Network Effect (The Murderbot Diaries, #5)

by Martha Wells

Arada added, “Who are you?” 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. Arada lifted her brows, startled, and Thiago looked boggled. I said, You’re using the public feed, everyone can hear you. So are you, ART said. And you’re leaking on my deck.

I was losing all my inputs but there was one thing I had to say before the gurney got here. “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. Then my performance reliability bottomed out and— Shutdown. Delayed restart.

Amena followed the gurney into the foyer. “That’s the ship. It’s SecUnit’s friend.” She threw a glance upward. “That’s you, right? You’re the transport?” Thiago knelt over dead Target Six, turning the helmeted head to see the face. He looked up, startled. “The transport?” ART said, Correct.

Sitting on the bench with a wound pack wrapped around his knee, Ratthi smiled. “That’s SecUnit. I’m glad it kept you safe.”

“I’m fine.” Parts of the surgical suite were withdrawing and I could see her with my eyes now instead of just the drones. “Except that I’m being held prisoner by a giant asshole of a research transport.”

I said, “The humans think I’m an asshole, wait till they get to know you.” I thought you weren’t speaking to me. Ratthi muttered to Amena, “I admit I’m a little worried right now.”

Thiago kept his expression neutral. “But how are you talking to us if—” I saved a backup copy and hid it where only a trusted friend could find it. I was looking at the wall, watching everyone and the display with Amena’s drones. Trusted friend? “Oh, fuck you.” That still counts as speaking.

Arada was sticking to the point. “But why did you want to kidnap SecUnit?” I needed someone who could kill the hostiles. Everyone looked at me. I dug my fingers into the edge of the med platform. The skin on them itched, too, where the surgical suite had fixed the burned parts. “You told them I was a weapon, that they could use.” I built a trap, they entered it of their own accord.

Oh, fantastic. I said, “Is your comm shut down?” It was not an attack launched via the comm, because I’m not an idiot. “And I’m not the one who got taken down by a viral malware attack, so maybe you are an idiot,” I said. Yeah, I was all over the place with that one. ART said, It was not a viral malware attack, it was an unidentified event. “That’s fucking reassuring.”

ART said, That was a chance I was willing to take. Oh, okay. I was either having a processing error, or something that the shows I watch call a “rage blackout,” or another emotional collapse.

After twenty-seven minutes and twelve seconds, Ratthi tapped on the hatch and sent me the feed message: Can I come in and talk to you? I sent back, Do you have my jacket?

ART’s processing capacity made me look like I was moving in slow motion. This made ART capable of both enormous patience and also of becoming furious when it didn’t get what it wanted immediately. It was one of the few ways I could successfully mess with it.)

Ratthi persisted, “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.

I thought about poor dead Miki, who had wanted to be my friend. There was a 93 percent chance Miki had wanted to be everybody’s friend, but Miki had said to me “I have human friends, but I never had a friend like me before.” I said, “No. It’s not like that. Not like it is between humans.” Ratthi was still skeptical. “Is it? The Transport seems to think differently.” I said, “The Transport doesn’t know what the hell it’s talking about, plus it lies a lot, and it’s mean.”

“Why do you call it ART?” Amena asked. “It said its name was Perihelion.” I told her, “It’s an anagram. It stands for Asshole Research Transport.” Amena blinked. “That’s not an anagram.”

“Regardless,” Ratthi said, “I think that while you and Perihelion know how to have relationships with humans, neither of you is quite sure how to have a relationship with each other.” It still sounded disgusting. “Do you have to call it a relationship?” Ratthi shrugged one shoulder. “You don’t like the word ‘friendship.’ What else is there?” I had no idea. I did a quick search on my archives and pulled out the first result. “Mutual administrative assistance?”

(Yes, it had actually left out the whole part about telling the Targets that I was a weapon they could use and bringing them to where they could attack our baseship, and using the comm code to locate me. That was fucking incredible.)

Arada nodded. “Right. We understand. I think SecUnit is looking out for our interests—” ART said, I want an apology. 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.

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

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

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.)

I am not your social secretary, Amena, you want a better lie, make up one yourself.)

ART didn’t answer. I think it was upset. I was also upset, but somebody had to be the adult here. (I was used to ART being the adult.)

I hesitated but I had to be completely honest about what I thought or ART would know. They wouldn’t have cleaned up after a mass murder. I’ve seen mass murders, ART, they leave a lot of mess. It didn’t reply, but I could feel it listening.

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.

Then Amena said, “Do you love my second mother? Thiago thinks so.” I should have known this was going to turn into an interrogation. I said, “Not the way he thinks.” Her face went all dubious. “I don’t think you know what he thinks.” He doesn’t know what I think, either, so there.

I said, “Your second mother is…” Client wasn’t the right word, not anymore. “My teammate.” I could see I had to clarify. It was really hard finding the right words. “Before your second mother, I had never been an actual member of a team before. Just an…” Amena finished, “An appliance for a team.” That was it. “Yes.” “I see. Thank you for letting me ask you questions.” 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.

I said, “You need to sleep.” She yawned. “Okay, third mom.”

After twenty-seven minutes, it worked. I was aware of ART looming in my feed. (Imagine sitting in front of a display surface and someone eight times your size shoulders in and sits in the chair with you.) It was watching World Hoppers, and also backseat driving my coding and doing its own analysis of the data.

I said, “I don’t tell Dr. Mensah what to do.”

That’s because of you. You’ve made her afraid of shadows. She never needed ‘security’ before you came to Preservation. Now she thinks she can’t do her job without it.”

I said, “I didn’t come to Preservation. I was brought there in an inactive state after incurring a catastrophic failure while saving Dr. Mensah’s life.”

ART commented, What is that human stabbing you with? Part of a broken chair.

“She didn’t quit because she was afraid, you asshole, she quit because she needs to start the trauma support treatment at Central Medical. She didn’t tell anyone in her extended family because being taken hostage—” In our private connection, ART said, Stop. ART has different ways of telling you to stop doing what you’re doing, with different threat levels, and this was toward the top of the list. I stopped. ART explained, You’re violating her privacy.

He had thought I was taking advantage of Dr. Mensah? I still wasn’t even sure what he meant. Did he think I was making her feel sorry for me? Hey, I hadn’t asked her to buy me. I hadn’t even been there when it happened, I had been still stuck in a cubicle in reconstruction at that point.

“It’s normal to feel conflict. You were part of something for a long time. You hate it, and it was a terrible thing. But it created you, and you were part of it.”

Mensah was watching the door and when I walked in her shoulders relaxed.

Mensah met me in the middle of the room and did the hand thing that meant she wanted to grab me but knew I wouldn’t like it. She said, “You need to go to Medical.” There was dried blood on the tunic she was wearing, and on the right knee of her pants.

“Yes, please be careful. There was a terrible virus on a company ship and we all nearly died and SecUnit’s brain was compromised.” SecUnit’s brain is always compromised, ART said.

(My skin was less even than hers and it gets completely regenerated on a regular basis due to me being shot in the face.)

(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.)

You don’t have to thank me for doing my stupid job. But it is nice.

You’ve let your hair grow out a little.” Some of ART’s changes to my configuration had been subtle—longer head hair, more visible eyebrows, the kind of fine, nearly invisible hair humans had on large sections of their skin, the way my organic skin met my inorganic parts. Other changes had been structural, to make sure scanners searching for standard SecUnit specifications wouldn’t hit on me. “I also got shorter,” I told her. “Did you?” Startled, Arada stepped back, eyeing the top of my head. Lack of attention to detail is one of the reasons humans shouldn’t do their own security.

(Normal = neutral expression concealing existential despair and brain-crushing boredom.)

She said, “What are you two fighting about now?” ART said, I made SecUnit’s uniform too nice. Amena nodded. “You do look great.” I’m not even going to dignify that with a reaction.

“Surely they won’t suspect anything,” Ratthi was saying to the others at the bulk dock. “Who runs around with a friendly rogue SecUnit? Besides us, I mean.”

The problem with gunships is they want to shoot at stuff. That’s why they’re so expensive to write bond contracts for. I said, No, don’t shoot at us. For fuck’s sake, ART. If everybody would just let me do my stupid job for one minute.

“I need to talk to ART in private.” Amena’s expression did something funny and she lifted her brows. “About your relationship?” I felt ART’s sharpened attention in the feed. I said, “Very funny.”

ART said, Do you want to watch Timestream Defenders Orion? Of course I did, but first I had to do this.

ART said, I didn’t mean you. That sounds mild, putting it like that, like something ART would say in a normal tone. But it said it with so much force in the feed I sat down hard on the bunk. I said, “Stop yelling at me.” ART didn’t respond. It just existed there, glaring at me invisibly in the feed.