Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)

by Martha Wells

Some twenty or so hours later, I was still deep in the show, and enjoying my human-free vacation.

Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that’s how they treated it. I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private.

but … I don’t know, everything was annoying right now and I had no idea why. Okay, Rin! Miki said. We’re friends, and friends call each other by name. Maybe I did know why.

Maybe they thought the systems would be lonely if they were left active, Rin, Miki said. What do you think? I wondered if ART had thought I was this stupid when it had been riding around in my head. Maybe, but the chances were good that if that had been the case, ART would have said so.

For fuck’s sake.

LOLL murderbot can’t catch a break

Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)

I was congratulating myself (because nobody else ever does it) on an excellent save. Human security had literally just noticed that something had tried to steal their client’s head.

“I know that,” Gerth snapped. I know you know that, asshole.

Being a SecUnit sucked. I couldn’t wait to get back to my wild rogue rampage of hitching rides on bot-piloted transports and watching my serials.

Well, shit. I do make mistakes (I keep a running tally in a special file) and it looked like I had made a big one.

In my feed, Miki said, I never talked to a bot like me before. I have human friends, but I never had a friend like me.

Miki told her, Priority is to protect my friends. Priority change, Abene sent. Priority is to protect yourself. That priority change is rejected, Miki told her.

I hate caring about stuff. But apparently once you start, you can’t just stop.