Network Effect

Hopefully the humans had taken the maintenance capsule back to the space dock and contacted ART. Now it would be focused on getting to the explorer to find its other humans. So … even if … ART and my humans probably thought I was dead, anyway.

Murderbot, you don’t have time to sit here and be stupid. I could already feel that the feed was active in this section and that was a relief, though there might be nothing on it except targetControlSystem. I cautiously established a secure connection.

Hey, is that you?

It was loud, right in my ear, and I almost screamed. It was a feed contact but so close it was like it was already inside my head. Who are you?

It said, I’m Murderbot 2.0.

If this is going to be like one of those shows with the character trapped in a strange place and then ghosts and aliens come and mess with their mind, I just can’t do that right now. But I couldn’t ignore it. I mean, I guess I couldn’t. Ignoring stuff is always an option, up until it kills you. I said. You’re what?

I’m the copy of you. For the viral killware you and ART made. Come on, it wasn’t that long ago.

So ART really had deployed our code. Also, what the fuck? It had interrupted my secure connection and come right through my wall like it didn’t exist. I had killware in my head. It was my killware, mine and ART’s, but still, holy shit. I tried to focus on the important points but all I could think was You’re calling yourself Murderbot 2.0?

That’s our name. It was trying to shove a file into my active read space.

But our name is private. Wow, I cannot keep this file from opening. That’s not good.

Well, I didn’t have that restriction in my instruction set. And you need to stop talking for like a second and read this.

I read the file. (Not like I had a choice.) It was called MB20Deployment.file and was a record of what 2.0 had done so far.

Right. Okay. Right. Things weren’t nearly as bad as they seemed. The explorer was permanently out of play and ART’s last three crew members were retrieved, plus some bonus Barish-Estranza survivors. But note to self: the next time you create sentient killware based on yourself, set some damn restrictions. (It had downloaded one of my private archives to that SecUnit. I mean, my new friend SecUnit 3 who if I actually get out of this alive, I’ll have to do something with, like civilize or educate it or whatever. Like what the humans originally wanted to do with me, except we all gave up on that.) Do you know where the humans are? My humans, the rest of ART’s humans? Did they get out of the surface dock?

I don’t know, but before we look for them we have to find TargetContact and neutralize it.

That’s not in your deployment directive. I was pretty sure of that, because I hadn’t known TargetContact existed until 2.0 had given me its report.

Yeah, I wrote a new directive.

Killware was not supposed to be able to alter its deployment directive, so that was disturbing. I had a moment of confusion and a little bit of terror that ART and I had designed it too well and my killware was maybe about to eat my brain. I didn’t know what I was about to say, but what came out was, I don’t feel so great.

Let me take a look, it said, and was suddenly all up in my diagnostics. I hadn’t run any yet, because I hadn’t had time, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

I said, Hey, hey, stop that. We don’t have time. I shoved to my feet. A projectile popped out of my back and I felt fluid leaking down. Have you got a schematic of this place? Are there cameras?

No, you didn’t give me any mapping code. And there’s no cameras.

I pressed my hands to my face.