Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries, #2)

by Martha Wells

When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on.

I guess you can’t tell a story from the point of view of something that you don’t think has a point of view.

Are all constructs so illogical? said the Asshole Research Transport with the immense processing capability whose metaphorical hand I had had to hold because it had become emotionally compromised by a fictional media serial.

And now I knew why I hadn’t wanted to do this. It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person.

Yes, the giant transport bot is going to help the construct SecUnit pretend to be human. This will go well.

“Sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.”

ART had sent drones to scrub and sterilize away my fluids and Tapan’s blood from the shuttle’s interior. ART had already wiped the bot pilot’s memory and deleted any security data. It was also chatting casually with transit ring launch authority with a forged feed signature from one of the dead humans.