Exit Strategy (The Murderbot Diaries, #4)

by Martha Wells

(Humans never think to tell their bots things like, say, don’t respond to random individuals wandering the outside of the station. Bots are instructed to report and repel theft attempts, but no one ever tells them not to answer polite requests from other bots.)

(Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.)

(For one thing, the shows and serials were trying to communicate accurately with the viewer. As far as I could tell, real humans usually didn’t know what the hell they were doing.)

How humans decide what to do with their arms on a second-by-second basis, I still have no idea.)

I was having an emotion, and I hate that. I’d rather have nice safe emotions about shows on the entertainment media; having them about things real-life humans said and did just led to stupid decisions

So the plan wasn’t a clusterfuck, it was just circling the clusterfuck target zone, getting ready to come in for a landing.

Disinformation, which is the same as lying but for some reason has a different name, is the top tactic in corporate negotiation/warfare.

In the shows, I saw humans comfort each other all the time at moments like this. I had never wanted that and I still didn’t. (Touching while rendering assistance, shielding humans from explosions, etc., is different.) But I was the only one here, so I braced myself and made the ultimate sacrifice. “Uh, you can hug me if you need to.”

It would have been hilarious if I wasn’t about to die. It was still a little hilarious.

It was very dramatic, like something out of a historical adventure serial. Also correct in every aspect except for all the facts, like something out of a historical adventure serial.