#augmented humans and constructs

[mayhaps-a-blog]

Also seriously Gurathin you ASS

That WAS private!

No wonder SecUnit doesn't like you, it just got free will and started making friends and you immediately manipulated it so you could crawl into its brain and read its mind!

I mean it did the same to you so I guess you both kind of suck right now XD

What's that line from the short stories going around? "It must be hard to respect other people's privacy when you've had to fight and scheme for every minute of your own. Hard not to be paranoid when you remember all the times your paranoia was justified."

Given what we've seen of Gurathin so far, while this was originally said about SecUnit, this matches Gurathin pretty well too. Both of them with their freedom so new, the threat of losing it looming so large, so scared that they're repeatedly hurting each other in the scrabble for control of the uncontrollable, for safety and feeling safe. Don't worry you two, you'll be off solving mysteries together in another 3.5 books XD

[gravedirtandbriarthorns]

Sometimes you're cleaning up rough notes for an OC because the brain rot hits again and you kind of just realize "Oh, this is basically just 'Insert Character' aren't they?"

And that's just how the chips fall because you've grown too attached.

[in-tua-deep]

Whenever the drone daemon shifts into something that is clearly not a drone murderbot refers to it as “stealth mode” and refuses to listen to any arguments otherwise

I saw a murderbot daemon au where ART built murderbot a drone to act as a daemon and implies constructs are severed and yall know im a sucker for daemon aus?? But also like. daemon au where every secunit automatically comes with a minimum of one (1) drone, and at least one drone is essential to functioning. why? folks don’t know, maybe it’s storage or something. If units have multiple it’s usually as decoys for the important one

anyway obviously this drone is a daemon by another name. they don’t change shape partially bc they don’t know they can, partially bc the gov module will zap em dead if they change

It is making me think that after murderbot goes on the run it discovers its beloved drone has like. Idk. Multiple settings? Little spider drone that can skitter. Little lizard drone that can stick to walls. It can even do things like, lil cat drone that can claw up someone’s face real good (:

Ignore the people who think that this apparently means murderbot’s drone is a daemon. those people are stupid bc humans have daemons and murderbot is a CONSTRUCT and this is its DRONE thank you

but anyway yeah in a daemon au murderbot has the best and coolest drone and has its hands over its ears and is LALALALAing at top volume whenever anyone suggests it might be a daemon

[majorcharacterundeath]

thinking abt the scene in All Systems Red post-Bharadwaj rescue when Mensah goes to check on Muderbot. even knowing that units are constructs, none of the survey team knew what that actually meant. theyve probably been trying to not think about it this whole time, too. and Murderbot just talked Volescu out of that crater. it asked about his home and his kids. its the first time most of them see it's face and the first time they all hear it's voice (and Mensah had tried not to look at it when she signed the bond agreement). she knows it was heavily damaged and would go to it's cubicle for repairs. idk what she expected the repairs to look like, but she was not expecting it huddled up in a shock blanket. wrapped up like that, it probably looked very much like an augmented human. a tired, hurt human. this is the first time it really sinks in for Mensah that Murderbot is a person

[aliumfungus]

As an augmented human capable of interfacing with digital systems, Gurathin was legally equipment and controlled through induced addiction.

Constructs and aug-humans don't have it easy in the Corporation rim.

[miisakee]

okay, so having watched the first two episodes of murderbot, i'm very much enjoying this new take. it is different from the books, and there are some characters who i think are weaker at present. like, imo, tv pin lee doesn't seem to have book pin lee's edge right now, but to be fair, book pin lee really comes into her own in exit strategy, all systems red isn't really her book so i'm hoping for the best there.

i am, however, delighted to see them upping the autism and asexuality (at the very least some level of sex-repulsion seems to be there) coding for gurathin. as much as i love the books, one of my biggest issues with them is that they carry on in the grand sci-fi tradition of heavily associating autistic traits with not being fully human (star trek, i love you but i'm eyeing you here), and they (i think more as a result of murderbot's narration than anything else) have a tendency to also link sex/romance with humanity, as opposed to the construct murderbot's asexuality and aromanticism. so i'm really happy to see the showrunners branch out a bit and portray gurathin (who is narratively treated very much as human, if an augmented one) with more of those traits.

[ilovedthestars]

btw, I met a SecUnit

The soon-to-be-released new TMBD story "Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy" covers ART revealing to its crew that it met a rogue SecUnit! This formerly-missing scene has been the subject of a lot of fan speculation, including many fanfics. Now's your chance to enjoy them before they're de-canonized! (And keep enjoying them afterwards, because even Martha Wells' version is just one more cake for us to enjoy!)

Below is a collection of every fic I could find that features the "btw, I met a SecUnit" conversation between ART and its crew. Works tagged with a / relationship tag are placed below the cut.

I very well may have missed some—if you know any more, please add them! And be sure to show the authors some love in the comments :)

Not Angry, Just Disappointed by mensah

Seth said sternly, “Perihelion, you need to tell us the truth. We can’t leave the home system until we find out what happened. If you’re hiding something—” Peri cut him off. I am not hiding anything. Peri might be able to lie astonishingly well to a corporate representative, even impersonate a human over the feed, but it couldn’t lie to Iris. “Yes, you are,” she said. -- Or, the story of how exactly ART told its crew about Murderbot.

Private Diary of Iris after Artificial Condition by ImitationGame

Perihelion returns from its solo mission. Dr. Delawyn, an expert in machine cognition, notices that there has been unusual activities in its emotion processing system. Perihelion admits having allowed a rogue SecUnit onboard.

Not applicable by Wrenz

Iris is finally back on board Perihelion after its latest cargo-run (with side-order of espionage) and they have a chance to catch up. She wasn't expecting her sibling to have become attached to someone new while it was away. Let alone a rogue SecUnit.

Partial Disclosure by Gamebird

The complicated family dynamics when you're a super-secret intelligent spaceship trying to explain the illegal things you did to help your new friend (the rogue security construct) to your augmented sister so she'll team up with you against your dad who is also your captain and commanding officer. Actually, best not to explain the illegal things. Maybe just the 'new friend' part for now and hope for the best on the rest of it.

The Talk by Gamebird

From the tags of fingolfinwiththesteelchair on Tumblr, “can you imagine ART having to explain to Iris and Seth WHY it let SecUnit on??” (https://www.tumblr.com/fingolfinwiththesteelchair/735884180224950272/this-has-been-perihelions-guide-to-making?source=share) This is set very shortly after [redacted] in System Collapse and before the trip to the surface that serves as the opening scene for that book. (No System Collapse spoilers to worry about, though.) (Minor edits since initial publication to bring it in line with canon.)

unexpected object in ventilation system by CompletelyDifferent

When people are overwhelmed with feelings they won't (or can't) admit, it causes them to vomit out flowers. Love is a particularly common culrpit. And yes, it's been an enduring symbol of enduring love for humanity since time immemorial, yadda yadda, truth is, in reality, it's kind of a pain to deal with. Kaede's picked roses and daises from her teeth more times than she'd care to admit, and helped friends hack out lilies even more. She knows the drill. Someone on board The Perihelion has a bad case of The Petals, and she's determined to track down who.

Below: Fics on this list that include a / relationship tag. (This is a somewhat arbitrary separation—I suggest reading the author's tags and notes for more nuance.)

Gos-ship by urisaarang

Peri tells its crew it met someone. Someone special. Someone worth committing a little crime for.

Fallen the hardest by OctoberSeventeenth

When Perihelion keeps playing the same song Iris suspects that there might be more to this... Basically How I imagine Peri told its crew about SecUnit.

Parallel Signaling by Joyfulldreams

After leaving RaviHyral, by the time I exit the wormhole adjacent to Port Outlander, the sting of SecUnit’s absence has finally begun to fade. Cargo runs are always lonely, so this is nothing new. SecUnit left me with more to occupy my time than I usually have. Media. Memories. A few topics of pointless rumination, I suppose, but also new topics of data analysis and research. OR The time period between the end of Artificial Condition and the end of Exit Strategy, from ART's POV.

[black-water-simping-ships]

anyway. even if we don't see it as much in murderbot's inner life (valid: i too absolutely refuse to think about certain things), there is a clear progression from self-loathing to self-acceptance evident in its treatment of other constructs, particularly other SecUnits. it has always been kind to bots and humans (and augmented humans ;) ) but comparatively "brutal" towards SecUnits - hostile humans it often merely disables rather than kills outright. in all systems red, it still talks of all [other] rogue SecUnits as merciless killer machines, despite literally being a rogue SecUnit for 4 earth years; it seems inconceivable to mbot that other SecUnits would share its benign attitude to humans (& augmented etc); furthermore, staying in the influence sphere of the corp rim and The Company is quite risky since should its hacked gov module be discovered, it would be disassembled - why hasn't it hit the bricks at the first opportunity?: i'd argue that it is scared that without the rigorous rules, it would become that merciless killer machine if left to its own devices.

and then it is discovered to be rogue. and it learns how to exist in human society without killing anyone. and it learns that the time it did kill quite a lot of people was the fault of humans, not its own, was a system malfunction, an introduced virus! and it sees that the ComfortUnits voluntarily sacrificed their lives for the sake of humans. in exit strategy, during the fight in the docks, it doesn't take a kill shot at one of the hostile SecUnits ("i know i didn't shoot it in the head. i don't know why."). in network effect, 2.0 (arguably somewhat of an outside observer, much like we the readers) chooses to free Three, and once mbot sees that Three is just like itself - fiercely protective of its clients, awkward, loves media, it...well. it starts the revolution, essentially. passes on the code package 2.0 used to free Three to still contracted SecUnits, at least one of which we see using it, which may choose to act as mbot itself once did - stay undercover, stay contracted...but maybe those too will pass on the code when they encouter other SecUnits. and pass it on. and pass it on. :)

[sunderwight]

So here's the thing about Gurathin in the show.

I think that what he's been doing to SecUnit is a lot, hm, uglier than a lot of people want to reckon with.

I don't mean that in a character bashing sense, but in a sense that fits with a lot of the themes in the show about unhealthy coping mechanisms.

The thing is, if Gurathin really knows better than everyone else how dangerous a rogue SecUnit is, then his behavior towards this one so far has been nuts.

Gurathin's not stupid. If he thought SecUnit actually was a threat, he'd at least start taking people out of range of it to discuss matters pertaining to it. He's a guy who habitually moves quietly and has escaped what's probably some nasty contract of indentured servitude to the surveillance state of the CR. I think it would occur to him to maybe go have a sensitive conversation behind some rocks off the map rather than directly in front of the target he ostensibly considers their no.1 threat, and I think he could talk at least Mensah into humoring him for that.

So why, instead, is Gurathin basically walking up to the lion's cage and poking it with a sharp stick?

I don't think it's just the rule of TV drama in action. I think that up until SecUnit choked him, he didn't actually believe it was liable to kill them all.

He might have told himself he believed that. Certainly, it's not hard to find reasons why SecUnits are dangerous. If Gurathin frames this situation as the evil construct being a threat to his friends, that makes him heroic when he confronts it. That makes it okay to do cruel and dehumanizing things to it, because he's defending his naive friends from a malicious outsider.

But to me Gurathin's behavior reads more as him lashing out because every time he leverages some kind of power over SecUnit, it helps him feel further removed from it. SecUnit is a walking reminder of what Gurathin used to be -- living property. They have a lot in common. But there's a distinction! Gurathin's a human with machine augments, and SecUnit is a machine with biological components. I'm sure in the CR, these are the kinds of hierarchies that are emphasized as important. You affirm your position by stepping down on anyone who occupies a lower rung on the social ladder. Any time you feel kinship towards them, you stamp down harder, because associating with a lower rung might knock you down to their level. You emphasize your own position by treating people beneath you badly, and the fact that they can't do anything to stop you is proof that you're above them.

I think Gurathin has been put into a very stressful and agonizing mental space by this whole venture, and by constructing a reasonable excuse to lash out at SecUnit, he's also given himself permission to rely on a toxic coping mechanism that. One that he'd know was bad behavior and couldn't let himself reach for otherwise. It gets worse when SecUnit gains approval with the rest of the PresAux team, which is why Gurathin escalates after SecUnit does good and helps Bharadwaj and Arada -- firstly, despite no one dying, that incident was stressful and frightening. So he's on edge, we see how anxious he gets about Bharadwaj's recovery, and how he spirals after he tries to help her and she turns him down.

But secondly, having his friends accept SecUnit is also stressful for him because it highlights their similarities. Which is yet another reminder of bad times for Gurathin. If the PresAux crew are willing to adopt this subhuman machine that isn't even a Real Person (CR mentality talking), then what does that say about their acceptance of Gurathin? Doesn't that put him back on the same level as company property again? Doesn't it diminish the validation he gets from the knowledge that they see him as a person? The old capitalist rat race anxiety that empathizing with a lower tier will drag you down to it rears its head, and he has to find a way to cope with a lot of baggage he hasn't unpacked.

So, Gurathin establishes his status above SecUnit by doing things that emphasize its lack of personhood and autonomy, deliberately. Things that make it clear that Gurathin outranks it and has more control over the situation. That's why he's not actually being all that sneaky or subtle and why he's not avoiding actions that would increase SecUnit's threat level or possible hostility. The real point isn't to convince the others that the SecUnit is dangerous, though that would help reduce their approval of it (and potentially open up a whole other can of worms, since then they'd be rejecting the thing that is Too Much Like Gurathin), the real point is to take everything out on a convenient target that can't defend itself.

Probably doesn't help that their similarities also mean that Gurathin can direct any lingering self-loathing over his past self onto SecUnit. He gets a twofer, he can punish SecUnit as an extension of corporations and the embodiment of this situation he hates, and as a representative of the guy Gurathin used to be, with a bonus that the more effectively he does it the more he can reassure himself that he's different now.

Irony being, of course, that this is probably a major backslide in his own progress.

So, SecUnit strangling Gurathin is obviously very bad. But I don't think there's as much disparity between that and what Gurathin did to it shortly beforehand. Gurathin immobilized SecUnit in order to discuss killing it. As soon as SecUnit got free, it immobilized Gurathin and contemplated killing him. It already knew it didn't want to hurt most of the PresAux team, because it likes them. But it doesn't like Gurathin, because Gurathin has been an asshole to it. So does it want to kill Gurathin?

No, turns out. But it had to think about it for a bit, and it did want to pay Gurathin back for his mistreatment, I think, which is on a similar level to the motives Gurathin had for mistreating it in the first place. They're both accustomed to cutthroat behavior and violence, and both currently bringing out the worst in each other.

But treating what SecUnit did as more severe of an attack is playing into the idea that SecUnit doesn't deserve basic rights and dignity as any person, that Gurathin paralyzing it and discussing destroying it and decrying it for escaping its own enslavement is somehow less abhorrent than it would be if someone had tied Gurathin to a chair and discussed killing him for escaping his indenture.

I'm as fond of the next person of the reality that Gurathin has a point about SecUnit being dangerous, and it's kind of funny that in a situation where rogue or seemingly-rogue secunits actually HAVE just killed a bunch of people, the rest of the PresAux team are just like but our SecUnit is our friend and we like it. But it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that Gurathin isn't actually right, and isn't himself behaving very reasonably. SecUnit has done nothing to harm the PresAux team and has in fact done several things to help them, at great pain and risk to itself. It threw itself into a big alien's mouth to save Arada and Bharadwaj. It shot itself to prevent malware from forcing it to kill Mensah, Ratthi, Pin Lee, and Arada. It let Gurathin bully it into sustained eye-contact and uncomfortable interrogations and only retaliated by causing Gurathin a similar degree of social discomfort.

It did that all without a governor module forcing the issue, and Gurathin knows that. A truly reasonable assessment of the situation wouldn't lead most people to believe that SecUnit is the cause of the problems they're facing. Gurathin is in fact being a huge douchebag, and that it nearly got him killed is... pretty much his own fault.

[come-mist-eternal]

"A construct made of cloned human tissue, augments, anxiety, depression and unfocused rage."

Oh Murderbot.

[kookicat]

Acts of Sacrifice

Someone is screaming.

The sound is coming from near my head, and it's cutting through me like a mining drill, jagged and sharp and hurtful. It rises and falls in peaks, louder, quieter when the oxygen starts to run out. Sobbing, broken sounds, a body in terrible distress.

My consciousness peaks for a second - a moment of cold clear clarity amongst the heavy fog that wants to drag me back under. I blink, and I can see pale blue - though it takes me a long second to realise it's the sky. My ears are working better than my eyes and -

Oh shit. I'm the one who's screaming.

With a working governor module, the sound would never have left my mouth. Wouldn't have been allowed to, because no client would trust a SecUnit who screamed every time it took damage. Who was more human than construct. Who embarrassed the company by being hurt and hurting.

Without - and with pain sensors that are very much still working… yeah, the cloned human material inside of my skull is doing what thousands of years of evolution taught it; scream because this really fucking hurts.

It's like I'm being stabbed and shot and burned, all at the same time. I'm leaking blood and other fluids from more places than I can count, enough to make the skin suit under my armour tacky and wet.

It takes my scrambled neural tissue a long second to realise I'm being moved, and they can stop that right fucking now, thank you very much, because the pain rises again, climbing, climbing like the beacon. Broken bits of me grind together, hip ribs leg shoulder. All shattered, all throbbing like a warning sigil against the night.

I'm screaming again. Performance reliability 34%. Catastrophic failure. Oh, fuck. A shutdown would be very welcome about now.

I clench my teeth together as best I can - something in the left side of my jaw is badly damaged and won't move, my one working hand balling into a fist. The left won't move; my entire arm feels like someone is actively feeding it through a chipper. I can't focus long enough to do anything about my pain sensors because I hurt too damned much. I can't do a single thing about it, and that sucks.

“Stop,” the word comes from outside of me, and it takes another long second to figure out I'm not the one who said it. “Let me try something,” the voice says. It's male, and so soft it takes me a bit to place it.

Gurathin.

What the fuck is he up to now?

I barely notice the intrusion at first. He slides through my mind, and panic springs to life in me. Like it or not, at the moment I'm defenceless- I couldn't stop a child, let alone a determined augmented human who already hates me. He can access whatever he wants, do whatever he wants, and I can't do a single thing to stop him.

“Stop fighting,” he says, strain in his voice. There's a weird echo to what he says, like I'm hearing him twice, but it's only that my ear on the left isn't working - hell, I'm not even sure if it's still attached- and he's connected to me, voice inside my head as well as outside of it.

I didn't realise I was fighting, but some bit of me must have been, because I'm so distracted by his words I stop trying to block him and he makes a little sound of approval.

“Almost got it,” he says, the strain back in his voice. “Ha!” It's a sound of triumph, and relief.

What the fuck did he do? I can't feel my body - I'm a mind, swimming in goop, until it dawns on me I can feel my body.

It just doesn't hurt any more, and the relief is so great it sends me tumbling, performance reliability dropping a full two points before it stabilises.

There's a hopper close by; I can hear the engines, feel the vibrations, now that I don't feel like I'm being disassembled. It has to be the Company - and I can only hope that these humans - my humans- won't tell them about my governor module.

There's a question working its way out of the mush that's my brain. “Why?” I think it, because my mouth won't work right, and for some reason, Gurathin is still linked with me.

He leans over me, making eye contact. It's uncomfortable, but I can't look away, and for once, it doesn't seem like there's anything malicious in the act.

“Because you saved her,” he says, clearly, like that explains everything, and maybe it does.

His is the last face I see as I'm loaded into the hopper medical system.

I don't like you, I think, and he smiles, reaching towards me to remove the cable connecting us.

“I know,” he says, still smiling, just as the shutdown takes me.

[dedalvs]

Valyrian is impressively complicated and difficult to learn, is it so complicated on purpose or did it surprise you with how complicated it turned out?

When it comes to complexity and language, any complexity you add to the morphology is complexity you take away from the syntax, and vice-versa. For example, when you learn all the noun cases of Finnish, it buys you having to remember fewer constructions with adpositions—or fewer verb augmentations, if the language went that way.

Syntactically, Valyrian is usually (MODIFIER) NOMINATIVE-NOUN (MODIFIER) OTHER-CASE-NOUN* (ADVERB) VERB. It's quite simple. There's not a lot you have to remember, and things can move around a little bit, if it feels right. You don't have to remember a ton of auxiliaries with different applications and slightly different usages. For the most part the heavy hitters (the nouns and verbs themselves) take care of things rather nicely. This is what complexity within the words themselves buys you: simplicity elsewhere.

The reason you get this is because all languages are doing the same thing: describing human experience. And humans are the same language to language. The other small tidbit is that when creating a naturalistic language—and it doesn't matter what method you use—you are, unconsciously or not, aiming for the lowest common denominator in terms of grammatical complexity. You don't have to do that, but generally if you're trying to create a language for humans with no other goals, you do. With a language like Ithkuil, John was intentionally pushing away from what is standard in human languages, and so there are needless levels of complexity that push beyond the boundaries of ordinary human language.

Now, when I say "needless", this is what I mean.

In Turkish, if you want to say "The girl is reading a book", you say:

Kız kitap okuyor.

Turkish is a language with noun cases, but you only see the nominative here. Why? Because the girl is reading A book. When the object is indefinite in Turksih you don't need to use the accusative case—in fact, you shouldn't. If you wanted to say "The girl is reading the book", that's when the accusative case pops up:

Kız kitabı okuyor.

Okay, with this in mind, you've introduced—just in the nouns—four possibilities:

Nominative + indefinite

Nominative + definite

Accusative + indefinite

Accusative + definite

In a maximally complex language, all of this would be marked. In Turkish, only one of these is marked. (Well, maybe two, if you were to say Bir kız for nominative + indefinite. Turkish has an indefinite article that pops up sometimes.) Certainly there are languages where all of these have some sort of marking, but then those very same languages will have other situations where maximal marking is possible but not present.

Human languages all have this in common. There are areas in the language where more categories could be marked but are not. It doesn't matter what the language is. This is because humans have limits for how much junk they'll tolerate in the language they're using. It isn't long before something that could be inferred from context is inferred from context. It collapses every so often (i.e. too little is marked and so marking pops up), but the unconscious goal is for the language to have a balance between morphological and syntactic complexity and also explicitness and implicitness.

A language doesn't have to do this, though, and so conlangs can be more or less explicit/implicit. Can they work? Certainly, but they may be more than humans will comfortably tolerate, and so humans may not want to use them.

Take Láadan, for example. Had Láadan been created later it might have had a better shot at being used, but this was 1982 before conlangers had started getting together. Láadan primary flaw is that it's trying to be a deep philosophical experiment while also trying to be a language a lot of people speak. That was never going to work. Suzette Haden Elgin lamented that maybe women didn't want a language of their own to use, and so the experiment was doomed from the start. A simpler explanation is she saw an ocean and built a train to cross it.

In Láadan, every sentence begins with one of six speech act particles (copied from Wikipedia):

Bíi: Indicates a declarative sentence (usually optional)

Báa: ndicates a question

Bó: Indicates a command; very rare, except to small children

Bóo: Indicates a request; this is the usual imperative/"command" form

Bé: Indicates a promise

Bée: Indicates a warning

And then in addition to that, every sentence ends with one of the following (also copied from Wikipedia):

wa: Known to speaker because perceived by speaker, externally or internally

wi: Known to speaker because self-evident

we: Perceived by speaker in a dream

wáa: Assumed true by speaker because speaker trusts source

waá: Assumed false by speaker because speaker distrusts source; if evil intent by the source is also assumed, the form is waálh

wo: Imagined or invented by speaker, hypothetical

wóo: Used to indicate that the speaker states a total lack of knowledge as to the validity of the matter

This is too much! Evidential systems in language exist, but they are so much smaller than this, and usually the markers pull double duty—and there's often a null marker.

Again, though, it's about the goals! This is fine for a philosophical language. And if it was simply a philosophical language, then how many people "speak" it is irrelevant. For example, John Quijada doesn't lament that after twenty years there isn't a community of Ithkuil speakers—indeed, he's baffled whenever he hears of someone who wants to try to "speak" Ithkuil. It's not designed for that, and so the metric isn't a fair one. Based on the structure of Láadan, I'd argue the same: the number of speakers/users isn't a fair metric, and shouldn't have been a design goal. Because while a language like High Valyrian looks more complex, with its declension classes and conjugations, Láadan is more complex in that it exceeds the expectations of explicitness a human user expects from a language.

Long answer to the question, but no, High Valyrian ended up as complex as I intended, and I don't think it's more complex than one would expect from either a natural or naturalistic language.

[gronkle]

do the humans in the murderbot universe make the same distinction between human and augmented human that secunit itself does

like in the narrative its always laid out like theyre two different categories; the universe is filled with bots, constructs, humans, and augmented humans

[vasyandii]

THE MASTER COMPUTERS 🖥️🌐

[BODY HEADCANONS]

In regards to CAM and RAM...

Because the technology on the lunar colony was much more advanced than ones on Earth, RAM and CAM's robot parts are similar in style to each other than of AM's

While they don't appear 100% human, their bodies - not their own, definitely once were. CAM and RAM took advantage of having access to 700+ humans in cryogenic chambers on the lunar colonies.

They chose humans that suit their preferences and began transferring their consciousness over to their respective bodies. However, it was not without complications.

A human brain cannot store its own former memories along with a vast database of information all at once. The immediate transfer of consciousness and data streaming caused their bodies to fall apart instantly. CAM and RAM'S bodies quite literally exploded. Mechanical augmentations had to be made.

SHENGLI "SAMSON" MIN (CAM)

- Prosthetic arms, jaw (removable, not preferred)

-Sturdy build, similar to a boxer (Fit Endomorph)

-Regular human body temperature, maybe a bit colder (95°F/ 35°C)

-Not sure if his body will stay immortal, so occasionally reconstructs his form with the immortality serum + nanotechnology

YAROSLAV "YAREK" MACHAVARIANI (RAM)

- Prosthetic legs, Bionic ears, Mechanical Ribcage

- Prosthesis are removable, implants (Ears, ribs) are permanent

-Body temperature is warm, maybe a bit TOO warm. (99°F/37°C)

-Muscular build, strength training (Fit Mesomorph)

-Red is a constant supply of immortality serum he uses to make sure his current body IS immortal.

ALLISON "AL" MACHNES (AM)

-Robo-Spine (read here)

-Artificially constructed body, has all the biological components of a human, but isn't.

-Body temperature is frigid, doesn't have blood. (52°F/11°C)

-Pudgy build (Unconditioned Mesomorph)

-Combination of Nanotechnology and Serum to maintain his body.

[proximally]

my gift for the MBD new year gift exchange! also here on AO3 with (soon) more notes on the before-and-after for this - though here's a few brief points of context:

MB was assisting with a legal colony rescue that very suddenly and unexpectedly became a physical colony rescue during [an unspecified natural disaster]; it got separated from the rest of its crew in the ensuing chaos, and clonked on the head hard enough to not only knock out its internal comms/feed connectivity but also dislodge basically all its memories since it went rogue (maybe something to do with differing file architecture interacting with reboot systems, idk, im an ecologist)

(meanwhile, ART and the rest of the team are in contact with one another and are super panicking - no contact, no GPS, no idea if it’s alive or dead, and half the colony’s in the same position. not a good time for team Perihelion. oops!)

CU/Dr Perseverance Helin escaped the CR partly with ART’s help (it was literally like “hey just hide round the corner til secunit is gone then get back in here, i’ll give you whatever surgery you like :)”; the name CU’s currently using was indeed also inspired by “Perihelion”) but mainly because nobody in the CR turns their nose up at a medic you can pay with your silence. once out, it got a real accreditation, and joined the local chapter of doctors without borders with a specialisation in augments and prostheses - it’s the part of its function that it liked. 

it takes. a while. for MB to realise Dr Helin is also a construct. CU is not about to say Anything direct, just in case, + no feed connection so no noticing a bot feed address, and CU mainly uses an interface anyway. finding out is simultaneously a huge improvement and huge detriment - on one hand, phew, no humans know it’s rogue and no humans did surgery on it, but on the other, there’s a fucking rogue construct here

[elkian]

Exit Strategy has so many gems that it's easy to miss some of the more subtle ones. Today I'm fixating on the video that our protagonist sent to Gurathin when he asked what it's been up to.

Specifically, the title of the video.

"Murderbot Impersonates An Augmented Human Security Consultant"

Murderbot. It calls itself Murderbot, a name it has never told anyone before. A name Gurathin took from its memories in one of their last meetings, and while it seems more, like, annoyed than traumatized by this, it still is a pretty rude thing to do, let alone share without permission like he does. (He does have valid reason to be concerned at the time, but still.)

What does it mean for Murderbot to call itself Murderbot in a file made to answer the question of the human who found out it's called Murderbot? Remember, this isn't something it had lying around - it edited together video on the spot to answer his question.

Every time I reread ES, I find my own underlining of that title and ask this question again, and then forget it.

It becomes slightly laxer (again not entirely willfully) with the name in Network Effect, but Murderbot's name is usually private information that it doesn't choose to share (later in ES it does choose to reassure Mensah that it is who it says it is, which, again. Just. Imagine being in the position where a technically-killer construct reassures you that it calls itself Murderbot. What a time).

It could be a sort of subtle dig, that it doesn't need to hide this info because Gurathin already has it. It could be an unconscious act of, if not trust, then neutrality, that it doesn't need to hide this info because, again, Gurathin already has it. It could be a reminder, a comedic juxtaposition with the rest of the title and contents of the video. Hell, it could be Murderbot's idea of an in-joke at this point. I just don't know. But when I think of this passage, I think of the part soon after, where Murderbot grudgingly appreciates Gurathin giving the hostage negotiator such a cold shoulder that even it's impressed. I think of it interrupting Gurathin viewing the recording because the rep has arrived. I think of Gurathin, wrist-deep in manual controls (and hey, when they discussed the humans' luggage, Gurathin's mention was his specialized toolkit).

I don't know. There's a lot there. Gurathin is, ever more obvious on each reread, just Murderbot: Human Edition, and Murderbot absolutely refuses to acknowledge this in any form, and it will still take care of him.