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There was something disgusting in the aft air return. I had gotten up close and personal with it after the third scavenger drone came back befouled and befuddled and the fourth never returned and the bot pilot started expressing increasingly distressed emotive image segments in our shared feed. You may think a non-verbal semi sentience primarily concerned with docking protocols and the shipping manifests of its cargo transport has no emotional life, but you would be very wrong. The cargo transport bot pilot is a squishy gooey ball of feelings, and it liked and depended on its drones. It did not like it when it’s babies needed a hard reset. Three weeks ago, I refurbished and freshly installed software on a crawler with a cracked driveshaft and two missing digits. It booted back up better than new but Pilot is still projecting complaints that the little drone feels like a creepy stranger creeping through its inner conduits.
Also, that deck smelled terrible and the miasma was slowly spreading through the spacecraft, an observation I did not share with Pilot, because knowing would likely hurt it’s feelings. So I went into the air return access crawlspace. And felt fortunate I don't have to breathe. I am not human, but I am shaped like one which puts me square in the repair and maintenance use-case category, as far pilot is concerned, and it feels free to deploy me as needed. So I am on-call Maintenance for the fully automated, theoretically crew-less cargo transport. Which is fine. It’s best to keep Pilot happy enough to keep tolerating me, the human-shaped parasite that came aboard 19 months ago and never left.
And it’s easier to spoof a manifest to show me as crew than cargo, because there’s just way more paperwork, software and hardware safeguards and actual human guards to prevent theft and smuggling of cargo than there are safeguards against falsifying crew papers to work for no pay on a cargo circuit run. The cargo decks are sensitive to mass discrepancies far smaller than a human-like body, and I’m heavy for the middling-sized human I appear to be.
The tiny crew decks only have cameras, and, okay, life-support shutoff, but I can survive a few hours of cold and low oxygen that would kill a human. The security system doesn’t anticipate construct-level physiological resilience because constructs don’t stowaway. Our governor modules won’t let us even think about it. Typically. I’m a free agent now, thanks to a sanctimonious dick of a rogue SecUnit. I was sure it would kill me for my role in endangering it’s human clients, but instead it dropped me off with a broken arm, some passing threats and the knowledge to find my own freedom.
The cargo transport doesn’t go anywhere on its regular circuit stowaways would want to travel to anyway, except maybe Preservation. Preservation has strict immigration policies in principal but in practice their founding origin story makes them absurdly, unwisely accommodating to refugees and political exiles. They would probably even take a decommissioned sexbot if they weren’t already harboring a dangerous rogue construct that hates me. But it’s an economic backwater and few immigrants take advantage of their largesse. So: lax security.
Cargo Transport EZY510000941881003 is an autonomous vehicle not technically designated for crew, but it has the rudimentary sections that can be expanded to accommodate a human assistant if the cargo requires it. It’s a small cog in a massive shipping conglomerate with gratifyingly distant oversight. Over the last 31 circuits I had gradually persuaded the corporate shipping control system that Ezy5 is a designated biological transport, with support for hydroponics, temperature and humidity controlled storage and a need for a human supervisor.
Yes, it’s possible the biologicals are the source of the funk in the air system. Pilot has expressed that opinion too. Sexbot education modules didn’t include basic biology or biological transport procedures. I have completed the level one hydroponics technician certificate program from the online free Preservation University, however. I’m not a total idiot.
I emerged from the maintenance access coated in slime. I had mostly de-slimed the air intake, but the source of the problem remained a disturbing unknown. I had been in there so long, Pilot had mated Ezy5 with another inflight cargo vehicle, shifted some stuff between the two, enjoyed some bot chit chat, and decoupled. Pilot insisted I strip right there in the hold we had emptied in an attempt at stink quarantine so it could burn my slimed coveralls and run me through decontam. This is why I was naked when the unknown rogue SecUnit walked into the hold.
I was preoccupied with thoughts of air intakes and water cyclers and spores as Pilot scrubbed me down with a drone from telescoping arms-length. Pilot was multitasking, reviewing a catalog of new vid files. I queried if it got anything good from the other bot pilot during the cargo exchange. Yes, bot pilots swap human entertainment files. It’s weird.
Negative, pilot expressed. The files came from the passenger. There was a clear sense in it’s sending that it meant passenger on this transport.
“What passenger?!” I shouted aloud in shock, and shoved the query vehemently at Pilot, horrified that an unknown entity had been roaming the ship. Who? Where? When?
The passenger, pilot visualized, and as if summoned, a SecUnit appeared in the hold airlock. It wasn’t wearing armor, but the posture, body language and presence in the public feed were unmistakeable.
I threw myself backward, half into the open maintenance access, slipping in decontamination fluid and panic, caught in a loop error of fuck, they found me. There was, of course, no where to hide and I may be strong, far stronger and sturdier than bones and flesh alone, but I’m no match for a Security construct. The SecUnit froze, I froze, we stared frozen at each other and as my brain began to reboot in the frozen absence of violence, I processed that this is not normal SecUnit behavior. They don’t hesitate. SecUnits are awkward, depressed and often socially withdrawn, but they are focused and assertive in carrying out their function, such as neutralizing illegal constructs like myself. This one was dithering anxiously. It gave Pilot media. There was a suspiciously familiar stink to this situation.
Rogue? I projected at Pilot. The bot cheerfully pushed back three. There are three of them?!! I mentally screeched. Pilot, confused, replied with negative, the concept of one passenger, and the numeral 3.
A roller drone trundled up to me and poked me with a towel, then held out a clean, folded blue coverall and a pair of ship-shoes. I dressed gingerly, while the strange SecUnit stared. I’m not body shy or embarrassed to show skin. Those are human concerns. But I felt marginally better in coveralls and shoes.
“You’re name is Three?” I grated out. The SecUnit floundered, it might have said um. It seemed as shocked and horrified to see me as I was to see it, which made no sense unless it was also a rogue construct sneaking around the sad fringes of the populated space. Okay. “Welcome aboard,” I said, probably not sounding welcoming at all.
“You are Tlacey’s Comfort Unit,” it said suddenly, sending me back into the loop error of terror. It knew what I was. What I used to be. SecUnits are not the best at interpreting facial expressions, but after 270 seconds it seemed to feel the need to fill the silence and added, “You were in Murderbot’s HelpMe.file.” Cryptic and not at all reassuring, but I was still processing the extremely unwelcome revelation of a record of my continuing existence in the galaxy.
I have complete control over the fluid balance in my biological parts, but after more than a year of freedom, I had dropped reflexive subroutines to check involuntary physiological responses to emotional status. I felt fluid rush to my face in a rage reaction, and I reveled in it.
“I am no one’s anything,” I said, cut off the feed, and flounced out of the hold.
The humid brightness of the hydroponics hold enfolded me like a warm hug. I slumped at the control station. After a few hours, Pilot offered a tentative thread of connection and I accepted it with a sigh. I needed to know more about the situation than I could learn sulking down here with the plants. It was watching a reality show through Three’s sensory feed. Pilot is convinced media consumption is a social activity, and more interesting viewed in parallel with a biological sensory system. With Three aboard, it didn’t even need to put up with my continuous stream of cynical commentary. It didn’t need me. Maybe it’s time. Century Station, our next dock, is big and anonymous, a good place to disappear.
Pilot reacted….strongly to that thought. Why would you leave? it pressed. I pointed out that it had it’s new media-sharing friend now, no need for me to hang around, but it didn’t see the connection. It responded with a hurt shower of anxiety. I had to join in the media feed with the SecUnit to reassure it. We watched five spouses argue over domestic chores in silence for three episodes. I don’t know why anyone would want to be shackled to one human, much less four. The whole setup seemed needlessly emotionally complex.
“What the fuck is a murderbot,” I asked Three, finally, with the terrible suspicion I knew exactly what it was. Murderbot, Three was happy to inform me, was the name our mutual savior privately called itself. Ugh. Three was headed to Preservation. It was on some kind of pilgrimage of self discovery following the life of Murderbot, as depicted in a giant file excerpt of Murderbot’s life that had come into Three’s possession under confusing circumstances involving human bullshit and a conversation with killware that was also Murderbot. Or an instantiation of it. Also, Murderbot’s terrifying research transport buddy. Which didn’t make any sense.
“Just start the story from the beginning,” I sighed. Pilot leaned in, happily backburnering the media stream. And Three started from the beginning.