Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)

by Martha Wells

“SecUnit, I think we have a working arrangement with Perihelion for now. Unless this is something that could endanger us, are you sure you want to … confront it just at the moment?” I said, “I am absolutely sure.”

All the humans looked up at the ceiling. ART said, And this is your idea of being helpful. I said, “This is my idea of the opposite of being helpful. I am here against my will and you are going to regret that.”

Thiago was eyeing me through the conference image, frowning. He said, “It is a good question.” (Of course, none of the sensible humans are supporting me now, it has to be the one who never agrees with me when I’m not being an idiot.)

Amena took a breath, probably to object, based on her whole “despite being a relatively sheltered adolescent from the most naive human society in existence, I feel a need to pretend that none of this is bothering me” thing.

I made an obscene gesture at the ceiling with both hands. (I know ART isn’t the ceiling but the humans kept looking up there like it was.) ART said, That was unnecessary. In a low voice, Ratthi commented to Overse, “Anyone who thinks machine intelligences don’t have emotions needs to be in this very uncomfortable room right now.”

You know that thing humans do where they think they’re being completely logical and they absolutely are not being logical at all, and on some level they know that, but can’t stop? Apparently it can happen to SecUnits, too.

Was it grudging or was I just in a terrible mood? I don’t know, I have no idea, so I didn’t respond.

(The wibbliness was why I trusted Arada. Overconfident humans who don’t listen to anybody else scare the hell out of me.)

Apology accepted, ART said. I felt its attention shift in the feed. (Imagine it staring meaningfully at me.) (It could stare all it wanted, I’m not apologizing.)

Amena was still worried. “Are you fighting again or are you making up? Because it looks exactly the same from the outside.”

“Can I ask you a question?” I never know how to answer this. Should I go with my first impulse, which is always “no” or just give in to the inevitable? I said, “Is it contract-relevant?” Big, adolescent human sigh noise. “I just want to understand something.” I gave in to the inevitable. “Yes.”

ART must be recovering because it had to butt in with, Tell her you care about her. Use those words, don’t tell her you’ll eviscerate anything that tries to hurt her. ART, fuck off.

(It was unlikely, but so was everything unexpected that had happened so far. My risk assessment module had given up generating reports three hours ago.)

And it wasn’t like the company was afraid of GrayCris, but they had to teach them a lesson. (The lesson was: if you’re going to fuck with something bigger and meaner than you, use a quick targeted attack and then run away really fast. (This is the way I always try to operate, too.)

(If I got angry at myself for being angry I would be angry constantly and I wouldn’t have time to think about anything else.) (Wait, I think I am angry constantly. That might explain a lot.)

Humans and constructs were full of overwrought emotions like depression, anxiety, and anger (was anxiety an emotion? It sure felt like one)

I was desperate. I sent privately, ART, tell them I need to go alone. Back me up. ART said aloud, I concur, it will be safer if SecUnit is accompanied by two certified survey specialists.

(I know, it’s a logo, but I hate it when humans and augmented humans ruin things for no reason. Maybe because I was a thing before I was a person and if I’m not careful I could be a thing again.)

am actually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are.

ART didn’t hesitate, or argue. It had gone through the same threat assessment I just had, except faster and a million percent more homicidal.

I’m not actually a human baby, ART, I remember the fucking directive—I helped write it. You’re not making this any easier, ART said. You can either have an existential crisis or get your crew back, ART, pick one. ART said, Prepare for deployment.

So to summarize, the Targets had botched the install of their alien remnant drive onto the explorer’s engines, leaving the explorer no longer wormhole-capable. Also the group assigned to ART had lost control of it and now a giant armed transport was roaming the system implacably searching for vengeance.

All the concern was annoying, which was me being complacent or unfair or something, considering how humans being worried about me possibly going off alone to die was such a recent development in my life.

TargetControlSystem hit me with everything it had. It told me I would never take the ship. I told it, Okay, you keep the ship. I’ll take the planet.

Iris: “Peri, you can’t bomb the colony.” Perihelion: “You are incorrect, Iris, I can bomb the colony.”

Perihelion: Please calm yourselves and stop talking. Plan A01: Rain Destruction has been superseded by Plan B01: Distract and Extract.

But I couldn’t ignore it. I mean, I guess I couldn’t. Ignoring stuff is always an option, up until it kills you.

(It had downloaded one of my private archives to that SecUnit. I mean, my new friend SecUnit 3 who if I actually get out of this alive, I’ll have to do something with, like civilize or educate it or whatever. Like what the humans originally wanted to do with me, except we all gave up on that.)

They had agreed to this meeting when Perihelion sent this message via general comm broadcast to all receivers in the vicinity of the colony site: I have located your primary terraforming engine. Agree to a meeting or I will destroy it. There had been no response. Second message: You require proof of intent. And then Perihelion had crashed and detonated an armed pathfinder into the center of the agricultural zone between the space dock and the Pre-CR installation. The crater was large. The second pathfinder had been detonated in the air above the Pre-CR complex. The Targets had agreed to the meeting.

There is a lot about what is going on here that I don’t understand. But I am participating anyway.

(During the initial planning stage aboard Perihelion, Ratthi had voiced an objection: “Are we sure they’re going to buy this? That we’re prisoners of an evil transport who is forcing us to do this?” Perihelion: I can be very convincing.)

“The code in your system,” Ratthi explained, tapping his own forehead like maybe I had also forgotten where my brain was.

“ART, I thought you told them about me.” ART said, I told them I had met a rogue SecUnit. I didn’t imply that you were every SecUnit ever mentioned in the newsfeeds. I think I was every SecUnit mentioned in the newsfeeds during that time, but whatever. SecUnit 3 had stopped trying to pretend to be an appliance and was now watching in fascination.

I’m not going into detail because it was gross and involved a lot of leaking and removing projectiles and regenerating tissue the hard old-fashioned way with hand units and the emergency medical kit kept trying to spray everything with disinfectant.

I was glad I could pretend to be too overwhelmed by being reassembled to respond, because I kind of was overwhelmed. That was ART, and my humans, and humans I had known for maybe five minutes, and a Barish-Estranza SecUnit that 2.0 had randomly found, all cooperating to retrieve me. I’m going to stop talking for a while now.

I don’t think your humans are going to like that. I will discuss it with them. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even make a crack about ART’s idea of a discussion and forcing everybody else to do what it wanted.

There was more exclaiming. “But why didn’t you tell us?” Amena asked it. (Yes, Amena is still naive about what a monster ART is.) ART told her, Because then it would have been harder to force you to do as I wanted. (Yeah, like that.)

ART watched with me for some of the episodes but the idea of Dr. Mensah coming aboard made it weirdly excited and it had its drones clean its whole interior again and was doing things like yelling at Turi to put their laundry in the recycler.

It’s a pleasure to have you aboard, Dr. Mensah, ART said, and actually managed to sound like it meant it.