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iviarellereads · 8 months

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All Systems Red, Chapter 6

(Curious what I'm doing here? Read this post! For the link index and a primer on The Murderbot Diaries, read this one!)

In which Murderbot makes a joke, to a human, and doesn't spontaneously combust.

The humans had debated where to go, within the time they'd had, knowing their supply levels. Ratthi has coined "EvilSurvey" for the enemy, in the absence of another name, and the group knows EvilSurvey have access to their HubSystem data, including where they'd surveyed previously, so they had to pick somewhere new. The result was in some rocky jungled hills.

While MB scouts the area to make sure nothing can drag off the little hopper in the night, it thinks about its options. It's not precisely half bot and half human, because those parts aren't discrete from each other. What it knows is that it can't abandon the humans, because it can imagine them all too well being hurt by the rogue SecUnits, and it hates having emotions about reality. Besides, it has no resources here, and nothing to do, and a limited media entertainment archive.

When it returns, Mensah says she knows it's more comfortable with the opaqued helmet, but she thinks the humans will benefit from seeing, rather than a construct, a person who's helping them, since that's how she thinks of it. MB's insides melt, and it un-opaques the visor, and has the helmet tuck back into its armour. Mensah thanks it, and they go inside.

The humans all have a long discussion about what's going on.(1) The main point is that they must want something in the blacked-out regions of the map. MB brings up that EvilSurvey might believe the company and PresAux's beneficiaries won't look further than a rogue SecUnit if they can blame it on that. They can't disappear two survey teams unless their "corporate or political entity" doesn't care, so it asks if DeltFall's would care about them, and PresAux's would care about this crew.

Every human turns to stare at it, and Volescu asks if it doesn't know who they are.(2) MB says there was an info packet, but it never read it, because it didn't care. Gurathin is dismissive, but MB restates: it was indifferent and annoyed.

Gurathin asks why MB doesn't want them to look at it. It clenches its jaw so hard it gets a performance reliability alert, and snaps that it's not a sexbot, its appearance is beside the point.

Ratthi snorts, but MB realizes it's not directed at it as he tells Gurathin that MB is shy. Overse adds that it doesn't like interacting with humans, which makes perfect sense given how constructs are treated in corporate-political areas.

Gurathin asks if they could punish it by looking at it, to replace its governor module. MB says, maybe, until it remembered it has guns for arms. Mensah asks if Gurathin is satisfied at the threat but ultimate lack of violence. Gurathin says, for now, but he wanted to be sure it wasn't under outside influence.

Arada says that's enough of that, this is a learning experience for everyone, including MB, who has to learn how to interact with humans on its own terms as a free agent.

Mensah sends a private message in the feed, hoping MB is alright. MB whines that she only cares because she needs it. Mensah says she DOES need it, the humans all do, because none of them have experience in situations like this. MB is the only one who won't panic, who will keep steady.

That was absolutely true. And I could help, just by being the SecUnit. I was the one who was supposed to keep everybody safe. I panic all the time, you just can’t see it, I told her. I added the text signifier for “joke.” She didn’t answer, but she looked down, smiling to herself.(3)

Ratthi asks where EvilSurvey are stationed on the planet. MB says it left a few drones around the habitat that may pick something up on audio or visual to help. It thinks internally about how it had downloaded the SecSystem onto the big hopper and purged the whole storage in the hub, so EvilSurvey won't get anything about its functions.

Mensah points out that it will have to go back in range of the hub to retrieve that data, and asks how long they're likely to stay at the habitat. Everyone groans at the potential loss of their samples and the things they had to leave behind, but MB says there's nothing there that EvilSurvey is likely to want, so not very long.

Mensah sets up a watch schedule, including explicit time for MB to do diagnostics and recharge. It plans to use the time to also watch Sanctuary Moon and decompress after so much dealing with humans.

After the humans settle for the night, it walks the perimeter again. When it comes back, Ratthi is on watch at the big hopper's hatch. It removes its helmet again, and asks why everyone was so shocked it asked if their political entity would miss them. Ratthi smiles and says Mensah is the political entity. Preservation Alliance is a non-corporate system, and Mensah is the current elected administrator on the steering committee. One of the principles of Preservation Alliance is that admins continue their regular work, and hers required this survey.

MB is still processing this and feeling a little stupid for not reading the packet, when Ratthi adds that bots are considered full citizens in Preservation territory. MB is internally dismissive of this, noting that even "full citizen" bots require human guardians.

MB reroutes back to the subject at hand: the company knows who Mensah is, then. Ratthi confirms, and MB thinks how the company would scramble to have help here in record time if the beacon had launched. Not even a bribe would stop it.

It seems unlikely that EvilSurvey knows who Mensah is, given their behaviour, and they have no access to the SecSystem storage with the info packet that could tell them. MB isn't sure how to use that information, but thinks about it anyway.(4)

The next day, MB prepares to take the little hopper back in range of the habitat to check the drones. It wants to go alone, but Mensah, Pin-Lee, and Ratthi are also set to go along. MB is upset, because it can't stop catastrophizing the situation and focusing on all the ways every aspect can go wrong.(5) Gurathin comes up and says he's going too. MB snarks that it thought he was satisfied. It takes him a minute to remember, ah, the conversation last night. MB lies blatantly that it remembers everything it's ever heard, though it clarifies internally that it deletes most of it as useless junk.

Mensah intervenes on the feed, saying Gurathin doesn't have to come if MB is uncomfortable. MB would rather the others weren't coming, because it wants them safe, but it wouldn't mind so much(6) if Gurathin died in the events to come. It tells Mensah it's fine, and they all leave.

MB circles off further west, to prevent EvilSurvey from reverse engineering their course back to the real camp. The humans are mostly sleeping in their seats, but Gurathin is awake in the copilot's chair with it.

Eventually, Gurathin says he has a question, but waits for MB to give him permission to continue, which it thinks is "weirdly new". He asks if the company punished MB for the mining company's deaths. MB explains, not like he's thinking. They shut it down, brought it back online at intervals, and tried to purge its memory. After some silence, Gurathin asks if MB blames humans for what happened to it. MB says that's a stupid human thing to do.

What was I supposed to do, kill all humans because the ones in charge of constructs in the company were callous? Granted, I liked the imaginary people on the entertainment feed way more than I liked real ones, but you can’t have one without the other. The others started to stir, waking and sitting up, and he didn’t ask me anything else.

Eventually they make it, and move in to land, just inside the drones' range. MB keeps its transmissions brief, but all three are still active, and the downloads begin. MB realizes the drones recorded everything since they left, so it pushes half the footage into the feed for Gurathin to look at and starts skimming. It finds a good picture of the EvilSurvey ship, and footage of five SecUnits, including the two from DeltFall. It identifies the logo for EvilSurvey, which actually includes a name: GrayCris. Nobody recognizes it.

The SecUnits, no doubt with the combat overrides equipped, all get out of the hopper and go toward the habitat. Five humans follow them. MB thinks they aren't professionals, and their SecUnits are company, not private.

It's still reviewing its footage when Gurathin says they have a problem. He found something in the footage from the drone inside the hub.

The visual was a blurred image of a curved support strut but the audio was a human voice saying, “You knew we were coming, so I assume you have some way to watch us while we’re here.” The voice spoke standard lexicon with a flat accent. “We’ve destroyed your beacon. Come to these coordinates—” She spoke a set of longitude and latitude numbers that the little hopper helpfully mapped for me, and a time stamp. “—at this time, and we can come to some arrangement. This doesn’t have to end in violence. We’re happy to pay you off, or whatever you want.”

Everyone starts talking, but Mensah stops them and asks MB what its opinion is. It says that if they go, GrayCris can kill them all, and if they don't, GC has until the project end date and the company pickup to find and eliminate them anyway.(7)

Mensah says GrayCris seem to believe they know why PresAux is here. GC know by now that PA went to one of the map blackout areas, precisely where in that area, so they must think that PA has information of value. It gives PA leverage, but how can they use it?

And then MB has a wonderful, terrible idea.(8)

=====

(1) I could be annoyed at how often some of the same questions and points are reiterated each chapter, but it's also realistic that, in the absence of an answer, you would bring up "who the heck ARE they" every time you think about what's happening in this situation, so I'm once again inclined to forgive what normally I might also criticize. (2) Look, I'm a sucker for a subverted line, and "You don't know who we are?" is so well played here. Usually it's haughty, arrogant. Here's it's played straight to perfection. (3) A JOKE! A real piece of humour! Alright so it's gallows humour at best, but still! Our little construct is growing up so fast. Which is good because the book's almost over. (4) Admittedly, this is a kind of clumsy way to get it across that this information is probably going to come back. Especially since, going over it the once already told us that it's meaningful enough to include in such a short story. It only counts as the rule of threes if those three are separated enough to register separately. (5) MB is an eternal mood, honestly, but never more so than this. Part of its security programming is being able to see eventual results and compensate to prevent them. That's also how some people's anxiety works: you can imagine so many ways things go wrong, because theoretically that allows you to plan and ensure that it goes better, but sometimes the ability to see things going right is impaired so you only ever see the terrible consequences and never the good outcomes. (6) Reading between the lines: it would still mind, some. Maybe only because the other humans like him, maybe only because he's a person and people deserve continued life and not terrible murder. But it does care. (7) It's A Trap! (8) Tune in tomorrow, or, you know, keep reading to find out for yourself.

#the murderbot diaries #murderbot diaries #all systems red #murderbot #secunit #ayda mensah #bharadwaj #volescu #ratthi #overse #pin-lee #gurathin #arada

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murderbotwritingprompts · 9 months

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The Murderbot Diaries writing prompt #02: Are We Really Doing This Again?

It all started with some crazed human shouting some weird technobabble gibberish that Murderbot didn't bother to look up the definitions for, waving around in a panic some sort of large weapon-looking thing that was connected by some tubing to a giant machine bolted to the floor of the dead spaceship and sparking dangerously with electricity in a way that was absolutely not safe for anyone.

Before Murderbot could react -- (yes, it happened that fast) -- the main part of the machine let out a shrieking sound, and a beam of energy that only Murderbot could see shot out of the end of the nozzle the panicked human was still waving around, and slammed directly into the side of Murderbot's head.

(Archived read-more link)

The next thing it knew, it was jumping forward in a delayed, reflexive attempt to dodge the beam that had already hit it, and found itself suddenly with no ground beneath its feet, and then it was falling, tumbling head over heels, down what seemed like a cliff, unable to get any bearings at all and unable to slow its fall as its mind scrambled to catch up with the suddenly changed situation. There wasn't enough time to try digging its hands into the dirt it was falling past, and none of its frantic, disoriented attempts to slow its fall did anything.

Going from inside a cramped, dark dead ship to falling full speed down a cliff with a nauseatingly bright purple visible every other moment when its head spun to face upward was bewildering, to say the least.

Over the sound of every part of its body slamming repeatedly into dirt and rocks, it could hear the sounds of familiar human voices shouting over eachother in clear alarm, along with dozens of warnings from various sources, but it shut them all out, trying to focus on slowing its uncontrolled fall to no avail.

When it finally slammed to a halt, it fortunately managed to land squarely on its stomach, instead of its head or legs. Its armour supposedly would have stopped bones from being broken, but you never could be too sure it'd actually live up to that promise. Several of the times Murderbot had been dismembered while in the Company's hands had been because its armour wasn't actually up to the standard it claimed it was.

The force with which it had finally slammed to the ground would have been enough to kill an unarmored human instantly, but fortunately, its armour this time seemed up to the test, because it didn't even get the wind knocked out of its lungs like it'd been fearing. That had only happened to it a few times, because its lungs were sturdier than a human's but it was a sickeningly unpleasant experience that it never wanted to experience again if it could help it.

It wanted to sit up, but when it tried, its armour zapped it and then starting pinging it with alarms, warning it that the structural integrity was at risk and it should be placed in a repair cabinet before being trusted to protect the wearer.

It shut off the armour's alarm and sat up stubbornly, trying to figure out what was happening. This was the kind of armour the Company rented, not like anything they had on Preservation, not like anything it'd worn for years.

The first thing it saw when it sat up and got its eyes to focus was the bottom of a crater stretching out before it, with steep, black walls of loose soil rising in the distance, with the purple sky overhead streaming bright with sunlight, with brown and gold planetary rings stretching across the vaulted ceiling of the sky, and...

...wait a minute.

It was only then that Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu came into view, both of them running full tilt and skidding to a stop in front of Murderbot, assisted by the extremely and unpleasantly familiar, color-coded exploration suits they were wearing.

It was after Murderbot realized that Dr. Bharadwaj wasn't using her cane, and that this type of exploration suit wasn't fit to support an injured leg to, that the improbable, ridiculous, absurd idea of what might be happening started to dawn on it, despite all its logic trying to push the idea away. Time travel wasn't actually real, it was only something that happened in fiction.

It was probably hallucinating. Or dreaming. Because it was definitely Drs. Bharadwaj and Volescu in front of it, rushing forward to –

Oh fuck!

It realized what they were about to do an instant too late to stop them, and then it was too late to pull away as violently as it wanted to without severely injuring them.

Dr. Bharadwaj grabbed one of its arms, and Dr. Volescu grabbed the other, and they attemped to pull it to its feet, and all the while their concerned voices were overlapping along with the conflicting and progressively overwhelming messages and commands it was receiving from its governer module, the med system, and the other humans who were still on the comm.

Fortunately, it was wearing its armour, so they weren't touching it directly, but even so, it could feel the pressure, and it promised worse.

It was bewildered and disoriented, unable to figure out what was going on with all the chaotic inputs it suddenly found it couldn't handle. It found itself pulling away from the humans more roughly than it should have and leaping to its feet and landing several feet away from their reaching hands, snapping, without thinking, too confused and overwhelmed to do anything else at the moment, “My contract forbids you from touching me without my permission!”

It felt its governer module try and fail to fry its brain as Drs. Volescu and Bharadwaj fell backwards to the ground, shock plain on both of their faces through their transparent visors.

And it was only at that exact moment that Murderbot remembered the danger they were all in, remembered why the Dr. Bharadwaj it knew in what was undeniably the future never went anywhere without one of her canes.

The world seemed to move in slow motion as it started running forward to grab its friends to get them out of the crater and out of danger, every sense in its body, both mechanical and organic, suddenly, dreadfully certain that it was too late.

It was too late.

The giant, predatory tunneler exploded up out of the ground below the two humans, teeth whirling, and the comm units were filled with screams.

Murderbot didn't bother reaching for the gun on its back. After that fall down the hill, it was unlikely to be functioning. Instead, it launched itself straight for the animal's mouth, just like the last time Dr. Bharadwaj had been caught, pulled the two unconcious humans out and leapt clear, then opened the gun ports in its arms, and fired as rapidly as it could into the creature's throat on full power, aiming for the teeth, the soft inside of the mouth, and the back of the throat. It knew not to waste its time trying to hit the brain above the mouth, it wouldn't stop it.

But pain was pain, and maybe, if it hurt it badly enough, it wouldn't want to come back for seconds. The animal reared back violently away from the assault, and a few of the bursts hit its underside, cracking and charring the flesh in large circles of black before it plunged backwards back down the tunnel out of reach.

The roar of the hopper was suddenly audible overhead, and Murderbot knew that Dr. Mensah and Ratthi had arrived, flying to the rescue just half a minute too late.

Murderbot dropped down and clamped its hands over the horrible injuries the two scientists had sustained, feeling like it was also going into some sort of shock.

Dr. Volescu's left foot was gone, and so was Dr. Bharadwaj's entire right leg. It wasn't just chunks missing this time, the whole thing was gone.

Murderbot had miraculously managed to get them both out of the animal's mouth without getting debilitatingly injured itself this time, but even so, it knew it wouldn't be able to carry both of them up the steep wall of the crater by itself. All of the medical supplies had been left over in the center of the crater where they'd been standing before Murderbot fell down the hill.

The only thing it could do was crouch over them, its armoured hands covered in their blood, and wait for the hopper to get close enough that they could be pulled inside to safety, desperately hoping that they would survive, not knowing what it would do if they didn't.

Murderbot could feel an involuntary shutdown coming on.

::Please hurry.:: It sent to Dr. Mensah, as the roar of the hopper grew so loud that it was barely even aware when its cognitive systems finally shut down from the stress.

#MBWPAreWeReallyDoingThisAgain #prompt2 #blogrunner prompt #Murderbotwritingprompts #Murderbot writing prompts #TMBD writing prompts #The Murderbot Diaries #The Murderbot Diaries prompts #Murderbot prompt #Murderbotfic #Murderbot #SecUnit #Dr. Bharadwaj #Dr. Volescu #time travel fic #TMBD #Murderbot Diaries

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