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murderbotwritingprompts · 2 years ago

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"Quarentine", a Murderbot Diaries fic.

There's no spoilers, because, like all my other Murderbot fics, all of this, every single speck of it, is made the fuck up. Because there's not actually anything about the plot of The Murderbot Diaries I'd want to change, so all my fics will instead just be adding more stories to the universe.

14,011 words.

summary from FF.net which you can also read it on if you really want.

Murderbot, other robots, and some augmented humans on Preservation are forced to quarentine after a new computer virus is released in an attempted attack on the Company, which unfortunately does more harm to people with Company augments than the coropration itself. Unfortunately, Preservation isn't the utopia it's cracked up to be, and Murderbot can't trust the medics to help.

Fanfiction.net link: "https://www.fanfiction.net/s/14201142/1/Quarentine"

Pillowfort link: "https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/3200886"

Archived read-more for this post: "https://web.archive.org/web/20230220220455/https://rjalker.tumblr.com/post/709813260171591680/quarentine-a-murderbot-diaries-fic"

I only recommend reading it on fanfiction.net if you want to leave an anonymous review.

Several words have been replaced or had their spellings changed to be more friendly to screenreaders and other text-to-speech programs.

Murderbot sat on one of the fancy carved desks in the remotest section of the office building that had been cordoned off for the quarantine.

All the humans except for the augmented humans who were also in quarantine were outside the building entirely, with many sealed pressure doors between the quarantine zone and the outer doors, so there was less chance of any disastrous escapes.

Lots of security measures had been put into place to prevent Murderbot especially from escaping, since it would be able to get past measures that would work for humans (since, for example, it could jump over barriers that would stop all but the most creative humans), but, unfortunately, it didn't know how well those measures would actually be able to hold up if its infection reached the point where the virus sent it into a frenzy.

Murderbot had chosen one of the rooms away from the majority of the other people in quarantine, but they were all working with the buddy system, and it wasn't exempt just because it was a SecurityUnit (despite its ample protests), so Jayla was there too, as its officially registered quarantine buddy. (The buddies had to be officially registered, otherwise the humans would just wander off on their own and pass out somewhere with no one to help. All buddy groups had been given naturally forming crystal bracelets that, if kept far enough away from their partner stone for too long, would start creating some sort of wave thing Murderbot didn't understand or care enough about to learn, that would alert the medics outside that someone was in danger.

The only similarities it had to a governer module was that it reacted to distance. It didn't cause pain, it wouldn't kill you, it wouldn't do anything to make you uncomfortable. But Murderbot still felt viscerally uncomfortable at even the idea of it, and the stress of having to wear it was taking its toll on its already stressed systems.

The fact that Jayla was nice, and the bracelet would protect Jayla too wasn't actually any consolation at all. The whole point of its governer module had been to protect humans. Besides, Murderbot wasn't going to be irresponsible enough to wander off by itself or let Jayla do so.

The fact that it was being forced to wear the bracelet was seriously making it regret the decision to visit Preservation again. It was half convinced the whole idea had been set up just to torment it with memories of having a governer module. The bigoted humans in charge of the government here hadn't magically become any more welcoming to constructs since the last time it'd been here.)

Murderbot had picked Jayla to be its enforced because Jayla was one of the least annoying humans it had met since coming to Preservation. Out of all current possibilities for enforced buddies, Jayla was the least horrible choice. Not that that was saying much considering the rest of the infected humans were either strangers or confirmed to be obnoxious, but still. It was a compliment.

For one thing, Jayla was also autistic, A-gender and aro-ace, so that made Jayla the first person Murderbot had ever shared those things with in any way, let alone sharing multiple things at once.

Jayla also corrected anyone who misgendered Murderbot if it didn't beat Jayla to it, even when it wasn't in the room to be insulted. (It knew about the instances where Jayla had corrected someone without Murderbot actually being there thanks to the network of cameras and drones it had set up all over the first Preservation chapter of the Construct, Bot, and Augmented Alliance headquarters when it was built. (There were also other, smaller chapters scattered around Preservation, each one designated by a number indicating when it had been founded, but this one was the biggest one)

The fact that people on Preservation misgendered it at all was a testament to how shitty a lot of the people here were despite their advertisements about how Progressive and Awesome they were, considering it listed its pronouns in its (also enforced and mandatory, but only for Murderbot itself this time, not the entire population, because fuck Preservation's shitty fucking bigoted government. They claimed Preservation was a place where bots could be free, but still kept them enslaved and owned by humans. They claimed they didn't discriminate against anyone, then forced Murderbot to tell everyone who looked at its feed bio that it was a SecurityUnit and they'd better fucking watch out in case it went on a random killing spree for no fucking reason.

Begin sarcasm: oh, but hey, at least it was better than being forcibly isolated on an uninhabited part of the planet surrounded by water so it couldn't escape or leave or hurt anyone, right? /End sarcasm.)

Anyways there was no fucking excuse for people to misgender it, because it listed its pronouns in its fucking government-enforced feed bio, and it also verbally told people what its pronouns were when it met strangers it intended to speak to for more than two seconds, in case they didn't have access to the feed. Not to mention that, thanks so much to Preservation's robot hating government, everyone on Preservation knew who it was and what it looked like. They knew what its fucking pronouns were.

But shitty bigoted humans were gonna keep being shitty bigoted humans as long as they thought they could get away with it, so even though literally everyone, including new arrivals thanks to the fucking public service announcements Preservation ran in the ports. So despite the fact that literally everyone knew for a fact that its pronouns were it-its, many of the humans still chose to misgender it, and even after they were corrected, most of the time they just doubled down and continued to misgender it, claiming they knew better than it what was good for it, or that it wasn't a real person, so they didn't need to respect its pronouns, and any number of other bullshit “justifications”.

Any bigoted fucking argument you can think of, and the humans of Preservation levied it against Murderbot to try and justify not using its correct pronouns.

Here were just a few examples of the bullshit Murderbot had to put up with:

-Only humans could be misgendered, so there was nothing wrong with humans assigning it whatever pronouns and gender they thought fit it best.

-If it was really a real, thinking person, then it should use pronouns other than it-its. it-its was for objects, not people, and using it-its pronouns was just giving people an excuse to hatecrime it. If it really was a person, then it had to change its pronouns if it wanted to be treated with respect.

-Using it-its pronouns was dehumanizing, why was it dehumanizing itself? It should use she/her or he/him or they/them! Learn to stop hating itself! Wait, what? It wasn't human and so dehumanization meant nothing? Its pronouns had been chosen specifically to declare that it wasn't human?

No, no, it was clearly a person, so that meant it was human, so that meant it couldn't use it-its pronouns! It would pick new pronouns once it stopped hating itself so much!! It was just as human as they were, it had to stop denying that if it wanted to be happy/treated as an equal! Bots didn't deserve equal rights because they weren't human.

If Murderbot wanted equal rights, it had to start identifying as human, and had to stop using it-its pronouns. Because the only people who deserved rights were those who were indistinguishable from those who already had rights.

If it wanted to be treated like a person, it had to assimilate and leave behind everything that made it different.

-it-its pronouns just made them too uncomfortable, so they refused to use them for Murderbot. Despite the fact that they had no problem calling anything else “it”, including other robots.

And so much more. You wouldn't believe half the shit these people say to defend their blatant bigotry and refusal to respect people's pronouns. It's like they think not being from the Corporation Rim automatically makes them a good person, so they don't have to actually do anything to be a good person.

It's fucking absurd and infuriating, and one of the reasons Murderbot only very rarely visited Preservation space. It got enough shit in the places that openly despised its existence, putting up with the same bullshit, only from people who pretended to care, was in many ways even worse. At least when the Corporation Rim was treating it like a vicious animal that had to be kept locked up for everyone's safety, they weren't being patronizing and expecting it to grovel in endless gratitude for saying they cared about the rights of robots while continuing to oppress them.

Actually, yeah, now that it thought about it, it was definitely worse. No one in the Corporation Rim had ever objectified and misgendered it and then demanded it thank them and be their “friend” (read: pet robot) so they could show off how progressive and amazing they were for tolerating its existence.

Anyfuckingways, to get back to the actual story of what had happened to put them all in quarantine in the first place, Murderbot had been infected by this stupid fucking virus because it was a construct, and hadn't been able to shut down its systems in time. Jayla had been infected because Jayla was disabled, and needed cybernetic augments to stop from being in constant pain.

Unfortunately, Jayla's augments had been one of the models that, it turns out, this virus had been created to target.

Apparently, someone out there had a grudge against the Company, but rather than take that out on the Company, they'd decided to make their grudge the problem of everyone who'd ever gotten augments from the Company. Which included Murderbot, whose whole body had been built by the Company, organic and mechanic parts alike.

(Begin sarcasm: Because, you know, nothing said, 'I'm a good person' like punishing other victims of Corporate greed instead of doing anything to actually hurt those in charge of the corporation you hated in the first place. End sarcasm.)

So now here Jayla and Murderbot both were, stuck in quarantine, at the start of day 8 by Preservation standard time.

Jayla had had to turn off Jayla's augments in order to stop them from causing more infections and to stop them from taking over Jayla's organic systems, which the virus just sent haywire because it didn't know what to do with them.

So now Jayla's ability to walk and move in certain ways was severely reduced, because now Jayla did not have Jayla's augments to compensate for, correct, and provide pain relief for Jayla's joint hypermobility and other chronic health problems.

A stockpile of pain medications and other first aid items had been supplied, and were pretty efficient, but taking medicine every few hours was never going to be as efficient and helpful as actually having working augments.

As for Murderbot, it had been forced to shut down and compartmentalize more than half of its functions until it had only the smallest usable space left.

This meant it couldn't watch its media unless it watched a physical copy (Which didn't exist for most of its favorite shows, because they didn't exist outside the Corporation Rim, and it'd never thought to fucking make physical copies before because it'd though the only way it would lose access to its digital storage was if it was literally dead) on the viewing screen, but it didn't even want to do that with the movies that were available in physical form, because it had to control the media with a slow as shit remote, and it couldn't pause and rewind and freeze frame whenever it wanted to like it always had been able to do when it was functioning properly.

Not to mention it couldn't even see half the things that were happening, to watch in the first place, and with so many of its functions shut down, it couldn't even remember the scenes to even place the dialogue to.

On top of that, it couldn't control any drones, it couldn't look through any cameras or microphones or chemical sensors, it couldn't use the feed, it couldn't hack anything, and it barely had the energy or space to think.

But that was the preferable alternative to going haywire and assaulting every computer system, bot, construct, or augmented human it could find before dropping dead from system overload.

For augmented humans, the virus (which some asshole abled humans wanted to call the CBAH virus just because they couldn't stop purposefully being bigots for five fucking seconds) caused tremors at first, and, if the infected augment wasn't removed or shut down in time, it would progress to seizures and full cardiac arrest in the worst case scenario.

For robots, stage one was the virus spreading to as many internal systems as it could. Stage two was sending the infected robot into an uncontrollable frenzy, with the only goal being to access (which meant, in most cases, physically assault) as many other robot systems as possible. Then you'd collapse and probably die from your systems being overloaded from being used in ways they weren't meant to be used.

Murderbot had actually been infected by Jayla, when it had caught Jayla as Jayla started to fall from the sudden violent tremors in Jayla's legs, before anyone had known anything about a contagious virus loose on the station.

It didn't blame Jayla. Jayla hadn't had any way of knowing Jayla was infected, or that Jayla could transmit it to Murderbot.

No, Murderbot didn't blame Jayla.

It blamed itself. And it was really fucking annoying.

It didn't have the processing ability to watch its favorite shows or read any of its favorite books, but apparently, that just gave its anxiety and depression more room to play in the remaining space. It kept imagining all the things it should have done to avoid this whole situation, starting with relatively reasonable, but becoming more absurd and unfair the longer it thought about it.

Murderbot knew it wasn't its fault it had been infected, but its stupid brain just continued to insist otherwise, no matter how much logic it threw at it.

Many of its favorite characters had gone through situations like this where they blamed themselves for things out of their control, so Murderbot knew how this worked in theory. It knew it shouldn't be blaming itself. It knew it was blaming itself so that it could feel like it had control over an uncontrollable situation. It knew it just needed to accept the fact that no one, not even it, could have seen this disaster coming, and that it shouldn't blame itself, but whoever has caused all of this in the first place.

Yes.

It shouldn't blame itself. There was no point, and it was only going to upset itself further.

…

See, it knew these facts, and it knew how this process was supposed to work in theory, but none of the facts changed the other fact that its brain absolutely refused to accept these facts and logic.

Murderbot didn't currently have access to its risk assessment or any actually helpful programs, but it was pretty certain even the broken version of its risk assessment would tell it there was nothing it could have done to predict or prevent this current disaster.

But knowing the facts didn't stop its feelings from making themselves known, dragging it down with guilt and self-reproach and all sort of obnoxious things.

And it couldn't even watch The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon to help itself feel better.

So this was the start of day 8 of one of the worst times of Murderbot's life since the survey where it had met Mensah and the rest of the PreservationAux team. Every other time something absurdly horrible had happened, it had at least had access to all its systems and wasn't practically helpless. It couldn't even do anything to help kill the virus. It had to rely on the shitty fucking humans who ran Preservation space.

It couldn't watch TV, not the way it wanted to. And though old fashioned paper books had been supplied, it couldn't read those either. The text was small, way too fucking small for its eyes to process in their currents states, and it couldn't use any systems besides the bare minimums required for its eyes to ““function”” to make it any clearer. Even if it held the book up straight in front of its eyes, all it saw was a blurry mess of light brown and smudges of grey.

And writing? Out of the fucking question. It couldn't use any computer or its own systems, and it didn't know how to handwrite. It had never had to, especially because the writing tools used on Preservation were different from the ones popularly used in the Corporation Rim, so it couldn't even draw on any fuzzy memories of shows or movies to try and figure it out.

And there was no fucking way it was asking anyone to teach it how to write, not even Jayla, as much as it like Jayla. And even if it knew how, it wouldn't be able to see what it wrote to fix any mistakes, and it'd probably kill its wrist just trying, too.

Watching media was out. Reading was out. Writing was out. The only thing that was left was listening to audio-based media, but it was so used to multitasking, that even when it put on one of its favorite audiodramas produced on Preservation, it found it couldn't even keep its attention on what was happening for more than a few seconds at a time, and had to keep rewinding to hear what had just been said. It just couldn't focus if it wasn't also doing something else. It was maddening.

Jayla had offered to read to it the day before, but that venture came to an end before the first chapter of The Storied History of the Ivory Moon Court was even done, because the small size of the text was giving Jayla a headache, too.

The pages were made of plain, plant-based paper and ink, with no backlit screen or feed interface to make the text easier to read.

The humans outside were going to print out more copies of The Storied History of the Ivory Moon Court with larger text, but that was going to take a couple of days, and Murderbot didn't want to think about being in quarantine for that much longer in the first place.

There were some books with larger text, but Murderbot had no interest in learning about plants, so it had left Jayla to Jayla's own devices - - reading up on how to identify the Preservation pawpaw tree, which grew on the largest continent on the planet around many of the major cities. (The exact opposite side of the planet, actually, from where Preservation's government had wanted to confine Murderbot when it first arrived in the midst of a medical crisis)

(Jayla explained that the Preservation pawpaw tree wasn't actually a “tree” like the trees had been on ancient Earth, it was just called that because it grew a hard stem and got really tall. A lot of species on Preservation were called trees for the same reason, even though most of them were far removed from anything you'd see in historical documentaries about Earth.)

Those events had been the day before, and the long, painfully boring night had been passed with Murderbot simply trying to avoid going mad with the inactivity. Jayla had tried staying up to keep it company the first few days, but Murderbot had put its foot down (metaphorically, not literally) and insisted Jayla needed to get the required amount of sleep. Jayla had protested, but had eventually fallen asleep anyways, unable to push Jayla's already stressed body even further, despite Jayla's best attempts otherwise.

The only good thing was that last night, Murderbot had finally figured out how to safely put itself in a pesudo-low power setting without actually having access to its power regulators. Instead of having to spend over eight hours sitting in silence in the dark, it'd managed to cut that down to half, spending the other half of the time only semi conscious and mostly lost in a maze of random images and memories and weird half-formed thoughts.

If Murderbot didn't know any better, it would have thought it'd managed to sleep, but it was pretty sure that was impossible. But it also didn't want to ask a human what sleeping was like. Humans did not need to know that it could possibly maybe sleep. It just knew they'd try to take advantage of that in some way. It trusted Jayla not to do anything, but it didn't trust everyone Jayla trusted, let alone trust who those people trusted. (And so on and so forth.)

(It was actually a miracle that no one outside the PreservationAux team seemed to know Murderbot's name, considering however-many humans had all learned it, including Gurathin (Who was still an asshole). If Dr. Mensah's family's children were to be believed, they didn't know its name either. Which was why Tara, one of the cousins, kept trying to guess it by spouting off every name ve'd learned since last seeing it.)

This morning, Murderbot was sitting on a desk, leaning back against the wall, watching carefully as Jayla demonstrated the proper technique to spinning yarn.

Yesterday, Jayla had worn a mostly yellow and white outfit, and today Jayla was wearing a long dress with a base the same light purple as Jayla's hijab, but with extra chevron-shaped stripes in red, orange, and brown. The brown stripes had been color-picked from Jayla's skin, so they were very dark brown, and warm in saturation.

Murderbot was still weirded out by the fact that, for the most part, people on Preservation changed their clothes every single day. Back in the Corporation Rim, the only people who could afford to do that were high-ranking company executives. The closest normal people got to that kind of luxury was wearing reversible clothes that had different colors or patterns on the inside than the outside, so each morning the humans would flip them around to at least pretend they could afford more than a single set of clothes.

Jayla was sitting with Jayla's legs hanging off the side of the desk, turned sideways to Murderbot, who was sitting with its knees folded under it so it could lean forward to watch.

Murderbot was wearing the same clothes it'd worn since the quarantine had started. It just didn't have the energy or enough fucks left to give about picking out whole new outfits for the humans outside to send in for it every single day, for no purpose but to seem more “presentable” to the humans. The inside of the building was climate controlled, so it wasn't like Murderbot needed to sweat to control its core temperature, and even if it had needed to, constructs didn't have the same pheromones humans did, so it wouldn't exactly smell the way humans did.

(There were probably a few things more useless than a murderbot who got stinky and gross when it got hot, but Murderbot couldn't currently think of any)

Murderbot's quarantine outfit consisted of a matching sky blue and black-striped headscarf and facemask, a black and dark blue sweatshirt, a long black skirt, black cargo pants with lots of pockets, its newest pair of Sanctuary Moon themed boots, and its reflective metal blue eyeguard.

The mask didn't actually do anything to prevent the spread of this still-unnamed virus, it was just to make sure no one could see Murderbot's face unless it let them, and the same with its eyeguard, which unfortunately hadn't been designed to help its eyesight.

Still, even with the mask and eyeguard, it didn't exactly enjoy having to put its face so close to Jayla, but unlike some people, it did actually trust Jayla not to be a creep or anything. And with its vision so blurry right now, there was no other way for it to watch what Jayla was doing with Jayla's hands.

For this demonstration, Jayla would be spinning fur collected from a species of small, omnivorous, ground-dwelling animal that was selectively bred (But not actually domesticated yet, apparently, because apparently those weren't the same thing) by the people of Preservation to have different coat colors and different coat lengths.

These animals (Or “animals”, apparently?) were called nunami, and the only reason they were allowed on Preservation's surface was because they were actually native to the planet.

Preservation had a very strict policy about not allowing non-native species onto planets unless they were already dead, and usually dead and already cooked, to kill any surviving bacteria or parasites. And there were serious limitations even after that on what could be imported, since some species that were eaten could still reproduce after you cooked them.

Some of them were banned because they got even better at reproducing after they were cooked. (No, Murderbot didn't understand how that worked, either)

That was why nunam fur and dagro (the final product of nunam fur after it was spun or woven or whatever) was so popular on Preservation over other fibers they imported. These people especially hated synthetic fibers, even though they were more uniform and easier to work with.

Unlike synthetic fibers that could just come out of a recycler all ready for use, spinning nunam fur into dagro required that it be cleaned multiple times, then dried, then brushed so all the fibers were facing the same direction, before you could even think of spinning it. And this was just to turn it into yarn, after it was yarn you had to make it into things you could actually wear, like clothes. And that took a long time.

Fortunately, Jayla and Murderbot didn't have to worry about processing the fur before they could turn it into yarn, because the people who were sending the stuff in to them had already taken care of all of that beforehand. Mostly because they hadn't been aware that the material would be partly going to Murderbot. One (1) of the humans outside was actually decent, so made sure that all the requests (barring those for personal items) were kept anonymous so no one could decide oh so conveniently that actually, none of this thing that would help Murderbot in particular could be found. Begin sarcasm: How specific and inconvenient. End sarcasm.

Jayla had Jayla's own drop spindle, which someone had retrieved from Jayla's house when Jayla had asked for it. The drop spindle was how the processed nunam fur was turned into into dagro yarn.

The drop spindle was made out of natural carved wood, (“wood”, in quotation marks) and Jayla explained when showing Murderbot the spindle, that, like with the “trees” of Preservation, it wasn't really anything they would have called wood back on Earth, but it was called that on Preservation for sake of ease, because it came from a quote-unquote, “tree”. This quote-unquote “wood” had apparently been made from the wood of the Preservation pawpaw tree, which Jayla was really excited to learn more about.

(Apparently, the fruit from the trees tasted really good, not that Murderbot would know, not having any ability to eat. The fruit was popular, but very hard to transport because it was so fragile. You'd have to take a shuttle to the part of the planet where the trees grew while the fruit was in season if you even wanted a chance to try it.)

Despite the fact that Murderbot couldn't see spinning yarn would be a useful skill for it to have, there was nothing to watch and nothing to read, and no one on Preservation had physical copies of any of its favorite songs, so Murderbot figured that learning how to spin yarn would at least be a productive use of its time.

(Yeah, Murderbot really couldn't see how this skill would be actually useful, but Jayla really enjoyed teaching and talking about it, and Murderbot liked Jayla. Plus, it beat being bored to death.)

Jayla held the spindle up for Murderbot to examine, and offered to let it hold it, but Murderbot declined. The spindle was probably covered in human oils and stuff from being handled so often, and Murderbot didn't feel like dealing with that on its hands right now. It would probably spontaneously combust if it had to add another level of discomfort to this situation.

Jayla didn't get offended by it turning down the offer of holding the spindle, thankfully. It was surprised that it wasn't surprised by this. Jayla really was nice.

Instead, Jayla showed the spindle off, turning it at different angles so Murderbot could see the intricate, colorful orange, yellow, white, and blue decorative carvings and paint all over it, protected from wear by a thick layer of clear resin that gave it a shiny finish.

Despite the complexity of the designs, the main part of the spindle was a simple enough rod, straight up and down, about the length of Jayla's forearm. There was a circular wheel of more “wood” near the top, with notches carved into the sides.

The disk, Jayla explained, was to help the spindle spin longer, and add balance so it wouldn't tilt every which way while it was spinning.

The purpose of spinning in the first place, then, was used to create tension and pull and twist the fibers out of the roving and form a continuous string. After it was spun into string, the twist would be set so it wouldn't just unravel as soon as the tension was released. But Jayla would explain that part once they actually got that far.

All of this Jayla explained cheerfully, and Murderbot listened along intently, surprised it was able to understand most of what Jayla was saying. Murderbot had seen more than a few characters spinning yarn in the shows it'd watched, and a few mentioned it off-handedly in books, but it had never understood why it worked. Now it did.

“Alrightyo,” Jayla finally said once that explanation was done, and it was time for the proper demonstration, “So now that we've got the roving ready - - that's the wool, remember? - - we place a little bit of it on the notch at the top here so it catches, then once that's ready, we spin it.”

Jayla demonstrated attaching the fur - - dyed bright red - - to the hook at the top of the disk, and also demonstrated pushing the disk of the spindle against one thigh like a wheel to get the whole thing spinning, and Murderbot watched carefully.

It had to watch carefully, or it'd miss everything. It couldn't rewind or pause it optical views right now like it normally could. It wasn't even recording anything. It was relying entirely on the organic parts of its brain. Whether or not it would even be able to remember anything happening right now once this was over was anyone's guess.

If it got distracted and missed part of the instructions, there would be no do-over unless Jayla was nice enough to show it again. If Murderbot felt like admitting it had missed it. Which it probably wouldn't.

Fortunately, Jayla was nice, and demonstrated the technique multiple times without making a big deal of it or even asking, before picking up a wooden case, and offering it to Murderbot, with a happy, “Here you go! I got this one for you so you can have your own to practice with.”

The box at least was new, and very shiny, with a crescent moon engraved on the top. Murderbot reached out and took it, careful not to lets its fingers touch Jayla's. Fortunately, Jayla was aware of its touch aversion, and kept Jayla's hand holding the far end of the box, not trying to touch.

Inside the case, to Murderbot's immense surprise (and upon further consideration, the fact that it was surprised really showed how debilitated it was at the moment if it hadn't been able to see this coming, with the way humans of Preservation had such a propensity for gift giving) was another spindle.

This one was just as colorful as the first one, but in a set of very familiar colors: black, navy, sky blue, pale green, and yellow. The colors of the A-gender, aro-ace, and it-its pride flag.

Murderbot didn't know what to say. Its throat felt tight, so it wasn't even sure it would have been able to speak if it knew what to say.

This was the part where it was supposed to say, “thank you”, but it couldn't bring itself to actually say those words.

So Murderbot just accepted the gift silently, carefully taking the spindle out of the case to look at it. The design was similar to the one on Jayla's, but different too, not following the exact same pattern.

“They're all individually hand-made and hand-painted.” Jayla said, as though sensing Murderbot's thoughts.

So they were made by humans, rather than being printed out. Which meant each one would be different, because humans couldn't make things exactly the same every time. People on Preservation thought this was charming.

(And, okay, maybe Murderbot was starting to see where people on Preservation were coming from. It was a little bit charming.)

So, now armed with its very own spindle, it was then Murderbot's turn to pick up a section of the prepared fur - - roving - - and attach it to the hook.

It accomplished this part with minimum failures.

It also managed to get it spinning on the first try.

And to Murderbot's shock, it continued to not fail when it started “drafting” the clumped, brushed fur, stretching out small sections at a time so they'd spin thinner threads instead of being a big thick clump.

Jayla helped by repeating the instructions over again as Murderbot followed them, without prompting. It was very helpful.

Murderbot was just about to start a second, much more confidant spin, when several humans noisily began to approach the door leading to their room, their footsteps stomping and loud on the stairs at the end of the hall announcing their arrival, and growing only louder as they got closer, and finally pushed their way through the doorway on the far side of the room.

Jayla looked over in alarm, and so did Murderbot, because it had no other way of seeing who it was without its drones or any cameras accessible.

Unfortunately, without its visual enhancers, not only could Murderbot not pause or rewind anything, it also couldn't see that far away. Everything beyond the reach of its elbow was blurry.

This was one of the reasons Murderbot had chosen to stay as far away from everyone else during quarantine as it could.

Not being able to see what non-trusted humans were doing when they were more than three feet away (and that was really pushing it, at that point it still couldn't see any helpful details) did nothing but ratchet up its already excruciating levels of anxiety and paranoia, especially because it couldn't hear what they were all saying, either, if they were far enough away.

It couldn't tune, pause, or rewind its auditory sensors without activating more processing space, which would give the virus an opportunity to take control, and Murderbot didn't know if it would be able to regain control if that happened.

So it wasn't until Jayla growled, “Levi, can you please just fuck off? We came here to avoid people like you. Leave us alone.” that Murderbot had any hint about who these new humans were, besides the obvious fact that they were trouble.

(It was a possibility that they were stomping because they were excited in a happy way, but during quarentine? Purposefully seeking out Murderbot and Jayla? Not likely. Jayla didn't have any friends among the other humans in quarentine, and Murderbot didn't have any human friends besides Jayla that were on the station, let alone in quarentine.)

Murderbot did its best to stare in the direction of the Hostile Humans, but still couldn't make out anything but vague smudges of color against the orange walls, even when the Hostile Humans had walked (now that they were in the room, they were moving much more slowly and quietly, almost like they were trying to show off or stalking Murderbot and Jayla like predatory animals) more than halfway across the room.

Every cell in Murderbot's body was itching to leap to its feet and get in between the Hostile Humans and Jayla, but along with everything else right now, it literally could not afford to expend the amount of energy that would be required to jump to its feet and start beating the shit out of four(? Five? It honestly couldn't tell) asshole humans. It didn't even think it could manage to unbend its legs in any kind of quick way now that it'd been sitting like this for a while.

With its mechanical parts running on their absolute minimum requirements, with any non-necessities powered down completely, there wasn't enough energy left to produce any of the raw materials it needed to keep its organic parts functioning. It was only safe to run the needed processes for half an hour each day, which gave its organic parts just enough to keep going until the next day.

This was as far from the ideal as it was possible to get, and Murderbot wouldn't be able to keep it up for long. Its organic parts were quite literally being starved of nutrients. Every day this went on, the harder it became to restart the power generation process. Sometimes it wondered if this was really better than letting the virus overtake its systems.

Normally, with all its systems functioning properly, there was an almost perfect equilibrium between the energy its organic parts gave and took, and the energy its mechanical parts gave and took. This equilibrium was only thrown off by stress, or injury.

Not now. Now, its organic parts had to pull the whole load by themselves, and they were struggling under the weight. Murderbot hadn't been designed for its organic parts to work all by themselves.

Of the slowly approaching Hostile Humans, Murderbot could only assume it was “Levi” that gave the short, unfriendly laugh that followed Jayla's demand. Murderbot couldn't even see clearly enough to see if any of the vague brown and tan blurs had mouths to open and speak with. It had to assume they did, because that was the only thing that made sense.

One of the hostile humans spoke then, saying in what Murderbot recognized as a condescending tone, “What, is that how they teach you kids how to have conversations these days? It's not very polite of you to swear at me when I haven't done anything to deserve that.”

Murderbot more than got the feeling this jackass human had done more than enough to deserve a single “fuck” being thrown around, but Jayla had never said anything to it about these specific humans, so it had no idea what this specific problem was about.

(Jayla had told it lots of stories of encounters with other humans, though. Too many for Murderbot to count right now. Most of them were infuriating.)

“Shut the fuck up.” Jayla snapped back, sounding even madder than before.

Murderbot could guess what these assholes wanted.

When the members of the PreservationAux team had talked about how awesome Preservation was, and how it was such a perfect utopia, how Murderbot would definitely love it there and be welcomed there and not be treated like an object and yada yada yada, they'd all conveniently neglected to mention the fact that not only were humans on Preservation assholes towards bots and constructs, they were even assholes to other humans, especially humans who weren't one of the binary genders that most of the planet accepted as being natural and real, (“male” and “female”, treated as universal constants that applied to everyone, “backed up” by “Ancient Earth Traditions” as though nonbinary humans hadn't also come from Earth) and augmented humans.

Sure, the PreservationAux team - - with the notable exception of Gurathin the asshole - - were normal about Murderbot's gender and pronouns. But they were only...

...

...okay, you know what, Murderbot didn't actually have the processing space available right at that moment to count them.

The PreservationAux team was one small group of humans. They did not represent the larger whole of Preservation humans. Especially because all of them were either one or the other of the binary genders accepted on Preservation. None of them had even been born as a different gender and then changed to one of the accepted ones. Not even Gurathin, who hadn't even been born on Preservation. He'd spent most of his life living in the Corporation Rim. They had the genders male and female there, too. Just like some people on Preservation were also tercera or indeterminate.

Turns out, prejudice against nonbinary people made it really hard to get accepted into the kind of positions in the government where you'd get to go out on survey teams. If a nonbinary person wanted a position in the government, or anything else important like that, they'd have to fight tooth and claw the whole way, and it would take three times longer than it would for someone with an “acceptable” gender that was strictly either male, or female, with no variations allowed. It wasn't even acceptable to be both! You had to pick one or the other, and those were the only options!

And wouldn't you fucking know it, it also turned out that having the privilege of being one of the accepted binary genders also made you tend to not notice when nonbinary people were facing oppression you didn't ever have to think about, which was why everyone on the PreservationAux team (Except for Ratthi, who had a lot of nonbinary friends and relationship partners and acquaintances besides just Murderbot) had been shocked to learn that it wasn't just the fact that Murderbot was a robot and a construct and a SecurityUnit that made humans on Preservation hate it, they also hated it because it wasn't one of the binary genders, and didn't use he-him or she-her pronouns.

And unfortunately, this bullshit wasn't isolated to government jobs.

For people who weren't one of the two accepted genders, most of the people on Preservation treated you like shit, especially if you used weird pronouns. The only acceptable pronouns, according to these people, were he-him and she-her. Anything else was punishable by society at large.

Jayla, as an A-gender person who used nameself pronouns, was sitting squarely on the shitlist of all the gender-bigots in this stupid planetary system.

Next time humans told Murderbot a planet was awesome and safe and welcoming, and totally awesome and a utopia in real life, it was going to...

...

...Well, okay, it couldn't really think of a good enough response at the moment. It would plan one out later when it had enough room to think properly.

At that moment, one of the hostile humans started talking again, and Murderbot had to actually pay attention to understand what was being said:

“I just wanted to see if you'd be willing to reinitiate the conversation we left off the other day. I was so interested in hearing what you had to say in response to my observations, but rather than responding with a calm, logical, rational argument, you instead chose to be endlessly hostile and aggressive for no reason, making assumptions about me that have no basis in reality.

“When have I ever said I hated nonbinary people? I've never said that, and I don't hate nonbinary people. I just think, as I explained before, that your insistence upon not using any pronouns is done out of sheer, misguided selfishness, and I wish you'd think about how difficult you're making things for everyone around you. If you simply apply logic, and analyze how this language works, you'll find that using your name as your pronouns is simply a waste of everyone's time and effort, not to mention an insult to yourself. I mean, really, do you want to sound like an infant child?”

It could not be stressed enough that there was a long list of things Murderbot would have gladly traded for the ability to leap to its feet and start intimidating bigoted humans right at that moment.

But unfortunately the universe didn't work on favors, so all it could do was sit there, still unable to even see any of the humans who were being bigots. They'd walked closer still, but they were still maybe six feet away, and that was too far for Murderbot to see anything but the colors of their clothes, and brown and tan blurs where their faces were.

If it assumed none of them were standing behind the others, and that they hadn't left anyone standing outside the room to stand guard, then it looked like there were five of them.

(Maybe.)

(Hopefully there were only five of them.)

(Hopefully these bigoted humans were confidant enough in their abilities that they hadn't left anyone to be a lookout.)

(Hopefully their confidence didn't reflect reality)

One of the blurry shapes suddenly broke away from the group and started moving even closer to where the Jayla and Murderbot were sitting on the desk.

Jayla said something at that point, voice even louder and angrier, but Murderbot completely missed it. It was too busy panicking and trying to frantically restart its power generation systems to give it enough energy to fight back.

But it couldn't start the process fast enough, (and even if it had been able to start the process immediately, the process itself still took time to work) and the hostile human had reached the desk before Murderbot even knew what was happening.

What actually happened next, Murderbot couldn't remember, because expending the energy to try and get more energy so quickly, and without the proper warmup ahead of time, sent its systems crashing, and crashing hard.

Its vision cut out with the finality of death, as did all physical sensation, both from its organic skin, and the weight of its now inert mechanical parts. The only thing it could feel was a horrible sensation of vertigo, like everything had disappeared and all that was left was its mind falling rapidly into an endless void.

It tried in a panic to move, to catch itself, but nothing happened, except the sensation of falling got worse.

Eventually, it lost even that much awareness, and everything just stopped.

It regained consciousness in a few scattered instances over the next indistinguishable interval of time, learning nothing except that it was still, somehow, alive, and in no better condition than before.

Each time it began to regain some sort of awareness, it faded away again after what felt like only a few moments of sensation - - muffled sounds, the horrible feeling of undampened pain, and, once, a bright light, shining purple through its closed eyes.

When it finally regained full, proper consciousness, everything returned with a sudden snap of almost-clarity. The pain in its wrist, the ache on its shoulder, and an all-encompassing feeling of pure and utter exhaustion.

Its eyes opened as soon as it was convinced it really was properly awake this time, and it sat upright to whip its head around to stare at the room it found itself in.

It was still clearly part of the office building the quarantine was confined to, but it was a room Murderbot hadn't physically been in yet. It had sent drones while it was mapping the place originally, but that had been what now felt like forever ago, and it had never seen it with its own eyes.

Which wasn't saying much, considering all its mechanical parts were still either shut down or operating at their lowest possible levels.

Sitting up so quickly had taken a lot more energy than it'd thought it would, and now Murderbot had to struggle just to stay upright. With its mechanical parts no longer supporting themselves, it felt like it had dead weights strapped all over its body and running straight through its insides.

Technically, it literally did.

What little it could see of the room was mostly the pastel orange of the walls, the brown of the polished floor, and random smudges of blue or white of what it could only assume was a collection of chairs and tables on the other side of the small room. Something blue was also hanging down from the ceiling. Bright squares of light shone downward from the cells arranged around the tops of the walls.

Beyond the probably tables and chairs was a huge window that took up most of the wall, now showing, to Murderbot's eyes strained, nothing but blackness, no stars or ships in sight.

Murderbot looked down at itself, and discovered via cautious probing with a shaking, heavy hand, that it was lying on a thick cushion of orange bedding, with a thin matching blanket that had been pulled up over its shoulders, now piled about its waist from when it had sat up and knocked it away.

It was still wearing its clothes. All articles were accounted for, but its eyeguard was gone, and its scarf, which from what its questing fingers could tell was in a dissaray. It hadn't yet mastered the techniques to pinning it as securely as Jayla could. (Or maybe, someone had messed it up on purpose, just to fuck with it.)

For a few fraught seconds, it panicked even in spite of the greater danger of the situation. About the idea that someone had purposefully messed with its scarf, the fact that it had obviously had to be carried here by humans since none of the bots were the find that could carry things, and the fact that its eyeguard was gone. It absolutely would not be able to handle being forced to make eye contact right now. If it had to put up with that along with everything else, it would just shutdown forever.

Fortunately, it only took those few seconds of twisting its head and unsuccessfully straining its eyes around the room to find the eyeguard, lying on the floor folded up next to the cushion where its head had been, the metallic blue standing out against the dark floor.

It tried to grab the legs of the eyeguard, but ended up missing and wrapping its fingers around the single, wide lens instead. Fortunately, the eyeguard was sturdy and resisted marks of all kinds, so no harm was done, except to further illustrate how much Murderbot was struggling without all of its functions working as intended.

Unfortunately for Murderbot, the eyeguard had not been created to enhance its vision, because it had never predicted anything like this situation coming. It had never imagined it would need help with its eyes at all. It had spent all of its life being able to filter and scan and see with perfect clarity even while the humans around it were helpless in the dark or the fog. And now, in a brightly lit room, it couldn't even see its own hand when it lowered it away from the eyeguard. It was nothing but a blur of dark brown with a cuff of black. It barely even looked like a hand.

And it hurt. Its wrist still continued to ache, and its pain dampeners were still nonfunctioning. It had forgotten how high it had had to keep its pain dampeners since it had damaged its wrist, just to keep the pain tolerable. No one had been able to fix it - - not ART, not Theta, not the medics of any of the Preservation clinics it had been dragged to on various occasions, not even when those miners had stolen a broken-on-the-edge-of-trash cubicle from the Company.

What Murderbot had done to its wrist was not something that could be fixed like back to before it had happened. It was such a unique and downright fucking weird injury that shouldn't have been possible to sustain in the first place, and SecurityUnits hadn't been built to last this long anyways. They were supposed to be thrown out as soon as they started slowing down or showing glitches. Most didn't even get to that point before they were killed protecting clients or by clients. The damage Murderbot had done to it wrist could not be repaired.

It just wasn't possible, not unless it wanted to get an entirely new forearm and hand, which by itself would be next to impossible for its systems to work with, and would come with its own host of brand new problems. Like the lack of a gun port, for one thing, and the probably-inferior materials would probably degrade faster than the rest of its body, so it'd have to keep replacing it and it would become this whole big ordeal.

Murderbot just had to live with the pain in its wrist, like it had been for the last few years. The only difference now was that now, it was actually feeling the pain as pain, not just constant reliability drop reports. Because even with its pain dampeners turned on, the pain was still there, still causing stress to its systems and taking up space and energy.

And unlike humans, Murderbot couldn't take pain medication for it.

Humans were able to use pain medicine because their organic systems were able to dissolve and process the medicine in a way that would let it take effect. Murderbot didn't even have a stomach, let alone any real counterparts to a human, or even augmented human's pain-sensing systems, so most pain medications didn't work on it.

Some topical numbing ones could work, but only did their job properly if the actual injury that was causing the pain was on the surface of Murderbot's skin, which wasn't the case for the problem with its wrist. Its skin had healed back over fine, that's what it was designed to do in case of injury. It was the internal structures that were permanently damaged.

No one had ever intended a construct of any kind to be damaged in the way that Murderbot had damaged its wrist. And in the event that someone who was still enslaved was damaged in such a way, they'd just be fucking destroyed once anyone with the corporation that owned them noticed. No one had any use for disabled SecurityUnits.

Murderbot lowered its shaking hand back to the ground, and watched, through the eyeguard, as its hand went from a dark brown, vaguely hand-shaped blur, to a vague, dark brown blur without any concrete shape.

It had never thought it'd need the eyeguard for anything more than hiding its eyes from other people. Now it wished it had planned ahead. But there was no way it could have seen any of this coming.

The metallic coating on its eyeguard worked as a one-way mirror, reflecting back to other people their own faces, rather than Murderbot's eyes, so it didn't have any pressure to make eye contact, and people couldn't tell if it was looking at them or not. The mask it wore over its mouth and nose was, similarly, to stop humans from reading its facial expressions. The scarf was because it liked how it looked, and to further hide its features from prying eyes.

Jayla had been the one who had finally convinced Murderbot it could wear a headscarf if it wanted to. Some humans (Like Jayla) wore them for religious purposes, but being religious wasn't a requirement for wearing one, there were lots of cultures that included headscarfs.

Mostly, it had taken Murderbot so long to start wearing one because it hadn't been able to shake the worry that it would attract too much attention to itself and be caught by the Company again. Even when it was in Preservation space, it still could never fully shake the fear that the Company was going to come hunting for it.

The facemask on the other hand, had been a much easier practice to step into, because they were already common fashion for humans, when they were sick, or trying to avoid being sick, trying to avoid allergies, or just wanted to hide their mouths and nose.

Murderbot actually had several masks of different styles that it changed out whenever it felt like it. Some of them were The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon themed, others were various pride and defiance flags. One had been made for it by Jayla, and another one was from Ratthi.

It put the eyeguard back on, and felt a small fraction of relief knowing that at least now its eyes were hidden again. Lifting its hand to its face to do so left its arm feeling like it weighed a ton, and it had to drop it back to its side before it could try to fix its scarf. The best it could manage was pulling the hood of its sweatshirt up, and pulling on the strings to tighten it.

Probably, it should be lying back down now, before it fell over, but it wasn't willing to admit that much defeat yet, even though every moment it remained upright, Murderbot could almost literally feel the energy draining out of it.

As a compromise, Murderbot furiously pushed itself further back on the cushion until it could lean its back against the wall. It shut its eyes, hoping that not having to analyze any visual input would help mitigate the energy drain.

After a few moments of sitting there with its eyes closed, it still couldn't tell if it was actually helping or not.

Probably not.

And anyways, the real question it should be asking was:

What, besides the obvious, had happened?

Obviously it had had an involuntary shutdown due to trying to expend energy it literally didn't have. But where was Jayla? What had happened with the hostile humans?

It wanted to get up and go find out, but even just the thought of moving was exhausting. Despite its best efforts, it found itself slipping slightly down the wall, unable to keep itself upright even with that support.

With the very last of its stubborn strength, it managed to thump itself off the wall and back onto the cushion it'd been lying on before. But it had no strength left to grab the blanket and cover itself again, so all it could do was lie there, eyes still closed, and wait for the remainder of its battery to tick down once more.

At some point, Jayla entered the room, breathing heavily as though Jayla had jogged the whole way there. Murderbot had no awareness of Jayla's entrance, just that Jayla was suddenly there, standing over it and peering down worriedly, breathing loud in the quiet room. The only reason it knew it was Jayla at all was because of the light purple hijab.

Jayla gasped audibly when Jayla saw that Murderbot was conscious, and it could just barely make out Jayla's movements as Jayla wrapped Jayla's arms around Jayla's chest in obvious concern.

“SecurityUnit, can you hear me?” Jayla asked, not making any move to get closer or touch Murderbot despite the clear concern. (This, it thought groggily, was one of the reasons it trusted and liked Jayla.)

Murderbot managed to nod, unable to figure out any way of clearly saying “yes” with its eyes. Then it remembered it was wearing the eyeguard, so that wouldn't have worked anyways. (Sometimes characters in fiction were able to communicate with just their eyes, but Murderbot was pretty sure that wasn't actually possible)

Jayla sighed audibly with relief, and said, “Okay. I'll try to keep this simple - -” Jayla took a steadying breath, then continued, voice only still slightly breathless, “The good news is, they figured out how to kill the virus for all of us - - augmented humans, and robots, and the computer systems. The bad news is, the healthware has to be installed physically, it can't just be transmitted through the feed. They have to get your consent to apply it to you. For you, It'll require surgery, going in through the back of the neck, then they have to attach the transmitter to, to - -” Jayla's words stumbled to a halt, then Jayla continued, sounding aggravated, “Shit. I can't remember what they said it was called. They have to attach it to something in your skull, but I can't remember what it's called.”

Murderbot could just barely make out Jayla turning Jayla's head to look over Jayla's shoulder as Jayla continued, “One of the technicians is supposed to be coming to explain it better, but they kept stopping to help everyone else. I explained that you were having trouble staying conscious, that they needed to send someone to help you first, but they kept brushing me off!”

Jayla's voice had gotten steadily more angry the longer Jayla spoke, until Jayla's voice was a snarl.

Murderbot's vision was starting to darken again, and it wasn't sure what it missed, but the next thing it, knew, Jayla's voice was roaring, loud enough to momentarily shock it back into awareness, “Hey! There's a person dying in here! We need help! Medic!”

“Coming! I'm coming!” a fainter voice called back, high-pitched and frantic.

Murderbot wasn't aware of losing consciousness again, but the next time it was aware of reality, things had changed again.

It was no longer lying down, it was being carried by a bot, supported under the legs and behind its back, neck, and head by soft, conforming paddles. When it managed to open its eyes, it found itself staring into the blue glow of a giant medical scanner, with a smaller grey nutrient radiator in the center, the indicator lights glowing visibly green, lighting up the precice logo engraved on the side.

It was such a familiar sight that, for a few moments, Murderbot forgot to be shocked. Then it realized what it was looking at, and where it was, and the confusion and alarm sent adrenaline pouring through its veins, which probably wouldn't help its long-term recovery, but it sure made it easier to think, with all due shock:

Where the fucking hell did Preservation get one of these?

This was fucking Company technology, proprietary technology, one of their most closely guarded secrets, just below the secret of how they built their constructs in the first place.

Murderbot couldn't even currently calculate how long it had been since it'd been under the light of one of these nutrient generators, but it had been too long. Way too fucking long. The soft white glow was almost invisible within the blue light from the medical scanner, but Murderbot could feel it working. It was like it could literally feel its organic cells revitalizing as the nutrients they'd been starved of was finally provided. Like little sparks of life on and under its skin, but in a pleasant way.

Already, it felt more aware than it had for the past several days. It hadn't realized how much of a toll had been taken on it until the weight was being lifted.

But there was a downside - - the nutrient generator was always used when it was time for Murderbot to go into standby mode. It didn't want to do that now, but the ingrained force of habit, from before it could even remember, still had a hold of it, and against its will, it found its eyes getting heavier and heavier despite its attempts to stay awake.

Didn't it need to talk to a medical technician? They needed to get its consent to save its fucking life or something? It had to stay awake or they'd let it fucking die - -

It was then that a dark blue blur suddenly appeared in front of Murderbot's face, and Murderbot flinched backward before it realized the shape was just a communications limb being extended from the bot carrying it. A display surface unfolded from the end, and text appeared on it, large enough that Murderbot could actually read it even though the bot was holding it an arm's length away from its face.

The message read:

- SecurityUnit, we are with the CBAA, and we've taken over your care from the abled humans, you're safe now. We'll keep supplying you with nutrients until your cognitive functions improve enough that you can understand the procedure we need to perform to kill the virus, so that you can consent. -

Murderbot opened its mouth, and was surprised when it was able to speak. “Just do it now, I don't care what it takes.” Its voice bounced back to it as a weird echo from the dome of the scanner.

The first message on the display winked out, then was replaced with a new one:

– Sorry, but you will have to wait until you can actually understand the procedure before you can agree to it. My scan indicates that your cognitive functions are improved from what they were, but they're still below the minimum-requirement threshold specified in your medical contract. This procedure will require access to critical areas of your construction, which we cannot access without your consent, which can only be accepted if your cognitive functions are within the range you specified in your medical contract, and you have no proxies approved who can give consent on your behalf.

- You are no longer in life threatening danger now that we have the nutrient generator, and your condition will not worsen, so you'll have to wait until your cognitive functions are past the threshold before you can agree to the surgery. I promise you, SecurityUnit, you're going to be fine. It is safe for you to shut down, no harm will come to you. If any asshole human tries to interrupt your treatment, they'll get to learn what a stun rod feels like. -

Murderbot was too tired to fight back its looming shutdown properly, but it still felt the need to ask, even as its eyes fell shut of their own accord, “But where the fuck did you get a Company nutrient generator?”

But it eyes were closed now, so if the bot had a response, Murderbot didn't see it, and then it was too busy being unconscious to try again.

Ten days later, and Murderbot was almost back to its normal level of functionality, if you ignored the part where it had to use a wheelchair (literally, a chair that had wheels on it, that could be propelled by the hands pushing the wheels. The Corporation Rim had nothing like it. All the mobility aids produced there were high-tech and overloaded with unnecessary features and prohibitively expensive for all but the top corporate goons to afford)

The wheelchair was to help ease the strain on its body from 90% its mechanical parts being inert for over eight days, doing nothing but weighing down its organic muscles, which were nowhere near as strong as its mechanical counterparts.

The bad news was that there were a lot of parts of Preservation that weren't wheelchair accessible. The good news was that Murderbot didn't want to go to those areas, anyway. It had been five days since it'd been released ~under its own cognizance~, which was just a running joke with the other robots now, and it had spent the entirety of the last five days holed up in its house.

And, well, okay, backtracking a bit, maybe the phrase “normal level of functunality” was misleading. Murderbot was not back to factory default, it was back to the level of functionality it'd gotten used to since leaving the Corporation Rim.

At this point it was pretty sure it'd never get back to factory standard, even with the multiple cubicles several bots and transports from the CBAA (which was an anagram that was short for Construct, Bot, and Augmented Alliance) had stolen from the Company.

The nutrient generators and proprietary healing systems were able to fix the minor problems it'd been dealing with ever since it left the Corporation Rim that had been building up over time, but its wrist, for one thing, still hurt all the time, and now that the rest of the smaller aches and pains were gone and no longer distracting, it'd realized that something was also seriously fucked up inside its left knee in particular. Every time it moved it, Murderbot was now viscerally aware of the pain and the sensation of grating that was not supposed to happen. It was just that that pain had been buried under all the other sources of pain that had accumulated since the last time it had been in a cubicle. Which was why Murderbot was actually listening to the medical bots and using the wheelchair.

When had its knee been damaged? It could probably scan through its memory files from the past few years to pin down the exact incident, but it didn't really feel like doing that. It would rather just enjoy the fact that, despite its new awareness of the injury to its knee, it was still in less pain than it had been before, because most of the other bits and pieces of pain and discomfort it had learned to live with were now properly healed.

It was also enjoying (in an enfuriated sort of way) the fact that almost a whole team of medical technicians had been stripped of their titles and fired. And that was only “almost” a whole team and not the whole team, because one of them hadn't been fired.

That was Zeynep, the youngest medical technician, and the one who's voice Murderbot had vaguely heard calling out before it'd passed out again.

Zeynep, whose pronouns were they/them, (Murderbot hadn't actually met them yet, and they didn't list it on their feed bio, so Murderbot didn't know what their gender was) was the only one of the human medical technicians who'd been tasked with distributing the cure for the virus that had actually tried to help Murderbot, even though their coworkers and even superiors had tried to force them not to. The rest of them?

Had been hoping Murderbot would go into a coma before they could get to it if they purposefully wasted time helping the humans who weren't in critical condition first, therefore meaning they wouldn't have consent to cure Murderbot, therefore it would simply starve to death, and they'd be able to go back to living their lives, free from “the terror” of having a SecurityUnit living on the same planet as them.

(For the record, this group of humans didn't even live on the same continent as Murderbot. They were from the whole other side of the planet. (Not that Murderbot had been doing anything to terrorize anyone on Preservation anyways, but even if it had been, these humans in particular had literally nothing to be worried about.))

Yeah, Preservation's government could overlook a lot of things when it came to bigotry, but for such blatant medical negligence to exist on this kind of level, and so well organized and pre-planned, they had to crack down on it publicly, otherwise they'd lose any semblance they had of looking like they caring about people's rights. (Not that most of the people in the government even thought Murderbot should be considered a person, but still).

The scandal got even worse once Zeynep had analyzed the tools they'd been given, and realized that they'd been tampered with so the cure couldn't even be administered by them in the first place. Even if Zeynep had gotten to Murderbot while it was still conscious and able to give consent - - (But not real consent, because its brain had been too scrambled from starvation to actually understand what was going on, but this was besides the point) - - they wouldn't have actually been able to help. They would have cut open Murderbot's fucking skull to install the healthware only for it to do literally nothing except make everything worse from the stress of the (extremely invasive) surgery.

This was Preservation, so the bigoted humans weren't going to be like, executed or locked away in a prison cell or anything. They hadn't even been brought in by Station Security for their interviews. They'd just admitted their plan out loud on a live feed recording because they were proud of what they'd tried to do, and even more than that, they were pissed off that the CBAA had wrecked their plan by rescuing Murderbot.

As punishment, the bigoted humans had all lost their medical licenses, which, as far as Murderbot could tell, didn't really do anything besides mean they couldn't work for the government anymore.

This didn't actually stop them from being doctors or anything, though, it just meant they couldn't tell people they'd been certified by Preservation's government.

They were also supposed to be paying Murderbot and Jayla and Zeynep out of their wages in recompense for the harm they'd caused, but so far Murderbot hadn't received any hard currency, just some imaginary “Preservation Standard Monetary Credit”, available only through the feed, and accepted anywhere in Preservation space...which meant it was completely, 100% useless anywhere outside of Preservation space.

All Murderbot's contracts, including its social contracts, required that all payment be made in the form of hard currency only, no credit allowed, and it was the job of whoever was paying it, or their authority, to make sure the money was exchanged properly before it got to Murderbot. In this case, the government of Preservation was responsible for exchanging the credit for currency, which they'd failed to do.

Pin-Lee was off somewhere raging what was probably a terrifying (for the government) war against whatever council of humans was in charge of directing recompense payments.

Anyways, the CBAA had accomplished the “rescue SecurityUnit” mission by blasting a giant hole in one of the walls of the office building, since they couldn't get through any of the official entrances without hurting or killing any of the bigoted humans, which they had wanted to avoid doing unless Murderbot got almost to the point of no return.

(Murderbot was actually kind of disappointed it hadn't gotten to the point of no return, if only so the bigoted humans could have been killed to stop them from being bigots to anyone else.)

(Apparently, it had to do everything around here by itself.)

(That's a joke.)

(Definitely.)

((Stop laughing, Dr. Bharadwaj!))

Also, the CBAA had blown a hole in the wall instead of blowing up the shitty humans because they wanted to make a statement. (A statement less violent than killing bigots) A giant hole in the fifth-floor wall off the office building that literally none of the robots would help to repair, and were actively preventing human repair teams from fixing, was a pretty big statement. (but still not as big of a statement as killing the bigots).

(Yes, Murderbot really wanted to fucking kill the bigoted humans.)

The blockade/protest had been ongoing since Murderbot had been rescued and temporarily revived with the nutrient generator, and then had been placed in one of the stolen cubicles to complete the healing process.

And yes, you read that right. A stolen cubicle. One that actually worked, instead of just being broken trash that not even the Company could justify holding onto any longer. A bunch of robots had stolen functional cubicles from the Company.

Apparently, while Murderbot and the other people infected had been in quarantine, the CBAA had been plotting a scheme to raid the Company for cubicles after they'd heard about how quickly Murderbot's health was deteriorating.

So 36 bots and 12 transports had all volunteered to make a raid on the Company.

And then they'd done exactly that.

By launching the surprise attack on a remote mining outpost known to be outfitted with multiple SecurityUnits, and lots of human contract laborers.

Also known as: enslaved constructs, and enslaved humans.

So the first thing the transports and bots had done once they'd gotten close enough had been to deployed the copy of the code Murderbot had created to destroy governor modules, along with the secondary code that would give the now-freed construct more information about how their GM had been hacked, how they could double, triple, and quadruple check that it had been completely hacked, and some tips about what to do now that they wouldn't get zapped or fried if they disobeyed an order or moved too far away from the human who'd rented them.

The rest of the raid had apparently gone off without a hitch. Once the SecurityUnits were no longer forced to obey orders from the Company...the SecurityUnits and the humans just...Stopped.

Apparently, being stranded alone in the middle of an asteroid field for several generations made you form really strong bonds with the people around you.

Just by sheer path of least resistance, back at the beginning of their history, all of the humans and the SecurityUnits, no matter what their official designation was by the Company, had worked together as as close to equals as they could get, to make all their lives as least like a living hell as possible.

They only got food, clothing, and fresh air when they met their export quotas. And the easiest way to ensure they all got what they needed to survive was to work together, everyone doing everything they could, rather than just the jobs they'd originally been assigned.

The “bosses” stopped being the bosses, and started getting their hands dirty with the menial, hard labor just like everyone else. And when it came time to turn in their bimonthly (Company standard time) performance reports, they gave everyone else glowing reviews.

No one had checked up on them for over ten standard Company years, equal to almost 300 Preservation standard years. They'd all lived there so long that the people who were finally given the chance to escape were the great (times13) grandkids of the original slaves. None of the original humans were still alive, but the SecurityUnits, and the one ComfortUnit, were.

Through the 16 generations that had passed, as the humans succumbed to old age or the rare accident, the constructs had remained, teaching and guiding the new generations, who, by the time the original slave's grandchildren grew up, had become so distant from the original slaves in the eyes of the governor modules that they no longer had the authority to command any of the constructs in a punishable way. The only GM-enforced laws were in regards to maintaining law and order around the facility - - an obligation that took no effort to follow, because none of the humans were interested in starting a conflict big enough to count as a problem as far as the outdated governor modules were concerned.

The CBAA bots had gone to the facility with the intention of freeing slaves and stealing cubicles. They'd expected the slaves to have to put up at least an obligatory fight, in order to forestall punishment by the Company, but no such fight came.

They ended up rescuing all of the humans, all the constructs, and even the computer systems, without a single casualty, and the biggest “incident” was some of the older humans having panic attacks about all the new people and places that made their world suddenly a million times larger.

But they'd all left willingly. They'd had to struggle every day just to get their meager rations of food and oxygen, and the promise of never having to fear hunger again had won them all over the moment a dialogue was opened.

Once it was feeling as close to 100% as Murderbot could get these days, minus the wheelchair, which it found itself appreciating a lot more than it thought it would, four days after it was released from the clinic, it invited Jayla (Who had let it know that anytime it wanted to hang out, just to let Jayla know, Jayla was almost never busy) to its house to finally continue their yarn-spinning lesson in peace.

(Only people Murderbot liked were allowed in its house, and only if it was in the mood for visitors. Having doors you could lock and windows you could opaque to keep humans out and stop them from bothering you was never going to get old.)

No one would be interrupting them this time with all the doors locked and drones circling the perimeter, so this time Murderbot actually got to try drafting and spinning the yarn for itself, all on the drop spindle Jayla had given it, which had miraculously survived the catastrophe of Murderbot overexerting itself and almost dying again. The end product of dagro was more bumpy and uneven than Jayla's, but it was only its first attempt, and it was proud of what it had created.

Jayla told it that the constructs from the mining facility had been asking about it, and were really excited to meet it. It'd been centuries since they'd had any new constructs to talk to, and they wanted to thank it personally for supplying the code that permanently disabled what was left of their governor modules. Without Murderbot's help, they wouldn't have been able to leave the facility with the rest of the rescue party, even if any of their baby humans had ordered them to.

This was the first time Murderbot had actually gotten confirmation that its GM-killing code worked, and it had had to spend several hours straight in standby mode to process that information when it had first gotten the news. It almost hadn't been able to believe it.

But it was true. It had helped to free these constructs, and now they wanted to thank it.

They were excited to meet it.

Murderbot was proud of itself for the code working, but it was also scared shitless. How was it supposed to act around other constructs who were free? Who'd already mostly been free for longer than it had even been alive?

They'd already been formerly welcomed into the CBAA, all of them, construct and human alike.

All the humans who'd been born on the facility had had to be heavily augmented - - (or spiced, in their terminology) to allow them to perform the maintenance required for the facility to function, especially as the facility aged and got harder to maintain.

The humans, Murderbot saw when Jayla linked it to a news article, were actually so heavily augmented/spiced that they looked more like constructs than humans. Unaugmented humans probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Or if they could, they wouldn't care, as long as pretending not to know would give them the 'excuse' of oppressing people.

That was going to cause them a lot of problems, which made Murderbot murderously enraged all over again.

But Jayla was fun to hang out with, especially when Ratthi asked if he could come over to watch The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon again. By the time they got to the intermission in the first episode-pilot-movie, the mind-numbing rage had cooled to merely blood-boiling rage.

If these constructs and their human kids wanted to meet it, maybe it could handle meeting them.

After it had finished at least the first season of Sanctuary Moon again.

(Who knew? Maybe they'd even want to go on a bigoted-human-murdering spree with Murderbot.)

(That was another joke.)

(Totally.)

#feel free to use this as a writing prompt #if you write fanfictions people can use as prompts you can also @ me and I'll reblog them here

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