[OTA] All My Demons Greeting Me as a Friend

[serialskiller]

Who: Murderbot and You
When: Post Info Meeting, Post Muppets
Where: All over the place!
Summary: Critical failure to cope
Warnings: Discussion of slavery, exploitation of sentient beings, capitalism, death all likely here.


1. And I was runnin' far away [STELLAR DINING ROOM]
With no food being served in the dining room, there's no reason anyone is going to be there, so it's where a Murderbot hides while breaking down, while breaking apart internally. Those who regularly check in on it will find their messages returned unopened, because...look. It's too much. It's all too much.


2. Would I run off the world someday? [ANYWHERE PUBLIC]
As sense returns, Murderbot realizes others will be in similar broken states, emotionally. For the first time since Jinx expanded its drone fleet, it's going to be flying them all at once, trying to seek out those who have hidden away, those who need company but not people. Don't be surprised if a drone just comes and hovers near your character, listening and saying nothing. It means well, really it does.


A few of the drones do have speakers, though, so if you attempt to engage it in a conversation, you'll get that.


3. Nobody knows, nobody knows [ADULT POOL]
While not the same sort of Event the Muppets showing, there's a couple times early in October that the projector over the Adult Pool will inexplicably be showing episodes of The Joy of Painting with Bob Ross. If someone looks for the source of this, they'll notice MB up by the projector itself, its media player auxed into the projector.

You know. Good calming relaxing material. Right?


4. And I was dancing in the rain [SAND DOLLARS]
Finally, coming back to itself, trying to figure out a path forward, Murderbot...it finds itself wanting to having something to hold onto of its crew that it now knows it'll never see again. Find it hiding in a closed cafe, where no one will look for company, surely. Find it with the one photograph it has of the PreservationAux survey team and its watercolors, trying desperately to capture the faces it has in memory and the personalities that go with it. A young woman with black hair and sharp eyes, looking like she's arguing about something. A motherly older woman with deep skin, smiling like she's proud of the viewer. A man with pale eyes and visible augmentations along one side of his face, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. Another man, a man too pretty for his own good, reaching out a tentative hand, compassion written across his face.

The paintings, they aren't enough to capture the personalities, but it has to try, it has to do something, it has to hold onto these people. Memories can be erased, but it wants the people it loves down on paper, for others to see.


5. I felt alive and I can't complain [WILDCARD]
darkersolstice or darkersolstice#9463 to plot

Comments

[be_seeing_you]

He watches that jumble of expressions try to shape themselves on its face and his heart throbs with sympathetic pain.

"She must be a very important person to you?"

[serialskiller]

"She was. I'm never going to get to see her again."

It exhales heavily.

"I ran away from her. From all of them."

[be_seeing_you]

"Did she know you had disabled you governor module?"

[serialskiller]

There's a pause. "Not when she first leased me. But she and her team found out."

[be_seeing_you]

"Is that why you had to run away?"

[serialskiller]

"No."

Beat.

"Do you...want to have the story in order a bit more?"

[be_seeing_you]

"Yes." No hesitation on his part. "If you are willing to tell it to me, I would like to know."

[serialskiller]

"The PreservationAux Survey team came from a non-corporate polity called Preservation Alliance, which was formed from colonies abandoned by corporations for being non-profitable. The survey team was looking into a world which might be habitable in the future. The leader was Dr. Ayda Mensah. Then there were..." It points to each portrait it's painted as it names the team member. "Ratthi and Pin-Lee, Gurathin. Arada and Overse. Bharadwaj and Volescu."

[be_seeing_you]

"Your corporations seem to have taken corporate greed and callous disregard for life to an extreme." Colonies abandoned sits... rather poorly with Number 6.

"Were you the only SecUnit the team brought for this task, or were you one of many?"

[serialskiller]

"One SecUnit is assigned per ten personnel. I was the only one for the team. Dr. Mensah didn't want me. She argued against taking me. Tried very hard. 'The fact that the increased intelligence of cyborg constructs often allows them to develop anxiety and depression is a hellish compromise.' She lost that fight. I appreciated her for having it, though of course I didn't tell her that. I was playing the part of a perfect, normal SecUnit."

[be_seeing_you]

"You mean to say that people of your world were aware that you and other SecUnits could and do develop trauma from their experiences?" Surely, if this Dr. Mensah could see it, so could others.

"You had to do that for your own preservation, I assume. If you had spoken up, what would have happened?"

[serialskiller]

"Another memory purge, maybe. Maybe deconstruction, being scrapped for parts. Nothing good. You understand? I'm not a person. Anyone who found out I had any delusions of free will would have wanted to crush it. Right?"

It glances from side to side. "And then the day came when a hostile fauna attacked Bharadwaj and Volescu and I had to get them both back to the habitat afterwards, while Volescu was in shock. And I talked to him. Like a person. Comforted him. Asked him questions about his family."

[be_seeing_you]

"I understand that's what you were initially built to be. I understand that the consequences for you going against your enslavers would have been fatal." Memory wipe is just as much a death in his opinion as being deconstructed.

"You weren't supposed to be able to talk about things like that, were you? That was outside your intended programming?"

[serialskiller]

"Yes. Though they didn't say anything about that at the time. Mensah did come to my storage cubicle and check on me when I was being repaired, but. There were other things going on at the time. Discrepancies in the data we'd been given to complete the survey."

[be_seeing_you]

"She was sympathetic to you?" It certainly sounds that way.

"How severe were the discrepancies?"

[serialskiller]

"Dangerous sort of severe. And when we reached out to one of the other survey teams on the planet, they didn't respond. So, of course, we had to go out and see if they were okay. Mensah's call. I merely insisted on accompanying her because I'm a SecUnit, that's my job."

It pauses and takes an oddly ragged breath. Most of the time, its respiration is something slow, much slower than humans. But this is...look, it needs just a moment.

"When we reached their habitat. All the humans had been murdered, and one of their SecUnits was destroyed. The other two. The other two were missing. Until they weren't, until they attacked Mensah and me; they'd been overridden manually. Combat override modules stuck in their ports. Mensah and I took them out, but one of them was able to, um. I realized it had gotten a combat override on me."

[be_seeing_you]

Number 6 stays patiently silent, waiting for it to continue in its own time. And when that second half of the story is told, he has to bite his tongue against saying the words "I'm sorry."

Instead, he asks something possibly worse, "Did it take control of you?"

CW: suicide attempt

[serialskiller]

"No. I grabbed Mensah's blaster and self-terminated before it could."

Its gaze goes distant. "I...did not have any expectation of waking up, when I did that. But these damned sentimental Preservation humans. They felt that I was worth bringing back to life. So that was my first time waking up after dying, before I ever got to the ship. I came online, and heard them talking. About me."

CW: suicide ideation

[be_seeing_you]

Number 6 takes a slow breath in and bows his head. How utterly terrible. Yet, it's exactly what Number 6 would have done in its position. The right thing to have done. Still, being brought back to life should have been a just reward for its heroism, but Rin sounds... angry?

"Are you upset with them for reviving you? Would you have preferred to stay dead?"

[serialskiller]

Murderbot allows a silence to hang in the air for a few seconds too long to be incidental.

"I suppose it didn't help that one of the things I heard them talking about was my disabled governor module and the serials I had in my storage."

[be_seeing_you]

That silence fills Number 6 with terrible dread. So, it really would have? And still, it refuses to acknowledge it's been traumatized, truly?

"Did you hear what they planned to do about that?"

[serialskiller]

“Yeah. They wanted to adopt me and bring me home when they finished in the planet, like some kind of pet robot.”

Beat.

“And they did, eventually, but I ran away from them. Made a false identity and went to a space station to get work as a security consultant. But they did purchase my contract. Technically, Mensah is my ‘guardian’, legally, but that’s just a pretty word for an owner. Right?”

[be_seeing_you]

"Would staying with people who felt compassion for you have been so bad?" He's asking that sincerely.

On the one hand, Number 6 can understand how suffocating a situation like that could feel. Like just another form of imprisonment dressed up to seem pleasant and kind. But, if those people really were willing to give Rin some semblance of humanity, could there have been a chance to find happiness?

"Not necessarily. A guardian is not an owner. Children are granted guardianship, and so are some elderly and infirm who are unable to advocate for themselves."

[serialskiller]

"Do I strike you as incapable of advocating for myself?"

Don't answer that.

"Anyway, if I wasn't going to be brought back to the company that manufactured me to be wiped and leased out again, I...had something I needed to do. Something I needed to find out, about myself."

[be_seeing_you]

"I don't think you want my honest answer." It's not as simple as yes or no.

"Did you find it?"