Leaving Dr Mensah and Preservation had been... Rough.
I didn't realise it at the time, not really. But with leaving again to be on my own came the drifting. I needed to find my reason for being. What I wanted to do. What I wanted to be.
In another life, maybe another me would have stayed. Maybe that Murderbot would have found its reason, with Mensah. With the people of Preservation. Maybe that Murderbot would have been her bodyguard. Or the station's security consultant. Maybe it would have found its path there.
But I wasn't that Murderbot.
This Murderbot had felt the need to set off on its own again, despite all the affection it held for Mensah and for the people of Preservation. And PresAux especially.
And this Murderbot-- Well this Murderbot missed them. I missed them.
But I had needed this. I needed to figure this out on my own. I wanted to see what I could be. I didn't want to come back to Mensah before I managed to figure out what I wanted. No matter how long that might take.
It was a lot of drifting at first. Of feeling lost (not that it changed much from how I usually felt), of feeling depressed and a mess (same here), but I think... Eventually... I found it.
I didn't want to change the world. That was too high-profile for me (and my very existence required I lay low), and I was far too pessimistic to care for a lofty goal that. It was all doomed anyway, between the capitalistic assholes of the Corporation Rim and the naïvety of the ones who wanted to try. I didn't think it was even worth considering it.
But there was one thing I actually kinda wanted to do. And that was, making the life of those corporate assholes more difficult. At my level. I couldn't hope to touch corporations on their playing field. But what I could do, was work against the plans of assholes like GrayCris. Those whose playing field was already drenched in illegality.
And I knew one thing: when there was dirty money to be made, there were always more 'GrayCris'es out there, ready to appear. Cut one head, there would always be more.
Like the Hydra. I saw that in some old obscure movie adaptation of an even older tale. It wasn't even a good movie, but the concept had stuck with me ever since.
All that to say... This is how I found myself looking for a ship nice enough to take me in on a trip to my next destination. If I wanted to inconvenience asshole companies similar to GrayCris (not that any company was ever not an asshole, but you know, some are even worse scum than the rest), I needed to get to where their interests lie: unexplored planets which might well contain Alien Remnants.
I had built and ran a simple algorithm -- based on my own experience with PresAux and GrayCris, but also news articles and more obscure information on AR (Alien Remnants) locations -- to isolate a few candidate planets for this (and yes, I hated planets but I supposed I could make an exception if I could fuck with some assholes in the process). And I was certain, if I could do something like that, that they could too. And much better than me. So I was reasonably sure of my plan. Let's say... about 65% sure. And that's me calculating it manually, because yes, my risk assessment module is still as garbage as ever.
There was actually one ship going to my destination. That ship looked a little old, but serviceable, and most importantly: empty. I approached it a little more, checked a few things in the feed to be sure, then opened a connection to ping it:
ᴘɪɴɢɪɴɢ ᴀᴘʜᴇʟɪᴏɴ ʙᴏᴛ-ᴘɪʟᴏᴛ…….
ᴍᴇꜱꜱᴀɢᴇ:
𝙸 𝚊𝚖 𝚊 𝚏𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚕𝚢 𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚌𝚎-𝚋𝚘𝚝 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚊 𝚛𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗. 𝙸 𝚍𝚘 𝚗𝚘𝚝 𝚝𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚖𝚞𝚌𝚑 𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝙸 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚜𝚞𝚖𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚛𝚌𝚎𝚜. 𝚆𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚕𝚢 𝚕𝚎𝚝 𝚖𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚋𝚘𝚊𝚛𝚍?
