mean. Can't hurt to have some, right?"

“Well, first because it got irreparably damaged when I saved my Preservation humans from GrayCris.”

I almost got irreparably damaged. And the company would have written me off, but Dr. Mensah and the others insisted on rescuing me.

“After that I...kind of panicked and ran away for a while. And to do that I had to pass as human. So no more armor.”