All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)

by Martha Wells

I COULD HAVE BECOME a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

Their group was called PreservationAux and it had bought an option on this planet’s resources, and the

survey trip was to see if it was worth bidding on a full share.

Freehold meant it had been terraformed and colonized but wasn’t affiliated with any corporate confederations.

One of the reasons the bond company requires it, besides slapping more expensive markups on their clients, is that I was recording all their conversations all the time, though I wasn’t monitoring anything I didn’t need to do a half-assed version of my job. But the company would access all those recordings and data mine them for anything they could sell. No, they don’t tell people that. Yes, everyone does know it. No, there’s nothing you can do about it.

“Something’s been deleted from the warnings and the section on fauna.”

as long as they didn’t try to talk or interact with me in any way.

literally me

DeltFall was another survey group, like us, but they were on a continent on the opposite side of the planet.

The sense of urgency just wasn’t there. Also, you may have noticed, I don’t care.

Yes, talk to Murderbot about its feelings. The idea was so painful I dropped to 97 percent efficiency.

but you may have noticed that when I do manage to care, I’m a pessimist.

“We heard—we were given to understand, that Imitative Human Bot Units are . . . partially constructed from cloned material.”

This is why I didn’t want to come. I’ve got four perfectly good humans here and I didn’t want them to get killed by whatever took out DeltFall. It’s not like I cared about them personally, but it would look bad on my record, and my record was already pretty terrible.

I am not a combat murderbot, I’m Security. I keep things from attacking the clients and try to gently discourage the clients from attacking each other.

Nobody was touching my humans.

I do a half-assed job sometimes, okay, most of the time, but Pin-Lee had checked, too, and she was thorough.

lol

It was starting to occur to me that Dr. Mensah might actually be an intrepid galactic explorer, even if she didn’t look like the ones on the entertainment feed.

Something was wrong with one of my hip joints. Oh, right, I got shot there.

murderbot kills me omg

The DeltFall SecUnits hadn’t been rogues, they had been inserted with combat override modules.

My clients are the best clients.

awww

On the entertainment feed, this is what they call an “oh shit” moment.

“This Unit has killed people before, people it was charged with protecting. It killed fifty-seven members of a mining operation.”

I didn’t want to explain. I had to explain. I said, “I did not hack my governor module to kill my clients. My governor module malfunctioned because the stupid company only buys the cheapest possible components. It malfunctioned and I lost control of my systems and I killed them. The company retrieved me and installed a new governor module. I hacked it so it wouldn’t happen again.”

“It calls itself ‘Murderbot,’” Gurathin said.

Ratthi said, “The one where the colony’s solicitor killed the terraforming supervisor who was the secondary donor for her implanted baby?” Again, I couldn’t help it. I said, “She didn’t kill him, that’s a fucking lie.” Ratthi turned to Mensah. “It’s watching it.”

ratthi is my favorite

I was still watching them through the camera, because it was easier than looking directly at them.

neurodivergent behavior tbh, i understand

And in their corner all they had was Murderbot, who just wanted everyone to shut up and leave it alone so it could watch the entertainment feed all day.

The problem I was going to have is that the way murderbots fight is we throw ourselves at the target and try to kill the shit out of it, knowing that 90 percent of our bodies can be regrown or replaced in a cubicle. So, finesse is not required.

It’s wrong to think of a construct as half bot, half human. It makes it sound like the halves are discrete, like the bot half should want to obey orders and do its job and the human half should want to protect itself and get the hell out of here. As opposed to the reality, which was that I was one whole confused entity, with no idea what I wanted to do. What I should do. What I needed to do.

I hate having emotions about reality; I’d much rather have them about Sanctuary Moon.

felt

I really didn’t want to get into how little I paid attention to my job. “I didn’t read it.” Arada said, gently, “Why not?” With all of them staring at me, I couldn’t come up with a good lie. “I didn’t care.”

lol this is so real

“Probably, right up until I remember I have guns built into my arms.”

murderbot please lol

“We’re from Preservation Alliance, one of the non-corporate system entities.

“You know, in Preservation-controlled territory, bots are considered full citizens. A construct would fall under the same category.”

Ratthi is too sweet, too pure for this world

It was hard not to think about how everything

was going to go wrong and they were all going to die and I was going to get blasted to pieces or get another governor module stuck in me.

Granted, I liked the imaginary people on the entertainment feed way more than I liked real ones, but you can’t have one without the other.

“GrayCris, be advised that my party has secured evidence of your activities on this planet, and hidden it in various places where it will transmit to the pickup ship whenever it arrives.”

This planet had been inhabited at some point in its past, which meant it would be placed under interdict,

open only to archeological surveys. Even the company would abide by that. You could make big, illegal money off of excavating and mining those remnants, and that was obviously what GrayCris wanted.

“Good news! Dr. Mensah has permanently bought your contract! You’re coming home with us!”

I don’t know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn’t that, it’s that I don’t want anyone to tell me what I want, or to make decisions for me.

That’s why I left you, Dr. Mensah, my favorite human. By the time you get this I’ll be leaving Corporation Rim. Out of inventory and out of sight.