Dress for the Occasion

[awkwardbot]

 Wen Ning’s funeral was the next day. (I looked it up - in Wen Ning’s culture, you stop using courtesy names for people once they’re dead.) The funeral announcement said that people attending should wear white or grey, and I didn’t have anything like that. So I was at the Bar, getting myself a proper outfit for a funeral. At least, a proper outfit for this funeral.

The clothes I’d picked were best described as “somber and nondescript.” The jacket had a hood on it, which I liked. Bar was trying to convince me to get some nice shoes for the occasion instead of just wearing boots like I usually did. I was considering it.

[Tinytag: Murderbot]

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[hat_and_dimples]

And up comes Jin Guangyao, parking his golden silk clad bottom on a bar stool a few yards away, putting down the anachronistic tablet computer the bar gave him open on his favourite game (Plague Inc.) that he had been playing over by the fireplace, now paused in favour of watching the construct pick funeral clothes.

[awkwardbot]

Oh, it was that asshole again. “Take a picture. It’ll last longer.”

[hat_and_dimples]

Jin Guangyao lifts his tablet in confusion (he can take pictures with that, and even knows what the HDR function does) and says, "Excuse me?"

No cultural context.

[awkwardbot]

Oh, great. “I mean it’s rude to stare at people.”

The problem was that Jin Guangyao, as far as I could tell, didn’t think I was a person. (It was weird because a lot of people in settled space thought the same way about me, but for some reason it was weird when that happened here.)

[hat_and_dimples]

"I am simply watching you," Jin Guangyao points out. "It's fascinating to watch how you negotiate the idea of clothes."

Yes, not really a person.

[awkwardbot]

“What’s to negotiate? It’s not like there are hostages involved.”

If there were, I’d be infiltrating, hacking, and/or shooting while someone else did the actual negotiations.

[hat_and_dimples]

"You negotiate between the need to wear certain clothes for an event, and the reality of who you are and what you usually look like," Jin Guangyao says. "I like watching the way you come to a decision."

[awkwardbot]

I made a very rude gesture at Jin Guangyao. It was probably as unfamiliar to him as that saying about taking a picture. But I did it very emphatically and I’m pretty sure I had on a very unfriendly facial expression, so he probably got the gist of it at least.

[hat_and_dimples]

"You -- what??"

Did that machine just flip him the finger (or whatever the equivalent might be in their respective cultures)?

[awkwardbot]

Oh yeah. He'd understood that just fine.

"That's probably not something you want your meat puppets to do. Or, well, I guess they'd be your dad's meat puppets."

Wen Ning had told me about that. I decided, you know what, I'd take the nice shoes with the funeral outfit after all. I let Bar know over the feed and the shoes appeared on her surface.

[hat_and_dimples]

"You what??"

Now, here is a Jin Guangyao who is completely flummoxed, getting angry, and pondering how to contain that information the construct should definitely not have.

Xue Yang is experimenting with nails to the brain, but not quite successfully yet; and does that machine even have an organic brain?

[awkwardbot]

Jin Guangyao's face right at that moment was pretty much the highlight of my day cycle, so I saved a picture of it in the part of my memory where I keep really important stuff that I'll never delete, like my episodes of Sanctuary Moon.

(If there really was an afterlife and Wen Ning was in it and could see what living people were doing, I hoped he could see this, and that it made him happy.)

I folded up my new outfit, put the shoes on it, and put the whole bundle under my arm. "I hope you have learned a very important lesson today about not fucking around with me." Or maybe he hadn't. Whatever.

[hat_and_dimples]

"You're threatening me," Jin Guangyao says, incredulous.

A machine!

[awkwardbot]

"I didn't threaten you. I just spoiled your fun so hard it ruined your day."

Really, I don't make threats. I'm not good at it. (And it doesn't seem like the kind of habit a terrifying rogue Murderbot should get into anyway.)

I took my new clothes and headed up to my room. I was just going to watch media until it was time to go to the funeral. (Okay, maybe I'd also replay that conversation with Jin Guangyao a few times, because it was deeply satisfying and kind of funny.)

[hat_and_dimples]

Jin Guangyao watches it go, utterly perplexed.

How could such a thing even happen?