System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)

by Martha Wells

So the next time I get optimistic about something, I want one of you to punch me in the face.

(For however many corporate standard years, all I got from humans was “Run in there now no matter how likely you are to get blown to tiny pieces when a quiet tactical approach has a higher percentage of success” and now it’s “Oh no we’re fine, we can hang out in this objectively terrifying immediately hazardous situation for however long.”) (I’m just saying that it would be nice for the humans to give me a realistic situation report for once.) (Dr. Bharadwaj says even good change is stressful.)

(I know I get pissed off when humans don’t acknowledge my work, but why is too much acknowledgment also upsetting? Sentience sucks.)

You’re stalling, ART-drone said. I am not. I can stand here and be useless without any ulterior motives, thanks.

“Be safe, SecUnit,” she said. I don’t know how to respond when humans say that. It was always my job to get hurt.

(They were all so nice about it. The whole thing made me understand the human expression “it made me want to vomit.” Why would you ever want to do something that was so objectively disgusting and looked so painful. Oh, this was why, I get it now.)

Am I making it worse? I think I’m making it worse.

The humans had folded their hoods and helmets back, so I did it, too. (The most important part of pretending to be a human is not standing out from other humans.) They all looked sweaty and tired.

ART-drone was cycling through shows for us to watch in background, but I was actually really in the mood for a good long stare at a wall.

I paused the episode and asked ART, What’s that? You don’t want to know, it said. Yes, I do fucking want to know. I pinged Three, who reported that its situation was normal, i.e., boring. (It was in the lab module watching student educational vids.) (I know.) (It didn’t get fiction yet, it was a whole big thing.) Though after you hack your governor module, boring was probably a great option. It just hadn’t worked for me.

“Is there a problem.” “What? No!” He stared at me. I stared back, just above his sightline. He winced and ran a hand through his hair. “Not that kind of problem.” “What kind of problem.” There’s no question mark there because I didn’t really want to know and was hoping he would refuse to tell me.

I looped my audio so I could filter their voices out (except for a keyword search in case one of them screamed for help) and then resumed wall-staring.

I had fifty-seven unique sources of concern/anxiety, speaking of checking in with my emotions, but nothing I could do anything about right now.

I could have asked what “or worse” meant in this context but there was only so much I could take and I thought I’d hit my limit about, I don’t know, four years ago.

Tarik didn’t sound like an asshole, though I distrust new humans who agree with me too quickly, especially about security. (I know it doesn’t sound rational but I have data and charts to verify my assessment, okay. Good charts, too, not like for the thing with the round hatches.)

Leonide walked forward confidently, so I did, too. Just without the confidence.

Yeah, I’ll just code a patch to stop feeling anxiety, wow, why didn’t I think of that earlier. (That was sarcasm, I have too much organic neural tissue for that to work.) (Of course I’ve already tried it.)

Ugh, having hope that it might have worked was almost worse than knowing for sure it hadn’t. (I know, I’m never satisfied.)

I felt HostileSecUnit1 go into shutdown mode. It wasn’t dead, it was just catastrophically damaged. (I know, who isn’t?)

And I did know, and now I was having an emotion. Like a big overwhelming emotion. It felt bad but good, a weird combination of happy and sad and relieved, like something had been stuck and it wasn’t stuck anymore. Cathartic, okay. This fits the definition of cathartic.

Don’t just sit there, ART said to me and Iris as it brought the shuttle into its docking module. Console each other. I said, You fuck off at the same time as Iris said, Oh, shut it, Peri, and that felt even better.

I was ready to get out of this system. I was never going to like planets, and nothing had happened here to change that. And I had decided, for real this time, which ship I would be on when I left. Do you know where we’re going next? I asked ART.