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.

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.

Sekai and the others would be hit with fines for almost clogging the collectors with her burning body, but it was better than being dead. I guess.

Vena and Elane tried to pull Sekai away, but she turned back and stumbled toward me. “Thank you,” she said. For .75 seconds it was like she could see through my opaque visor which was such a terrifying thought it made my performance reliability drop by 3%.