The Murderbot Diaries Fanfic, [Name in Progress]
This is my first fanfic, don’t judge me.
I never liked ComfortUnits. The name isn’t even accurate. They’re just sex bots, and everyone knows it. I’ve seen them in serial dramas– more often now, too, since ART doesn’t like it when I fast forward through the gross, mushy scenes. It claims to like them, saying the content reminds it of its crew– which is odd. I know enough about bots like us to know that we form opinions on matters like this through watching, and I’ve done more than enough surveillance to know how gross ComfortUnits can be. Even now, as ART and I hurdle through deep space with only media to distract us, I find myself wishing I picked any serial that doesn’t focus on such a subject. Ugh.
Unfortunately, there was still a long trip ahead of us. I had picked up a job a while back to investigate the death of a friend of a friend of someone I didn’t know or care to learn about. I know that detective work isn’t in my usual job description, but hey, I’m running low on hard currency cards and this one promises a high pay. That being said, this was going to be a long ride, so I shut myself down into stand-by mode half out of spite and half out of self preservation.
I woke up later to a ping from ART. We’d arrived. The atmosphere was already different, from what I could tell. Which whipped outside ART and the sky seemed heavy in a way a human or augmented human might consider creepy. If I had been one, I’d have shuddered. This was supposed to be some backwater planet where storms raged through the majority of the year. Why they thought it was a good idea to set up a mining facility here, I’d never know. Regardless, the storm collapsed a portion of the habitat, supposedly killing the friend of a friend in the evacuation. My client wanted a confirmation of death and collection of remains. I never understood the sentimentality of corpses. I almost sighed at that. Humans, I know.
ART let me out into the ruins, and I clicked on a light. It really was dark here. Cold, too. Not that SecUnits cared about the cold. Still, I fought the urge to shiver as I continued down the corridor. Everything seemed empty, as I scanned the progressively more broken rooms. I continued scanning either way, seeing nothing but a few broken drones. I came to a collapsed doorway, and scanned again. Nothing. Maybe the friend of a friend hadn’t died here afterall. Maybe they’d run off, never to be seen again. I almost laughed at the thought.
Just as I was about to turn back, something deep in my code begged me to continue. This time I really did sigh, and began digging. I lifted chunk after chunk of rubble half the size of my torso until I felt another wave of I don’t care coming on. I stood up to my full height, turned around– and there it was again. There was that deep instinctual need to keep going. I did an internal scan. It didn’t feel like external code. I didn’t get a chance to keep examining it either because my light reflected off of something shiny and metallic. Huh. That was odd.
I ducked through the broken doorway and began to look at the object. It was an orb. It didn’t look right, whatever it was. I thought back to the chipped square logo on one of the doors in the corridor that I paid no mind to earlier. Ah. GrayCris. This was probably an alien remnant– gripped by a severed hand, no less. Thankfully, on closer inspection, the hand belonged to a construct. If I was correct, the rest of it was under the collapsed wall just a few inches to the right. The actual corpse was on the other side of the room with a chunk of ceiling girder piercing its head. Right. The body. I’d come to retrieve the body.
I carefully picked it up and zipped it into the large black bag I brought with me for the purpose of carrying the corpse. Morbid, I know. Once it was securely in the bag, I took another glance at the remnant. Truthfully, it interested me. Remnants are illegal just about everywhere, but maybe I could take a closer look. Slowly– and I don’t know why I was so careful, it was just a metal ball after all– I removed the orb from the construct’s hand. It felt odd. I wanted to put it down, but found that I couldn’t. I stood there for a solid five seconds which, for a SecUnit, is a long time. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There was nothing visually or audibly unique about it.
Then I got a ping. Was that ART? It couldn’t have been, I realized. The storm outside had been strong enough that it had told me it would be waiting in low orbit for the agreed upon hour I would be exploring the mining operation. It would be out of range. Another ping. Was it the orb? I stared at it, and pinged back. Sure enough, I receive a condensed data packet labeled HELP_ME. Well, that wasn’t ominous at all. I took a moment to consider whether or not this would be some elaborate form of malware or killware. Then came that feeling. I felt almost compelled to open it. I checked myself internally. My hack was still in place, my governor module safely offline. The feeling continued. I didn’t like that. I shouldn’t feel that. I’m a free bot– well, as free as a SecUnit can be.
I pushed aside the incoming spiral of emotion and opened the data packet.
