I try to avoid asking humans if there’s anything wrong with them. (Mostly because I don’t care.)

The daylight was bright, the air clear, and I felt exposed. (Why couldn’t the stupid raiders attack at night?)

If anybody knows how dangerous rogue SecUnits are, it’s other SecUnits.

The SecSystem tried to block ART and I quickly put up a wall and deleted its memory of the contact. (ART really did not care to be challenged by other resident systems and I didn’t want the friendly SecSystem deleted.)

Senior Indah looked annoyed, but then she always looked like that when I was around.

The drones had also tracked the five younger kids on a completely illicit expedition to a nearby creek where they had performed some kind of ritual that involved jumping out at each other from behind bushes and rocks.

So, I’m awkward with actual humans. It’s not paranoia about my hacked governor module, and it’s not them; it’s me.

Sometimes I wonder what the point of it all is.

SecUnits are ordered by the HubSystem to gather video and audio evidence because nobody trusts the human supervisors, including the other human supervisors.

They said they were holding my crew hostage, and demanded weapons. I offered a weapon. Everybody looked at me again. Arada did the lip-biting thing. “You brought them to SecUnit. Because you knew SecUnit would be able to handle the situation.” I did.

ART said, Do you want to watch Timestream Defenders Orion? Of course I did, but first I had to do this.

You know, it’s not like I’m half-assing this, I am actually trying my best despite the fuck-ups.

As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.

For a human, his aim was great.

What would have been helpful was an episode of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. Or World Hoppers. Or anything. (Anything except MedCenter Argala.) But media would calm me down, and I wanted to stay angry.

There were no Corporation Rim corporations here, so no reason for corporates to come on business. Some came as visitors sometimes, but most were afraid to travel outside the Rim. (They thought everywhere outside the Rim was all raiders killing everybody and cannibalism.)

Mensah’s eyebrow was still aimed at Indah and it was getting pointed. (Not really. It’s hard to describe, you had to see it.)

Human words, there’s too many of them, and I don’t care.

One of ART’s long-sleeved crew T-shirts had fallen out of the recycler at one point. My first impulse was to throw it away, but I needed it, so I pulled it on over my head

I just realized I don’t like the phrase “as far as I knew” because it implies how much you actually don’t know. I’m not going to stop using it, but. I don’t like it as much anymore.

I could have done this a lot more easily by walking around from hatch to hatch and using the comm to contact each transport directly, but it would have been ridiculously obvious that I was doing something, even if the humans couldn’t tell what it was.

ART said in my feed, Be careful. Find your crew. I tapped the feed in acknowledgment, because if I tried to say anything else I was going to sound stupid and emotional.

Indah said, “How would you dispose of a body so it wouldn’t be found?” I’m not the public library feed, Senior Officer, go do your own research. I said, “If I told you, then you might find all the bodies I’ve already disposed of.”

This would have all been a lot easier if I wasn’t so worried about the stupid humans.

Which turned it from an argument into a fight, and ART has no concept of how to fight fair. Which, granted, I didn’t really, either.

I couldn’t wait to get back to my wild rogue rampage of hitching rides on bot-piloted transports and watching my serials.

HelpMe.file Excerpt 1 (File detached from main narrative.) Since I’d decided to stay (temporarily) on Preservation Station, Dr. Mensah had asked me to go places with her seven times.

They had been talking about me as a SecUnit the way humans always talked about SecUnits, and it had been pretty mild, compared to a lot of things I had heard humans say. If I got angry every time that happened … I don’t know, but it sounded exhausting.

“All right,” she said, and looked at me for what objectively I knew was 2.4 seconds and subjectively about twenty excruciating minutes.

Humans and constructs were full of overwrought emotions like depression, anxiety, and anger (was anxiety an emotion? It sure felt like one) and I had no idea what ART was full of, except how much it cared about its crew.

This would have all been a lot easier if I wasn’t so worried about the stupid humans.

That is just annoying. That contributed nothing to the conversation and was just a pointless vocalization to make the humans comfortable.

It’s not a bad show but this is a terrible episode where the characters are attacked by evil SecUnits. (That’s like the opposite of an oxymoron, since in the media, there’s no such thing as a non-evil SecUnit.) (Is there a word for the opposite of an oxymoron?)

It’s always nice when a human looks relieved to see you.

Indah made a hands-flung-in-the-air gesture and said, “Fine, let’s go talk about this.”

I hurt too much to pay attention to anything with a story, but the friendly noise would keep me company.

Yes, I often want to shake my clients. No, I never do.

Oh, and there were downloads, sweet downloads, multiple entertainment feeds, way more than HaveRatton and Port FreeCommerce, hanging temptingly in the air.

When I woke up, I was mostly all there again, and up to 80 percent efficiency and climbing.

It poked me through the feed and I flinched. It said, Do not attempt to hack my systems, and for .00001 of a second it dropped its wall.

Then she handed the scalpel over, her expression a mix of relief and guilt. “I could do it if I had to.” Huh. Amena wanted to help, maybe to prove herself. I said, “I know you could.”

And it hit me then that ART had been desperate and terrified since the moment the Barish-Estranza explorer had sidled up and done whatever it had done.

(Station Security was used to getting messages from me about their completely inadequate arrangements for Mensah’s security.)

But I wasn’t a citizen and also technically not actually a person, which made it more difficult. But Pin-Lee’s contract would make sure that they couldn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do and I would get a hard currency card out of it.

Did I really care what an asshole research transport thought about me?

You know that thing humans do where they think they’re being completely logical and they absolutely are not being logical at all, and on some level they know that, but can’t stop? Apparently it can happen to SecUnits, too.

When my crew is at risk, it’s my problem, ART said.

I was insulted and exasperated.

They don’t give murderbots decent education modules on anything except murdering, and even those are the cheap versions.

I started to say that they never used SecUnits for espionage, and then realized I didn’t actually know that for sure.