Network Effect

I’m Murderbot 2.0, I said, and then I remembered. Oh, right. It was disorienting not being able to hear or see anything, and none of my inputs were receiving. It was like when I had uploaded myself to the company gunship’s systems to help the bot pilot during the sentient killware attack. Except that time it had been like the ship was my body, which I was sharing with a friendly bot pilot, and this time it was like I was stuck in a storage cubby. Also, this time I was the sentient killware. This is weird.

Suddenly I had a video input. It was Amena’s anxious face, peering up into one of ART’s secret cameras. I had found the secret cameras annoying at one point, but I couldn’t remember why. So I had access to some parts of my memory archive but not others. Oh shit, my media!

No, wait, I had access to some of it. In my storage cubby, which was actually a relatively tiny partition of ART’s archives, I found some of my most recently used files, mostly episodes of The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon and Timestream Defenders Orion and ART’s favorite episode of World Hoppers. Plus there was a download of my current active memory, which was basically everything that I needed quick access to. As killware, my onboard storage space would be limited and I remember ART and Me Version 1.0 had been a little worried I’d forget who I was and start randomly attacking stuff.

Yeah, I was a little worried about that, too.

Amena was saying, “Hey, are you there? Can you see me?”

After three seconds of fumbling around I found how to access ART’s local feed and comm and sent to her: Hi, Amena. Yes, I can see you.

Amena didn’t look happy. “How do you feel? Are you all right?” I could tell ART was talking to her though I couldn’t find the right channel in time to listen in. Amena added, “Okay, ART, okay. SecUnit, ART says you have to leave now. Be careful, okay?”

I lost Amena’s video input as ART said, I’m in pursuit of the Barish-Estranza explorer. They are attempting to make comm contact, which I am refusing. It sent me a compressed report of its recent statuses. So other me, Overse, and Thiago were on the space dock. Huh, not ideal. ART continued, It’s obvious they intend to threaten my crew again and force me to reinstall targetControlSystem. But I can use their outgoing connection to send you to their comm system. There was a tenth of a second’s hesitation. Are you ready to deploy? Do you understand the directive?

Obviously some things had happened since ART had pulled my copy. And ART was right, it couldn’t risk a comm contact, even to get intel. If the Targets managed to deliver the threat to kill ART’s crew, it would put them in control of the situation and we had to avoid that any way we could. I said, I’m not actually a human baby, ART, I remember the fucking directive—I helped write it.

You’re not making this any easier, ART said.

You can either have an existential crisis or get your crew back, ART, pick one.

ART said, Prepare for deployment.

This was tricky, since once I arrived via comm I’d have to hack into the explorer’s feed. If the explorer was using a filter with properties we hadn’t accounted for, or if it used the brief contact to deliver another viral attack to ART, we could be in trouble.

I was expecting to feel something, like a sense of motion, or to see light streaking by. That’s what would have happened on a show. (I need to get this over with fast. I don’t know how long I can stay me without access to my longterm storage.) But there was nothing.

Then abruptly my existence was all comm code. The suddenness of it shocked me, then I realized this was it, I needed to get moving.

I was still disoriented, and having a moment where I wondered if hey, maybe all the humans were right for once and this was a terrible idea. But then I recognized a code string and snapped out of it. I was onboard the explorer, in the comm system’s receiving buffer. Right before the contact was cut, I pulled over my files from ART’s partition. Now I needed some safe temporary storage.