Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)

by Martha Wells

I’m a murderbot, I don’t give a crap about boats.

“What are you?” I said, “I’m a Shut Up or Get Your Head Smashed.”

🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

Thinking of Arada’s sad face made me too uncomfortable.)

“SecUnit, you need to get to Medical!” I checked the feed again; still no alerts. “What happened in Medical?” “You happened, you got shot.”

hahaha

“No hugging,” I warned her. It was in our contract. “Do you need emotional support? Do you want me to call someone?”

HelpMe.file Excerpt 1 (File detached from main narrative.)

huh...?

wished I was ART, who was good at this kind of thing.

Just clients. And if anyone or anything tried to hurt them, I would rip its intestines out.

(I knew of forty-seven ways that ART could kill a human, augmented human, or bot intruder, and the only reason I didn’t know more is because I got bored and stopped counting.)

I was starting to panic. I didn’t want ART to be hurt,

“We deleted it, of course.”

Wrong thing to say

The good thing about being a construct is that I can have a dramatic emotional breakdown while still running my background search to find the drone key commands.

“Angry, then afraid, then dead. Is that the right order?”

oh boy

I designated the intruder as targetControlSystem. I hoped it was sentient enough to hurt when I killed it.

ART was dead. I wanted to stop and lean my head against the bulkhead, but there was no time.

😭😭😭😭😭

I was going to break into targetControlSystem and do terrible things to it.

Revenge I want revenge!!!

“No, this transport. This bot pilot. It was my friend, and it’s dead. I think it’s dead. I don’t see how it would have let this happen if it wasn’t dead.”

I was emotionally compromised. A recharge cycle which I actually didn’t need right now wasn’t going to help with that. So what would help with that? Taking over targetControlSystem and hurting it very, very badly, that’s what would help with that.

I checked my buffer to see what had happened. Oh right, ART happened.

ART, you manipulative fucker.

😅😂😂😂😂😂

You set me up, you fucker.

Don't be like that. It was in trouble so he called for to rescue It. It needed you

“It’s an anagram. It stands for Asshole Research Transport.”

🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

“Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don’t have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.”

“ART, stop talking to my human behind my back!”

hahahaha

And it hit me then that ART had been desperate and terrified since the moment the Barish-Estranza explorer had sidled up and done whatever it had done. It had tricked its captors into taking it to me not because it had some kind of grand strategy but because it needed me. I hate emotions. On the private channel between ART and me, I said, I apologize for calling you a fucker. It said, I apologize for kidnapping you and causing potential collateral damage to your clients.

Awwww you guys are making up

(I know, I’m paranoid, but that’s how I’ve avoided being rendered for spare parts all this time.)

And this is serious, it’s like—you and ART are making a baby just so you can send it off to get killed or deleted or—or whatever might happen.” “A baby?”

hahaha

“It’s not a baby, it’s a copy of me, made with code.”

“That you and ART made together, with code. Code which both of you are also made out of.” I said, “That’s not like a human baby.” Amena said, “So how are human babies made? By combining DNA, an organic code, from two or more participants.”