All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, #1)

by Martha Wells

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 love you, armor, and I’m never leaving you again.

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.

It would be better if they could think of you as a person who is trying to help. Because that’s how I think of you.” My insides melted. That’s the only way I could describe it.