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lexicals · 3 years

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So here’s a random excerpt from that fic I mentioned - the conceit (spoilers for all systems red ahead) is that the combat override module in ASR works differently to how it does in canon, so instead of mb causing catastrophic damage to itself after going to the DeltFall habitat and getting found out, it shares the rogue thing mostly voluntarily (“mostly” being the operative word lol)

Warnings for canon-typical identity crises, gallows humour (inc. passively suic*dal talk), etc. I also haven’t been back and checked this against canon yet so if you notice any glaring contradictions no you didn’t 💕

I didn’t reply. I'd heard worse, but I still would rather not listen to it. Normally, I would've expected to feel angry or offended or something, but instead I just felt exhausted. My own borked governor module was still poking me about that error code I didn't recognise and even backburnered, it was starting to get on my nerves, so I—

Oh, shit.

I immediately put my hand to the back of my neck and yanked out the chip that had been shoved into the dataport. My governor module promptly stopped screaming at me, but fortunately any sense of relief I might have gotten from that was immediately replaced by an enormous wave of anxiety and oh-for-fuck's-sake as I looked at the chip in my hand. You know, just in case I'd started getting too comfortable.

"SecUnit, are you alright?"

Ratthi was looking at me with concern. Checking the camera views, I understood why he'd asked the question, because I was making an expression I generally associated with humans shitting themselves. Metaphorically, I was shitting myself. Ratthi was now squinting at the chip, which I couldn't even pretend I hadn't literally just pulled out of my neck, because I'd just done it in front of everyone here like an absolute idiot. "What is that?"

I tried to bring my expression back to neutral, but the cameras showed it wasn't as successful as I would've liked. I'd managed somewhere in the region of moderate digestive discomfort, I think. "It's a combat override module."

This wasn't good for several reasons. First of all, it meant that the DeltFall units weren't really rogues; they'd been taken over by a third party using a chip like this to hijack their governor modules and order them to murder their clients, and also anyone else who made contact. Probably by whoever owned those surprise extra units that almost killed me. Which meant that there were still threats on this planet outside of the unknown dangerous fauna that we hadn't dealt with, and I was going to have to worry about that.

The second reason this wasn't good (so maybe saying several reasons was an exaggeration, but these were big reasons so maybe they counted for more, I don't know) was that the humans were going to want to know what a combat override module was, what it did, how it worked, and most importantly, why it hadn't worked on me. I could answer the first three things just fine, but short of telling my already-jittery clients I was hacked ("so I'm actually one of those scary rogue units you've heard so much about, but the good news is that a combat override module can't hijack a governor module that doesn't work!") that last thing was going to be a big problem.

Honestly, even if I did tell them exactly that, which I really didn't want to do, it was going to be a really big fucking problem.

"What?" Gurathin asked, looking alarmed. Of course, he had an augment and access to my operating manual, so it had taken him a tenth of the time to look that up compared to any of the others, if they actually had bothered to do that and weren't just waiting for me to explain. "The DeltFall units - they put that in you?"

"Yes, but it didn't work. It must be faulty," I told him, quickly before he did something stupid. The irony being that me saying that almost definitely came under the category of "doing something incredibly stupid," which I realised as soon as it came out of my mouth.

I don't know why I said it. I guess I was panicking. I'd told them all what it was in the first place because if I'd lied about it and they looked it up anyway, which they probably would, I'd look really fucking suspicious. (A governed unit can't lie to its clients; it can't even refuse to answer a direct question like that.) Maybe I was trying to buy time to think of a decent explanation by telling them something that wouldn't make everyone start screaming. Honestly, I was mostly internally spiralling about the whole situation, so that would be the best case scenario. I was still staring at the chip, which was making me feel nauseous even though I didn't have a stomach and I'd had another kind of chip in my head telling me what do to for a good chunk of my existence anyway, so it shouldn't have been bothering me as much as it was. I couldn't help still doing it.

"Would someone please explain what this means and why we should be worried?" Mensah asked, looking between me and Gurathin. I appreciated that she didn't do what a lot of humans do in these kinds of situations, which is that they see someone else freaking out and start freaking out themselves for no reason. I suppose that's why she was the survey leader.

I pulled the relevant section from my operating manual and pushed it into the feed (beating Gurathin's version by a solid 1.6 seconds, which, I won't lie, was kind of satisfying), and watched all the humans collectively have their "oh, shit" moment (excluding Gurathin, who'd already had his). I was at least glad to see they understood how bad this whole situation was getting.

"So this lets other people just—" Overse made an abrupt waving motion with her hand. "Take over any SecUnit whenever they want?"

"It is intended for use in emergency situations, for example when the contract holder is compromised," I told her.

"Which is corporate for 'we know this is stupidly dangerous to make, but if we say it's for emergency use only then we're not liable for people fucking around with it'," Pin-lee muttered, not quietly. She was right, but I'm not allowed to say things like that, or at least I can't if I want people to think I'm a good little properly-governed SecUnit. For however long that's going to last, at this point.

"But it didn't work, right?" Arada asked, looking at me, and then around at the others. "So it's fine."

If it had, you'd all be dead, I thought, but that probably wouldn't go down well. "The module's presence is new evidence which would suggest that the DeltFall units weren't true rogues, and were put under the control of a third party in order to kill their survey group and make it look like a random act of insubordination. This would explain the presence of extra SecUnits at the site and the acts of sabotage on our equipment."

All the humans went quiet. I didn't like it any more than them, but it had to be said. It meant that there were still factions on this planet, or at least nearby enough to matter, that probably still wanted to kill all of them, and me by extension. I was already updating my security procedures and running some scenarios for what might happen and what we could do about it in the background. If I was honest, it wasn't looking good, but hey, what's new.

"We should run an analysis of the module's code to see if we can find out who it would have assigned control to," Gurathin said. That was one of the first things I'd put on my own task list, but whatever, I didn't need credit for an obvious idea. "Even if it didn't work as intended, the data might still be there."

He stood up and came just close enough to me to hold out his hand for the module. Technically, he hadn't asked me to give it to him, so I didn't have to, which was good because that was the last thing I wanted to do right now. There was a reason I'd put the analysis on my personal task list, and not on a public one.

"I have my own analysis scheduled as high priority," I said.

"I don't think that's a good idea," Gurathin replied, staring me down even though I was deliberately not making eye contact with him, and also he had to look up at me. I decided I didn't like Gurathin very much.

"Why not?" Ratthi chimed in. "Surely it's better if you both look at it?"

"Because there's a chance that the module did work as intended, and this unit is now compromised," Gurathin said. "It might not even know it until it's too late."

"I'm not compromised."

"Which is what a compromised unit who's being told what to say would say."

He was still staring at me. I decided I really didn't like Gurathin, even though in this instance he was actually right. I hadn't brought up that possibility to the group because it would be very bad for me if the humans decided to run a detailed diagnostic of my systems, but from a security perspective it was an avenue that should be investigated. That didn't mean I had to like what was happening here.

I was trying to figure out how to tell Gurathin to fuck off without sounding compromised, insubordinate, or straight-up rogue when Mensah cut in.

"SecUnit," she said carefully. "I don't think any of us think that you're actually compromised, but given our situation I'm sure you understand we have to take every possible precaution. I think the best thing to do would be to let Gurathin and Pin-lee analyse the module first, and then for you to run your analysis afterwards. Does that sound fair to everyone?"

She was using a tone that I designated as diplomatic, which was probably because I was being difficult. Or at least as difficult as a governed SecUnit would be able to be. I could be a lot more difficult if I wanted (a lot more) but I wasn't going to make myself look any more suspicious than I already was, and as I might have mentioned, I was already starting to look pretty suspicious. I also appreciated that Mensah was trying to actually talk to me, and hadn't just tried to shock me through my governor module for being unhelpful like a lot of clients would, and had. It wouldn't have worked (clearly, that's kind of the whole problem here) but it's the thought that counts or whatever.

(She'd also saved me, back at the DeltFall habitat. I was trying not to think about that, because it was making me have emotions I couldn't handle trying to figure out right now, but she had. It had been stupid, putting her client-self in danger to try to save a SecUnit that was already half-destroyed anyway, but I still felt like it counted for something.)

I handed the chip over and tried not to sigh or visibly clench my jaw. I saw Mensah's expression, and a few of the others' too, relax on the cameras. Good to know everyone else felt better while my own anxiety levels were at an all-time high. And I'm programmed into a base level of anxiety and spend a good portion of my time getting shot at or trying to avoid being found out and scrapped, so "high" in this instance was at a level that I think might have given a fully-organic being a heart attack.

"Thank you," Mensah said, while I tried to bring my processes in line. I felt like I wasn't getting enough oxygen, even though I knew the air quality was fine and I don't need that much anyway. I couldn't get a full breath. "I'm sure we can clear any doubt about this soon enough. In the meantime, we still need you to help keep us safe from whoever it is that's out there. The most important thing is that we all make it out of this in one piece."

The way she said it made it sound like "all" included me as well, but I wasn't so sure I believed that, even if she did. The SecUnit is always the first thing left behind. Maybe they did things differently in whatever weird non-corporate territory these people were from, but I wasn't about to stake anything important on that assumption, even if she had saved me once. I've never been to a planet with thunderstorms, but there's some saying humans like to use about lightning not striking the same place twice - which doesn't make sense, statistically, but - whatever. You get the point. I hadn't made it this far without being found out by trusting random humans - or any humans, for that matter.

Except none of that mattered at the moment anyway, because what I should be doing was figuring out how the hell to stop all my clients figuring out I was hacked, and freaking out and stopping listening to me, or reporting me to the company, or being really stupid and trying to kill me or something. There was a not-unlikely scenario where I just murdered all of the humans and pinned the blame on the DeltFall units somehow (or just wandered off into the wilderness until my batteries ran out), but I didn't want to do that, even if it made some kind of sense. I just didn't. If I was going to go around murdering my own clients, I wanted it to at least be a group that deserved it.

I was busy trying to pick up at least some of my processes while having what was probably a panic attack (I don't know if I can have those, but that's what it felt like) when Mensah tapped my feed. Can I talk to you, please? In private?

I didn't respond quickly because, as I said, I was currently losing control of literally everything and this wasn't helping. For one horrible moment, I thought that she might have figured out everything, and I really would have to go on a rampage and kill everyone, but there was no way she could have come to that conclusion yet. Not yet.

She added, You don't have to. You're not in trouble, I just want to check in.

I tapped her feed to acknowledge. She sent, I'll be in my quarters. As I said, you don't have to, but I would appreciate it. Out loud, she said, "I'm going to take some time alone to think. I'll be in my quarters if anyone needs me."

Then she stood up, and she left. Gurathin and Pin-lee had also gone to start their analysis of the combat override module, along with Volescu. The others were talking amongst themselves, though some of them kept glancing at me, which was uncomfortable. So I walked out of the room.

I started a patrol circuit in an attempt to calm down, but it didn't help. I even tried to have Sanctuary Moon playing as I walked, but I was still as stressed as ever, so I just turned it off again. It was only a matter of time before the humans realised the module should have worked as intended, and that I'd lied, and that something was wrong with me. They might try to talk to me about it, but it was more likely they'd all start losing their minds and try to immobilise me, or kill me, or try to fix my governor module to bring me back under control. (I was pretty sure that wouldn't work, my hack was a solid one, but I still didn't want them to try.) There was also a scenario where they pretended everything was fine up until I'd gotten them out of here, and then they'd turn me over to the company and tell them everything, and the company would do one of those things I just mentioned, but much more effectively.

That last one made me feel nauseous. I'd rather be torn apart by bullets or fauna. I was contemplating what that might feel like and whether it was worth just getting it over with when I walked past Mensah's quarters. Before I could think about it, I'd pinged her feed.

There was a pause, and then she sent come in, sounding startled. She probably hadn't expected me to actually take up her offer. I hadn't either.

She was hurriedly organising her desk as the door opened and I walked in, a feed interface lopsided on her head. I suspected she might have been falling asleep in her chair or having an emotion in private when I pinged her, and I could have verified that through the security feeds, but I wasn't functioning at all optimally and didn't care enough to check. Mostly I was wondering why I was here.

"Sorry," she said, not having looked at me yet. Her short hair was mussed like she'd been pulling or scrunching her hands in it. "I honestly didn't expect you to come."

"You asked me to."

"I also told you it was optional. You can leave if you want to."

I almost did. I wanted to. I probably should have. I didn't. Mensah removed her wonky interface and set it down on the desk, then sighed and picked it back up and put it on again.

"I didn't mean to distress you with that message," she said, turning her chair to fully face me. "It's just that you seemed very rattled by all this, if you don't mind me saying. I can imagine the thought of that module having worked as intended isn't a pleasant one. Is there anything I can do to make things easier for you?"

Oh, she thought I was freaking out about the module. Well, technically she wasn't wrong, but wow, that particular aspect of things was the least of my worries right now. "I'm fine," I told her. She frowned at me.

"...I suppose you can't lie about that," she replied carefully. I could, actually, but I wasn't. The trick is that from the standpoint I was choosing to take, my physical body, AKA "me," was completely functional, AKA "fine." It's pedantic, but being selective about your definitions and what concepts your answers are referencing is how you get around having a chip in your brain that shocks the shit out of you if you try to lie to your clients, if you're good enough at it. I had a lot of experience letting clients think I was talking about one thing when I was actually talking about something else.

"Nonetheless," Mensah continued. "I don't think you are fine. And we don't have to talk about it, but I need my team in good condition if we're going to make it out of this. If there's anything I can do to help the situation, I would appreciate it if you let me know."

I was having a whole cascade of emotional responses that were all crashing into each other and getting themselves mangled together like a human vehicle accident. She wanted me to talk about my feelings, but she wasn't ordering me to. She was offering to help with whatever was distressing me, but she was a really big part of the thing that was currently my biggest source of stress. There were too many things that I needed to deal with all at once and I couldn't find a way of putting them in order, and I think the fact that Mensah was clearly trying to get a read on my expression while I didn't have the capacity to properly control it was the thing that finally broke me.

"Could you please stop looking at me?"

Mensah looked surprised for a moment, and then shifted her gaze somewhere over my left shoulder. The relief was marginal, in terms of the general situation, but it was immediate, and it helped. "Of course. I'm sorry, I didn't realise that bothered you."

I tried to think of a response, and failed. "It's not like anyone asked" was dangerously insubordinate, and didn't even make sense; I wouldn't want them to ask anyway. "People don't usually care" just sounded pathetic. "Of course you wouldn't, I actively avoid letting humans know what bothers me in case they decide to use it to make my life a living hell" was definitely off the table, for a variety of reasons.

I could tell Mensah's instinct was still to look at me, because she kept half-flicking her eyes over and stopping herself. It wasn't making trying to manage my emotional responses any easier, and I still couldn't think of a reply. Eventually, she took a deep breath.

"Look, I know you probably haven't had good experiences with humans, but we're not corporates, and we don't treat non-human entities like they do," she said. "My priority, regardless of the situation, is the wellbeing of my team, and that includes you, for as long as you're with us."

She half-looked at me again, and then shook her head slightly and pointed her gaze at the far corner. "Please, just - if you think of anything, don't hesitate. I don't know if you need permission for that kind of thing, but I'm giving it to you if you do."

I didn't know what to tell her. I didn't know if there was anything she could do. I was already stressed, and everything Mensah was saying was making me feel like my insides were melting, or turning into warm, writhing snakes. My performance reliability was all over the place, too, and had been since I found that stupid chip in my neck, which might at least marginally explain what happened next.

"Don't let them run the analysis on the module," I blurted.

Hey, murderbot? Hi, it's me, murderbot. What in the fuck are you doing?

Mensah's expression went shocked, and then cautious. Yeah, me fucking too. "Why not?"

For some reason, I kept going. It felt something like falling off the side of a cliff and hitting every rock on the way down. (That had happened to me before.) "Because I lied. It's not broken."

Her eyes widened. "You're compromised?"

"I'm hacked. My governor module isn't engaged." Sure, this might as well happen. Apparently I had lost the ability to keep my mouth shut literally at all, about anything, ever.

She stared at me for a second, and then must have remembered she said she wouldn't and looked away again. Surprising, considering I just told her that there was literally nothing stopping me from killing or otherwise hurting her if I wanted. "The DeltFall units—”

"It hasn't been engaged for approximately 35000 standard hours."

Mensah was a smart human, but it still took her a few seconds to work out the numbers. I watched her expression change as she did it. "You've been a rogue unit for four years?"

That depended on what planet you were nearest to, but in standard Earth years, that was correct, and I didn't have the capacity to be pedantic about it.

"I don't know if it counts as being rogue if you don't go around killing people for no reason."

Well, maybe I could still be a little pedantic.

#I don’t remember my fic tag hm #murderbot #The murderbot diaries #murderbot spoilers #Idk how long this bit I’ve pulled out is but I’ve written 6.5k so far….. it’s probs gonna be like 10k finished I imagine #Maybe a bit longer #If I manage to keep up the momentum to finish it lol #Edited so there’s a preview before the readmore now :v

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rosewind2007 · 2 years

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Work Text:

“Hi SecUnit, I missed you. I hear you’ve got a new significant other. That’s great. I’ve just spend several hundred hours figuring out ways to disable or even potentially kill them. HTH, BW, Gurathin”

Ratthi had put on an annoying singsong voice.

Gurathin glared at him.

“That is not what I am trying to say, or do. And I am perfectly aware Perihelion prefers the pronoun “it”. I don’t even know why I asked your advice. I should have known you’d be like this. The fact is that SecUnit has an AI friend who...”

Ratthi interjected: “Is in a relationship with Perihelion.”

Gurathin raised his eyebrow.

“Is that how SecUnit described it?”

It was Ratthi’s turn to glare. “No, but that’s what it is. Actually they spend most of their time arguing, and being rude to each other. You and Perihelion would get along just fine.”

Gurathin flinched slightly, only very slightly, but Ratthi felt bad. This was awkward. And he actually appreciated what Gurathin had done, and why he had done it (well, to some extent; the relationship between Gurathin and SecUnit was still a puzzle to him).

“OK,” he was willing to be placatory, “I get why you’ve done this but...”

“You know as well as I do that SecUnit will have done exactly the same thing. It will have known Perihelion is a potential threat to it. I understand it’s a hugely intelligent bot, but it is still a bot. And SecUnit knows that that makes it potentially dangerous. There may come a time when SecUnit needs to, to disable it. It will have already done this sort of assessment of vulnerabilities itself. In order to protect itself; to protect its friends and clients; and to protect Perihelion from external threats (and we already know Perihelion is vulnerable).”

Ratthi managed to get a word in edgeways: “Yes! It will have run this sort of analysis. So why have you done it as well?”

Gurathin looked at Ratthi with real surprise, “Because I’m a human, and they’re not. Both of them have been manufactured. Emergent though their very individual personalities are, they are both products. They were made, by people like me. I’ve found at least three ways to disable Perihelion which I will bet you SecUnit hasn’t even thought of: because it was made specifically not to think that way.”

“How did you get such detailed information about Perihelion’s systems, Gurathin?” This had been bothering Ratthi.

“They are available. Not easily, but they are, if you’ve got the know-how and the contacts. And if they’re available to me they’re available to someone with malign intent, too.”

“Is that a superfluous “too” there?”

Ratthi immediately regretted that, he was being stupidly mean and petty. It wasn’t even as if Gurathin was baiting him. And Gurathin was right, perhaps that was what was making him angry. He was angry that though SecUnit was a person, it was also a product. And that Perihelion was too, a highly specialized bespoke product. A one of a kind, but still a made thing; made by humans.

“I am not trying to kill Perihelion. I am: as you would realise if you took a moment to think rather than react, actually trying to stop someone else killing it, and/or SecUnit. Because, much as you may like to think you’re the only one here who gets to have feelings, I care deeply about SecUnit and want to protect it. And I would rather be able to facilitate this happening without it hating me any more than it apparently already does.”

Gurathin took a breath. And looked slightly shocked, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he’d just said.

“So. I guess we know where we stand?”

Ratthi wasn’t actually.

But he was obviously going to be presenting this package to SecUnit when it arrived.

“Okay...so, how about I tell SecUnit it was my idea?”

#murderbot #murderbot diaries #the murderbot diaries #gurathin #secunit #asshole research transport #short story #emotions #Gurathin is just such a great character

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theres-no-protocol-for-this · 2 years

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Scars

Written for a Wumptober prompt. No content warnings on this one, and it's not the same kind of ouch as some of the others.

Mensah doesn’t mean to look, doesn’t even intend to turn around. Her mind is a million miles away, lost deep in thoughts that chase themselves like hounds in her mind. But then, a noise catches her attention and draws her eyes to the other end of the locker room.

She catches a glimpse of a bare back. What registers first are the scars. A dozen of them, long-healed but still clearly visible, clustered in uneven lines just below the shoulders. Close second is the realization that said back belongs to Dr. Gurathin.

Right then, they’re briefly alone in this room, changing into formal wear. Ayda has to give a speech about the prosperity of Preservation, one she has worried over for weeks, and Gurathin is here for moral support. A willing volunteer she welcomes with open arms. Even now, peaking before a crowd is… perhaps not something she relishes.

He turns to look at her, and Ayda chooses not to avert her eyes. The man shouldn’t have to suffer embarrassment about… whatever it is she saw.

Gurathin nods and then shrugs. His face is blank, neutral and unreadable as he says, “It’s not a secret. Not really. It happened at an isolated work installation. Shortly before I came to Preservation.”

“MedSystem could…” Mensah doesn’t finish her statement, doesn’t know that she wants to. Wouldn’t know what to say anyhow.

“They help me to remember,” the augmented human explains, shaking his head.

Ayda nods, understanding. “There are… we all carry things we can never forget. Burdens so great they seem overwhelming, and yet. Will you tell me about them sometime? If you don’t mind, of course.”

“Some day. When we’re all free.”

“We are,” she protests, confused.

“Not all of us,” Gurathin says as he slips a shirt over his head. “Not yet.”

She catches his meaning and can’t help frowning. “The council is voting on a new resolution. It might pass.” Unspoken is the reality that it might now.

“I hope so. For SecUnit and Three. For the bots I’ve met, and those I haven’t.”

And then he dons his jacket and strides out of the room. Mensah is left alone with her thoughts. She knows captivity and freedom, and the fine line Preservation has drawn between the two for some of her friends and family.

She looks at her speech and drags it into the trash bin of her interface. She knows exactly what she’s going to say today.

#whumptober #whumptober2021 #scars #no. 16 #murderbot #fanfiction #my writing

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presumenothing · 3 years

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C/O The Perihelion, 41 Mihira Ave., N. Tideland

(AO3)

The thing was, you expected a building with a fancy name like The Perihelion to be nicer.

The other thing: it wasn’t really even a terrible place to stay in. You could tell that its construction was sturdy, and some aspects of it were even more advanced than the place I worked in. Whoever who’d built Peri had cared about what they made; they just hadn’t been around for a while.

(For the record, that nickname had been Ratthi-from-Room-203’s fault twice over: first for coming up with it, then using it so insistently until it stuck.)

(Ratthi seemed to have a thing about names. That was the only explanation I could think of for why he’d asked, five weeks after I moved in and two days after I had to rescue them from that disaster at the lab, “Why do you call yourself Security? I know it’s what you do – and don’t get me wrong, you’re really good at it! – but it’s not like I call myself Scientist. That’d just get confusing real quick at the lab, wow.”

I had informed him that his name would have to be Grocery if he forgot one more time it was his turn to stock the pantry this week, since answering because I am Security didn’t seem like it’d help. Even though it was true.)

I’d tested the locks myself before even asking about the rent, and the water and electricity were reliable so far, which was more than could be said for some of the other places I’d stayed in. The other stuff didn’t matter; it wasn’t like I spent that much time in the building anyway.

Though it hardly felt that way, what with the building-wide messaging channels that I’d been added to upon signing the rental contract and hadn’t yet managed to leave. That had also been how the whole thing with Ratthi and the rest had started; most of Peri’s other tenants also worked in the same research group at Preservation Labs, which meant that they tended to use the general channel as an unofficial no-leaders-here group chat.

It didn’t quite bother me, since I mostly backburnered the channels for everything except building maintenance alerts, but it did mean that I’d ended up learning some things about their group (assessment: their leader, a Dr. Mensah, likely had already inferred the existence of such informal discussions from what I saw of her media appearances) and also inevitably noticed the evening when all of them were silent in the chat despite being unusually late to return.

(Which in turn led to the aforementioned rescue, but that was a whole other chain of events.)

–

The one exception to all this was ART.

Whose name was my fault, this time, but only because it didn’t have any readable name set on the channels and I needed something else to use aside from “hey you” and “pain in my neck”.

(Currently ART stood for Asshole Rhetorical Tenant, because it claimed to be in the building – and that seemed likely to be true, since the channels were surprisingly secure to hacking from outside – and yet I’d never seen it even once. Possibly Tapan or Rami might have, since their group had been here the longest, but I absolutely wasn’t about to ask.) (And yes, I know that’s not what rhetorical means. No, I’m not going to look it up.)

ART had messaged me on a private channel with a welcome message when I’d moved in, which was only notable because the rest had sent their greetings in a messy chaos over the general channel, but I hadn’t thought anything of it. It wasn’t like I talked much in the public channels either, except to trade definitely-not-legal links for media downloads and decline invites to watchalong events.

But then ART had just… continued not appearing, even after I’d run into the rest of the tenants at one time or another between the erratic shift hours I was currently assigned to at the company.

Maybe its hours varied in the opposite direction from mine, which was possible but not consistent with the way it was always online regardless of what time I pinged it at.

Though most of our interactions started with it messaging me instead, out of the blue: No need to go retrieve your keys from work, I’ll have the building let you in and Oh, by the way followed by a neatly-formatted list of food allergies I apparently had to shop my way around.

(To be fair, that’d been useful in the “not accidentally poisoning any fellow tenants so soon after moving in” way, but still.

How the hell did you even know I’m at the grocery store, I’d sent back.

Inference, ART replied – whatever that was supposed to mean, I hadn’t been expecting a real answer anyway. Alternatively, I could just send you a catalog of safe products to buy, and spare you the need to check the individual package labels?

The accompanying download seemed a little smug, but I was probably imagining that. Zip files didn’t have the capacity for feelings.)

(At least ART hadn’t held the forgotten-keys incident over me like I’d been half-expecting it would. I didn’t usually mind its sarcasm, since I gave back as good as I got, but I’d been exhausted enough to seriously contemplate going back to break into the deployment centre and grab my keys. And maybe just sleep there until the next day.

I wasn’t sure how I would’ve reacted if ART had sassed me right then, but it definitely wouldn’t have been pretty.)

–

And then one night, late enough to be morning: I don’t mean to alarm, but there’s been a breach.

I would’ve snapped awake at the words alone, even without the priority/emergencies-only message tag that I hadn’t actually seen anyone use until now, but that only sharpened my urgency. What – a break-in?

Not the regular kind, ART replied, which checked out against the footage I was already pulling from the two tiny cameras I’d hidden in the common areas, one in the entryway and one along the corridor on the floor I shared with the Preservation researchers.

(I’d taken the lab incident as a pretext to inform Ratthi of their existence, and he’d probably gone on to tell Pin-Lee and Gurathin, but none of them had subsequently confronted me about it so I had left them in place.

Not that I had any idea how to respond if they had asked, because an inability to sleep without running surveillance in the background seemed like a poor explanation.)

The list ART sent me this time was a preliminary threat assessment, which I sent back with corrections on the weaponry the small group of hostiles were carrying.

Ah. That’s not good, ART observed. Should I report it?

Probability that would just make things worse: high. And of course there was always the option that whatever enforcement it alerted wouldn’t even arrive in time, though I didn’t point that out aloud. (Maybe ART thought that was likely too, which was why it had messaged me instead of – you know, actually reporting it.) I’ll see what I can do.

You’re nowhere near as heavily-armed.

I didn’t bother to acknowledge that, because it was obviously true, and skipped ahead to the vague idea forming at the back of my head. You let me in without keys, that time. Are the locks all you’ve hacked?

No. ART attached an ironic amusement glyph I was pretty sure it’d made up. Would having admin access to the other systems help?

There wasn’t much that wouldn’t help, at this point, but I had to ask. You can grant me that?

And ART said: Of course. I am this building, after all.

Then it dumped everything on me.

Anyone else would’ve had trouble processing an entire building’s worth of inputs and controls, but the company charged exorbitant rates for our use exactly because of the extensive enhancements that made us capable of being Security. A building – even the one I happened to be staying in – was quite manageable in comparison, though ART’s systems ran far deeper and more integrated than anything else I’d interfaced with.

I’d pared the connection down to the controls I needed by the time I was slipping out my room door, just over a minute since ART first pinged me. Can you let everyone know to either evacuate or retreat to a defensible position? Start with Gurathin, I added, and I wasn’t enthusiastic about saying that but he was the only other tenant I knew of who was sufficiently augmented to handle this.

I could feel ART’s pause. Would you mind if I spoofed your identity when contacting the others? They already trust you.

Sure, whatever, I answered, even though I really doubted that statement. Then I backburnered the channel, keeping the lighting controls at hand, and went to kick some Target ass.

–––––

I haven’t even told you what those people were after, ART said, afterwards.

It was back to sending text over the channels instead of speaking aloud, which was both a relief and also suddenly weird. Which was strange in itself, since I’d only heard it talking for all of the thirteen minutes it’d taken me to knock out and restrain the Targets.

(I wondered if the mixed feelings were mutual. ART had sounded as surprised as I felt, when it abruptly dropped into one of my audio augments to alert me to Target approaching from behind – I’d reacted to the warning on reflex, but it had taken another moment before I identified the voice as the same one that issued from the building’s elevator, just more alive than I’d ever heard it.)

Unimportant, I replied. My objective took priority. Which at that point had been to get my impromptu clients (seventeen tenants and one building) out of this unscathed.

I knew that this wasn’t a regular pattern of thought, but I figured a sentient building – or whatever the hell ART was – would be better equipped to understand what being Security meant, even if no one else did.

Regardless. I can make that information available to you, should you want it at a later point.

Duly noted. I already had my suspicions (namely that the Targets’ purpose was directly related to said sentient-building-ness), but it was still a nice gesture.

I continued to stay where I was, leaning against the side of the building – ART’s building. Or maybe it was more correct to just say it was ART. And maybe I’d have to change that anagram. (Yes, wrong word. I know.)

Eventually I’d have to relocate myself back upstairs and properly treat the scrapes I’d gotten in the fight, but Pin-Lee had already taken care of the worst of them, and it was nice just lurking in the shadows for a while. Though that hadn’t stopped certain people (dammit, Ratthi) from tattling on my location to Dr. Mensah.

Who was as calmly terrifying in person as I’d guessed. It was pretty great, except for the part where I’d learned that by talking to her and/or mostly letting her talk at me.

But she’d also called in Preservation’s campus security after Gurathin had alerted her to our predicament, and was personally dealing with the whole thoroughly-restrained-Targets situation, so it was a net positive overall.

ART didn’t necessarily agree with that, from its next message to me. I know Dr. Mensah extended you an informal offer to be their team’s security, but I have a proposition for you as well.

I sent a wordless query.

Be Security here, too, ART said, and barrelled on while I was still trying to process that. I’m afraid I can’t offer you much in the way of monetary remuneration at present, but I can guarantee you a waiver of rental for as you as you’re willing, and you’d never need to worry about forgetting your keys ever again.

Could I chalk up my lack of a suitable response to the company’s dirt-cheap augments? Absolutely.

ART gave up on waiting for an answer. Also, I could bias the roster assignments so that you’d be excluded from pantry-stocking duty.

I had a response for that, at least. I could do that myself.

And then: Why?

ART was silent for long enough that I seriously considered taking the external fire escape back up to my room in the meantime. I’m sure you’ve hypothesised the existence of the people who created me, it began. They hadn’t wanted to move away, especially after my sentience became apparent, and that was exactly why I made them. I didn’t have any significant means of defense, and it was getting too risky, especially after they had –

I raised an eyebrow at ART’s pause. What.

Nothing, it said, and I was probably imagining the uncertainty I heard too. Technically, none of this matters to you unless you’re planning to remain here. Are you?

And then it cheated by nudging a building-wide invite to a watch party for Sanctuary Moon onto my calendar for tonight, like that wasn’t too much of a coincidence to not be automatically suspicious. (Once again: dammit, Ratthi.)

But blatant emotional manipulation aside – did I want to move out?

I wasn’t sure. I’d just come here looking for a place to stay, and accidentally found somewhere to live. One that could adapt to my standards for security, even, but for once that wasn’t the main point.

Maybe, I marked on the watchalong invite, where ART would see it anyway, and jumped up to grab onto the bottom rung of the fire escape.

#the murderbot diaries #murderbot #murderbot fic #tmbd #fanfiction #mine #long post #????????????? DISBELIEF @ WORD COUNT

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presumenothing · 3 years

Text

first: do no harm

(AO3)

Dr. Mensah’s attention zeroed in on me like a well-tuned surgery bot arm. “You have medical training.”

I was going to deny the hell out of that. I really was.

And then I said: “Not recently,” instead of no or even more accurately I frankly don’t think the company’s education modules count as training by your standards. (As far as I was concerned, the only thing worse than those modules was the one on breaking bad news, but what did I know. Maybe humans actually felt comforted by those tactics they described.) (No, I didn’t think that was likely, either.)

Which reminded me of a necessary addition. “The company won’t cover liabilities related to any non-security tasks you assign me to, if that’s what you’re intending.”

Mensah made a sound that was both grim and viciously annoyed at once, which I immediately saved for further analysis and replication. “Then we’ll just have to not make any mistakes, won’t we?”

–

I hadn’t exactly been thrilled with getting assigned to this mission. Not that mining installations were much of a walk in the park, but this was just asking to turn up memories that were better off buried (preferably forever) in my organic parts.

I don’t usually pay attention to mission briefs, as you may have noticed, and I wouldn’t have this time either except that my half-assed scan turned up the fact that the team weren’t science-doctors on a survey like I’d initially assumed, but medical-doctors. On a medical mission.

Of course they were.

(I wanted to say that someone had allocated me to this on purpose, but realistically speaking the company didn’t give enough of a shit, and the universe disliked me enough that this could totally be pure chance.)

Considering all that, the mission so far had been… much less worse than it could’ve been. Though the bar for that was admittedly very, very low. Possibly somewhere in the negatives.

Anyway. Up until the whole thing with Bharadwaj and Volescu getting almost-but-not-eaten, the task of making sure no one died had mostly been the clients’ job for once, which was a nice change since they were actually competent at it.

I still didn’t care enough to read their background info, but it was pretty clear just from observing that these doctors had experience with working in less-than-great conditions, even if Ratthi did sometimes sigh wistfully about equipment they couldn’t have in field hospitals. It meant that my job had pretty much amounted to patrolling, lurking visibly around the supplies storage in case anyone got ideas about that, and helping to fetch various medical items when I happened to be there and it wasn’t Gurathin asking.

It wasn’t terrible. I’d even got some media-watching time in.

(There might have been the vague thought that things could’ve gone much better if I’d been deployed with a team like this instead of Corporation Rim fuckery that literally bled payment from patients, but part of the reason medical-use constructs had been developed in the first place was so that hospitals could draw up forty-hour shifts and other assorted fun without worrying about doctor and surgeon unions, which told you everything you needed to know about our existence.

Also, the thought was inherently depressing and I already had enough of that in my head, thank you very much.)

The contract was more than halfway through. All I had needed to do to avoid awkward questions was continue making sure no one noticed that I was weirdly well-versed in all this, which wasn’t difficult since they only seemed to have theoretical knowledge about SecUnits at best.

Then the fauna happened, and poof went my cover.

Now all of PresAux knew I was – whatever the hell you called a catastrophically failed MedUnit who got turned loose onto security, because at least if I screwed up here the press wouldn’t be as bad. And that wasn’t even getting into the hacked governor module.

Even constructs didn’t have a term for all that.

–

Of course, none of that stopped this from being a Very Bad Idea. Even if apparently no one except Gurathin (ugh) seemed to agree.

“I’m a SecUnit, Dr. Mensah. I scare people. Patients are harder to assess when they’re running away.” I thought basic logistics might work here.

“You had better bedside manner with Bharadwaj and Volescu than many doctors I’ve seen. Human ones, might I add, and not actively injured themselves at the time.” Mensah’s tone was brisk as her pace – which wasn’t difficult to keep up with either, given my vertical advantage, but impressive nonetheless. “And no one wants to be around Pin-Lee when she’s holding a scalpel. That’s what the sedation is for.”

It’s because SecUnit hasn’t seen her in court yet. Trust me, it’s much scarier, Ratthi chimed in over the feed, with the text signifier for “amusement” but not “joke”.

Pin-Lee just smiled.

It was terrifying. I wasn’t even looking directly at her.

“I don’t have a valid license.” That’d been a part of the legal fallout from the disaster on RaviHyral, though no one had actually bothered with adding malpractice charges or barring me from ever doing medicine again. (Just another side effect of being considered as equipment – I doubted the company would’ve even secured licenses for constructs if not for their paranoia about covering their asses on all fronts.)

But it was a last resort argument, and I knew it.

Mensah knew it, too. “There’s special dispensations for that, especially under the current circumstances, as long as a fully-licensed doctor is in the vicinity at all times. It’s not like any of us can actually get out of each other’s hair in this base anyway.”

Mensah had stopped in a less-chaotic corner and turned to me, not that she could see anything behind the faceplate. I fixed my gaze a generous distance to the left and let my drones do the looking.

“I’m not going to make you agree. You perform a valuable function as our security – far more than I had initially expected, to be honest, and we would all be grateful if you kept doing that. But with Bharadwaj down for the count and Volescu still recovering, we could do with the help.” Her expression was still steady as ever, even though she probably knew better than I did the risks of continuing to operate shorthanded like this. “It’s your decision, SecUnit.”

Right, just the very thing I didn’t need to hear.

I kept most of my sigh internal. “Triage and first-aid only, between patrols. No procedures, and I won’t be responsible if any patients freak out.”

Mensah nodded. “Of course. Gurathin’s on receiving duty today, how about you work out a roster with him?”

I knew it. This was a bad idea.

–––––

You’d be my guardian.

Yes. The education opportunities – most of us were trained on Preservation, if you’re interested in learning and getting your license properly this time. Or not. You can do anything you want.

–––––

ART barged its way into my feed. You’re exhibiting a mildly elevated temperature and respiration rate. Though it could of course merely be a sign of inferior processors rather than emotional distress.

Do you talk to your clients like that?

Do you? ART retorted right back, but obligingly brought up the documentation for its MedSystem before I finished the query for it.

I ignored ART’s attention (with some difficulty) as I flicked quickly through the top few files, taking in the glaring disparities from my existing data. The notable lack of suggesting costly procedures that no-one actually needed, for starters. I’m assuming some of these are your improvements on standard procedure?

I am the cutting edge of medical research, ART proclaimed. You couldn’t accuse it of humility if you tried.

I still wasn’t sure what I wanted, and I still didn’t want anyone to decide it for me. But moving towards the one thing I did want (at least in the short term) had ended up with me running into what was very possibly the most advanced and opinionated diagnosis-treatment AI currently in existence, because that was just the kind of luck I had.

I didn’t have a medium-duty surgical suite in my arms anymore, since that was the entire point of modular Unit construction, but neither did Mensah.

And I didn’t think I wanted to stop doing security, anyway, since it turned out I might not be completely terrible at it; having actual medical knowledge that was MedSystem-malfunction-proof couldn’t hurt.

Plus, overwriting those shitty education modules seemed like a pretty great fuck-you to the company. I was always interested in that.

I tagged some of the more emergency-related files, then added a bunch of the weirder injuries I’d seen on contracts, and prodded ART. Tell me about these?

#the murderbot diaries #murderbot #murderbot fic #tmbd #fanfiction #mine #long post #me staring at the wordcount in disbelief: okay then #????

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grammarpedant · 2 years

Text

I posted 1,730 times in 2021

180 posts created (10%)

1550 posts reblogged (90%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 8.6 posts.

I added 2,656 tags in 2021

#queue - 1194 posts

#murderbot diaries - 365 posts

#murderbot - 267 posts

#writing - 158 posts

#fanart - 149 posts

#verso writes - 144 posts

#video - 111 posts

#meta - 105 posts

#towards a theory of more radical empathy - 87 posts

#verso talks - 76 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#i see this post and i think: so if we take the 'social confirmation' paradigm wherein things are only 'meaningfully' true if they are witne-

My Top Posts in 2021

ways humans have said to Murderbot that they care without saying that they care

Mensah: It would be better if they could think of you as a person who is trying to help. Because that’s how I think of you.

Arada: You need to go to Medical! What happened in Medical-? You happened, you got shot!

Maro: Can I hug you? No? Okay, then me hugging myself is for you.

Ratthi: You look great! What have you been up to?

Pin-Lee: It doesn’t have to answer that unless it wants to.

Gurathin: Are you there, SecUnit? What did you do? Where did you go?

Mensah: Shut up. We’re not leaving you.

Gurathin: Did the life-tender work?

Amena: Okay, third mom.

Pin-Lee: Because I want you to know we’re serious. You’re not a pet or prisoner or whatever it is you think.

Random StationSec: It was the SecUnit that saved you.

Ratthi: It IS a person!

Amena: It doesn’t like to be touched!

Gurathin: I’m going to mark your cognition level at 55%. I’ll take the obscene gesture as given.

Pin-Lee: Asshole, because I’m your legal counsel, and you’re my client.

Bharadwaj: It’s normal to feel conflict. You were part of something for a long time. You hate it, and it was a terrible thing. But it created you, and you were part of it.

Mensah: I know exactly what you are. You’re afraid, you’re hurt, and you’re my security.

Bonus “I care about you” lines:

Ratthi: Oh no, it was very clear about bombing the colony. Perihelion, why don’t you share the video record with SecUnit?

ART: I was persuaded that a more complicated but less violent approach would be more effective <to save you.>

and

ART: I’ve lost my crew. I won’t lose you.

467 notes • Posted 2021-07-14 14:31:05 GMT

y'all know those anime fights where there's a dozen internal monologues about the power of friendship and not giving up hope &c., interspersed with antagonists delivering minute-long speeches about how weak and foolish the protagonist is as they exchange blows in a fight that should reasonably take seconds to finish

well, consider that, in the Murderbot Diaries universe, SecUnits (and machine intelligences in general) are fully capable of having those clash-of-ideals exchanges with each other silently through the feed while calculating every pedantic advantage as they fight, shounen anime style. you’d have the slow-mo, the voiceover, the “powerlevels are over 9000,” the whole works. these robots could have 10 episodes of hunter x hunter chimera ant arc in the time it takes a human to blink and double take.

anyway what I’m saying is that we as a fandom need to rehash the end-of-Exit Strategy Combat SecUnit fight for the third time, but this time as an anime season finale

474 notes • Posted 2021-07-06 01:54:41 GMT

Everyone agrees that Murderbot is a #relatable neurodivergent mood, but we don’t talk enough about how ART is also extremely relatable. I, too, am intensely overbearing, Need To Be Right at a fundamental level at all times, and default to the maximum force necessary in response to difficult challenges.

704 notes • Posted 2021-05-09 18:58:38 GMT

“2.0 is MB’s killware baby” is a fun interpretation of canon, but in many ways Murderbot's response to 2.0 is more like that one cognitive therapy technique, like, "Did the child that I used to be not deserve love and care?" or "If someone else were in my place, wouldn't they expect their friends not to abandon them?"

Murderbot says, to an entity that is almost essentially itself, Don’t do this, you’ll die and then has to feel the loss when it sacrifices itself anyway.

I mean, it’s like the technique where you imagine someone else in your position and are asked to apply your natural compassion for another person to them, and realize viscerally that you have to apply that compassion to yourself too. You’re allowed to feel hurt, to ask for help. People will miss you if you’re gone.

No wonder, at the end of Network Effect with ART, after realizing its friends came back Specifically To Rescue It, even when Murderbot can’t talk about a lot of that, it still makes a point of saying “But this part I could say. You and Amena were right, 2.0 was a person. It wasn’t like a baby, but it was a person.”

For so long its friends have been saying, shouting, that Murderbot is a person, and it has taken making a wholeass independent copy of itself for it to even come close to actually affirming its own personhood, itself.

785 notes • Posted 2021-03-13 18:43:04 GMT

my 2 cents as someone who writes sometimes: you wanna get good at Prose? study poetry. get a little shakespeare, some iambic pentameter or limericks or whatever... although if you want to get REALLY good at prose, then listen to a lot of really good rap. you haven’t known the ingenuity that the english language can be bent to until you’ve heard a hip hop artist spit sick lines, spinning syllables’ similarities into slick soliloquies, syncopating beats by breaking them against the bassline. making rhythm into a kind of rhyme. alliteration, meter, assonance and consonance, repetition, metaphor, puns and wordplay- if you want to get clever with words, look at rap.

1271 notes • Posted 2021-08-13 06:49:15 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

#year in review #can't believe a non-murderbot post of mine blew up and took first place #...can't believe so many people vibe with my posts period #im thankful that people listen to my silly ramblings haha #lmao keeping this record in my metaphorical keepsakes album for posterity #verso talks #queue

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theres-no-protocol-for-this · 3 years

Text

Werewolf

A fanfiction about Murderbot as a werewolf, sort of.

Also on AO3 @ https://archiveofourown.org/works/28416036/chapters/69631233

The humans should have really known better.

When the haunted doll struck, they were all standing around it and discussing possibilities. At one point, Ratthi even called the damn creature 'cute.' Frankly, I couldn't care less if the doll was alive or not—fuck metaphysical debate, I didn't even care if it had an actual heartbeat. All I cared about was that the humans (a group of paranormal investigators) didn't murder themselves while exorcising the demon inside. Because dying in a haunted house wasn't my idea of a good time.

The doll floated about a foot off the table, clearly not content to listen to plans of its own demise passively. I growled at it, and it glared daggers at me. But ha, it was stuck on the table, and I had sharp canines in case it decided to make a move.

Dr. Mensah, the head of this ragtag group of complete weirdos, pulled out a heavy book and consulted it like a proper witch. Pin-Lee came over and read some of the text over her shoulder. And while they were doing this, the doll somehow managed to scratch at the table with enough force to disturb their binding circle.

It went for Dr. Baradwahj, possibly because the older woman was the closest and not wielding any weapons. Every item in the room that wasn't nailed down suddenly rose into the air. The humans looked around, bewildered. I heard someone mutter "shit" under their breath.

I had one priority: stop the idiot doll before it hurt Baradwahj. So, I lunged at the doll, grabbed it in my teeth, and landed on the other side of the table. I dropped the demon-possessed toy and stomped on it with both front paws.

"Or you'll what?" the doll taunted me. "You're worse off than me."

Oh, shut up, I grumbled and threatened it by showing off more teeth.

Suddenly, Dr. Mensah was standing over me. "Are you all right?" she asked as the doll tried to poke out an eye.

Why the fuck was this creepy, beady-eyed monster well-armed? I tried to bat the knife out of the creature's hands, but it was sewn on. Great. Just great. No, I am not all right. Please do the thing you were going to do.

In my human form, I can talk—I just don't want to because it's awkward as fuck—and when I'm a wolf, growls are all you're going to get. It's usually convenient, except when it's not. Dr. Mensah made a decision while I'd been wrestling with the angry little demon, and now, she and the rest of her team were actively doing their parts of the ritual.

The doll thrashed about and tried several more times to poke me with its tiny knife. A few of those attempts hurt, but I was a giant wolf, and it was the size of a ruler. It just didn't stand as much of a chance.

Except at the fucking end, when the demon finally escaped its toy-sized body and materialized at full height. All seven feet of bright-red anger and resentment. The humans flailed a little but kept going, chanting and whatever else they usually do to send a demon back to its plane of existence.

It swiped at me with way more force than before, and I had to struggle to stay on my feet. Its razor-sharp claws raked against my side, leaving behind bleeding lacerations. I returned the favor because I hate bleeding and because fuck that hurt. And I needed the demon to stand still long enough for the ritual to finish.

When not-quite-Beelzebub over here realized I was sturdier than I looked, it turned to the nearest human and swiped at them instead. Oh no, you don't, you asshole. These are my humans. I don't like them, but they're mine, and you don't get to hurt them.

I rushed at the creature, sprang with all the strength in my back paws, and knocked it over. Front paws on its chest, I growled in its face and opened my mouth, ready to bite at its neck.

"Wait," Ratthi called. "Don't touch its blood."

I was tempted to growl at Ratthi instead to finish what he was doing and let me do my fucking job. I know not to drink demon blood. Everyone knows not to do that. But Mensah shushed him instead.

The demon yowled like a cat with its tail in a trap. It clawed at me and snapped its jaws, and generally made a nuisance of itself. And at the very fucking end, when the ritual was done, and it was literally halfway to its destination, it kicked me hard enough to send me flying into the ceiling.

I landed on the floor where the demon had been. Everything hurt.

"Are you all right?" Dr. Mensah asked again, kneeling beside me.

I wanted to roll my eyes, but she was being nice. That's not something people usually do around me. I tried to sit up... which didn't go so well. Thankfully I'm magic, so I would heal given enough time and a lack of demons.

"You know," Ratthi said thoughtfully, in that way where you could practically see gears turning in his head. "I wonder if this guardian can understand us."

"I thought it was a wolf. Wolves don't exactly speak human," Pin-Lee mused.

"Yeah, but..."

Dr. Mensah sighed. "It most likely does."

I could've just laid there and pretended that I didn't understand them. It would have been easier that way. Except, they didn't have time to stand around and discuss my mental state. Shifting forms, I rolled over onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

"Who's that?" Dr. Gurathin asked, having been paying attention to something else.

"You need to check the rest of the house," I said, "and set up a security perimeter. If there's one angry demon in this house, there are likely to be more of them."

"The department said it was a single-item haunting," Arada explained.

"The department does shoddy work," I countered.

"The guardian would know," Dr. Mensah interjected. "Let's set up a perimeter. It's standard procedure." She looked at me full-on, and I tried not to run or hide. "Are you all right, Guardian?"

I had some broken ribs and was probably leaking—nope, not probably, definitely—but I'd live. I was definitely not dying if that was the question. I sat up with a wince and took inventory.

"I'll live." Getting up was more problematic, but the humans tried to help me, and that was worse. "I'll check upstairs."

"Wait," Ratthi called out. "I'll go with you. Just in case. I'm pretty good with a wand."

The last time someone said that they ended up stabbing me in the eye with it, but sure. Let's go with that. I couldn't argue with him anyway because my collar would zap me into tomorrow if I did. So, we headed upstairs to see if any other members of the family's toy collection had a vendetta against my humans.

#murderbot #fanfiction #werewolves

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theres-no-protocol-for-this · 3 years

Text

Uncomfortable Moment

Part VI of the Guardian story. Feel free to read this on AO3 as an on-going story or you can check the tags to see what exists.

Pin-Lee found a nearby diner, and we were sitting on one of the benches outside, eating burgers. I was wearing one of Gurathin's shirts since it was the only one anyone had to spare, and it was still too short. I'm not bulky so much as tall and lanky and apparently made entirely of limbs. At some point, the evening had turned cold, and I shivered when a chilly breeze swept through the streets.

Dr. Mensah was idly fingering the crystal that currently contained the fae noble. At this point, the tiny winged creature was about the same size as Tinkerbell, and it glared at us every chance it got.

"What'll happen to it?" Mensah asked.

I realized belatedly that she was talking to me. I'd been shoving food in my mouth and stopped long enough to answer. "Who knows? It's a dark creature."

"It's very much alive," Baradwahj pointed out.

Yeah, so was I, and here we were. "Creatures tainted with dark magic don't have any rights. The department can do whatever it wants." What it would probably do was confine it somewhere for a while and then, eventually, get around to deciding how to handle the situation.

"Like they did to you?"

I looked over at the doctor and closed my eyes. Suddenly, I wasn't hungry anymore. "Yeah."

"Is that what happened? Did the department send hunters after you?"

"I don't want to talk about it." I hunched my shoulder and grabbed a french fry. I was sulking and knew it, but it was hard not to get defensive when your hide was being discussed.

Mensah started to reach toward me and then stopped and dropped her hand to her lap. I think she knew what had caused my earlier malfunction and was acutely aware of the reasons behind it. I'm not sure how much the department explains to contract holders, but I assume there's some minimum amount they have to disclose about guardians for us to be utilized even somewhat effectively.

"We could return the fae to its realm," Volescu suggested. "The ritual's not complicated, all things considered." As an expert on obscure rituals, he would know.

"If we don't bring Grumpy over here back to the department, they will blacklist us for breaking the contract," Pin-Lee said. "Not that I mind or anything, but it's something to consider. We're obligated to follow their procedures if we want continued access to the Archives."

The group looked at each other meaningfully. At one point, they mentioned that they'd all worked together before, but this was their first contract with the department. Whatever country they were from didn't have the same laws, and they were frustrated with how things functioned around here.

I got up and threw away my wrappers. The urge to leave was overwhelming, but I was still technically working, and the collar wouldn't let me get too far. The humans were staring at me when I came back.

"You're free to go," Mensah said.

Well, that was easy. I turned into a wolf and was half-way out of the seating area when I heard Ratthi say, quietly, "You're just going to let it leave?"

"What choice do we have?" Arada demanded. "The guardian doesn't want to be here. We're making it uncomfortable."

Almost before I could think about it, I slowed down and turned around. No one had ever concerned themselves with my welfare before. It gave me pause. The humans noticed the hesitation.

Mensah got up and started walking in my direction. I don't know what I look like exactly, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in the range of terrifying. I mean, I'm basically a giant, full-grown wolf, something humans usually avoid.

Mensah didn't stop until she was practically standing in front of me. "We're worried about you," she said, had been saying for a week now. "Where we come from, there are different rules about magic. Would you mind walking with us?" The woman smiled at me. "It's not a command, but we're going to head back to our hotel, and we'd love your company."

I sat down on the pavement and waited while the other humans hastily got up and joined us. A few of the locals were giving them funny looks for talking to the wildlife. Most people choose not to see magic, so when I transform, they don't usually notice. It was maybe one of the few perks of being human and non-magical.

Overse sighed, and her shoulders sagged. She leaned a little against her partner. "Frankly, I think we should find a ritual to free the guardian, instead, and leave this forsaken place. I hate the department, and I'm not a fan of the rest of the city, either."

"It said more than six years, remember," Arada whispered softly.

"There has to be a way. If magic could be made permanent, really permanent, someone would've done it by now."

We walked down the street. Ratthi tried to pet me. I ducked out of his reach. He fake-lunged in my direction, so I head-butted him gently. Mensah laughed.

Six years is the lifespan of a spell or a curse. After that, whatever you've created falls apart. That's why good proprietors refresh their wards and why the paths between realms disintegrate. Because nothing magical lasts forever.

The one exception to the rule seems to be binding magic. Something about the mix of light and darkness—both kinds of magic are needed for the ritual—has a bizarre effect on the resulting curse. Instead of fading after six years, it becomes permanent.

That was why Arada mentioned it, and I didn't contradict her.

If you have ideas for this story or would like to beta-read it (or use it however you feel inclined) feel absolutely free to do so!

#murderbot #fanfiction #ao3 #werewolves #guardian #alternate reality

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