Цитаты из книги All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries

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.

I panic all the time, you just can’t see it.

— Ты не винишь людей за то, к чему тебя принуждали? – наконец спросил он. – За все случившееся?
— Нет. Обиды – это для людей. Конструкты не так глупы, – сказал я.

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

Иногда ничего нельзя поделать. Остается лишь выжить и двигаться дальше.

Выдумка заставляет забыть о реальности.

«Опекун» - более приятное слово, чем «владелец».

Мертвые клиенты – кошмар для бизнеса.

Мне нравилась эта работа – ну пока кто-то не пытался сожрать меня и Бхарадвадж

Лучший способ дать людям понять, что они делают глупости, это задавать вопросы.

Работая по прошлому контракту, я стал невольным зрителем сериала про сложные отношения между несколькими любовниками, вот только мне опротивел весь актерский состав.

Но если тупой бот, вроде грузчика, будет отвечать за безопасность, то за ним должен присматривать человек, а он обойдется компании недешево. И нас сделали умнее. Побочными эффектами стали тревожность и депрессия.

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

I felt this would be the point where a human would sigh, so I sighed.

I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time. I told myself I still looked like a SecUnit without armor, hopelessly exposed, but the truth was I did look more human. And now I knew why I hadn’t wanted to do this. It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person.

Constructs sometimes fall under the same category as bots, sometimes under the same category as deadly weapons. (FYI, that is not a good category to be in.)