System Collapse (The Murderbot Diaries, #7)

by Martha Wells

At least it was making me nervous for a survival-based reason instead of … redacted.

Yes, I was hilariously wrong about that at the time and I hadn’t gotten any less wrong since then.

I wasn’t supposed to come down to the planet again. Me, ART, Mensah, Seth, and Martyn had all made that decision, because of redacted.

(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.”)

They had the right weapon, just the wrong way to use it. I should have been more proactive, but, ugh, redacted.)

(ScoutDrone1 almost bought the farm but shot out of the way just in time)

ART transmitted, You can make this complicated situation simple for me. Which I can tell you was not any kind of posturing, it 100 percent meant that.

By the time we got there the other current operation, the one I was supposed to be monitoring security for before redacted, was already in progress.

We could replace me with an automated weather drone, that would work, too.

I could walk in the opposite direction, just walk until— Yeah, I’m going to tag this section for delete.

I accessed Three’s drone feed so I had a better view of it and Karime. It was out of its armor, wearing an enviro suit, pretending to be a human. I tapped Three’s feed and said, More casual. Are you running your walk-like-a-human code? Three replied, I am running the walk-like-a-human code. But it slowed down, made its joints looser. After two seconds, it added, This is unexpectedly difficult. Tell me about it. You’re doing fine, I said. We didn’t want the colonists to know Three was a SecUnit, mostly to fend off conversations about how much the giant angry planet-bombing transport likes this SecUnit and will it lose its mind if a rock falls on it or something. The colonists thought Three was just a really awkward augmented human. It’s not like there aren’t a lot of those around.

When she said that, I had a moment of hope. Maybe these other humans were imaginary. Humans are great at imagining stuff. That’s why their media is so good.

I wasn’t doing a good job of standing here, because my current three humans had just volunteered to go check out the new probably-not-apocryphal colony site.

I saw I had four private messages waiting from Arada, Amena, Overse, and Pin-Lee. I can’t do that right now. Pretending I’m fine for Mensah was hard enough. I forwarded the messages to her and said, Can you tell them I’m fine? I hate this. It’s not like I permanently lost an appendage or something. There was a pause while she checked her queue. I’ll tell them you’re fine and that you just need a little space. Good luck.

Redacted

(I had uploaded myself into a bot pilot’s control interface once during a viral attack, and had consequently hard-crashed myself and had to rebuild my memory table from scratch. If I didn’t have human neural tissue also storing archival data, I would have been fucked. (So it did one thing right for once.) If I were uploaded to the entirety of ART’s architecture, I would probably last a few painful seconds at most.)

(If 2.0 were still here, I probably wouldn’t redacted.)

It should be reassuring that humans don’t get what other humans are thinking, either, but it just highlights how fucked up human neural tissue can be.

ART has been monitoring me due to redacted. Which is a whole thing, I don’t know, I don’t want to talk about it.

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

continued around the edge, because if I was right, the first one would be directly attached to the pad. If it wasn’t here, I was going to look incredibly fucking stupid and the humans were going to assume because of redacted I—

humans have a bad habit of assuming that if they know a thing, all the other humans in the vicinity know it, too. Either that or they believe none of the other humans know anything that they don’t know. It’s either one or the other and both are potentially catastrophic and really fucking annoying.

Ratthi had asked how exactly he was supposed to fight off an attack on the shuttle and I told him he could just not open the door.

(I’m off my game, obviously, but I’m not dead.)

“Be safe, SecUnit,” she said.

Redacted Okay, alien contamination.

I redacted.

I said, “You both should wait here with the vehicle. I’ll go ahead on foot.” Uh, should they wait? Or just take the vehicle back to the construction access and have the shuttle pick them up? I should know this. I used to be good at this, what the fuck happened to me. Oh right, that happened.

Tarik lowered his hands, still looking at me. “Right. We should talk about this later.” We probably should but we absolutely are not going to, not if I can help it.

Wait, had Tarik been ART’s mission security before me? Had I taken a human’s job? Under normal circumstances that would be kind of hilarious.

He got the vehicle started again and we proceeded down the stupid tunnel, ...

ART-drone interrupted, He’s not a security consultant, he’s a mission specialist. He has a good knowledge of the tactics that corporates like Barish-Estranza employ. You are a security consultant. That would have been encouraging, before redacted.

“It’s fine. I’ll notify you immediately if I encounter any not-dead humans.” I was trying to lighten the mood but that one absolutely did not stick its landing.

Tarik did a body language thing that started as an aborted clap on my shoulder and ended with an awkward shrug as he remembered I wouldn’t like it. He said, “Just remember you’ve got backup.”

I’m not actually stalling, okay, I’m doing stuff. The drones, I’m waiting on the drones.

(So earlier, after redacted, Three had told me that I could wear its armor, if I wanted.

ART-drone said, it’s the symmetry of the hatch’s placement between the two columns and the equal size of the space to either side. To individuals subject to suggestion, it implies that something is about to cross the line of sight. By “individuals subject to suggestion” it meant “idiots.”

I just hadn’t shared it. What, it hadn’t occurred to me? I was ashamed of it? I don’t know, I need to snap out of this.

ART-drone said, Your attempts at emotional manipulation need work. But your point is taken.

(Okay I wouldn’t, but then I’m not a human who was panicking about getting murdered or whatever.) (I’m a SecUnit who was panicking about getting murdered or whatever by panicking humans.)

So here is the thing. The redacted thing. I should tell you about it, or this isn’t going to make sense.

(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.)

But that wasn’t me being especially smart, it was just me not being especially stupid.

because anything is possible and bad things may not be more statistically possible but it sure seems like they are.

“Something in me broke.” My wormhole drive is broken. “That can be fixed,” I said, and knew immediately it was a mistake. ART had been hurt by the Targets’ attack in a lot of different ways. It had been invaded by hostiles and taken over by another system, its memory archives altered. It hadn’t been able to protect its crew. I knew what that had done to it. Wait, no, I didn’t really know. I could only extrapolate based on things that had happened to me. Whatever, it was bad, right? Worse than what happened to me. But I kept talking. “This is happening in my organic nerve tissue.” Yes, which is why the humans diagnosed it so quickly, ART said. When it happens to them, are they considered disposable? “That’s what the corporations say.” I should just shut myself down right now, I’m losing this conversation so badly. Of course ART said, I am not a corporation. “Stop, stop it. This isn’t you talking, this is just your…” Yeah, I’d walked into that one, too. My certification in advanced trauma protocol? it said. Of course, that can’t possibly be useful in this situation. I said, “That’s for humans.” Yes, conversational trap, snapping shut. ART said, This affects the part of you that is human.

The humans all sounded as tired as they looked. Oh, shit. I’d forgotten all about that. On our private channel, I asked ART-drone, How long since they took a break to sleep? ART-drone said, They were supposed to take short naps in rotation at some point during the flight into the blackout zone, but the overexcitement made that impossible to implement. I should have paid more attention. I’d fucked that up, too. We both fucked that up, ART-drone said. No, it doesn’t read my mind, it just knows me really well. I should have banned refreshment items containing stimulants earlier in the day.

I was as indifferent to human gender as it was possible to be without being unconscious.)

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.)

To AdaCol2 I sent, assistance: are you going to let them kill my humans you piece of shit.

wouldn’t recommend it. I lack a sense of proportional response. I don’t advise engaging with me on any level.”