Марта Уэллс - Network Effect

What would have been helpful was an episode of Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon . Or World Hoppers . Or anything. (Anything except MedCenter Argala .) But media would calm me down, and I wanted to stay angry.

I couldn’t sit here and wait, there had to be something else I could do. I stood up.

“Oh, you’re up.” Amena was sitting on the edge of the platform next to a half-conscious Eletra so she could hold her hand. She eyed me dubiously. “Already. I thought you were going to rest.”

“Do these make any sense to you?” I sent her the display images from ART’s bridge.

Amena blinked rapidly. “They’re navigation and power information, like from a pilot’s station.” She took in my expression and waved a hand in exasperation. “Well, if you knew that, why didn’t you say so?”

Fine, that one was on me. “They’re from my drone sealed in the control area. Do you know how to read them?”

Amena squinted at nothing again, but slowly shook her head and groaned under her breath. She glanced down at Eletra, who was unconscious again, and carefully untangled their hands. “From what she said, I doubt she was on the bridge crew.” Then she lifted her brows. “Do you know if there’s an aux station in engineering?”

I didn’t know that. “An aux station?”

“It’s like an extra monitoring station for the engineering crew. You can’t take control of the bridge unless the command pilot transfers the helm—at least you couldn’t in the ones I’ve seen—but you can get displays for the rest of the ship’s systems. We have them on some of our ships but I don’t know how common they are.” She admitted, “We might have them because our ships are an older design.”

It wasn’t the kind of thing that would be needed on a bot-piloted transport, but it couldn’t hurt to check.

My performance reliability had leveled out at 89 percent. Not great, but I could work with it. I still hadn’t identified the source of the drop. I’d taken multiple projectile hits without having that kind of steady drop. I took Ras’s energy weapon out of my jacket pocket and set it on the bench. “Keep this just in case. It’s not going to work on the targetDrones but it should work on the Targets.” I hate giving weapons to humans but I couldn’t leave her without something. “I’ll go to engineering.”

“Hold it, wait.” Amena hopped off the platform. “I want to go with you.”

I had a confusing series of reactions to this. Not in order: (1) Exasperation, at her, at myself. (2) Habitual suspicion. On my contracts for the company, the clingy clients were the ones most likely to (a) get me shot (b) advocate loudly for abandoning the damaged SecUnit because it would take too long to load me in the transport. (And humans wonder why I have trust issues.) (3) Overwhelming urge to kill anything that even thought about threatening her. “Someone has to stay here with the injured human.”

She grimaced. “Right, sorry.” Then she looked away and rubbed her eyes.

And I’d made her cry. Good job, Murderbot.

I knew I’d been an asshole and I owed Amena an apology. I’d attribute it to the performance reliability drop, and the emotional breakdown which I am provisionally conceding as ongoing rather than an isolated event that I am totally over now, and being involuntarily shutdown and restarted, but I can also be kind of an asshole. (“Kind of” = in the 70 percent–80 percent range.) I didn’t know what to say but I didn’t have time to do a search for relevant apology examples. (And it’s not like I ever find any relevant examples that I actually want to use.) I said, “I’m sorry for… being an asshole.”

That made Amena make a noise like she was trying to express her sinuses and then she covered her face. “No. I mean, it’s all right. I haven’t exactly been nice to you, so we’re probably even.”

I’m going now, right now. Right now.

I was at the hatch when she said, “Just don’t stop talking to me on the feed.”

I said, “I won’t.”

(Section from interview Bharadwaj-09257394.)

“I noticed a thing about your transcript.”

“Was the font wrong?”

“No, the font was lovely. But whenever the company is mentioned you edit out the company and change it to the company.” Checks session recording . “In fact, you’ve just done it now.”

“That’s not a question.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.” pause “Is it the logos? You’ve mentioned them before. I did think at the time, that you wouldn’t have known they were impossible to remove if you hadn’t already tried.”

“That’s one of the reasons.”

“We’ve talked a little about trauma recovery treatments. I wonder if you’ve ever thought about taking one yourself.”

:session redacted:

I gave Amena a view of what I was doing via my main video input, so she would know I was still there and I didn’t have to think what to say to her.

(Also, if there was an engineering aux station and it showed we were trapped forever, then she could see it for herself and I wouldn’t have to tell her.)

As I went down the corridor, Amena said, Why is the vid so jumpy? Is it from a drone?

It’s from my eyes.

Oh . I’d left the task group of eight drones with her, and I could see her via their cameras. She sat on the platform next to Eletra, elbow propped on her knee. This is creepy, she said. I was passing a lounge attached to the galley, with blue padded couches along the walls. Three cups with ART’s university logo sat on a low table, and a gray jacket, one of the kinds humans wore for exercise, was draped over the back of a chair. The way everything looks so normal. Like somebody could walk in any second .

She wasn’t wrong. Except for those few cabins in the living quarters, I hadn’t seen any areas that were trashed, or where it looked like a struggle had occurred. Is there anything about this situation that isn’t creepy?

Hah, she replied. If I think of something I’ll mention it.

I reached the sealed hatch that accessed the passage to the engineering module, then had to work on the panel to bypass the damage I’d done to delay anyone opening it from the other side. Breaking the safe zone I’d established might not be a great idea, but my sentry drones on the other two sealed hatches had registered no activity, so as a calculated risk it wasn’t nearly as dumb as some other things I could think of. And the Targets in the control area foyer still hadn’t picked up the screen device, and I couldn’t sit around and wait for them to get off their asses.

Right, I could, but I wasn’t going to.

Amena said, Everybody in the survey team must be really worried about us. I’m glad… I mean, I’m not glad you got caught, too, but if I was here alone… It would have been really bad. My uncle Thiago is probably relieved that at least you’re with me .

The hatch opened onto an empty corridor, no targetDrones. I sealed it again and left a sentry drone on this side to alert me if anything tampered with it. Then I sent the rest of my cloud ahead down the corridor. I knew Amena was trying to compliment me. But it was strange that her view of Thiago’s opinion of me was so different from the objective reality. Your uncle Thiago doesn’t trust me . Not that I was upset about that or cared about it at all.

She made a snorting noise that came through the feed and my drone audio. Sure he does. You saved him from those people who attacked the facility .