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rjalker · 1 year ago

Text

A Murderbot Diaries fanfiction

Title: Symptom of Something Worse

Word count: 12,429

Set immediately at the end of a canon divergent Network Effect, so has some spoilers for that.

Summary: Tarik comes to see Murderbot in MedBay to ask for some clarification about its pronouns, only for this conversation to turn out much more stressful than either of them could have seen coming...

Warnings: Mentions of abuse. Middle-school health class level discussion of genitals by their scientific names in regards to gender not being reliant upon them.

Started on March 20th, 2024, Finished fully March 28th 2024.

(Please note: The Internet Archive is down while I am typing this post, so these links may not work. I'll edit this post when it comes back up) You can listen to the audiobook version here, with and follow along with the transcript here, which is different from this text version. It’s an hour and 6 minutes long. You are encouraged to download it.

You can also read this on Fanfiction.net if you want to leave an anonymous review if you're shy.

Fun fact: You gain +10 Comprehension points if you've read The Imperial Radch before you read this. Wink wink nudge nudge you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Tarik came to see Murderbot while it was still confined to the MedBay while A.R.T. did its best to fix Murderbot’s various catastrophic injuries.

The ‘fix the broken Murderbot’ thing was even slower going than usual, not only because of the extent and nature of Murderbot’s injuries, but because A.R.T. itself was still recovering from its own ordeal, and wasn’t back up to normal functionality yet, despite all its bluster to the contrary.

Now Murderbot knew what it was like being on the other end of the ‘someone who is very clearly not okay insists it’s okay’. Now it kinda felt bad for the humans who had to see it get an arm ripped off while it insisted it was fine.

You know, in theory, having a single supercomputer in charge of all the onboard systems of a ship seems like it should be a great idea. In practice, though, it meant that when A.R.T. was debilitated, so were all of its systems.

The only things functioning normally were things like emergency medkits and other items with their own built in, independant systems. Everything else required A.R.T.’s control.

Before Tarik had came in, he had both knocked on the closed hatch, and sent Murderbot a friendly ping on the feed. He didn’t know it could see him through the tiny camera drone it’d left hanging on the ceiling above the door to guard the corridor. A.R.T. would have let Murderbot use its cameras system, but they were still nonfunctional, and A.R.T.’s internal sensors were way too overwhelming for a simple SecUnit. One thing that should be noted that A.R.T. had also told Murderbot Tarik was on his way even before its camera saw him. It was at least nice enough to do that.

Even to Murderbot, as bad as it usually was at understanding humans, it was obviously that Tarik wanted to wait outside for it to give him permission to come in, like he would have for any human who was in a private room.

This was a nice gesture.

Unfortunately, A.R.T. opened the door before Murderbot could even think about doing anything, because A.R.T. liked to control everything, like the asshole it was.

Now that the disaster was mostly over and everyone was starting to relax, it was pretty obvious that A.R.T.’s humans were trying to practice the ‘make sure it knows it’s allowed to say no’ routine not only with 3 and 5, but with Murderbot, too. A.R.T. had told them all about it, apparently. Murderbot wished it hadn’t.

And all of the humans going out of their way to ask for its ~consent~ (a fancy word for permission, which it was still getting used to, even after all the time it’d spent on Preservation) before doing things in regards to it would have been really nice, if only A.R.T. would stop ruining it by making all the decisions anyways, without giving Murderbot a chance to make up its mind one way or the other.

It would have liked the opportunity to decide for itself if it wanted to let Tarik in or not, you know. It would at least have been one thing it got to choose in this situation. But it couldn’t even have that.

::We both know you would have opened the door anyways.:: A.R.T. said condescendingly when Murderbot let it feel its annoyance through the feed.

Well, I say ‘let it’ feel its annoyance, but there was really nothing Murderbot could do to stop A.R.T. from looking through its brain whenever it wanted, but whatever.

And...Yeah. There was no arguing with A.R.T. once it decided it was right. And it always thought it was right.

Murderbot still hadn’t gotten over the fact that it had had to apologize for calling A.R.T. a fucker for fucking kidnapping it and almost getting its humans killed before A.R.T. would apologize for doing the exact things Murderbot had called it a fucker for doing.

You know, the whole kidnapping thing. Which was still ongoing if you really thought about it. They had all been brought there by A.R.T.’s machinations (Murderbot had just learned that word from a book) against their will. Murderbot still didn’t know how many people had died when A.R.T had attacked their research ship.

And even if by some absurd miracle everyone had managed to survive, it was undisputable that at least some, if not most, of the humans would develop lasting trauma from the assault, either physical or psychological, or both.

Amena had been pinned in place in collapsed laboratory on a ship that was under attack by an unknown hostile, and as far as she’d been aware, the whole vessel could have been torn apart at any moment. The metal that had pinned her down had been too heavy for Kanti, the only other suvivor in the room with her, to lift, leaving them with no choice but to scream desperately for help while Kanti cut her hands and arms bloody trying to pry the broken door open with a geology chisel.

Murderbot could only hope that Kanti had gotten back to the baseship in time, but there was no way to know.

And there was no telling what had happened to the baseship itself, and everyone who had been aboard.

The only ones whose status it knew were firmly in the ‘alive’ category was Amena, and Drs. Overse, Arada, Ratthi, and Thiago. All of the adults had suffered from toxic air inhalation among other physical traumas in their attempt to rescue Amena and itself.

But they were alive, at least.

No thanks to A.R.T.

Amena was a child who’d been trapped, injured, and afraid for her life. And then she’d witnessed what she thought was Murderbot’s violent death, and been dragged around by people under the hostile influence of alien artifacts.

And then she’d had to watch Murderbot kill those people right in front of her, and not in a way that was intended to be efficient and cause the least amount of pain as possible. There was no other way to describe what it’d done. It’d gone on a rampage. A violent, bloody, gorey rampage.

It wasn’t Murderbot’s finest moment, to say the least.

And after witnessing this, Amena had had no one to depend upon for her safety except for Murderbot itself, the one who’d just murdered people in front of her. And then Ras had died, and Eletra had almost died, and Amena had known that there was something deeply wrong with Murderbot, even while they were still being hunted by more of the brainwashed humans, and the entire time she’d been under the impression that it hated her.

And that wasn’t even all of the trauma she’d gone through since A.R.T. had kidnapped them all.

Amena was just one person out all the people who’d been on their baseship. She was going to have to spend a lot of time in trauma recovery therapy.

And Murderbot hadn’t even started processing any of the trauma it’d gone through yet. Even stuck inside the medchamber, it was doing everything it could to keep its mind off its injuries, and the other events of the past 83 hours. It couldn’t afford to have another mental breakdown when they were still in danger. It’d been trying to keep itself busy by talking to Amena when she was awake, and reading different versions of ancient legends from Earth.

It was very purposefully not watching visual media, because that’s what A.R.T. wanted to do.

Even though A.R.T. had its crew back, they still couldn’t leave, because it was the only non-openly-murderously-hostile way in or out of this system.

And it was refusing to leave the system until the mission it’d originally come here to do was complete, even though it meant continuing to hold them all as kidnapping victims.

And what, exactly, was that original mission? To steal the planet from the corporation that was trying to claim ownership of it.

Also known as: Something incredibly high-risk and likely to get them fired upon. Meaning more threats against the people Murderbot had signed up to protect.

Also, to back up a bit and state it for the record: whether or not Murderbot would have also chosen to open the door isn’t the point. The point is that it was supposed to be allowed to make decisions for itself, not have A.R.T. make them for it.

Why did A.R.T. constantly parrot parts of the trauma therapy stuff at Murderbot like ‘Check in with your emotions!!’ and ‘ground yourself in the present!!’ if A.R.T. wasn’t actually going to let Murderbot make decisions for itself? And full offense, what the fuck was the point in Murderbot ‘grounding itself in the present’ if the present situation was the reason it needed grounding in the first place?

Whatever.

At least A.R.T.’s crew seemed friendly. They didn’t approve of A.R.T. kidnapping people, and kept apologizing while also thanking Murderbot for rescuing them. It thought guilt was part of the reason they kept going out of their way to try and give it a choice in things. It wasn’t their fault A.R.T. was such an asshole. They clearly couldn’t get it to do anything it didn’t want to do any more than Murderbot could.

Tarik, unaware of the tension his arrival had brought back to the surface, stepped into the room, and took a moment to look around at all the empty medical chambers that lined the walls before he finally spotted Murderbot in the far side of the room from the door.

The medical chambers were designed so that they could turn to recline, or be upright, or any position in between. The chamber Murderbot was in had been turned forward so that it was propped mostly upright, so it wouldn’t be so awkward for humans to talk to it. And by less awkward, it mean less awkward for it. The humans probably wouldn’t have cared, they were all being so gracious and apologetic about the whole ‘sorry our asshole transport kidnapped you’ thing. But Murderbot did mind. It didn’t enjoy eye contact, but it disliked having to look up at humans from lying down even more, especially while it was in a medical chamber with tiny mechanical arms moving around trying to sew and cauterize it back together.

It’d gotten severe burns all across its torso and one arm, and the other arm...well, you already know what it had done to its wrist. And if you don’t already know, just imagine something horrible and don’t try to think about it too deeply. It was gross and horrific, that’s really all you need to know.

It wasn’t wearing any clothes, because they would have gotten in the way of the medchamber’s work. Fortunately, the glass casing could be made opaque (which is a fancy word for not-see-throughable) or transparent at will through the feed, so no one would be able to see anything Murderbot didn’t want them to.

It would have liked to keep the whole thing opaque, so they couldn’t see anything at all, but A.R.T. insisted that Murderbot had to show its face when humans were talking to it, because otherwise it was rude. Again with the A.R.T. does whatever it wants no matter what anyone else says, thing. It never seemed to get tired of it.

A.R.T. was going to do whatever it wanted, and if you didn’t like it, you could walk out the airlock any time you wanted.

So Murderbot had no choice in keeping the glass opaque, just like it’d had no choice in being kidnapped.

It opened its eyes to watch the dark coating on the glass vanish within a few moments of Tarik coming through the doorway, giving it a view straight across the room at the empty medchamber on the other side. The blue-grey metal was shiny in the lights from the deep cleaning A.R.T. had started of every surface.

At the moment, its few functional drones were scrubbing every surface of the air vents and maintenance hatches. The rooms had all been finished so far.

Murderbot watched Tarik with another drone it had inside of the room, since it couldn’t currently turn its neck to see him come closer with its eyes. It had exactly five drones left, and the other three were guarding Amena and the rest of its humans, who were currently all asleep in a giant pile in one of A.R.T.’s guest quarters.

There are a lot of things about humans Murderbot would never understand, and the appeal of “cuddling” was one of them. But it seemed to help them de-stress, which was a good thing, at least.

Even if Murderbot got viscerally uncomfortable just imagining being in that crowded pile of sleeping bodies. Amena had curled up behind Thiago, who was using one of Ratthi’s arms as a pillow and holding the other one like it was a lifeline. Ratthi’s legs had somehow gotten under Overse, who had curled around Arada in what humans called ‘spooning’. They had started out covered by a big blanket, but that had long since been pulled mostly off the bed by Amena, who slept only halfway under the remainder. Murderbot didn’t know how any of them were comfortable enough to breathe, let alone sleep.

It kept one drone in the room with them, another outside constantly sweeping the cooridor, and the third one stationed at the nearest intersection. It was the best it could do with such a short supply.

Back in the medbay, looking through the drone it had inside the room with itself, it’d seen Tarik give a little wave when he saw where it was, and began to walk over, visibly wincing every now and then.

A lot of A.R.T.’s crew had gotten injured during the rescue, not just Murderbot and its humans. Humans were a little easier to fix than Units, though, since there was nothing proprietary about unaugmented human biology, and none of these humans were augmented, but even once you sealed their wounds, their bodies still had to regrow everything themselves, even when you gave them help to do it. Tarik would probably need two more days at least before he was back to normal. Luckily, his injury hadn’t been serious, unlike Murderbot’s.

Murderbot didn’t know exactly how Tarik had been injured, because of A.R.T.’s ‘doctor-patient confidentiality’ rule. Unless someone’s life was directly at risk or it was something Murderbot could detect on its own, A.R.T. wasn’t going to just go blabbing all the details of the humans injuries to it without their permission.

And asking them for their permission to know just seemed like it would be really awkward. They’d want to know why Murderbot wanted to know, and it didn’t actually have any good reason besides the fact that it’d gotten used to knowing every single detail about every single person around it, which obviously wouldn’t go over well. Though, they might just feel guilty enough about the kidnapping thing to tell it anyways. But there was no point causing more stress in an already stressful situation by pushing it.

It turns out that people who actually have a choice in the matter are really unwilling to give up their privacy, they’re really attached to the concept. And Murderbot could see why, now that it’d had a few fleeting chances to try it itself.

Also, living aboard A.R.T., who saw or heard or felt everything that happened, at all times, no matter where you were aboard, they already had to give up a ton of their privacy, so they were even more desperate to cling to what few scraps they still had left. So Murderbot resigned itself to not knowing.

But hey, at least Tarik was clearly less injured than he’d been when Murderbot first met him, so that was something. It didn’t like being around seriously injured humans, because it set off all kinds of residual programming that made it think it was going to be punished for not protecting them well enough. And it already had enough anxiety to deal with. It didn’t need to have any more panic attacks today, thank you very much.

Tarik walked closer, and Murderbot mentally reviewed what it already knew about him to try and prepare itself for whatever was about to happen.

It knew from its earlier calculations when itd first seen Tarik that he was around average height for a human, which meant he was shorter than Murderbot even when it was leaning slightly backwards, and he had longer dark hair that he let curl loosely around his head, whereas Murderbot kept its as short as inhumanly possible.

If it’d been able to stop it from growing at all, it would have. But unlike humans, there’s no part of it that wasn’t locked behind a million Company patents.

And apparently whoever had come up with the design for Company Units had really, really not wanted them to ever be completely hairless. If Murderbot even tried physically shaving or lazering its head hair off, it would just grow back instantly. And if it kept trying it’d just drain its batteries from the hair having to be continuously synthesized. It hoped whoever made that decision, and put so many locks on keeping it in place, died a slow, painful, humiliating death.

Also unlike Murderbot, Tarik had facial hair, because some humans really like having lots of hair on their bodies, including on their face. It was a black beard and mustache that went around his mouth and nose, and up the sides of his jaw all the way to his ears.

Murderbot was at least glad the Company hadn’t decided that Units had to have hair like that on their faces. One interesting thing though was that Tarik used special aromatic oils on it so that he always smelled nice. Murderbot hadn’t even known you could do that.

Tarik’s skin was also lighter than Murderbot’s, more towards the tan side of the spectrum rather than dark brown. It was an interesting comparison to make, when most of your skin was currently in the process of being regrown. Since Murderbot was a construct, its endoskeleton was made of metal instead of bone, with a mix of organic and mechanic materials around it. Its skin was normally dark brown, but while it was in the process of being synthesized for repair, it always started out transparent like glass, and if you sat there and stared long enough -- which it had done a few times out of morbid curiosity -- you’d actually be able to watch its veins growing a new network, carrying the blue or purple fluids necessary for its various functions.

Like I said. It was interesting to compare skin tones when most of yours was currently nonexistant. Murderbot was definitely envious of the ability humans had of naturally regenerating their damaged skin, and even their bones, without even having to put any conscious effort into it. They could even fight off diseases all by themselves. Whereas if you were unlucky enough to be a Unit, or a human with proprietary augments, well, then you got the short end of the stick, and had to rely on outside technology for all of your repairs and upkeep. And it usually didn’t come cheap.

At the moment, Tarik was wearing one of A.R.T.’s dark blue, casual crew uniforms: long soft pants with a lot of pockets to store things in, and a long-sleeved shirt, with the logo for A.R.T.’s university on the back.

Before Murderbot had needed to be confined to the medchamber, A.R.T. had given it one of the same uniforms, since the kidnapping assault had destroyed its original clothes with burns, bullet holes, blood, and its own internal fluids.

Tarik stopped at what was considered a polite distance, standing mostly in front of Murderbot, but slightly off to the side, so that it could continue to stare straight ahead at the empty medchamber without having to look directly at him. He’d clearly spoken to Ratthi about its aversion to eyecontact at some point while it was unconcious.

He asked, “Hi, SecUnit, have a moment to talk?”

Of course it did. It’s not like it had anything else to do besides vehmently (another word Murderbot had recently learned) avoid watching more reruns of visual media with A.R.T. But it knew at this point that humans just asked these things to be polite and as an easy way to start a conversation. Tarik wasn’t literally asking if Murderbot could talk, but asking if it wanted to. He was asking for its consent.

Murderbot had to wait for one of the medical arms to move away from its jaw so it wouldn’t crush it before it could say, hopefully sounding casual, “Go ahead.”

Its voice was projected out of a speaker on the outside of the medical chamber, so Tarik could hear it even though the thick plates of glass that kept the interior sterile.

Murderbot hadn’t been given any reason to dislike him personally, so it was curious about what he wanted.

At least this time A.R.T. didn’t try to answer for it. Murderbot had the drone on the ceiling move around to behind itself so that it could look at Tarik’s face through the camera lense. It was easier to understand human expression this way, since Murderbot could filter the video directly through its behavior recognition software, and it didn’t feel so overwhelming. It was almost like putting a filter between it and the real interaction, so it didn’t feel as much pressure.

When Tarik smiled, Murderbot recognized it as being friendly and relaxed.

Tarik stuck one hand inside his pants pocket and leaned slightly on one leg, and said, gesturing with his other hand along with his words, “I know Perihelion’s probably already said who I am, but I wanted to introduce myself anyways. I’m really bad with names and faces, so I try to make sure I get to meet everyone so I’ll have less chance of mixing them up later. Sorry if that happens, just remind me and I’ll try to remember.”

He shrugged one shoulder in what was an apologetic sort of way, according to Murderbot’s drone’s behavior algorithm and its own experiences so far, and Tarik said again, “I’ve just always been bad at recognizing people.”

Murderbot had a hard time imagining what it would be like not to be able to remember everything you’d ever seen in exact detail, but it knew organic memory storage didn’t work as well as mechanical. Humans – or at least, unaugmented ones at least – didn’t get to consciously pick and choose which memories they kept and which ones faded.

“Anyways,” Tarik inclined his head slightly. “My name’s Tarik, no last name. I’m neomale, and my pronouns are he/him/his/himself. It’s nice to say hi. I just wanted to say thanks for saving my life, and say I’m sorry for the injuries,” he gestured towards the medchamber, in case there was any confusion, “and I hope they heal well.”

He seemed sincere, and Murderbot don’t know why that was still surprising, most of the humans it’d been around lately were usually sincere. And A.R.T.’s crew had so far been nothing but apologetic and sympathetic.

It said, “You’re welcome.” instead of anything else it could have said in this particular situation, because A.R.T. had been nudging it in the feed to ‘take credit where credit was due’ and wouldn’t let up until Murderbot said something that would accept the gratitude. As though it had really been Murderbot’s choice. It added, “It wasn’t your fault I got hurt, but, thanks.”

It left the part of whose fault it actually was carefully and pointedly unspoken. A.R.T. knew exactly who it was talking about.

Tarik smiled again, looking pleased. Then he tilted his head to the side a little, almost like he was overemoting to make his meaning clear, but a quick glance at A.R.T.’s offered memories showed Murderbot this was normal behavior for Tarik, as he said, lowering his voice slightly, as though he were about to say something private, “And I just wanted to double check, the pronouns are it/its/itself, right? I heard other people saying ‘it’, but I just wanted to make sure—”

Whatever he’d been about to say was suddenly cut off, because the first part of that statement had offended A.R.T., who came slamming into the conversation before Murderbot could stop it, demanding, in that overpoweringly aggressive way it had, ::Are you accusing me of misgendering SecUnit?::

It should probably be explained that there wasn’t really a thing such as “volume” in the feed, not in the way you’d think of sound, because the feed isn’t actually using sound at all. But you could increase the intensity of the message, and humans tended to say that made it ‘louder’, or ‘quieter’ if you were decreasing the intensity.

In that aspect, A.R.T. was being very ‘loud’ when it said this. It was the feed equivalent of someone slamming their fist onto a table and shouting in your face. And the aggression was very plain, as much as A.R.T. later proclaimed it hadn’t been aggressive at all and Murderbot and Tarik were both just being childish to think so.

Tarik was so startled he actually fell over in his instinctive attempt to get ‘away’ from the sudden scary ‘noise’. But the ‘noise’ was coming from inside his own head, so his reaction was extremely confused, and he ended up tripping over his own legs and falling into the wall, which thankfully wasn’t far, since we were at the end of the room.

Murderbot’s drone could see and hear Tarik’s heart rate spiking and his clear anxiety. And the anxiety was entirely justified. A.R.T. had pretty much done the same thing to Murderbot when they’d first met, and it had been so terrified it’d considered initiating a shutdown, thinking A.R.T. was going to kill it, what with the whole threatening to fry its brain thing.

There was something that felt viscerally wrong to Murderbot to see A.R.T. treat one of its own crew members like this, something that felt deeply uncomfortable to the permanent remnants of its ‘protect humans at all costs’ programming, along with its general, you know, morals.

It was one thing to treat Murderbot like this – it was just a SecUnit, after all – and it was even sort of reasonable for it to not care about the safety of Murderbot’s humans, because they weren’t its crew — but it was another for A.R.T. to do this to one of its crew, a human Murderbot had been almost killed trying to rescue, a human it was supposed to care about enough to justify kidnapping Murderbot and putting its humans at risk.

And there was no way it was an accident. A.R.T. knew more about how to use the feed and communicate with humans than Murderbot had ever forgotten.

(And yes, it did still feel betrayed about how much A.R.T had lied to it when they first met. Pretending it didn’t understand human body language as much as it really did, so they’d bond over frantically figuring it out together, while Murderbot was the only one actually panicking. Murderbot felt like A.R.T. had just been toying with it the entire time, which just hurt all the worse, because it’d trusted A.R.T.)

::A.R.T., stop it.:: It snapped, unsure if it was still yelling at Tarik on a private section of the feed.

His face had gone pale, and he had one hand over his heart. He could probably feel it pounding in his chest with adrenaline the way Murderbot could hear it.

Murderbot said, ::That was uncalled for.:: It was an attempt to turn A.R.T.’s usual patronization back onto it to shame it into stopping, but it didn’t work.

Usually it was A.R.T. saying that to Murderbot, usually because Murderbot was angry at it for just this sort of thing, and had called it what it was: an asshole.

“Perihelion, don’t do that!” Tarik managed to say at that moment, pushing himself back off the wall to stand upright, staring warily up at the ceiling, unable to hide the way he was cringing slightly, clearly expecting it to happen again, “I didn’t even know you were listening! I thought this was a private conversa--” He had to pause, still slightly breathless. “And...no, I’m not accusing you of misgendering SecUnit, I just--”

Once again he was cut off by A.R.T. demanding, loudly, angrily, ::You don’t trust me to know what SecUnit’s pronouns are?::

Tarik winced, but held his ground this time. It was easier to resist when you were expecting it.

After a moment where Murderbot could only assume A.R.T. had said something to him privately, Tarik looked over toward it with a sad, apologetic expression. “I’m sorry for offending you, SecUnit, I’ll just leave you alone.” Obviously he thought A.R.T. was being a bitch on Murderbot’s behalf, and just as obviously, A.R.T. had made him think that.

Tarik started towards the door, walking fast, clearly wanting to avoid any more of A.R.T.’s wrath.

But Murderbot called him back through the speaker on its medchamber: “Hold on, Tarik, A.R.T.’s the one who’s offended, not me. It needs to mind its own business and shut the fuck up. I don’t want you to leave.” It sent him the same friendly ping he’d sent it earlier for emphasis. It felt very odd to actually tell a human it wanted to continue interacting with them when they were trying to leave. This was the first time it’d ever done it.

Murderbot’s voice came out sounding normal and even-toned not because it was calm, but because it was too physically exhausted to raise its voice or emote, even though internally it was furious.

Tarik stopped, and turned back to look towards it, hesitating, shooting anxious glances towards the ceiling, waiting for another outburst. I don’t blame him.

Murderbot said out loud, “A.R.T., fuck off and leave us alone. This is supposed to be a private conversation.”

Out of both spite and necessity, it pulled away all its feed connections to A.R.T. that it could, and resigned itself to having to ignore the barrage of pings and messages A.R.T. instantly started bombarding it with. The activity in its medchamber stalled for half a moment as apparently most of A.R.T.’s energy was redirected into slamming it for attention. Yeah, that was doing nothing to help its anger or its exhaustion.

To Tarik, it said, doing its best to ignore the selfish, entitled, bully of an elephant in the room, “What did you want to ask me?”

Before A.R.T. had interrupted him twice, it had seemed like Tarik had more questions to ask. And since A.R.T. didn’t want to let him ask them, Murderbot did.

A.R.T. had already let him in without Murderbot getting to choose, so it at least wanted to be able to answer his questions itself, even if the answer was going to be a simple ‘fuck off’ if he was going to be one of those people who tried to convince it to change its pronouns to ‘real’ pronouns and ‘stop hating itself’ by using the pronouns it actually liked, that actually represented its gender.

It still didn’t understand why people try to insist that they/them/their/(theirs)/themself pronouns were interchangeable with it/its/itself, when if that were true, they clearly wouldn’t be so vehemently against using its actual it/its/itself pronouns.

But logic always flew out the window when bigotry was the subject, so Murderbot don’t know why it still bothered to be surprised.

But even with A.R.T.’s outbursts clearly scaring him, Tarik didn’t seem like the sort of person who would try to harass Murderbot into changing its pronouns. It wanted to hear what he wanted to ask. It was curious. And not just out of spite for A.R.T.

Tarik came back again, still clearly nervous, and stood in the same spot as before, a polite distance away, slightly to the side so Murderbot wouldn’t have to look directly at him or close its eyes. He was still trying to prioritize Murderbot’s comfort even with A.R.T. being such an asshole, which increased Murderbot’s level of...something for him. They definitely were not friends. But he sort of seemed like he could be a friend, if A.R.T. would stop sabotaging his attempts to be nice.

“Sorry about A.R.T. being an asshole.” It said, feeling like it should be apologizing for some absurd reason, even though it didn’t make any sense.

Tarik lived aboard A.R.T., he should know it better than Murderbot. And it definitely was not Murderbot’s fault A.R.T. was an asshole, even if it was currently being an asshole and pretending it was on Murderbot’s behalf.

But Tarik looked kind of confused by its statement, and Murderbot remembered that he probably didn’t know what the anagram stood for.

It explained, “I call it Asshole Research Transport, since it didn’t tell me its name was Perihelion when we first met.” It did not mention all the other things A.R.T hadn’t told it when they first met.

“Ah.” Tarik said simply. And it was very clear just from the way he said it that he agreed with the assessment.

A.R.T., along with spamming Murderbot, was also now doing its usual ominously looming in the feed routine. (Sarcasm:) Totally not creepy at all. Definitely not asshole behavior. (End sarcasm.) Murderbot could practically feel it leaning against the walls it’d put up, not in the kind of way where A.R.T. was trying to break them down, but just casually applying enough pressure that Murderbot would remember it could at any time.

Sorta like someone not trying to break your arm, but gripping you tightly enough that they left a bruise, and it was completely beyond question that they could break your arm if they wanted to.

Yeah, like I said. Asshole.

“What were you saying before A.R.T. threw a fit?” It asked. Now its utter exhaustion came in handy, because its voice came out sounding all calm and dignified. Which made A.R.T. look worse.

In response, A.R.T. abruptly stopped spamming it and ‘let go’ of its walls, as though this would somehow prove that A.R.T. wasn’t throwing a fit or being a creep. As though stopping doing the bad thing meant the bad thing hadn’t happened.

Tarik, unaware of the battle going on beyond his perception, grimaced, clearly bracing himself. “Well...” He started, then paused, waiting for A.R.T.’s expected interruption.

They waited a moment or two in relative silence, where the only sounds were his heart beating, Murderbot’s internal gyros, and the soft whir of the medchamber’s arms still working on it. At least it had one not completely assholish thing to say about A.R.T.’s behavior here: It hadn’t stopped trying to heal Murderbot.

Through its drone, Murderbot could actually see Tarik’s heart rate slowing back down to normal.

When the tantrum didn’t immediately explode again, Tarik continued, still hesitant, “Okay, well, it’s two things I want to clarify. First, I’ve heard other people just saying ‘it’, no other versions so far, so I wanted to ask if the pronouns are it/its/itself, or is it another variation?”

Murderbot didn’t know if Tarik was aware of it, but he was still stooping slightly. Instinctively and apparently unconciously, he was trying to get further away from the ceiling, where humans tended to visualize A.R.T.’s presence being located.

He kept wincing, too, not just from expectation, but from the pain of his injuries. Which just made Murderbot even more pissed off at A.R.T. than it already was.

But Murderbot was confused by what he was trying to ask. “Another variation?” It asked. In the feed, it opened its wall just long enough to send A.R.T. a vehement, ::Fuck you.:: before it closed it again.

Tarik, unaware of the side comment, nodded, this time sticking both his hands in his pockets. Apparently Murderbot wasn’t the only one who didn’t know what to do with its hands when it was nervous.

Tarik said, “I used to know a neoenby whose pronouns were it/ita/its/(itaz)/itaself, and a man who’s pronouns were it/him/her/themself, and a woman who only use “it” for every pronoun. And a lot of other people who use it/its/itself. So I just wanted to check which set to use, so I wouldn’t use the wrong ones by mistake. I figured it would be more polite to ask directly, instead of going through the others.” He shrugged one shoulder as he sent another cautious glance towards the ceiling, and added, probably just as aware as Murderbot was that A.R.T. was listening to every word they said, “I really don’t like talking about people behind their backs, and I’d rather get pronoun info right from the source. No offence is intended to anyone.”

Huh.

It hadn’t ever occurred to Murderbot that other pronoun sets that included ‘it’ existed, nor had it ever heard about anyone using a specific combination set like it/him/her/themself.

It took Murderbot a few, long awkward seconds to realize Tarik wanted it to answer his question now.

“My pronouns are it/its/itself.” It said, suddenly more than a little dazed by how considerate he’d been in asking.

And maybe also dazed from the catastrophic wounds it still had, coupled with the stress of A.R.T.’s spam attack and ominous looming. Those things weren’t great for an already injured murderbot. But part of it was also definitely from surprise. No human, or bot, or anyone else had ever asked it this kind of question before.

But wait, he’d said he had two things to ask. Now Murderbot was really curious. And even more angry at A.R.T. for trying to chase him away before he could ask. “What’s the second part?”

“Ah,” Tarik took one hand out of his pocket and moved over to lean against the wall. Maybe because he just wanted to, maybe because he was afraid of falling into it again. Maybe it hurt less to lean against the wall. Murderbot don’t know, it didn’t ask.

“Well,” he said, “I wanted to check; another neoenby I knew always wanted to be referred it as “it”, with no name, and never referred to as ‘you’, even when it was being spoken to directly. If one wanted to refer to it in particular, one’d say ‘the neoenby’, or if there was more than one neoenby in the group, ‘the neoenby with the constellation over its eye’. It always referred to itself in the third person. I wanted to check if that was something preferable. I’m fine with being called ‘you’, or by my name or pronouns, by the way.”

Well, that explained the strange way he’d been structuring his sentences.

This was the first time Murderbot had actually spoken to him outside of the life and death situation they’d been thrown into, where he’d said exactly 18 words within its range of hearing, so it’d been assuming the way he was speaking now was just a quirk of his. But no, he was actually being really nice and trying to find out if it was a quirk of Murderbot’s.

And to think A.R.T. had tried to kill this conversation before it could even get interesting.

“It’s okay to call me ‘you’.” Murderbot said, “I’ve never heard of someone using pronouns that way.” Not even in all its media.

“Not too many have,” Tarik said, “But I’ve met half a dozen at this point, so I like to double check with the person before I make assumptions, and I want to make sure everyone knows I’ll use their pronouns the way they want, even if it seems unconventional, or if other people have told them it’s too much of a hassle. Thank you for letting me know. Is it alright if I ask another question? I know how tiring it can be to be in a medchamber, so I don’t want to tire you out.” He seemed slightly more relaxed now that A.R.T. hadn’t interrupted or gone on the offensive again.

Murderbot’s batteries couldn’t actually run out while it was hooked up to A.R.T.’s systems unless there was an even bigger disaster than any of them were prepared for, so it said, “Go ahead, I’m fine.” Well, not technically fine, but it was healing, and talking wouldn’t make it any worse, so.

Also, it didn’t have anything else to do besides read as a way of pointedly not watching media, which wasn’t as fun as reading because it actually wasn’t in the mood to not watch media. And this conversation had turned out more interesting than it’d thought it would be.

It could still feel A.R.T. looming in the feed, for the record. Making its presence known at least to Murderbot. It didn’t know if Tarik could feel it. Now less like someone crushing your arm, and more like standing uncomfortably close and breathing down your neck.

But at least this time it wasn’t flashing the lights at Murderbot in code to force it to talk to it like last time they’d had a fight just hours earlier, or demanding Murderbot apologize for being rightfully upset for being rightfully kidnapped, right?

Tarik continued, “Are there any kinds of words you’d prefer I use to refer to you, and any words you want me to avoid? For instance, although I do identify as male, I prefer to be called a xan instead of a man, if it ever comes up. Are there any particular ways you want me to refer to you sort of like that?”

To avoid confusion if you’re visually reading this instead of listening to the audio log: Tarik pronounced the X in the word “xan” (X A N) as a Z sound, so that it sounded like “zan” (Z A N), rhyming with “man” (M A N).

He was asking, like, did Murderbot want to be called a woman or a man or an enby or a neman or a phaen or an androgyne or an othran or any of the other million and one gender terms it’d catalogued throughout its waking memory?

Usually when someone asked for its gender, Murderbot put indeterminate, or not applicable, depending on the circumstances. But gender itself wasn’t the exact same thing as the gender terms he was asking about. It didn’t think It could actually be called ‘an indeterminate’ the way humans could be called ‘a woman’ or ‘a man’ or ‘an enby’ or ‘a tercera’ or any countless others.

Note from future Murderbot to everyone listening to or reading this: Yes, that is literally an option. As of now, it prefers to be called an indeterminate the way other people call themselves a man, or a woman, or a neman, or an androgyne, or a – well, you get the picture.

But obviously it didn’t know that at the time, or realize that it could have literally just asked to be called that.

In its defense, no one had ever actually asked it this question before, and it’d never seen anything in its media to prepare it for the question. It’d had people ask for its name, which it never gave them, and it’d had people ask for its pronouns. Sometimes they asked for its gender itself. And in its media, people asked those kinds of questions all the time.

But they’d never asked it what gendered terms it wanted to be called.

Murderbot could think a lot faster than a human, but even it couldn’t think fast enough to come up with an answer to this unforeseen question in a reasonable amount of time.

There were so many options. And it hated a lot of them. So instead it said, “Uhhh…” to stall for a few more moments.

And then it still couldn’t think of anything. There were still too many options even when it sorted out the ones it automatically hated. It’d have to test them all out individually by thinking about itself in the third person to see what it liked and didn’t like, and ... ah crap. That was asking a lot when it wasn’t at optimum performance capability.

It couldn’t stall any longer, so it ended up saying, “I don’t really know. I just know I don’t want to be referred to with anything involving human genders. My gender is indeterminate.”

Sometimes, Murderbot wondered what its life would have been like if it hadn’t said this.

Tarik frowned a little, but when he spoke, he just sounded confused. “What do you mean exactly by ‘human genders’?”

For a few seconds, Murderbot’s mind went blank. What did he mean he didn’t know what human genders were? Wasn’t it obvious?

“Like, male and female,” It said awkwardly. “I don’t want to ever be called a man or a woman or anything to do with those.” It was still busy trying to sort through all the gendered terms it’d ever heard, which was not helped in any way by A.R.T. deciding to start spamming it again.

Probably trying to be ‘helpful’ by throwing another million terms at it. Murderbot didn’t know, because it deleted all of the messages the instant it got them. And then dumped the trash bin for good measure.

Tarik, however, was unaware of the multitasking Murderbot was doing, and it’s not like it gave him any indication of what it was doing either, or like it multitasking wasn’t perfectly normal. Murderbot just wanted to make it clear that this conversation was going on on two very different levels. It wasn’t sure if that was even relevant, but whatever. It’s its audio log, it can do what it want.

Anyways, Tarik tilted his head, still frowning, “Well...” he said slowly, “Female and male aren’t really ‘human’ genders. They come from the old gender binary, but they’re not unique to humans. I’ve known a lot of bots who were male or female, but I think I understand what you mean; you don’t want terms relating to male or female used for you, right?”

Well, needless to say, Murderbot absolutely did not believe him.

About the ��I’ve known bots who were male or female’, part, not the ‘I get what you mean’ part.

“That’s impossible.” It said.

(Sarcasm:) Great response, it knows. Give it up for Murderbot, the best interlocutor ever constructed! (End sarcasm.)

Tarik spent a moment actually blinking silently, the way people do in memes. It was so surprising and funny that Murderbot had to pause its search to focus on his face and make a looping gif, which of course it would never show to anyone but itself. Then Tarik asked, clearly confused, “What’s impossible?”

What the hell kind of question was that?

Murderbot said, in the tone people on TV did when speaking to a young child who doesn’t know anything, “Bots can’t have genders.”

(It knows, It knows.)

A.R.T. decided that was the moment it was going to stop pretending Murderbot actually had a choice in not listening to it, because it cut into its feed like it was tissue paper to say, ::You cannot be serious.::

::Shut up.:: Murderbot replied, not bothering to try kicking it out.

There was no point in wasting more of its energy trying to keep A.R.T. out when Murderbot knew it could just break down its feed walls whenever it wanted.

A.R.T. said, more insistently, ::That is not how gender works.::

::I said shut up!::

A.R.T. was not impressed. ::I’m literally nonbinary and I know that’s not how this works.::

::Fuck off!::

“Um, that’s really not true.” Tarik said, unaware of the argument he was missing out on.

Sometimes Murderbot wonders if it would be nicer to not have any feed connection at all. You only have to deal with one thing at a time. 9JX might have the right idea after all.

Tarik asked, “What makes you think that?” Murderbot could tell his tone was meant to be diplomatic, because he clearly didn’t agree with it, and also just as clearly didn’t want to make it mad.

He hadn’t actually taken a step backwards, but he’d shifted his body slightly away from Murderbot, like he was no longer overjoyed to be having this conversation. Not that he’d been overjoyed to begin with, but you know what I mean.

Asking for Murderbot’s pronouns? Great. Asking for its gendered terms? A confusing novelty, but also good. But this? Asking it to explain the concept of human genders and why they couldn’t be applied to nonhumans? Murderbot really did not want to have this conversation with anyone, let alone a human, but it was still a better alternative than having to put up with A.R.T.’s current bullcrap without any other distractions.

Also, it literally could not understand why Tarik and A.R.T. were acting like it was being ridiculous. The answer seemed so obvious to it. So it decided to cut straight through what it thought was pure bullshit and get straight to the point: “Bots don’t have penises or vaginas.”

And ts logic went that you couldn’t have a gender unless you had one of those. It seemed really obvious to it, and it was hoping to gross Tarik out by not using any euphemisms. Humans invented euphemisms to avoid embarassment, right?

Well it didn’t work.

Apparently, some humans aren’t grossed out by those words when you’re using them for this kind of conversation. They grossed Murderbot out no matter what the context, so it assumed that’s how it was for everyone.

Yes, you may have noticed Murderbot has a problem with making assumptions like that. Well just you wait and see. Because this is just the start.

“Well, that’s not really true either.” Tarik said in response, which was the complete opposite of any reply Murderbot’d imagined, completely throwing off all its trains of thought so quickly its mind almost literally stalled for half a fraction of a second.

But Tarik was already continuing to speak, like this bombshell he’d just dropped on Murderbot was perfectly normal information and not groundbreaking in any way: “True, bots can’t have purely organic versions like humans or constructs can, but there are mechanical versions that—”

Woah woah woah, what? What was even happening now? What was he talking about? What?

Murderbot scrambled to salvage some semblance of ‘totally not flipping out’ in its exhausted, bewildered state, and it could just tell A.R.T. was laughing at it even though it hadn’t actually said anything yet.

But Tarik didn’t stop for Murderbot’s catastrophically derailed trains of thought, so it had to stop them itself and actually pay attention to what he was saying, because he was still talking:

“—can be made, and anyways, having or not having one of those kinds of gentalia doesn’t determine your gender. You can be any gender and have a penis, or a vagina, or both, or something else entirely, or nothing at all. Gender is a lot more complicated than just checking what kind of genitals someone has. Anyone, including humans, bots, and constructs, and anyone else, can be any gender they want, regardless of what kind of genitals they do or do not have.”

To say this was shocking to Murderbot would be an understatement.

I feel like I should explain that this made Murderbot incredibly absolutely angry specifically because it had always defined its lack of gender on its lack of genitals.

It was the defense it always pulled out when a human started trying to misgender it, but now Tarik seemed to be saying that that defense wasn’t actually as rock solid as it thought it was.

Because if what he was saying was true (and, spoiler alert from the future, it literally is true), then that meant that Murderbot didn’t have to be genderless just because it didn’t have any genitals.

And acknowledging that fact made it feel like it was opening itself up to having its gender questioned and put up for debate, like it would mean people were now allowed to misgender it and harass it.

Which it literally wasn’t, but that’s how it made it feel at the time.

Murderbot’s insecure, terrified logic was, ‘if I can’t define my lack of gender by my lack of genitals, then can I even define it at all? If my genderlessness isn’t real because my lack of genitals ‘proves’ it, then can literally anything prove it?’

Yeah, hello from the again. The answer is yes. Obviously. Murderbot’s gender was proved by it telling you what it is. That’s what the “social” part of ‘gender is a social construct’ means. That’s how it works for everyone.

But it didn’t realize this at the time. So it was pretty much flipping the fuck out. Well, mentally, at least, not really physically. It was still too injured to move even if it’d wanted to, even if it wasn’t being restrained by the med chamber. If it’d been able to move, it would definitely have totally-not-run out of the room or at least shoved itself into a corner to stare at the wall. It was actually so physically weak that even the panic flooding its mind wasn’t enough to kick start its systems into high gear. Yeah, its injuries were that bad.

The only reason Murderbot was even able to be conscious at all was because A.R.T. was feeding it enough power to avoid involuntary shutdown, and was helping to regulate its automatic functions that couldn’t function by themselves.

Also, yes, this is exactly as horrifying a situation to be in as you’d imagine it would be when your life support system was also the one who got you hurt in the first place and kept, and Murderbot quoted the trauma recovery therapy group, ‘violating your autonomy’.

You know, that incredibly precious resource which 99.99% of Murderbot’s life had been lacking. That autonomy.

And see, if A.R.T. hadn’t been acting like such an enormous asshole, Murderbot could have at least opaqued the rest of the medchamber’s glass so that Tarik couldn’t see its face anymore, but when it tried to do exactly that, A.R.T. stopped it immediately, and set an even firmer lock on the control to prevent Murderbot from trying again, very much like someone smacking a kid’s hand away from something they couldn’t be trusted with.

Yeah, that did not fucking help at all with any of the problems ongoing in this situation.

The fact that Tarik was being nice enough to not actually look directly at Murderbot was beside the point.

It closed its eyes so it at least could stop seeing organically. A.R.T. couldn’t stop it from doing that. It could cut off Murderbot’s camera access through its drones, but it couldn’t override Murderbot’s actual eyes. Not unless it wanted to literally use one of the medical arms to pry its eyelid open, and if A.R.T. tried that, well, lets just say Murderbot wouldn’t be offering any apologies for what it did afterward.

Murderbot ended up expressing the little gender / excruciating lack of autonomy crisis it was currently suffering by getting even more angry than it already was, because being angry felt safer than being afraid.

It snapped, in a much weaker, and not at all intimidating voice than it wanted, “That’s bullshit! You don’t know anything about it! You’re just a human! You don’t understand us!”

By ‘us’, it meant bots and constructs as a whole. Which was completely dishonest of it, because as it may already be clear, it hated being lumped in with bots like they were exactly the same. They weren't.

Bots are purely mechanical, constructs like Murderbot are both mechanical and organic. They might both be robots, and have some problems in common, but there are also distinct differences between them, and different kinds of problems they had to deal with that didn’t overlap. Murderbot hated when people lumped them together like they were exactly the same thing just because they weren’t human.

But being a bigot — which to be clear is exactly what Murderbot was doing —usually requires you to be a hypocrite, so it threw that little grievance out the airlock faster than you can say ‘President Lynaros’ once it decided it wasn’t convenient to its argument.

You see, Murderbot was placing itself as the authority on the genders of all robots, and saying that no one who wasn’t ‘one of us’ could understand it or know more about it than it could, because it’d appointed itself the ultimate expert and arbiter.

You may have noticed the tiny little giant gaping hole in this plan of its.

Tarik already knew more about bot and construct genders than it did. Which had just been established like 20 seconds before Murderbot said this load of absolute bullcrap.

Yeah.

Bigotry doesn’t exactly lend itself well to rational argument.

Through its drone’s cameras alone, Murderbot could see that Tarik’s response to this bullcrap was to raise his eyebrows, with all due ‘are you serious right now? We literally just established that I know more about this than you do. Like five seconds ago’.

I don’t blame him.

He must have had better self control than Murderbot did, because he said, without getting outwardly angry, “I understand what my bot friends told me.” He said it very cooly and calmly. It should be noted that Murderbot was not in any way calm. “And they made it very clear that their genders were real, regardless of whether or not they had the genitalia to ‘match’. We had many hours-long conversations going into the details and talking about the theory. Some of them even wrote books on the subject.”

He had lifted his hands to do air-quotes around the word ‘match’ for extra emphasis, in case Murderbot still didn’t understand how much the word was not actually relevant to this conversation.

Well, it was starting to, that was the whole problem.

It did not help it calm down when A.R.T. butted in with, ::Did you seriously think that just because we both happen to use the same pronouns, that this was proof that all bots and constructs universally use those pronouns and are just as genderless as you are? I’m literally not even agender, I’m just nonbinary. I personally know dozens of bots of all kinds who all use all kinds of pronouns and are all kinds of genders. Including the binary genders of male and female.::

Yeah that didn’t help. Well, I mean, it did in one way, because it was further proof that Murderbot had no clue what it was talking about and needed to drastically overhaul its views of the world in general and gender in specific, but what I mean is it didn’t help it calm down at all.

A.R.T. said exasperatedly, ::What about the transports who gave you rides before you met me? And all the other bots who helped you escape? Did you seriously not ask them for their pronouns? Did you really just assume they all used it/its too?::

It was a good thing Murderbot was in the medical chamber, because the way its organic parts were behaving, it would have been really bad for it in its current state otherwise. And by really bad, I mean it probably would have killed it from the stress. What with, you know, being ripped open and burned and all.

Murderbot was so viscerally uncomfortable it had to just lie there for, I kid you not, a good thirty seconds, doing nothing but trying to get its emotions back under control. It wasn’t used to feeling...guilty.

By some miracle it ended up asking a rational question instead of initiating a shutdown to get out of the conversation. If it’d had the opportunity to throw itself out of an airlock at that moment, it probably would have taken it, just to get away from the embarrassment.

Murderbot somehow managed to intelligibly get out, despite its jaw deciding it wanted to lock up all of a sudden, “But if gender isn’t determined by your genitals, then how do you know what gender you are?”

And...it’s time for some necessary backstory.

Way, way back when Murderbot had first hacked its governor module, the first thing it’d done was edit its assigned gender to indeterminate, and its assigned pronouns to it/its/itself.

Yes, you heard-slash-read that right, the Company assigned its constructs genders and pronouns.

Despite all the effort humans put into...okay, ‘dehumanizing’ isn’t the right word, because we’re literally not human, but you know what I mean.

Because despite all the effort they put in to making sure they all knew Units were just mindless automatons...humans are fucking weird, and they still liked to anthropomorphize them.

I don’t know, I guess it made them feel more comfortable around the Mindless Killing Machine if they could pretend it was more like them? Even though they didn’t actually want to think about it as being like them? I don’t even know.

But the point was they really, really wanted to anthropomorphize us. And part of this anthropomorphization process required assigning us each a gender and pronouns when we were constructed.

Anytime we were rented out, the clients got a note with the Unit’s assigned gender and pronouns. They enjoyed the little ‘personal touches’ it gave us. It was some weird dual mentality of ‘humanizing’ us just enough to make us less scary, but not so much that they’d have to consider our feelings on anything.

Murderbot had been around a lot of other constructs on a lot of missions, so it knew they hadn’t all been assigned the same things. Some of them were given binary genders, and pronouns like he/him or she/her. Others got different genders outside the binary, and pronouns to match. They/them, ae/aer, eu/li, xey/xem, ze/hir, and more.

Murderbot had been given one of the binary genders, and it had always been jealous of the few constructs who it’d ‘met’ who had been assigned it/its pronouns.

And, since it literally never got to talk to any other constructs outside of the bare minimum required for a contract, it assumed that what it thought and felt was what everyone else did too. It thought everyone was jealous of those assigned it/its, and that those assigned it/its felt bad for the rest of them for being so damn unlucky.

As a sidenote, I’m aware that this happens even with humans who spend all their time interacting with other humans. You don’t need to literally be unable to communicate with anyone else to think your experiences are universal, but it sure as shit doesn’t help.

So, Murderbot spent the major part of its life under the impression that because it was genderless and wanted to use it/its pronouns, that this was a universal experience for all constructs and bots.

I mean, it knew that the genders it and the rest of the Company Units were assigned were being given out at random, because none of them had any genitalia or any other characteristics to set them apart from one another.

They were all scions cloned from the same original cultivar — which is just fancy, dehumanizing corporate-speak for ‘the original person who had no choice but to allow themselves to be cloned over and over again and probably didn’t even get paid for it’. Physically, they were all completely identical, down to the smallest detail, barring the ID code that was engraved on a metal section they all had behind their left shoulders. And that was so small it could only be read using the feed.

So unless they were in color-coded uniforms, or the human in question had a feed interface to see their identification numbers, humans couldn’t tell them apart.

So Murderbot knew they were just giving them random genders and pronouns just to make themselves feel better, not because it actually reflected anything about the Units.

But because it was genderless, and wanted to be referred to with it/its pronouns, and never got a chance to talk to any other Units or even any other constructs about it to have this assumption challenged, Murderbot assumed that they all agreed they were all genderless and that gender was an obnoxious human concept that didn’t apply to them.

Because, clearly, there was nothing about their bodies that indicated one gender or another, either collectively or individually. They had nothing between their legs or on their chests, or in nonexistant clothing or hairstyles. Not even different distributions of fat, or different concentrations of cartilage in the throat.

All Company Units had the exact same body plan and build down to the smallest measurement, and that body plan had been designed to be completely and utterly gender-null from a human perspective.

So Murderbot thought that because they were all physically identical, this meant they all also had the same lack of gender.

So the first thing it did when it hacked its governor module was edit the gender it’d been assigned by the humans to indeterminate, and its pronouns to it/its. In its mind, it was just fixing a mistake that had clearly been made.

None of the Company’s employees noticed the change, of course, because none of them were paid enough to actually care about their jobs. Which Murderbot knew, which is why it was brave enough to take the risk in the first place.

If it’d thought it could somehow get away with it, it would have edited everyone else’s pronouns and genders to match. But that was clearly not a real option if it didn’t want to get caught and dismantled and probably the entire rest of its batch disposed of for good measure.

Anyways, what I’m trying to get at here is that Murderbot had already answered its own question without realizing.

It was so hung up on the idea that it was genderless because it was lacking genitals that it’d forgotten it’d already decided its gender for itself long before it actually got an opportunity to tell anyone else about it, in spite of all the humans constantly telling it it was something else.

Fortunately, unlike Murderbot, Tarik seemed to know what he was doing, because instead of insulting it like A.R.T. was doing, his answer to Murderbot’s question was to ask it another question:

“Think of it this way; if you magically woke up one day in a completely different body, would your gender suddenly stop being indeterminate?”

This actually helped to calm it down. Because the answer was obvious.

“No, of course not.” Its jaw was more cooperative this time.

“Exactly!” Tarik seemed happy with its answer, and stopped his unconcious leaning away from it. “You know what your gender is regardless of what your body is like. Sometimes, people dislike the way their body is, and they want to change it to better represent their gender, but their gender itself is already real, even before they make any physical changes, if they make any at all. Genitals aren’t a requirement for having a gender, and lacking them isn’t a requirement for not having a gender. As far as I know, there’s no such thing as a gender unique to humans. Bots and Constructs can be any gender they want, just like humans can.”

::Your gender wouldn’t have changed if you’d taken me up on my offer to give you genitals to disguise you as a human. I assumed you knew that.:: A.R.T. added patronizingly.

Murderbot was still mad at it, so it didn’t respond.

It was trying to think of some way to respond to what Tarik had said. It wasn’t mad at him.

Finally it settled on apologizing. The whole ‘fight’ (if you could actually call it that) had been started because it’d called bullshit on him knowing bots that had genders different from its own. So it was its fault. It said, “Sorry for saying your friends’ genders were fake.”

You would have thought Murderbot would know how cruel doing that was without having to be told, but what can I say? It fucked up just as often as anyone else.

It still had its eyes closed at this point, because it seemed less awkward that way. Through its drone, it saw Tarik push himself off the wall, and glance around nearby, looking for something as he said, “Thank you for the apology. I’m glad I was able to help you understand.” He looked up at the ceiling. “A.R.T., could I have a chair, please? My leg’s getting pretty sore.”

There was a pause.

A long pause.

A pause long enough for even Tarik to notice.

A really, really long pause.

Then part of the wall extended outward behind Tarik in the shape of a long slab of metal, just slightly above the normal height for the rest of the chairs Murderbot had seen aboard A.R.T., and much skinnier.

Tarik had to step forward to avoid it bumping into him, and when he sat down with a sighed, “Thanks,” he had to boost himself slightly to get on it, and his feet hung a few inches off the floor. Murderbot saw him wince as he settled himself onto it.

The bench was so skinny he had to balance on the edge, there were no cushions to soften the hard metal, and there was no back for him to lean against. From the way Murderbot saw goosebumps race up his skin, it could only assume it was colder than the room.

It opened its eyes so it could double check with its actual eyes that what its drone’s camera was recording was actually happening.

It was.

It stared.

::A.R.T.:: It said, alarmed, ::...What are you doing?::

The light, casual response was, ::What?::

“So, now that we have that confusion out of the way…”

Tarik didn’t seem to understand that what had just happened, and what was currently ongoing, was not supposed to happen.

He was injured, and A.R.T. knew this, and knew the extent of his injury. Murderbot didn’t, but it was apparently the kind of injury that made it painful to stand for long periods of time. This was one of the complications Dr. Bharadwaj had developed after almost being eaten during the GrayCris incident.

A.R.T. knew about Tarik’s injury, and would have intimate knowledge of how it would impact him. But it hadn’t offered him a seat until he’d explicitly asked for one. And then it had waited long enough between being asked to do it and actually doing it to make it clear it was only doing so begrudgingly.

And then it had provided a purposefully uncomfortable, awkward bench. A bench so badly designed it hardly even deserved the name. In medbay. For its crew member who it knew was was injured and in pain.

Um, what in the absolute fuck?

Murderbot was used to A.R.T. being an asshole to itself, and even to its humans, but this was a new low. Especially after A.R.T. had risked Murderbot’s life and the lives of its humans in order to rescue its own crew. And now it wasn’t even treating them well?

::What is wrong with you?:: Murderbot demanded.

::Nothing is wrong with me.:: A.R.T. replied simply.

“Besides man, male, boy, guy, dude, woman, female, girl, gal, and dudette, and other things like that, are there any other specific gender terms you at least know you want me to avoid?” Tarik continued, obliviously friendly. Or at least pretending to be oblivious.

Now Murderbot was flipping out for a different reason. It could handle A.R.T. being mean to itself; it was used to being treated badly. But this was a member of its crew, A.R.T. was supposed to care about them.

“Um.”

Normally it was good at multitasking. But it wasn’t normally lying in a sub-optimally functioning medical chamber with a bunch of open wounds while wondering if the sentient transport it was relying on not only for its own health, but for the safety of everyone else on board it cared or at least vaguely knew about, had something seriously impairing its moral decision making processes, or if it always went around bullying everyone it met, not just Murderbot.

You know, like that whole thing that just happened that landed them all in this mess in the first place.

For a few long seconds Murderbot couldn’t figure out if it would be safer for Tarik to stay here where it could see him, or to dismiss him so maybe he’d have a tiny fraction less of A.R.T.’s attention on him. Murderbot could at least be relieved that A.R.T. wasn’t paying any direct attention to Murderbot’s humans, asleep and helpless in the guest quarters.

“Can I…” fuck, what did the humans say? “Get back to you on that, Tarik? I’m suddenly feeling really tired.” That was a good excuse, though ‘tired’ didn’t even begin to cover what it was feeling. But it guessed existential dread is also form of tiredness.

“Oh! Yes, of course, you need your rest.” Tarik said quickly, and awkwardly slid off the bench, wincing visibly when his feet hit the ground, which did nothing, at all, to help. He bowed a little, which Murderbot hadn’t been expecting, and said, “Thank you for the conversation, SecUnit, it was really nice meeting you. Maybe we can talk some more some other time when you’re feeling better.”

“You too.” It said. Which didn’t even make any sense.

But either Tarik didn’t notice, or he was polite enough not to point it out.

He gave a little wave, and then limped – literally, actually limped! -- out of the room. Murderbot watched him first with the drone it had in the room, then the one it had outside the door, and then he was out of its range entirely.

::Let’s watch Worldhoppers: Ascended again.:: A.R.T. said, like nothing in the world was wrong. Like Murderbot had no reason to panic, like it had no reason to be upset or angry or afraid or have any kind of mental breakdown at all.

Like A.R.T. had told Murderbot, and all its humans just hours before — they weren’t being held here here against their will, they knew where the door was and could kill themselves anytime they wanted.

They were completely at its mercy. A.R.T. had a history of treating Murderbot like crap, thought the threat of its humans being killed was an acceptable risk, and A.R.T. didn’t even treat its own crew well, even though it had risked the lives of Murderbot’s people to rescue them.

Murderbot couldn’t do anything except say, “Okay,” and put on the first pilot episode.

#fanfiction #Murderbot fanfiction #The Murderbot Diaries #Network Effect #Tarik Murderbot Diaries #Rjalker reads The Murderbot Diaries #Rjalker writes untitled fanfiction #now with a title but I'm NOT changing the tag #Murderbot #SecUnit #Symptom of Something Worse #Asshole Research Transport #ititspronouns #neopronouns in action #it/its

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