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now due to their hired security service Palisade making an extremely bad decision to punch my ex-owner bond company in the operating funds by attacking one of its gunships. (The company is paranoid and greedy and cheap but also ruthless, methodical, and intensely violent when it thinks it’s being threatened.)
*chuckle*
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So that was what had happened before the survey. Now we’re here, ready for the next major disaster. (Spoiler warning.)
I😍U Murderbot!
Oh, shit. Seriously: oh, shit. My organic parts had a reaction that reminded me how lucky I was not to have a digestive system.
Ha!!
It was weird (not bad weird, just weird) seeing this place again. This was where ART had made the changes to my configuration, to help me pass as a human, where it had saved my client Tapan. Ugh, emotions.
Yes indeedy do, Murderbot.
The cabin didn’t have an attached restroom, but didn’t smell as bad as I would’ve expected. (Humans trapped for multiple cycles with no access to water or sanitary devices is usually harder on the furniture.)
Heh
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. I wanted to find a bunch more algae-smelling gray snotty assholes and kill the shit out of every single one.
Me too, Murderbot!
It looked, oddly, like what being punished by a governor module felt like— Now there’s a thought.
Ew!
Amena started to reach out for me and then pulled her hand back when I stepped away again. “But I think you’re emotionally compromised right now.” That was … that was so completely not true. Stupid humans. Sure, I’d had an emotional breakdown with the whole evisceration thing, but I was fine now, despite the drop in performance reliability. Absolutely fine. And I had to kill the rest of the Targets in the extremely painful ways I’d been visualizing.
Oh, poor dear sweet Murderbot.
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. I’d taken multiple projectile hits without having that kind of steady drop.
Rage grief misery
On the general feed and comm, audible to the whole ship, ART said, The foreign device detached from my drive and ceased to function when the invading system was deleted. Further interference is not advisable. That was definitely not menacing. Oh no, not at all. On a private feed channel to ART, I said, You set me up, you fucker. I was still catching up on archived drone video and fifty-four seconds behind actual time, so ART ignored me.
This does not bode well...
This was a vid conference link for humans trying to figure out how screwed they were, not a professional newsfeed production. ART had dissolved the edges and corrected the color just to show off. Next it would be providing theme music and a mission logo.
Ha!!
The Free Preservation Institute of Discovery and Engineering was most helpful when I asked for a possible meeting with Survey Specialist Arada.
Free PRIDE. Author Wells, I <3 U
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“You have a friendship.” I settled back in the corner and hugged my jacket. “No. Not—No.” “Not anymore?” Ratthi asked pointedly. “No,” I said very firmly. ART had stopped pinging me but I knew it was listening. It’s like having a malign impersonal intelligence that is incapable of minding its own business reading over your shoulder.
Perfect
The only interesting new info was from one of ART’s crew members, an augmented human named Iris, who had added some newsfeed archives about the hostile takeover of Adamantine Explorations after the colony had been established. There were three different articles from news sources that said an undetermined number—anywhere from four to twenty-four—Adamantine Explorations employees had died in a firefight, holding off the corporate takeover long enough for their database of wormhole coordinates to be deleted.
Not quite like NYSE proxy battles.
Then Amena said aloud, “I think you need to give SecUnit some time.” Right, that’s all this situation needed. I asked her, “Is it talking to you on a private channel?” Amena winced. “Yes, but—” I yelled, “ART, stop talking to my human behind my back!”
Seven-year-olds have fights like this. Hilarious!
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“The normal space engines aren’t working yet. But even if we could get to the wormhole, the transport won’t let us go. You heard it. It’s programmed not to leave without its crew, the rest of the crew. And it’s really mean, and determined.” On the feed, Amena said, Sorry, ART. 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.)
Hilarious!
(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.)
I <3 U Murderbot.
at her. She tried to hold it in and managed it for almost six seconds, then burst out, “ART should know how you really feel about it! 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?” I said. I was still mad at Amena telling ART about my emotional collapse behind my back. But I really wish ART had a face, just so I could see it right now. “It’s not a baby, it’s a copy of me, made with code.”
I swaNEE that is the single funniest passage in this book
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.
Payback is a Royal Bitch
(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.)
Deeply upsetting.
I’m letting you see all this because I want you to know what I am and what I can do. I want you to know who targetControlSystem is fucking with right now. I want you to know if you help me, I’ll help you, and that you can trust me. Now here’s the code to disable your governor module.
Perfect
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We didn’t have time for me to show it 35,000 hours of media and I didn’t have access to my longterm storage anyway. And that had worked on me, but I knew I was weird even for a SecUnit. Maybe it would trust me more if it knew me better. I pulled some recent memories from the files I’d brought with me, edited them together, and added one helpful code bundle at the end. :send helpme.file: Read this.
How beautiful it is to see a person help another person because they can, not because they have to.
A figure stood up out of the plants suddenly, almost ten meters tall and covered with spikes. It’s a good thing I don’t have a full human digestive system because I was so startled something would have popped out of it involuntarily.
Wonderful!
(Yeah, it said “the humans.” But if this was an alien intelligence then all the horror media I’d watched had really gotten it wrong. Which is not impossible considering how wrong the media gets everything else.)
Me-owch!
I didn’t know what I was about to say, but what came out was, I don’t feel so great. Let me take a look, it said, and was suddenly all up in my diagnostics. I hadn’t run any yet, because I hadn’t had time, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Yeup, they had a kid. Just like em both.
Whatever, the humans worked it out while I watched Sanctuary Moon. 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.
Making everything right for mother!
