Artificial Condition

“Unsecured” is what they call rogue SecUnits when they want humans to listen and not just start screaming.

Young humans can be impulsive. The trick is keeping them around long enough to become old humans.

Now that I knew something was hacking the security cameras to watch me, I could use countermeasures. I probably should have been doing that from the beginning, but you may have noticed that for a terrifying murderbot I fuck up a lot.

I had forgotten that I had a choice, that I wasn’t obligated to do what she wanted just because she was here. Being asked to stay, with a please and an option for refusal, hit me almost as hard as a human asking for my opinion and actually listening to me. I sighed again. I was having a lot of opportunities to do it and I think I was getting good at it.

I had intended to just stand there and stare at her, which is what SecUnits do to clients who have just performed an act of stupidity so profound it approaches suicide which they ordered us not to stop them from doing.

Yes, I often want to shake my clients. No, I never do.

I tried to think about why I didn’t want to change my configuration, even to help protect myself. Maybe because it was something humans did to sexbots. I was a murderbot, I had to have higher standards?

Granted, it would have been hard to show realistic SecUnits in visual media, which would involve depicting hours of standing around in brain-numbing boredom, while your nervous clients tried to pretend you weren’t there.

Молодёжь такая импульсивная. Нужно стараться удерживать их от порывов, чтобы они успели состариться.

I liked protecting people and things. I liked figuring out smart ways to protect people and things. I liked being right.