Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory (The Murderbot Diaries, #4.5)

by Martha Wells

She knows SecUnit is not so much taunting her with its abilities as refusing to pretend to be anything other than it is. And that’s for the best, because being honest about that is the only way forward.

Instead Ephraim asks her, “Can you separate that person from the purpose they were created for?”

The Corporation Rim has always been a slave state, though it calls its institutionalized slavery “contract labor.” The production of human/bot constructs is just a more horrific twist, a mental slavery as well as a physical one. At least victims of contract labor are free to think their own thoughts. But we tell ourselves that constructs aren’t aware of their predicament. What SecUnit makes us realize is that this is not true; they are all aware of what they are and what’s been done to them. But the only choice they are ever offered is obedience or pain and death.

It must be hard to respect other people’s privacy when you’ve had to fight and scheme for every minute of your own. Hard not to be paranoid when you remember all the times your paranoia was justified. It’s about being treated as a thing, isn’t it. Whether that thing is a hostage of conditional value, or a very expensively designed and equipped enslaved machine/organic intelligence. You’re a thing, and there is no safety.

SecUnit is tucked into a chair in the corner, probably watching media in its feed. It’s good to have it there, too.

She should go back to her family in her quarters soon. But it’s easier here, where everyone knows what happened and no one feels the need to ask questions or is trying to get her to tell them everything is fine and she is exactly the same as she was the day she left. Work is a good excuse.

SecUnit is looking down at her. “You can hug me if you need to.” “No. No, that’s all right. I know you don’t care for it.” She wipes her face. There are tears in her eyes, because she’s an idiot. “It’s not terrible.” She can hear the irony under its even tone. “Nevertheless.” She can’t do this. She can’t lean on a being that doesn’t want to be leaned on. Of all the things SecUnit needs, the only ones she can give it are room and time in a relatively safe space to make decisions for itself. Becoming a prop for her failing emotional stability won’t do either one of them any good.