Compulsory (The Murderbot Diaries, #0.5)

by Martha Wells

Since I hacked my governor module, it’s not like I haven’t thought about killing the humans. But once I started exploring the company servers and found hundreds of hours of downloadable entertainment media, I just thought, there’s no hurry. I can always kill the humans later, after the next series drops.

Even the humans think about killing the humans, especially here.

“Knobface,” Vena said to Asa. “You’re not the supervisor.”

I was actually in the entertainment feed watching episode 44 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon, which was a better use of my time than standing guard here on the platform, though the supervisors wouldn’t see it that way if I got caught.

Nobody likes SecUnits. I am one, and even I don’t like us. We’re part human, part bot constructs, rented out as part of the company safety bond, and we’re creepy and we make everybody nervous and uncomfortable, and if we didn’t have governor modules to flashfry our brains if we refuse an order, we’d rampage and kill all the humans and augmented humans. Or maybe we’d just watch entertainment media for the rest of our hellish existence. Personally I could go either way.