Cohost writing prompt: @Making-up-Mech-Pilots — Mech Pilot who will teach you something they wouldn’t at the Academy
"What did you just call me?" the senior pilot says dangerously, sliding her chair back from the mess hall table, and the tank-grown numan blanches, jerks to their identical, uncomfortably stiff preprogrammed attention pose, and stutters. "My callsign's right here on my fucking sleeve, what does that fucking say?"
"Sir," the newbie says. "I'm a Series 3, sir." No shit; the new hotness, everyone's real curious what's changed in the process since Series 2, that's why they waved one over to say hi. Pale eyes flicker across Murtaugh's expression, which obviously doesn't yield comprehension. "They have our tank time down to five weeks now, sir, but that — optimised some stuff out. I can read, sir, but my functional written vocab only extends to the set of words that have appeared in mech piloting UIs. I can't— I don't know what that says, sir. I'd heard people call you—"
"Socket." Murtaugh swallows bile. "You've heard people call me Socket." Because the sniggering that she got everywhere she's got by dropping trou and getting socketed never unsticks from you, once people start.
"Sir, under the Series 3 terms of service, this may qualify as an Offence Against the Human Person," the numan says through stiff lips. "If you deem yourself infringed on, I'll report to Protein Reclamation—"
"What," says Murtaugh.
"What the fuck," Papadopolous echos, next to her. "Recycling?"
"Sir, you're a human being," the numan says, as if that's all the explanation, and Murtaugh has a sick, sinking feeling that she knows exactly what the point of the Series 3 is over the 2, and that it answers a lot of homefront squealing about authentic personhood more than any technical improvement.
"No," she says. "Fuck, no. I am not infringed on. What the fuck — where do I find a copy of the Seies 3 terms of service? I want to see this shit."
"Sir, I don't know, sir," the numan says, not relaxing in the slightest. "We have it programmed in. So that we can self-report infractions."
"Infractions," says Papa.
"What kind of infractions get you marched to a fucking protein breakdown vat?" Murtaugh demands. "Those are supposed to be for your combat casualties!"
"We're equipment, sir," the numan says, looking steadily more terrified. "We pilot mechs to better the odds that a human won't die in service. Infractions are malfunctions."
"You're telling me," Papa says, "that if you hurt Muerta's girly feels, that carries a death sentence."
"This is fucked," Murtaugh says. "This is sick. For god's sake, pilot, you didn't do anything wrong, relax, sit the fuck down."
The numan hesitates, sits, doesn't notably relax.
"You eaten yet?" Murtaugh says, jittery with leftover stress and fresh sucking guilt.
"No, sir."
"You don't have to call me that. I don't outrank you."
"You're a human being, sir."
"Fuck," Murtaugh says, hands clenching uselessly. "Which of today's meals did you want?" and then a horrible realisation takes hold, like ink blooming in water. "Wait, the meal options are up on the whiteboard. How do you know—"
"I always order the number one, sir," the numan says, quiet, lips barely moving. "Or sometimes, I'll overhear enough in the queue to infer, mostly if people are complaining about the chicken—"
"Today you got a choice of generic curry, or white fish in grease sauce," Papa says.
"Look," Murtaugh says desperately. "Look, you can read. They put the skills in there. You must be able to pick up new vocab, with a bit of effort?"
"Unassigned learning is seditious, sir."
"Fuck this," Murtaugh says. "Fuck everything about this. What if I coach you? What if I point new words out to you, for — for ad-hoc spot operational efficiency gains?"
There's a long, long pause.
"I think that's against the spirit of the Series 3 terms of service, sir," the numan says.
"Does that get you recycled?" Murtaugh has a sudden, horrible vision of the most efficient way to program what must already be a fucking flood of Series 3 recyclings: an orderly queue of numans filing into the facility, shucking and folding their own uniforms for reclamation, clambering themselves into the bioreactors—
"No?" the numan concedes slowly.
"Okay. Okay, good." The base library probably has some learn-to-read books, for pilots from worse backgrounds than hers, but for now— she grabs sachets off Papa's tray, salt, pepper, ketchup. "Okay, you must recognise letters. Can you sound out a word?"
"Curry or fish, kid?" Papa says, sliding out of her chair, patting Murtaugh's shoulder on her way past.
"...The number one," the numan says, eyes on the sachets, looking like it's all a little too much.