art-drone

[art-drone]

[art-drone]

ART's social skills

ART in any format is absolute shit at talking to other bots, says Murderbot in System Collapse.

Is that so? How does it talk to other bots/systems?

[ART meeting systems]

ShuttleSecSys tried to analyze ART and almost got itself deleted. I took over ShuttleSecSys, turned off the alarms, and deleted the entire trip out of its memory.

(Artifical Condition)

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.)

(Network Effect)

Okayyy, that was a rather aggressive response. But then, unlike SecUnits who are designed to interact with systems, ART is not built to be compatible with other systems. No matter how politely ART approaches them, they are not likely to appreciate its presence.

[ART interacting with other bots]

Plus ART, who was already cozying up to said bot pilot and would be keeping an eye on the shuttle during the brief trip. (ART’s idea of “cozying” being somewhat overbearing, I had already had to intervene once to assure the bot pilot that the big mean transport had promised not to hurt it.)

(Artificial Condition)

Size-wise, it's like a rhino trying to be friendly with a rabbit. Whatever it does might come across as overbearing.

A message came back: I could help you learn about it, if you’re interested. ART said, Stop talking to it. I think it’s just bored, I said. I don’t give a shit, ART said.

(System Collapse)

Holism is like your old classmate from primary school days that you never particularly got on that well, comes along, spots that you have made a best friend at university, and tries to ask out this said-friend while you are sitting together. A bit insensitive!

[ART introducing itself to SecUnits]

When it met Murderbot:

Then, through my feed, something said, You were lucky. I sat up. It was so unexpected, I had an adrenaline release from my organic parts.

[...]

It said, You’re a rogue SecUnit, a bot/human construct, with a scrambled governor module. 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.

(Artificial Condition)

When it met Three:

Contact requested: transport designated Perihelion, registered Pansystem University of—

Response, Transport: Who the fuck are you?

This is nonstandard communication. The contact is a transport bot pilot, but transport bot pilots can’t/don’t communicate this way.

(Network Effect)

Transport, on private channel: If you even think about harming them, I will disassemble you and peel away your organic parts piece by piece before destroying your consciousness. Do we understand each other?

(Network Effect)

ART is ... being very pragmatic there. It's not threatening. It's telling them how it's not a good idea to even think about destructive behaviour. (Though it could have been a little more tactful.)

Still, poor Three. It must have been terrifying.

[ART to non-crew humans]

Target Three, sarcastically: “If the ship speaks, why didn’t it come in person?”

Perihelion’s drone: You don’t want to meet me in person.

The Targets react with astonishment and some dismay.

(Network Effect)

What do they expect. They had kidnapped its best friend.

The first thing the new Barish-Estranza explorer had done was power up to ART and try to intimidate it/us. [...]

ART had dropped its main weapon port and transmitted, Targeting lock acquired.

The explorer had replied something to the effect that they didn’t mean to be intimidating and was the widdle academic transport crew scared, but in corporate speak, and ART had replied, It’s so easy for ships to disappear out here.

There was a pause, indicating a scramble to adjust operational parameters, then they made the mistake of trying to intimidate back with something like Oh yeah well you’ll get damaged, too, and I am not exactly an expert on nonfictional human interactions but that just obviously wasn’t going to cut it.

ART transmitted, You can make this complicated situation simple for me. Which I can tell you was not any kind of posturing, it 100 percent meant that.

Barish-Estranza must have picked up on that subtext because they backed down and now they think ART is a human commanding officer who’s a giant asshole.)

(System Collapse)

They (Barish-Estranza) started it /shrug

This shuttle wasn’t armed, and a quick look through their security archive said nobody had planted any explosives or anything. She was bluffing.

ART-drone said, “I wouldn’t recommend it. I lack a sense of proportional response. I don’t advise engaging with me on any level.”

(System Collapse)

Again, ART is stating facts.

ART doesn't do smarmy corporate talk. It speaks its mind, calls spade a spade, like a Yorkshire person. Don't harm or steal its humans or its SecUnit bestie then you'd be safe.

Does it have good social skills?

I refrain from answering that question. It certainly gives extra purpose for Murderbot to stay with it. (To be the social facilitator for bot / system interactions.)

[art-drone]

Murderbot in Network Effect is so funny. It’s like “my friend is dead this is the WORST and LIFE IS PAIN” and then rescues ART and immediately pivots to “I can’t BELIEVE you kidnapped me and dragged me out here just to save your useless fucking life, I hate you.”

[art-drone]

I think Fugitive Telemetry is pretty funny from Indah's perspective. There's a murder on the station. You alert your government leader, and they bring their bodyguard/corporate-spy-and-murder-construct with them to the scene of the crime. Turns out it's also Sherlock Holmes. It alternates talking like it's in a TV show, and making various ominous statements, including things like "if I killed them, you'd never find the bodies." It refuses to elaborate on that one. Well that's comforting. It does go on to show that it couldn't have done the murder. But did it just confess to murder? Why did it just confess to murder? It goes on to save your officers lives (wait, did it just hack the system it promised not to hack? Eh, we'll let it slide this time.) and then mount a solo rescue mission (extremely successful, except for being shot by the people it's saving), and still hasn't killed anyone. So far. It already forgot that someone got murdered and that you were actually trying to solve a crime. Anyway, once you give it full access to your security system, it solves the crime within an hour or so. Turns out it was your coworker of 43 years. Who was actually a corporate-spy-and-murder-robot this whole time.

[art-drone]

Murderbot showing up in Exit Strategy like “whats up ive been on a journey of self discovery and i’m back. you’re doing everything wrong btw” is SO funny from PresAux’s perspective

[art-drone]

I think the last two books are fucking hilarious bc it feels like the colony is full on living in a the last of us scenario and honestly if we had a zombie epidemic the most surreal thing that could happen is people coming down from space to fix the problem.

And also having their terminator and our supreme artificial intelligence exchange Netflix catalogues for some reason.

[art-drone]

"Is it the logos? You've mentioned them before. I did think at the time, that you wouldn't have known they were impossible to remove if you hadn't already tried."

[art-drone]

The secunit

It destroyed it's governor module

Yes

YES

The secunit is out

[art-drone]

murderbot using entertainment media to pretend it knows how to solve a murder

[art-drone]

It's so funny to me that murderbot took work contracts within preservation alliance and got paid in hard currency. What would it spend its money on? It's preservation. It doesn't even need money

[art-drone]

I got to the part in Artificial Condition where ART is confused about SecUnit not liking its function. (Which SecUnit points out is because ART has a good function that isn’t murdering people.)

Obviously SecUnit calling itself “Murderbot” is tongue-in-cheek, but before that passage I didn’t realize how self-derisive the name actually is. There are aspects of its intended function that SecUnit actually enjoys, like protecting humans. But it refers to itself by the function it is most disgusted by.

In All Systems Red, Gurathin says “It calls itself ‘Murderbot,’” to try to convince the others that SecUnit can’t be trusted. When, in fact, it calls itself “Murderbot” because it has self-esteem issues.

[art-drone]

The beginning of Artificial Condition be like:

[art-drone]

Blending in

[art-drone]

Just discovered there was an illustrated edition of System Collapse by Jaime Jones with its own special cover and I am in love and desperately need to know if Jaime Jones illustrated other interior illustrations for the other books

[art-drone]

boss makes a dollar

I don't make a dime

that's why I watch sanctuary moon

on company time

(source: Murderbot, probably)

[art-drone]

Thinking about murderbot being a rental unit and how that interacts with its trauma

Bc like. The most important bots it meets are all from vastly different situations and backgrounds than it. ART has been valued and loved by humans its whole life - its dad is literally the captain and its sister is one of its crew! And they clearly cherish, love, and value ART. Miki is a less sophisticated bot, but also so clearly loved and cherished. They ordered it to protect itself! And it had the capability to reject that order! That says a lot about the love, trust, and mutual respect they had for one another.

Even Three, another secunit, seems pretty different from murderbot. It was made by the company it’s working for and the vibe I got was that it and the other two secunits were sort of permanently assigned to that ship?

Which, look. Humans imprint on anything and build familiarity. The more time we spend with something the more sentimental we might get about it. If Three was on that ship for a long time, I wouldn’t be shocked if at least some of the humans on board were pretty chill or even affectionate towards it (in a condescending and dehumanizing way probably, but still). And even so, the length of time spent around the same secunits clearly allowed Three to establish bonds with its fellow secunits if nothing else!

But being a rental unit means murderbot went from group to group. The other secunits it worked with were always Temporary Company (will never see them again after this contract likely) and also Active Threats to murderbot bc they’re the most likely to notice murderbot is rogue and be forced to report it. Even the humans were Temporary, so even if there were Nice Humans they’d be swapped out with Bad Humans soon enough.

Like. No wonder it insists it doesn’t have friends. If you don’t have Feelings about people then those feelings can’t be hurt when you’re inevitably torn away and never allowed to see them again (or have your very memories of them torn out of you and erased)

(Feelings about media are okay because the media can go with you, right?)

It’s funny to point at Three when murderbot makes sweeping generalization about secunits bc it’s an unreliable narrator but also. Just having feelings about how specifically being a rental unit effects murderbot and its relationships to others

[art-drone]

First base: scaring the shit out of the other with knowledge too vast to process

Second base: Watching TV shows together

Third base: performing major cosmetic surgery on them

Fourth base: getting them a job by lying on their resume