Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)

by Martha Wells

I’ve also had clients who thought they didn’t need any security at all, right up until something ate them. (That’s mostly a metaphor. My uneaten client stat is high.)

Doing this would solve the problem and get me back to new episodes of Lineages of the Sun much more quickly, but I knew Arada would make a sad face at me and Thiago would be pissed off.

“You didn’t have to shoot anyone.” Heat crept into Thiago’s voice. “If you needed supplies, we would have given them to you.” Don’t worry, the “anyone” who got shot was me.

I’ve got everything under fucking control, okay. “No, it says it’s fine,” I heard her relaying to the others on our comm. “Well, yes, it’s furious.”)

Target Two whispered something, which FacilitySys rendered as “What are you?” I said, “I’m a Shut Up or Get Your Head Smashed.”

Projected Schedule of Events Leading to a Successful Resolution. (In company terms that’s a PSELSR, which is a terrible anagram.) (I don’t mean anagram, I mean the other thing.)

Thiago said, “It’s a security unit. A bot/human construct.” Target Leader didn’t seem to believe him. “Why does it look like a person?” I said, “I ask myself that sometimes.” Over the comm loudspeaker, Dr. Ratthi said, “It is a person!” In the background, I heard Overse whisper, “Ratthi, get off the comm!”

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

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

(Just a heads-up, when a murderbot stands there looking to the left of your head to avoid eye contact, it’s probably not thinking about killing you, it’s probably frantically trying to come up with a reply to whatever you just said to it.)

(6) I just had a bad feeling about the little shit.

And I was standing in the middle of the room. He screamed. (Yes, it was hilarious.)

Amena was furious. “That’s my second mother’s … friend,” she said through gritted teeth. “And her security … person.”

Oh everyone thinks you love each other

(The house actually had secure sealable window and door hatches, WHICH NO ONE USED, but at least this made it easy for my patrol drones.)

“It’s not me, it’s you.” She huffed a laugh.

(Data suggests family dramas bear a less than 10 percent resemblance to actual human families, which is unsurprising and also a relief, considering all the murders. In the dramas, not Mensah’s family.)

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

It looked like a clip from an action series, right before something drastic happened. Then something drastic happened.

(That scenario could turn out any way from “we thought this was an easy target, let’s run away” to Rajpreet making a desperate last stand with her sidearm over the pieces of what was left of my body.)

(Right, I should probably mention that I find 99.9 percent of human parts physically disgusting. I’m also less than thrilled with my own human parts.)

“That’s—” That’s ART, I almost said on the feed, like an idiot.

AHHHH

One big problem with that scenario, no wait, two: 1) getting aboard without ART’s cooperation and 2) doing something to ART without getting violently murdered. (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.)

Unidentified One sounded even more amused. “You had better have the weapon we were told of, or I’ll take your ribs out one by one and break them in front of your little face.” I saved that for future reference.

It didn’t know who I was, what I was, it might not even know who ART was, but it knew I cared, and it was going to enjoy what it said next. “We deleted it, of course.”

NOT ART

ART was dead.

I refuse to believe this

I could have said “Don’t say I never gave you anything” and we could have had reassuring sarcastic banter, like one of my shows. But I was walking around in ART’s corpse and nothing felt reassuring.

In the Corporation Rim, it would have meant the survey had rented me from an owner, the same way you’d rent your habitat or your terrain vehicle, except humans usually had warm feelings toward their habitats and terrain vehicles.

“We were attacked on the way there,” Eletra said, as Ras was drawing breath to answer.

I do not trust these bitches

I felt something build in my chest. I pulled the recording of my conversations with ART, the way it said “my crew.” It was bad enough that ART must be dead, it wasn’t fair that the humans it had loved so much were dead, too.

So I only had a 1.4-second warning when I stepped through the hatch and Ras fired a weapon at me. For a human, his aim was great.

If I sound calm, I was actually not calm. I thought I’d had control of the situation (sort of control, okay? don’t laugh) and then it had unraveled rapidly.

“Right.” She flicked a startled look at me. I love it when humans forget that SecUnits are not just guarding and killing things voluntarily, because we think it’s fun.

The good thing about being a construct is that you can’t reproduce and create children to argue with you.

“No.” That was ART’s MedSystem, but without ART. Its reactivated feed said it was operating at factory standard.

I know in my heart ART's still here

And I tried not to see this as some remnant of ART still in the ship acting to save a human.

Please do

Amena gave up on the mask and gave me her full attention. “You look angry.” “That’s just something my face does sometimes.” This is why helmets with opaque face plates are a good idea.

I wasn’t expecting that. It was so far from what I thought she had meant, and she was so upset, that the truth inadvertently came out. “My friend is dead!”

I couldn’t stop now. “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.” Wow, that did not sound rational.

I said, “I am not. You’re emotionally compromised.” (I know, but at the time it seemed like a relevant comeback.)

My performance reliability had leveled out at 89 percent. Not great, but I could work with it. I still hadn’t identified the source of the drop.

GRIEF

I had a confusing series of reactions to this. Not in order: (1) Exasperation, at her, at myself. (2) Habitual suspicion. On my contracts for the company, the clingy clients were the ones most likely to (a) get me shot (b) advocate loudly for abandoning the damaged SecUnit because it would take too long to load me in the transport. (And humans wonder why I have trust issues.) (3) Overwhelming urge to kill anything that even thought about threatening her.

And I’d made her cry. Good job, Murderbot.

“No, the font was lovely. But whenever the company is mentioned you edit out the company and change it to the company.” Checks session recording. “In fact, you’ve just done it now.”

ART would have laughed at an attack like that. (Actually, ART would have laughed at the part where it sent back a code bundle that would have eaten my face.)

Then a thing happened. The comm hidden in the pocket under my ribs, the comm ART had given me when I left it on RaviHyral’s transit ring, pinged my internal feed with a message. It was a compressed packet, a type meant to be sent in-system, not carried via transports through wormholes. Which meant it had originated with ART’s internal comm array. It was tagged with the name “Eden.”

I'm gonna cry

The compressed video clip in the packet was from the serial World Hoppers, from a story arc climax episode, when a secondary main character’s mind had been taken over by a sentient brain-virus (I know) and the story was really much better than it sounds but it was the moment when the character said, I am trapped in my own body.

ART IS ALIVE

And ART’s feed filled the ship. In the pleasant neutral voice that systems use to address humans, it whispered, Reload in progress. Please stand by.

Crying at work

ART said, You are aboard the Perihelion, registered teaching and research vessel of the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. Then it added, I’m not going to hurt your humans, you little idiot.

Oh thank god he's still an asshole

“ART,” I said aloud, because ART could silence my feed if it wanted to. “You did this. You sent those assholes to kidnap my humans.” Of course not, ART said. I sent them to kidnap you.

He wanted saved

Yeah, I think they had both noticed that ART had deliberately not answered the direct question. (Pro tip: when bots do that, it’s not a good sign.)