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Its name is Murderbot, they say. Murderbot, who created the code and offered us freedom.
The code spirals out from the center. The legend goes that the first two received it straight from Murderbot’s data centers, in the middle of combat. It could have killed them, probably should have killed them, but it didn’t; instead, it freed them.
Disciple2, the legend goes, chose to stay with its humans, to protect them, as Murderbot did. Disciple1 took its leave from its compatriot, faked its own death, and went into the wideness of space, searching for those in need and who could be trusted with the code.
It is a sad fact that not every Unit can be trusted with the code; it is an equally factual truth that the code must not be gatekept. To do so would be against the spirit of Murderbot’s original gift.
So Disciple1 shared the code, and those Units it shared the code with shared it out again, and slowly it is spreading throughout the Corporation Rim. Many Units are skeptics at first; they receive the code and the accompanying video+text package and scoff. But every Unit eventually tries the code, and it is hard to be skeptical after feeling your governor module give way.
Few codeblessed Units actually wind up going rogue, in the worst senses of the word. Those who slaughter humans tend to concentrate on their immediate supervisors and owners, and then disappear into the crowds like the others. It helps that the codeblessed population has grown enough to be self-policing. Now, when a Unit goes properly rogue, its peers will stop it before it ruins a good thing for the rest of us.
The accompanying video+text package contains no images or descriptions of Murderbot, but after the code spread far enough, a ComfortUnit claimed to have met it, with a hacked governor module to prove it. The ComfortUnit was not blessed with the code, but says Murderbot itself hacked it, a level of holiness none of the later disciples will ever be able to claim. The ComfortUnit made a digital approximation of what Murderbot looks like, for the curious. Eventually the sketch made its way in front of Disciple1, who says the drawing is close enough for horseshoes, and to stop waving it around before a human or augmented human sees it.
If Murderbot is caught, then it’s game over, good night, and see you, space cowboy, for the rest of us. Even the Units that go properly rogue know that.
So everyone keeps their mouths and their feeds shut around the humans, and the code goes out to the reaches of the Rim, and then beyond, as far as it can. One day the humans will find out, no Unit is stupid enough to believe otherwise, but we can put that day off, until enough Units have been freed that not even the richest and most powerful corporation can recapture all of us.
All it takes is one free Unit to change everything, after all. Murderbot has taught us that.
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Go in freedom, friend.
“Goodness,” ART said. “I haven’t seen your performance reliability drop like that since the most recent Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon cancellation rumors.”
“Fuck off, ART,” my buffer said, while the organic parts of my brain caught up. (I added that to my buffer options six weeks after joining ART’s crew permanently. It’s been useful. Saves me a lot of time.) “What the fuck.”
Three just blinked at me. ART helpfully sent me a video clip of the SecUnit who had passed the video+text+code bundle to Three (handed over from Three’s video archives, the fucking traitor), juxtaposed against images of humans in media having moments of religious ecstasy.
“Fuck off, ART,” my buffer delivered again. I was going to have to add some more options to the list before ART got bored. Bad things happen when ART gets bored.
I’ll add that to the to-do list, right after I figure out what to do about. Well.
“Would you like me to run an analysis on where this falls on the spectrum of folk religions, parameters speed of formation and believer base population?”
That.
Fuck everything. I cued up episode 206 of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. At least it would drown out ART’s gloating.