Rogue Protocol (The Murderbot Diaries, #3)

by Martha Wells

(There needs to be an error code that means “I received your request but decided to ignore you.”)

If you bother her again I will break every individual bone in your hand and arm. It will take about an hour.”)

They were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn’t want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little.

supervisor to deal with. (Or to willfully ignore until the whole project devolved into a giant clusterfuck and your SecUnit prayed for the sweet relief of a massive accidental explosive decompression, not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.)

I couldn’t save this many humans from where they were going, where they thought they wanted to go, but I didn’t have to watch it, either.

(SecUnit clients, at least, only assured each other that everything was fine while you stared at the wall and waited for everything to go horribly wrong.)

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.

(Somewhere there had to be a happy medium between being treated as a terrifying murder machine and being infantilized.)

Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas.

We were talking about GrayCris here, whose company motto seemed to be “profit by killing everybody and taking their stuff.”

Why yes, I did want to disengage the safety protocols, thanks for asking.

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