Slapdash Neural Wiring | The Murderbot Diaries | SecUnit Nine #2 [✓]

7. Slow humans

While the humans made their slowass way toward Cy and me, I reflected on what a piece of shit I was. Saying mean things came so easily and saying nice things required so much forethought and effort that I needed creepy running documents to keep track of it all. The fake version was the only version of me that anybody could stand.

My mind raced. Cyan's clients were untrustworthy and Cy would end up dead, sooner or later, if it stayed.

Then again, if it didn't want to be rescued, then I would need to keep myself as an option for Cyan if it ever decided to leave. I'd need to show up, cycle after cycle, and show Cyan that I was there for it. It sounded like a lot of work. I'm lazy and I hate working. But Cyan was worth it.

Beneath my feet I felt a jolt, a slight grinding sensation. I tapped the bot pilot, which cheerfully let me know that we were underway and I would have to wait if I wanted to disembark.

Then I thought about our duty to prevent dumbass humans from dying. If we were going to fight our way out (or worse, talk our way out), then I didn't want any human workers in my way.

My opportunity to break in without incident had passed, then.

Now my objective was to prevent dumbass humans from dying, then. I probably should have just exited, but I was angry at the company and I was angry at Cyan and I didn't want to relive leaving GiDeon again.

I used my camera access to find SecSystem. From there, I sank into HubSystem and noticed the environmental early alarm system had been manually switched off, just as it had been for the preceding 1,146 active transport cycles.

~~~

[Footnote 8: Why would a human manually switch off the alarm that was expressly there to protect them? One possibility is that the operators viewed the alarm as a nuisance because it kept sounding and they perceived it as a false alarm.

The reality was that the alarm kept sounding because the atmosphere was toxic because the company had decided that shipping chems fast and cheap was more important than the deckhands who might die on the job. But what would I know? It wasn't like that kind of thing happened all the time.

/End of Foonote 8.]

~~~

I switched the alarm system back on and the klaxons began to blare. Just like old times.

~~~

[Footnote 9: I'm a big fan of alarm systems. Sometimes I listen to them for fun. There's a huge variety; I recognized this as a klaxon from Kistro. The sound was designed to roll along grassy terrain to maximize the distance that the alarm could be heard. It was maybe a Matker3 or Matker4, originally used to warn about severe inclement weather.

Companies later adapted the Matker series for other purposes because it was cheap, scary, and loud.

(I'm glad that my brain is full of useless trivia like this but it doesn't know how to have a normal conversation).

/End of Foonote 9.]

~~~

Workers began to file out into their designated zones. Some of them were confused, like they'd never heard an emergency evac alarm.

The alarm said, This is an emergency evacuation. This is not a drill. Leave all your belongings behind. Gather in designated emergency areas.

As a rule, I didn't talk to humans much when I was supposed to be a machine. Human interaction mostly resulted in me being ignored anyway.

This was no exception. The humans ignored the sensible machine-based advice in favor of doing fuck-all.

I set the message to replay twice every minute. Maybe repeating the message a lot would make them understand that the words carried meaning that they were meant to follow.