Artificial Condition

In filmmaking, there is something called an “establishing shot”. It is a brief shot shown before the action begins, to let the viewer know the background of the story about to take place. I think of All Systems Red as the establishing shot for the Murderbot Diaries. The film analogy is not great, because there’s a lot of action in All Systems Red. But what did it establish?

Well, Murderbot (her own name for herself — on the issue of pronouns, see my review of All Systems Red) was a Security Unit (SecUnit) owned by a company that insures miners and explorers. She is a construct of poorly defined nature. Her brain — the thing she thinks with — has both organic and inorganic components. She is by nature extraordinarily good at fighting and surveillance and almost impossible to kill. She is also very much a person with her own motivations and desires. Her motivations and desires are, by and large, those of a Good Person. About four years ago (35,000 hours) she went wild on a contract with the mining company RaviHyral and killed a mort of human clients. Or did she? The Company erased the parts of her memory stored in her inorganic brain. Memories stored in her organic brain are still there, but they are vague. She subsequently hacked her own governor module, which gave her the freedom to disobey orders and to not behave like a SecUnit. In All Systems Red she saved the lives of half a dozen client researchers. They in recognition purchased her contract from The Company and set her free, to the minimal extent that a SecUnit can legally be free.

Also important is that Murderbot is an avid consumer of TV series. (OK, serial media entertainment — they are probably not strictly TV as we know it.) She is very emotionally involved in them. I wonder, in fact, how much of her moral code she imbibed by watching TV.

Wanting more complete freedom, she fled her new owners and is now on the loose on her own. She is therefore, with her history of mass murder, her disabled governor module, and her having fled her owners, by definition a rogue SecUnit, and therefore a fugitive.

She now has a mission — to find out what really happened at RaviHyral. To travel there, she offers a Research Transport heading in that direction all the TV shows she has downloaded as payment for passage. The research transport accepts this deal and, once Murderbot is aboard, passive-aggressively forces her advice and friendship on Murderbot. Murderbot calls the Research Transport ART, for A—— Research Transport. (A—— stands for a word that I can’t include in an Amazon review.). They buddy-watch a lot of TV — that’s a fun part of the story.

They arrive at the location of the RaviHyral incident, and adventures ensue. To avoid spoiling, I won’t say anything more specific. It’s a good story and further reveals Murderbot’s history and character. Some light is shed on past events at RaviHyral. Murderbot and ART part ways, having exchanged phone numbers (so to speak). I think we can expect to see more of ART in the future of the Murderbot Diaries.

How do your relate to a machine that has guilt anxiety? It knows that something is very wrong, but can only remember the outlines. What did it do? What didn’t it do? How can it relate to other machines and to the people who seem to befriend it? How can a machine have friends in the first place? It’s all so confusing!