Maybe I had been watching too much media.
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@marthawells@wandering.shop The Murderbot Diaries. Has no gender. Managed by @writerphoebe@wandering.shop
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Oh good, maybe the security level would go from barely adequate to mostly adequate.
Ignoring stuff is always an option, up until it kills you.
I did everything I could think of to do, then finally let myself go on standby while I caught up on my serials.
Right, so the only smart way out of this was to kill all of them. I was going to have to take the dumb way out of this.
I feel like panicking and I was not in control of this situation and I could see at least ten instances now where I’d made wrong decisions and being in control of the situation was really important because otherwise it was in control of me
(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.)
It was a great idea to go if you wanted to be murdered.
I couldn’t do this without ART’s help.
They didn’t give us an education module on human evolution, but I had looked it up in the HubSystem knowledge bases I’d had access to, in an effort to figure out what the hell was going on with humans. It hadn’t helped.
Ships from outside the Corporation Rim, particularly on the routes intersecting Preservation, had a variety of different protocols, some of them horrifyingly jury-rigged by humans.
The killing machine in question has just sent her yet another message packet. They’re piling up in her feed and if she would stop encouraging SecUnit by opening them, it would probably stop.
Sometimes I wonder what the point of it all is.
“It’s not a baby, it’s a copy of me, made with code.”
Amena folded her arms and looked intensely skeptical. “That you and ART made together, with code. Code which both of you are also made out of.”
Amena had jumped on his back and was trying to choke him out. (It was a good effort but she didn’t have the leverage to really clamp down with her forearm.)
Target Two’s gray face went surprised, then furious. It was kind of funny. This was a point where if I was a human (ick) I might have laughed.
“I need my jacket.”
ART said, It was damaged and is being repaired in the recycler.
It was very hard to say evenly, “I am not speaking to you.”
Conflicting commands filled my feed but I didn’t pay attention.
I sent it a salutation and it sent back, query? It was asking me why I was here. I replied query: identify, and attached an image of the dead human.
My education modules were such cheap crap; most of the useful things I knew about security I learned from the edutainment programming on the entertainment feeds.
The humans not being able to tell what I was doing just guaranteed that whatever they assumed I was doing would be way, way worse than me having a brief comm interaction with each transport in dock, trying to get info for stupid Station Security.
I was trying to force an emergency open through the transport’s feed but the connections were inactive and it was like groping around in a giant bin of tiny broken drones for the one that was still intact.
I love it when humans forget that SecUnits are not just guarding and killing things voluntarily, because we think it’s fun.
She wasn’t there, obviously, being busy betraying her clients. (When I said I didn’t like humans working security you thought I was just being an asshole, right?)
Trying to get humans not to touch dangerous things was a full-time job.
There was some strange system where they all got their food and shelter and education and medical for free, no matter what job they did.
One of ART’s long-sleeved crew T-shirts had fallen out of the recycler at one point. My first impulse was to throw it away, but I needed it, so I pulled it on over my head
This would have all been a lot easier if I wasn’t so worried about the stupid humans.
For my entire existence, at least the parts I could remember, I had done nothing but accept the inevitable. I was tired of it.
How humans decide what to do with their arms on a second-by-second basis, I still have no idea.
(Humans have a bad tendency to use weapons unnecessarily and indiscriminately. Of the many times I had been shot, a depressingly large percentage of hits had come from clients who were trying to “help” me.)
Transports don’t communicate in words (most transports don’t; ART did, but ART was ART)
I yelled, “No!” which I’m not supposed to do; I’m always supposed to speak respectfully to the clients, even when they’re about to accidentally commit suicide.
Stupid humans. Sure, I’d had an emotional breakdown with the whole evisceration thing, but I was fine now, despite the drop in performance reliability. Absolutely fine.
Maybe I do watch too much media, because in the empty corridors, passing empty but recently used rooms, I had an image of finding Mensah’s family camp house like this.
But to make an ID I thought I only needed to see one thing. I told it, clothing. Acknowledge, the bot said. It pulled its arms in and led the way toward the target corridor.
How humans decide what to do with their arms on a second-by-second basis, I still have no idea.
His face did the thing humans do when they’re trying not to show how annoyed they are. (Mission accomplished.)
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.
The employment contracts for Preservation citizens were pretty simple, because their planetary legal code had so many in-built protections already.
98 percent of my attention was on the episode I was watching: The colony solicitor’s bodyguard and best friend had just been crushed under debris while trying to save a transport mech trapped in a crash. Were they really going to kill her off? That sucked.
There was a lot I didn’t know for sure. I am going to have to stop scaring the shit out of myself.
Right, so the only smart way out of this was to kill all of them. I was going to have to take the dumb way out of this.
Replying to
@muddle@infosec.exchange For my entire existence, at least the parts I could remember, I had done nothing but accept the inevitable. I was tired of it.
Replying to
@muddle@infosec.exchange I started a search against my own archives, which included the tech catalogs I’d used to pick out the new drones Dr. Mensah had bought for me.
You know, it’s not like I’m half-assing this, I am actually trying my best despite the fuck-ups.
It was a low-stress group, they didn’t argue much or antagonize each other for fun, and were fairly restful to be around, as long as they didn’t try to talk or interact with me in any way.
Replying to
@muddle@infosec.exchange I keep the hatch closed on the rear compartment until I can make sure this transport is non-hostile. I don’t know what to do if it is hostile.
(I don’t know anything about transport engines but I know you shouldn’t shoot at them, okay? They’re near the top of the long list of things it’s just obviously not a good idea to shoot at.)