delighted by the fact a non preservation human has to deal with murderbot surveillance state. this is so bizarrely funny to me. ur minding ur business and suddenly a drone is analyzing you because you’re making an emotion and the weirdo construct is autistically breaking it down

Murderbot is MurderBACK in the next installment of Martha Wells’s NYT bestselling Murderbot Diaries series System Collapse 🤖🚀

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Following the events of Network Effect, our favorite lethally cybernetic television fiend has done the previously unthinkable: agreed to accompany the sentient spaceship Perihelion (dubbed ART by Murderbot, short for Asshole Research Transport) and crew on its next mission. 

Unfortunately, they’re not going to get too far. 

Having failed to harvest dangerous artifacts from their target planet by way of Murderbot misadventure, the Barish-Estranza corporation is much angered and determined to recoup their considerable losses. And when you’re a lethally opportunistic space corp, blood and muscle are valuable currency. 

Murderbot, ART’s crew, and the Preservation humans have planetside work to do as Barish-Estranza seeks to claim the planet’s beleaguered colony as a conscripted workforce. 

But for Murderbot, the challenge is as internal as it is external. Something is deeply, deeply wrong with it. Normal operational parameters are unmet, but with the corp’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams en route, Murderbot needs to resolve its issues, and fast!

"Huh. That wasn't a lie, but it sure wasn't the truth, either."

miki and don abene from rogue protocol!!!

but it also knows stories are a tool and can therefore be misused - just like itself 😭😭😭

I can pinpoint the moment that destroyed my life today:

It’s been a handful of weeks since Murderbot came within inches of having a new, organic governor module implanted in its head via infection - do you think, maybe, that’s also been hiding behind the redacted? Not the way everything else is, just as a deep-seated reminder of what it can’t afford to lose?

What a way to be told “I love you” - to be told “I will not lose you, I will not let go, I will do the hard part of holding on even if you don’t want me to”

so murderbot assumes that three offered its armor because it doesn't understand that the armor can belong to it and thinks mb taking the armor is just good resource allocation.

but if it assumes it doesnt have control over the armor, it would probably let whoever it sees as in charge (maybe ART?) handle it, or at least make the suggestion directly to that person. even newly freed in NE, it's willing to give its security advice (on hostage situations being undesirable) even if it doesn't expect to be taken seriously. it doesn't make sense to me that it would have so much trouble expressing the offer if it were just a security suggestion.

and then i think about how murderbot says later in the book that even if three felt fondly toward its fellow SecUnits, the govmod would prevent it from expressing that care or knowing it was returned.

so-- imagine you're three, and you havent yet internalized that you can just say "i care about you and dont want you to get hurt" to another SecUnit; but you can make sure that it has every resource it might need; you could probably do that even before the govmod was hacked.

you can't explain why, but you can hope that the gesture is explanation enough, and you can look for similar caretaking gestures in return; things like being given code and advice to do your job better, and being reassured when you express that you're finding said job difficult.

i think *murderbot* isn't aware of this language of care, because it hasnt had much opportunity to bond with other constructs. but three probably is, and probably knows how to read between the lines and guess that murderbot is starting to care about it, too.

I think it's hysterical that Murderbot sent Three to amuse Holism. Now University has two construct/bot pairs, and one of them is a timid information hungry SecUnit, who just learning about the world and how to be its own person, paired up with probably the biggest nerdy pedant of all University's machine intelligences (judging by Art's reaction).

And the other pair is ART and Murderbot, two mentally unwelly traumatized asshole machine intelligences, who would kill and die for their humans.

I think that's beautiful.

Totally living for the fact that in System Collapse, we get both Murderbot and ART getting jealous when they think someone else may have more of the other's attention:

Murderbot jealous of Tarik when it thinks he was ARTs previous security consultant and why would ART want Murderbot for that role if it already had someone else?

ART getting snippy and jealous of Holism and telling Murderbot to not talk to it and then Holism talking to Murderbot just to rile up ART even more.

Some good shit right there!

ART and Holism have impeccable annoying sibling vibes. they're in the backseat yelling "MOOMMM IT'S TOUCHING ME" and "oh I'm not touching you ;)" *finger hovering as close as it can without making contact*

i love how the blurb of System Collapse is like "something mysterious is wrong with Murderbot, and it figure out what, and quick!"

and throughout the book Murderbot's like "something's fucking wrong with me, i hate it, what and why and how do i stop it"

and then we get the flashbacks and it's like. all the humans and ART were immediately like, "yeah that's a very common response to severe trauma. the only solution is to unpack it"

Murderbot, being dragged kicking and screaming into self-recovery: i don't waaaaannnnna

for the record, the part of System Collapse (the new Murderbot Diaries novella by Martha Wells) where I absolutely broke down and cried was when Murderbot realized that stories had saved its life, stories had saved Three's life thanks to MB 2.0, stories might have the power to save the colonists from making a poorly-informed decision to sign their lives away and become corporate slaves...and that it needed to write the story that might save them. and then Ratthi told it that he thought Murderbot was absolutely the right person to write that story 🥹🥰😭

I fucking LOVE stories about the power of story, you guys

I cant there is another super inteligent ship thats as much if not even a bigger asshole than ART and they have this stupid rivalry going on. Also Holism is basically trying to chat up murderbot (its voice in the audiobook when it said "i can help you learn about it if you're interested 😏" qkzejxej ) to annoy ART and its definetly working lqzjexjwkzwj

Meanwhile murderbot just threw Three at it to avoid gettimg caugh in the middle and i cant wait to see how this dinamic turn out in the next books qksjwzjqzjwjzqj

Murderbot is MurderBACK in the next installment of Martha Wells’s NYT bestselling Murderbot Diaries series System Collapse 🤖🚀

WHAT’S IT ABOUT

Following the events of Network Effect, our favorite lethally cybernetic television fiend has done the previously unthinkable: agreed to accompany the sentient spaceship Perihelion (dubbed ART by Murderbot, short for Asshole Research Transport) and crew on its next mission. 

Unfortunately, they’re not going to get too far. 

Having failed to harvest dangerous artifacts from their target planet by way of Murderbot misadventure, the Barish-Estranza corporation is much angered and determined to recoup their considerable losses. And when you’re a lethally opportunistic space corp, blood and muscle are valuable currency. 

Murderbot, ART’s crew, and the Preservation humans have planetside work to do as Barish-Estranza seeks to claim the planet’s beleaguered colony as a conscripted workforce. 

But for Murderbot, the challenge is as internal as it is external. Something is deeply, deeply wrong with it. Normal operational parameters are unmet, but with the corp’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams en route, Murderbot needs to resolve its issues, and fast!

the whole "it would be kinder to kill them" exchange re-contextualizes murderbot's initial willingness-- even eagerness-- to kill other SecUnits in an interesting way, doesn't it.

Just a collection of Ratthi being Murderbot’s friend in Exit Strategy :’)

I realized the other day that ART never saw MB completely lose its shit because it thought ART was dead. It has no idea how fucked up the entire situation made Murderbot. How upset it was. And scared. And enraged. It didn't hear it yell "my friend is dead!" at Amena or the way it tears through the Targets (it sees the end results of that but not the catalyst that pushes Murderbot over the edge.) All it sees when it comes back online is Murderbot severely hurt and very mad. (Mad because it was used, mad because it's easier than dealing with the confusing mix of hurt and betrayal and utter relief.)

And now with System Collapse apparently being pretty heavily focused on Murderbot's rocky emotional state... there are so many ways it can go. How does MB handle being around ART and its crew while being so emotionally vulnerable and fragile? How does ART react to seeing how severely MB is affected? Is it sympathetic? Confused? Frustrated that MB won't let it help (or even tell it what's going on)? I have a feeling Murderbot will focus on the physical effects of its emotional distress, not the emotional distress itself. Which will ofc make it worse. Does it even think to consider that it's its emotional state causing its physical distress? Is ART able to help at all or does it unintentionally make things worse at first?