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ruukachoo · 2 months ago

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Okay so I need to talk about corru.observer

So I'm just sitting here, minding my own business, poking around on the social media sphere when I see a repost of a post talking about a browser game called corru.observer . "Huh," I say to myself, "a browser game about rummaging through an alien biocomputer? Well, I do like my weird fiction, and a biocomputer sounds intreresting. I'll take a look. It's a browser game, in my experience those are typically pretty short, I can give it a looksee and then get on with my life. How long could it take?"

That, my friends, is what we call hubris.

A week and change later I've binged through everything I possibly can (with the exception of the optional hard archive vein section because I'm terrible at the video games especially when they activate hard mode I still haven't dealt with the hard sections in Deltarune ugh why must they put more plot behind hard sections). I have been left staring at the ceiling muttering about mindcores and thoughtforms and weeping over characters. I've talked Eien's ear off puzzling through the story and my brain is still running several cycles repeatedly trying to suss things out.

What I'm trying to say is this game is GOOD and it's gripped my brain HARD.

Unfortunately I learned that it wasn't finished yet well after I had passed the point of no return (this has been happening to me a lot this year with other media, I can't say I'm fond of this trend--I never did like cliffhangers) so I'm left waiting for the next part to come out and in the meantime I have to get out how amazing this game is and maybe convince some other folks to play it because I need to yell more and theorize and there's only so much I can do on my own.

The non-spoilery review: IT'S GOOD GO PLAY IT.

But seriously, the premise basically boils down to: you're a contractor that's been hired to retrieve info from an alien biocomputer that's been recently salvaged from a wreck at the bottom of the ocean. And then it gets weird.

Actually, to quote a character from much later, this is probably the best tagline for the game: "It will probably only get stranger!"

Aesthetically, the game reminds me a little of Welcome to Night Vale. Writing and humor-wise, it reminds me a little of Undertale. There are some elements that remind me a little of Hatoful Boyfriend shut up it does make sense if you've played through it. It's a game full of nooks and crannies to explore and a whole bushel of questions and mysteries to solve. I realize in hindsight that it pings a lot of the things that also caused me to gravitate towards Steven Universe: compelling and complex characters, tons of mysteries big and small to chew on, and rock solid worldbuilding. I am seriously in love with the worldbuilding here - everything, right down to the reason you hear music and the appearance of the characters, has a reason, and part of the joy of the game for me is just figuring everything out. Media scores major points with me when it becomes apparent that the creators have Thought Through Things.

My only really negative thing to say is that while I love the immersive interface, I would have appreciated a little readme file or an annotation or something to indicate how to save the game. In internet years I'm older than the pyramids and I grew up on point-and-click adventure games where being able to save every five seconds is paramount, and I think I would've had a little less anxiety at the beginning if I knew how to save my progress in case Firefox borked or something (I think the answer is there's import/export file functions under data management I THINK that's what it is).

But yes, overall, really good, loved it, really wanting the next part to come out now.

OKAY NOW SOME OTHER THOUGHTS EXCUSE ME WHILE I DO A BIT OF SCREAMING.

NNNNGH THESE CHARACTERS I LOVE THEM. They are all so good. I love Cavik's eagerness and Tovik's determination, I love how Gakvu and Miltza manage to work together despite their differences, I love Kazki's gentleness and Bozko's protectiveness, I love how Idril is basically the answer to the question "What if Osaka from Azumanga Daioh was a dull engineer?". I think what makes it work so well is that you get a chance to spend some time with them, the Call Team in particular. You see them when times are good and when everything is falling apart. The visual novel format, where a lot of the narration is from Akizet's POV, works super well here. You get not only a chance to see what Akizet thinks of them based on what she knows about them, but you see how her thoughts and opinions of them change over the course of the story, particularly in relation to the collapse arc. It gives them an extra boost of life that I think might not have been possible from a more distant POV. They're allowed to be complex and deep.

And oh Akizet is a multidimensional delight. I love her fondness for orange juice. I love how she is doing her best. I love how she is anxious and overthinks things and it's clear that she is trying to do the right thing, even if there are some pretty clear signs that she isn't always making the best choice. I love how she has regrets and joys and stumbles. I love how she is more competent than she thinks she is. I love how she loves these people. Her scene with Bozko where he's spiraling and she hugs him because it's the only thing she can do is lodged in me, both for how relatable it is when wanting to help someone dealing with trauma and the only thing you can do is be there for them, and because oh Aki, you don't need to be a Tir, you just need to be a friend. You just need to be you.

I feel like the overarching theme of the game is "Everyone is doing the best they can with what they have." Right down to the partial translations of words from the mindspike and the fragmented state of the cyst, everything that happens is coming from a place of working with what you've got. That kinda makes the end of the collapse even more tragic, as it's being made abundantly clear that Akizet did not have all the pieces to deal with Vekoa. All she had was her previous knowledge of what she had seen, and all of that pointed to, in her mind, Vekoa attempting a deception. Although I wonder how much of that is based off of what she saw and what she believed. There's a TON of layers here still to uncover.

And there are SO MANY QUESTIONS. There's the big ones of course ("What happened to Akizet?" "What the heck is the deal with the meteorite anyway?" "What is Velzie hiding?" "Who sent the message to Akizet that set everything in motion?"), although there are some smaller ones that I keep chewing on.

What is Kazki's role in all of this? She was conspicuously absent from the collapse, and it made sense she wouldn't be present based on her role, but I keep wondering if there was more going on with her than is apparent. She had been regularly speaking with a human, but the details of that interaction haven't been made known, so is it possible she has more involvement than we currently know? The fact that Drowning, who holds some of Akizet's memories of Kazki and may look like how Kazki actually looks, is guarding some of the deeper parts of the cyst, suggests a greater role.

What is Velzie anyway? The obvious answer is some sort of thoughtform, but from what? Something I started thinking about recently after looking at some of the transcripts is how Tozik wanted Akizet to share the truth about the meteorite. We assume his message got out at the end, but did it? Is Velzie related to Tozik somehow? On the other hand there's evidence Cavik might have some connection as well. HM.

"OUR" DULL SHIP? WHO IS THIS "OUR"??

How much can Funfriend really be trusted? This one's gotten me into a LOT of knots. Funfriend is trying to repair the cyst and is again, doing the best it can with what it has, but the Council and Jokzi Ozo suggest that maybe it's not what the rest of the cyst wants. Honestly I was starting to get a bit of a Myst vibe, where it feels like we're getting two opposing viewpoints and we're eventually going to have to choose one of them (or perhaps a third as-of-yet-unknown third option). But getting back to Funfriend, it's repairing with what it has to work with and its own memories of Akizet and what happened, so how much of that can be trusted? Are we seeing what actually happened, or are we seeing what Funfriend wants us to see?

What IS that weird dark space in Jokzi Ozo with eyes that look an awful lot like Tovik's?

Will we ever get to have a drink with the orange juice effigy? I'M ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS HERE.

Nngh, in the end all I can do is ponder for right now, but when the next part comes out I will be SO ready. And maybe by then I'll have figured out how to get through the archival vein. PLEASE BSTRD, I NEED MORE PLOT AND LORE. I'M NOT A GAMER, I JUST WANT THE STOOOOOORY!!!

#corru.observer #seriously i adored it go check it out #although you may want to wait if you don't like having to sit and wait for the next part #seriously this is like the third time this year this has happened to me #“Oh this looks like fun it's probably finished right?”#HAHAHA NO RU #the game has given me a newfound reappreciation for orange juice #oh snap the obesk don't have fruit do they #they never lost the ability to produce vitamin c #assuming they need it in the first place #but WHOA that's interesting!#this game totally plays into my love of biology and story and weird #like it is seriously right in that sweet spot I like of weird and silly and strange and fun and maybe a little horror but not too much #oh and feels #okay I appear to be making a whole second essay in the tags I'M STOPPING NOW

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aleki-lives-here · 3 months ago

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The second part of tech's pov is actually here, this time including Murderbot being lovingly disassembled while conscious! (an experience that was definitely nothing but pleasant, don't worry about it)

It's officially a series now, I think there'll be five parts total? But don't trust my word, the process is mysterious and unpredictable.

A feed alarm marking the end of ter shift blinked to the center of ter vision just as Ginson pried open the chest panel. Ter tool slipped, jamming into exposed synthetic muscle held to the side by the SecUnit’s one functional hand. Ginson turned off the reminder, rubbed ter eyes with the back of ter hand that hadn’t yet been covered in blood and fluids, and sighed.

“Everything alright?” Minoa chimed in. Ginson could feel him working in the shared feed workspace, but he was keeping an eye on what te was doing. Which was, of course, not awkward and distracting at all.

“Yes, yes,” te sighed again, and brought the clock to the foreground of ter attention – it was an hour into ter usual rest period – and set a new timer, counting seconds to the morning. Te had a little less than eight hours to finish every diagnostic te could think of and compile the report, and even fewer if te actually wanted to get any sleep.

Which was why te picked up the tool, nudged the Unit’s hand into a more convenient position and pushed the chassis open manually instead of hooking up the specialized machinery and starting the full maintenance cycle that would require at least another half an hour and take the SecUnit offline.

Blood dripped down from where the organics tore. The SecUnit helped ter maneuver its parts to provide access. Minoa whistled, feed activity slowing down, and peeked over ter shoulder. “That’s… fuck, they actually have, like, organs?”

“Language,” te warned distractedly (Minoa groaned), then answered, “Yes,” and leaned forward to get a better view. The diagnostics couldn’t tell where the damage was, and te hoped looking at it would make things obvious, but there were no visibly leaking parts, and the inorganic tissue was still in the way, even if this one was partially transparent, so te reached to move it aside – thankfully, it was made to resist impacts, not being cut through (if the most inner parts of a SecUnit are being cut, there’s likely nothing more to be done) – moved the tool carefully around the tubing, pulling the tissues away with the other hand, and–

“What’s this?” Minoa exclaimed.

Ginson stilled ter fingers before te could accidentally cut something that should not be cut. “Nothing you need to look at,” te snapped and immediately regretted it. Judging by Minoa’s silence, it was entirely too harsh. That’s why Ginson hated working with people – te wasn’t good at it, especially when te was busy! Te put the tools aside and faced him. “Sorry. I don’t mean to yell, it’s just… sorry.”

“No, no, sorry I interrupted,” Minoa laughed, and te shifted awkwardly. “It's late, and you have to work. Ugh,” he made an entirely exaggerated face of disgust. “Eleven pm at work is the exact time and place to be cranky.”

That just reminded Ginson that te wasn't the only one staying after hours, and Minoa wasn't even paid for this. “If you want to call it a day–”

“Nuh-uh!” Minoa exclaimed and emphatically tapped his lips. “Nope, never, you're not getting rid of me so easily. You think I all but begged to be in your wonderful company just to give up like that?”

Ginson sighed, but this time it came out exasperated. “Offering help isn't begging.”

“That's besides the point.” Minoa waved dismissively. “Also, where else do I get to poke around in one of these?”

And, to prove his point, he poked. His finger landed at the side of the mostly exposed lung, and he immediately flinched away, making a face. It startled a laugh out of Ginson. “Don't do that,” te had to warn. “These things are delicate on the inside, and cost a fortune. I need to prove it hasn't been damaged, not get it damaged.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Minoa grinned back. Ginson found some part of terself relaxing. “I'll limit my poking to data, then. Your magical fingers are definitely much better suited for this task.”

Te waved him off, but couldn’t hold back a smile.

At seven hours thirty-eight minutes before the solicitor was due back at the office, Ginson had to accept that a purely visual inspection would lead ter nowhere, and ushered the SecUnit towards the table. It hesitated slightly, still holding its chest open with one hand, and Ginson put its severed arm aside, clearing the space.

At seven sixteen Ginson had gone through most of the circulatory system piece by piece, still finding no explanation for the lowered performance. It wasn’t surprising – the numbers weren’t significant enough to warrant so much effort in any other circumstances, but the manager had been clear: te was to investigate and list every smallest issue, and prove that (ignoring the mangled arm that happened during the assignment and could not be blamed on the company) no, there was no malfunction, so no, the company wouldn’t be paying for the mess.

Ginson really hoped there wasn’t any malfunction, because if there was… best not to think of that.

At seven ten, Ginson was waiting for the liquid pump to pause the flow on one third of its pipes, so they could be rerouted to an external pump, when Minoa made a surprised sound. Te made sure the errors from the temporarily reduced blood flow cleared out, then asked, “Something interesting?”

“Uh, I guess?” Minoa’s attention was on the feed. “Dunno. I’m gonna– yeah, that, I’m gonna run it against the archives, but maybe?.. Give me a couple of minutes.”

At six forty-seven Ginson fiddled with the disconnected pump, still warm and dripping liquids. It looked perfectly good in ter fingers, but the diagnostics did return an improvement now that it was out of the picture, so, here. A meaningless problem solved. Te wiped the pump and ter hands and focused on the report and the list of other things that returned less than perfect status. Could the left knee joint being 1.7% too tight cause a SecUnit to misinterpret the order? No. Did anyone care about ter opinion or basic logic? Also no.

Stars, te was tired.

“So,” Minoa said and then paused for a good half a minute. Ginson looked at whatever he was working on in the feed – graphs and automatic reports by programs te wasn’t familiar with, structured in ways that didn’t feel intuitive. Minoa sent some of it to the display surface. “Got a minute?”

“I’m listening,” Ginson sighed.

“Okay,” Minoa smiled and rubbed his hands together. “So, first of all, I wasn’t actually sure what I was looking for?” He looked apologetic. “I ran the code you sent, and the results were all very clear, and then I thought: surely I can do better than this! And you know I don’t really know how to interpret the logs, but it’s the exact kind of data I work with, so I ran some of my code just to see what’s up with that. And you know its performance is generally abnormal, right? Turns out, that’s not the only weird thing!”

That was interesting, Ginson told terself, and it was. Just, at any other hour, you know? Once te'd had a good long nap, then it would be interesting.

“I don’t have all the data from all the SecUnits,” Minoa continued, “but what I did have on hand has yielded fun discrepancies. This,” a graph appeared on the display surface, “is feed activity. This is what you’d see in new SecUnits, and some of the old ones here. This one would fit more with the first bunch, which is weird–”

“Individual differences,” Ginson interrupted.

“Huh?”

“They are all different. I don’t suppose it shows up for you, but it’s critical in my work. Every Unit is a bit different. They perform differently. They approach things differently and in different ways.” Te shrugged. “Neural tissue. You really can’t get them acting the same, no matter how much structure and how many constraints you implement around their decision-making process.”

“...Right,” Minoa said.

Ginson thought he looked disappointed, and felt another pang of guilt. Te fidgeted with the pump again, bits and pieces moving inside of it with every twist of ter fingers. “And other differences?” Te tried to sound enthusiastic or at least like te wasn’t dying for a soft pillow and some quiet.

“Right! Okay, there's quite a few to look at, but the most interesting one from those I could check is, I think, the cleaned up data for research on the governors and their effects. The primary focus was the cumulative damage to neural tissue and whether it was worth doing something about, but we tracked many metrics, and one of the things we tracked was hormonal response. The stress levels are higher in older SecUnits as a rule, but they fluctuate a lot, and, looking at the governor module’s influence, there’s always this spike right before it activates, and a long period of recovery afterwards, no matter which level the punishment was at.”

Ginson snorted. “So basically you’ve discovered that they have stress reactions to pain?”

Minoa blinked and looked at the SecUnit. Ginson did, too. It was still lying on the table, unmoving, tubes going out of the hole in its chest and to the external pump. It was still online. Suddenly, it made ter uncomfortable.

“Well, yes. The thing is: this one doesn’t. Or, if it does, then less than other SecUnits. There’s little to no correlation between its governor module and stress responses. By that I don’t mean it doesn’t have stress responses, because it does, and they’re– there’s a lot of those. And I mean, a lot. If I were a MedSystem looking at a human, I’d give them anxiety meds.” He paused and blinked some more. “...Can constructs have anxiety?”

“The hormonal responses are calibrated for optimal performance,” Ginson dismissed. Te squinted at the graph, then closed ter eyes and accessed it in the feed instead. That, somehow, didn’t make it make more sense. “Individual differences,” te muttered.

“I suppose,” Minoa sounded sceptical. “Do you know how long it’s been like this?”

“No idea. Logs aren’t kept in full for long.”

“So no logs pre-RaviHyral incident?”

That made Ginson pause. The SecUnit was a mess when te’d gotten ter hands on it first. Being infected with code that took control of its systems and forced it to kill indiscriminately – that was something out of a horror show, and none of them got out of it unaffected. Some were decommissioned as their performance reliability never returned to acceptable figures. Every other one had their memory thoroughly purged.

Half of those showed repeated problems afterwards, which was how they ended up in ter basically personalized care. Ginson knew them, pulled them apart and put them back together with ter own hands, and hated seeing three more of them gone, never returning from other contracts. Te compiled reports of their state afterwards, and all looked like unfortunate accidents, and were unfortunate accidents. It still felt a bit like ter failure. Maybe they were still underperforming, some error stuck in the organic parts of their systems that Ginson couldn’t access, and the mistakes were the consequence of ter lack of ingenuity.

But out of the ten Ganaka Pit SecUnits, there was one outlier. It hadn't been an outlier early on – In fact, it was one of the units struggling to return to baseline functionality – but then something happened and it shot beyond the baseline, enough to get Minoa's attention. It was great at its job, and Ginson never found out how it got there.

Te stared at the graph now, and wondered. It made ter feel deeply uncomfortable.

“Neural tissue can be unpredictable,” te repeated. “Especially after extreme adversarial circumstances. And it largely controls its own hormone release so it can self-regulate, and that’s what it did.”

Minoa didn’t look any less sceptical. “You made this sound like a very natural response that every Unit has,” he pointed out. “But then shouldn’t they have the same stress response to their governor module being activated? All the others do.” He gestured at the graphs.

“Well, what other explanation is there?” Ginson asked and immediately regretted it. The discomfort turned into painful pulsing between ter ears. This day couldn’t be over soon enough. “Whatever,” te waved ter hand. “It doesn’t give us much. I’m going to run the proper diagnostics on the endocrine system, but it’s not like it could have forced it to jump into the blast radius against an order.”

Except hormones affected decision making (that’s why they were there to begin with), and so, yes. This could in fact make it jump into the blast radius without paying attention to an order. If it didn’t have the appropriate fear of the governor module’s punishment protocol, it was the exact kind of thing that’d make it disobey.

Ginson winced. The only worse result te could deliver was finding out it was a rogue that got caught in an explosion in an attempt to commit mass murder. Oh, ter supervisor would love that conclusion.

The good thing about hormones was: they were in the blood, and that blood was already conveniently running through a machine capable of taking every test needed. By which Ginson didn’t just mean the SecUnit, though of course it could track its own levels, but the external pump could double as a diagnostic tool. That was just great, and a wonderful way to appear like a good diligent worker that took time to run double tests instead of enjoying ter rest – if a single supervisor would think to realize how much effort hooking it all up would have taken if Ginson hadn't already done that.

Half of the Unit’s hormone levels were of course elevated. Te’d already talked about individual differences – this was exactly about that. This SecUnit didn’t like going through any tests or repairs. It’d found those stressful since Ganaka Pit, and usually Ginson tried to keep it offline for everything that didn’t require its participation. Te felt a bit bad for keeping it awake like that. Poor thing must have spent the whole time in fear, but, well – it’s not like te had much of a choice here. Te’d take ter time if te had any.

The test was simple and automated, but took time. The hormones flushed away from its system, then flooded it again. The SecUnit twitched minutely when they plateaued at the highest concentration, and Ginson patted its hand briefly. “Sorry, it’s not going to be a pleasant test,” te muttered.

Minoa gave ter a startled look that made ter cheeks warm up, but didn’t comment.

The hormones slowly flushed again and as its results returned almost clear, Ginson dropped a modified governor module diagnostic in its feed. There was an immediate spike in adrenaline that the machines quantified, which was also great because here, proof that Minoa’s findings were a fluke and all of it worked beautifully. The systems connected to the governor, exchanged messages, orders (limited to those the Unit could perform without moving physically), received responses, all in a timely manner and with elevated stress.

Then came the test of punishment procedures. The shocks were administered at regular intervals, with growing magnitude, the governor module registered every one as completed with not a single problem, except…

“There are no pain-related spikes,” Minoa pointed out.

Ginson could see that.

The test finished, and returned all clear. “The endocrine system is being tested, that must interfere with the regular hormone production,” te lied. Because it didn’t, and the first spike was a proof that te’d not messed something up in the settings. The SecUnit had a fully functional hormone production system that could deliver as much adrenaline as needed, and somehow, magically, it didn’t have the natural, innate-to-all-constructs (and humans and, te was sure, animals too) responses to pain.

“Should we test for it separately?” Minoa offered and clapped his hands. “If that’s the reason it’s been performing better, we should look into it!”

Ginson cleared ter throat. “Minoa…”

“Come on, call me Tom.”

“Uh,” Ginson blinked and for a whole second looked away from the SecUnit. “Right. Sorry, – could you get me some coffee?”

Minoa stared for a few seconds before smiling. “Sure! How much sugar?”

“Three.”

“On it, boss!”

He left and closed the door behind himself, and Ginson lowered terself on a chair and slowly, articulately, allowed terself a singular thought: holy fucking shit.

Okay, te could still be wrong. Te wasn’t dismissing the idea that it was all a fluke, and a natural difference, and there wasn’t a singular test that came out anything but clear, and, most importantly, the SecUnit hadn’t actually killed anyone it wasn’t supposed to. It did ignore an order. And it did show the complete lack of natural responses to pain–

Wait, was it pain generally or pain from the governor? Te had full access to the logs, and te knew the exact timestamp te needed – ter alarm had gone off at exactly eleven, – and, yes, there was the spike in response to the tool slipping and hurting it, and then it lowered its pain sensors even further. So it felt pain alright, and had all the natural and universal reactions associated with it. Except when it came to the pain delivered by its governor.

So, returning to that thought: holy. fucking. shit.

At six hours and two minutes, Ginson spent an entire minute staring at what had to be a rogue SecUnit, lying on ter table, chestplate to the side, hooked up to an external pump and currently riding another hormonal high. That made no sense. There was not a single universe in which it made sense for a fucking rogue SecUnit to allow Ginson to do any of this to it! To continue allowing this, for months!

…Was this why it hated being tested so much? Was it scared of being found out?

At five fifty te was carefully connecting the tubing back to the SecUnit’s liquid pump as the door opened again. “The sugariest coffee I could find!” Minoa announced. He placed it on the table without being told to do so, and peeked at what Ginson was doing again, and drew out a disappointed, “Is this a no for additional testing then?”

“Not tonight,”” Ginson replied. “There’s already a lot to do–”

“Awwww.”

“–and hunting for mysterious possible problems – that likely don’t even exist because all the diagnostics are clear – would not just be a waste of time, it would be- it would be utterly unproductive, is what it would!”

“Okay, okay, I get it. I was just curious–”

“Well, I’m not! If it works, don’t fix it! My job here is to make sure that it was working within normal operating parameters during the contract. And it was! There’s a whole fucking lawsuit–”

“Hey, language,” Minoa tried for a joke.

“–and who do you think would be blamed if it were to have malfunctioned? Do you think it’d be whoever demanded it stopped in the middle of saving the workers? There was no malfunctioning involved, just some stupid contradictory orders, and that’s it. That is it!”

Minoa was silent for a while after te’d finished. “Sorry. I was just curious, is all. We don’t have to do any of that if you don’t want to, tonight or ever.”

“There’s no need to check that, because it’s nothing but bullshit,” Ginson said and made sure ter voice sounded confident.

Minoa was silent again. Ginson stared at the SecUnit in front of ter and felt sick. It stared at the ceiling, never once meeting ter gaze. A regular, normal, obedient SecUnit that helped with its own disassembly because a tech had asked it to, who just happened to receive conflicting orders that one time. Te’d checked the logs, there were conflicting orders. It was just that simple.

“Okay,” Minoa said finally. “I’m sorry. Is there something else I can help you with?”

Ginson felt awful. He’d done nothing but try to help and cheer ter up, but it was just… not a good night for that. “No. It’s fine, I’ll finish here myself. There’s just a lot of tedious checks, you’ve already helped enough,” that sounded wrong. Te winced. “Sorry, I’m really grateful, just…”

“No-no, I get it,” Minoa assured. His voice sounded odd. “Well, I suppose it’s time to spare you from the fun of my company.” He laughed. “Hang out at some point later?”

“Sure,” Ginson agreed and turned toward him. “Good night.”

“Good night,” he echoed and left.

At five forty two Ginson suddenly had no distraction from wondering whether a rogue SecUnit would jump up and kill ter the moment its blood was safely running all inside its body. It hadn’t yet. But it really wasn’t convenient to murder someone while they were conducting your own repairs.

Ginson spent a few minutes sipping ter coffee and mulling over that possibility, and every other possibility that bloomed in ter imagination, and then got to work.

At one hour thirteen minutes te submitted a final report that said that yes, there were minor problems with the SecUnit’s systems. Its pump was performing 2.3% worse than standard. Its left knee joint was too tight. A patch of skin on its back had been regrown at some point with slight defects. But there was nothing more than that, and nothing that would have made it malfunction and do what it shouldn’t have, and definitely not a single tiniest thing that would make the company liable for the damages, and even less that would point to ter, good Tech Ginson, as not having conducted a thorough enough check of the SecUnit’s functionality.

It was a great report, all in all, with the result of every diagnostic attached. And te didn’t even get murdered while writing it, so maybe it really was the truth.

#funky_graph.image #murderbot fanfiction #the murderbot diaries #murderbot #murderbot through the first part of the scene: can you please stop flirting by poking my lungs. what the fuck. ew. gross #the second part it spent just thinking oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit on repeat #it did come out of this convinced that humans are somehow even worse at security than it thought they were #they can miss a rogue murderbot lying right in front of them while actively searching for it! the stupidity has no bounds smh #it took me annoyingly long to write! but i'm technically a third of the way through the next part #probably gonna post it to ao3 at some point too #Huge THANK YOU for @jadefyre and @thelongestway for making this text the best it can be

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