[Story Weaving] There is absolutely no way that SecUnit is participating in team-building exercises. The very phrase makes threat assessment spike and performance reliability drop. It sits with its legs up in a little bundle of angry, stubborn murderbot for a solid 37 minutes, ignoring any attempts to get it involved in the weird game about fauna or the drinking suspect liquids (it can't really drink anyway) or the making-a-collaborative-film.
Alas, it's that last activity that SecUnit ends up breaking its vow of silence for. This is something it actually has experience with, now, technically. Except instead of a sad docu-drama, this story can be about anything. And the projection technology is just different enough from what's used back in its own galaxy/dimension/whatever to make it kind of interesting.
Alright, fine, it'll do something small, maybe. There's no way it's going to give away any info about its own life, but fortunately it has a plethora of fictional media in its storage that it can draw from. It decides to see what, if anything, its fellow 'Otherworlders' will do with one of its least favorite plotlines from a soap opera.
The bodyguard's sister's marital partner falls in love with the bodyguard. The sister has an angry confrontation with the bodyguard (this is the first stupid part, for the record) after which the bodyguard takes solace in the arms of the colony solicitor's long-lost uncle. (This is the second stupid part, and for everyone's sake SecUnit will fade-to-black over the sex scene.) The uncle is revealed to be an evil twin (third stupid part) and the marital partner is revealed to have undergone experimental face-switching surgery (fourth stupid part) with a famous author in order to hide the author from their stalker. (Possible fifth stupid part, depends on what happens next season.)
It works fast, and before it realizes it, it's actually sort of just...replicated the whole mini-plot, but in a more compressed format. Well...that will just give the others a good base. Right?
“Most of the show is good. It's just this one part,” it says as an explanation to the person next to it. "So we can fix it.”
[Welcoming Party/Room with a View] Surprisingly, it’s when they get to the apartments that SecUnit finds things that really catch its interest.
The first interesting thing is the plethora of readily accessible drones and bots; it finds a corner to sit in and methodically attempts to connect to each one of them, running through a long list of pings and codes. By now it’s aware that the bots in this city are either 1) running off extremely different hardware/software than it is, or 2) purposefully locked up/ignoring it (which, rude, but whatever) [or 3) it’s own internal systems have been tampered with, which seems more and more likely but which it would really rather not think about right now, so it’s just going to pretend that the possibility deserves to be the lowest on the list], but it’s gotta try anyway. It gets through most of the drones and several of the bots before Atlas enters, all failures, but once Atlas starts talking it gets distracted. (First interesting thing, section b: the bots are unionized? What does that mean, exactly? Do they get programmed to do jobs and then make money off of those jobs? Is it the same amount of money that humans make?)
The second interesting thing is something else Atlas says, which it overhears while the bot is talking to someone else: I haven't much choice in the magic or technology divide. But it is perfectly possible to live in the city and have positive relations with both sides. It's going to just accept that Magic Is a Real Thing that Exists Here for now, so – what does that mean for itself? Does it also not have a choice in this divide? What are the consequences of said divide? This is absolutely something it needs more info on. In the lobby and other common areas (it'll worry about 'customizing its apartment' later), it decides to see what else it can find out.
SecUnit's humans would probably be very proud of it (ugh) for actually sidling up to people and willingly engaging in conversation. (Though it's not quite looking anyone in the eye when it talks.) It's opening line, said very casually:
“So what do you think about the tech/magic stuff?”
Murderbot | The Murderbot Diaries
There is absolutely no way that SecUnit is participating in team-building exercises. The very phrase makes threat assessment spike and performance reliability drop. It sits with its legs up in a little bundle of angry, stubborn murderbot for a solid 37 minutes, ignoring any attempts to get it involved in the weird game about fauna or the drinking suspect liquids (it can't really drink anyway) or the making-a-collaborative-film.
Alas, it's that last activity that SecUnit ends up breaking its vow of silence for. This is something it actually has experience with, now, technically. Except instead of a sad docu-drama, this story can be about anything. And the projection technology is just different enough from what's used back in its own galaxy/dimension/whatever to make it kind of interesting.
Alright, fine, it'll do something small, maybe. There's no way it's going to give away any info about its own life, but fortunately it has a plethora of fictional media in its storage that it can draw from. It decides to see what, if anything, its fellow 'Otherworlders' will do with one of its least favorite plotlines from a soap opera.
It works fast, and before it realizes it, it's actually sort of just...replicated the whole mini-plot, but in a more compressed format. Well...that will just give the others a good base. Right?
“Most of the show is good. It's just this one part,” it says as an explanation to the person next to it. "So we can fix it.”
[Welcoming Party/Room with a View]
Surprisingly, it’s when they get to the apartments that SecUnit finds things that really catch its interest.
The first interesting thing is the plethora of readily accessible drones and bots; it finds a corner to sit in and methodically attempts to connect to each one of them, running through a long list of pings and codes. By now it’s aware that the bots in this city are either 1) running off extremely different hardware/software than it is, or 2) purposefully locked up/ignoring it (which, rude, but whatever) [or 3) it’s own internal systems have been tampered with, which seems more and more likely but which it would really rather not think about right now, so it’s just going to pretend that the possibility deserves to be the lowest on the list], but it’s gotta try anyway. It gets through most of the drones and several of the bots before Atlas enters, all failures, but once Atlas starts talking it gets distracted. (First interesting thing, section b: the bots are unionized? What does that mean, exactly? Do they get programmed to do jobs and then make money off of those jobs? Is it the same amount of money that humans make?)
The second interesting thing is something else Atlas says, which it overhears while the bot is talking to someone else: I haven't much choice in the magic or technology divide. But it is perfectly possible to live in the city and have positive relations with both sides. It's going to just accept that Magic Is a Real Thing that Exists Here for now, so – what does that mean for itself? Does it also not have a choice in this divide? What are the consequences of said divide? This is absolutely something it needs more info on. In the lobby and other common areas (it'll worry about 'customizing its apartment' later), it decides to see what else it can find out.
SecUnit's humans would probably be very proud of it (ugh) for actually sidling up to people and willingly engaging in conversation. (Though it's not quite looking anyone in the eye when it talks.) It's opening line, said very casually:
“So what do you think about the tech/magic stuff?”