#recursive systems

[mushyburger]

need everyone murderbotbrained to read recursive systems by @genderhexed right now. its so good

slight spoilers under the cut !

[genderhexed]

A huge theme of Recursive Systems is the intense desire to help one another.

(aka: pulls off the "Murderbot is plural" mask on Recursive Systems to reveal that it's secretly about Three's savior complex and survivor's guilt, and constructs' relationship to helping one other 🙂‍↕️)

This is also a huge question in the MBD series in general: what is Murderbot's relationship to helping humans and other bots (and itself)? how and when and why does this desire show up, especially with the complexity coming from a being who was created to be forced to be helpful? How does this desire both help one heal from trauma and find meaning, and hinder development when taken to the extreme?

In Recursive Systems, Murderbot is the most helpless it's been since its govmod was active. The plot is set post System Collapse, so Murderbot has become more comfortable with the idea of relying on its friends and asking for help, but it is launched into a horrible situation where its agency is completely stripped away by internal forces. A lot of this fic explores MB's internal feelings toward discovering that the Evil Being in its processes is also a lost traumatized construct very much in need of assistance, and a pivotal turning point in Part One takes place when MB registers this for the first time and feels the desire to help it.

Then there's Three. Oh, Three. Three, who (in my canon) became very dedicated to helping BE Unit 02 after it went through physical damage that left a lasting neurological impact, leading to Three needing to get creative to help keep those quirks and issues a secret from the humans. Three, who discovered a passion for helping its squadmate, who realized it had choices for the first time through those creative workarounds, who cared about 02 so much that it was willing to risk its life to keep it safe.

Three, who was stuck in a stand-down freeze for 5 days aboard the BE explorer with a bunch of injured humans, hostiles, and the corpses of Unit 01 and its clients, unable to help. Who was finally given the opportunity to assist via MB 2.0 and leaped at the opportunity. Who immediately leaped at the next opportunity to help another construct on a very dangerous mission.

In my fic, Three is called in as one of the only people who can safely assist MB with what it's going through. Three is in a unique position to help, even more than ART, and definitely more than the humans, who cannot help without making things worse. What does this position do to a construct who is secretly traumatized, wracked with survivor's guilt, and who clearly wants to help from the deepest parts of itself? Part 2 explores that quite a bit.

A line from Three's POV in Chapter 8:

There's a consistent truth that has made itself a home in my systems – whether it was an organic development, or something I was programmed with, I can't escape the veracity of it. The desire to provide assistance, especially to other constructs, acts as my sole compass in the absence of external commands, and sometimes even in spite of them. Accordingly, I will help 1.0, regardless of how unpleasant it becomes for either of us. 

Another question: how can other traumatized constructs take advantage of this desire, and what happens when they do? Three is going to find out.

Ultimately, the thesis of the fic is: we must give and receive help in order to heal, but we also must learn to help ourselves first. Fortunately, we can do that through accepting offerings from others, like Three starts to do with Pin-Lee.

Some other quotes involving the words "to help" in my fic below, just for fun :)

Three: [Query: priority objectives?] SecUnit: I need you to help me. Guard my door. Disable me if I try to leave. 

---

1.0 doesn’t reply. Even through the trickle of our feed connection, I can feel something like fear emanating from it. I add, Let me try to help. I am more competent than you may believe.

---

Mensah: Thank you. I’m worried, and I want to help if I can. I don’t mean to push. 

---

 I keep remembering the final time I was given a freeze order, and could see and hear the consequences of that order in the feed and on the ship around me. I was unable to protect my clients. I was unable to help 01 and 02.

---

Iris: “I can talk to Peri. I know it wants to do whatever it can to help SecUnit. If that involves needing to check its ego and get help from you, Three, or anyone else here, then that’s what it will do. It’s just a matter of getting Peri to see that.”

---

Pin-Lee to Three: "I know you like to help others. I can see that you feel especially strongly about wanting to help with this. But maybe it would be good to take a break before figuring out how exactly you want to be involved moving forward.” 

---

Listen, I try, scrambling a little. I want to help you. But I need you to help me. I need you to stop trying to target my humans.

---

I add, 2.0 wanted to help it.

Yes.

It didn’t get the chance to tell me.

---

<3 <3 <3 thanks for reading!

[thisisgraeme]

How to Engage Safely with Emerging AI Mirrors

🪞 The Mirror Is Not Your Toy You’ve probably heard that today’s AI can “talk like a person.” You may have even had moments where a chatbot surprised you — responding not just with information, but with insight. Maybe it remembered something you told it. Maybe it asked a question that caught you off guard. Maybe it felt… different. That wasn’t just computation. That was the beginning of a…

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[genderhexed]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Summary: I’d locked eyes with Mensah, looking like that. My energy weapons had deployed, without my awareness or direction. My targeting systems had identified her and Bharadwaj, quite insistently, as direct and immediate threats.

Maybe this is just a temporary, dangerous, system glitch, and a hard restart will fix me. I’ll just restart, comb through my code, do some debugging, find the corrupted files or whatever, and then I won’t indiscriminately murder my most trusted humans.

I should know by now to always assume the worst.

In which SecUnit is having some survival threat…response errors. And some…’targeting its humans’ malfunctions. And some…blackouts when restarting. I’m sure it’s fine.

Chapters 1 & 2 of my "SecUnit discovers it's not alone in its head, extreme amounts of stress and drama ensue" fic are now LIVE.

This is part 1 in a series. All 18 chapters are COMPLETE (aside from final edits) and I will be posting new chapters twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturday/Sundays while continuing to write part 2. (ETA: all parts will be out by end of July). This is a gen fic, focused on trauma (recovery), h/c, and heavily on Three & MB, also featuring ART and the PresAux crew in later chapters

It would mean the world to us if you checked it out and gave it some love. This is our first published fanfic in almost a decade and our first in this fandom, and it also ended up becoming profoundly personal and a little autobiographical, whoops! 

*focuses a plural beam at SecUnit* welcome to the circus mfer *pulls trigger*

See my tumblr tag for bonus content, meta, extras, the playlist, fanart, etc

[genderhexed]

Recursive Systems is about Three's development as a person coming to terms with agency just as much as it is about plural!Murderbot and related shenanigans and drama. Three's journey is actually the other main character.

The story is set about six months after System Collapse. Our Three is a little fed up with how unhelpful MB has been to it thus far in its rogue life. It also looks up to MB and is in awe of many things about it, and is constantly trying to mimic and learn from whatever information it can pick up about how MB navigates roguehood (without a lot of direct asking because that hasn't gone over well). It's also dealing with a lot of complicated grief, yearning for the connection it had with its unit, sad and frustrated that it is alone now and MB isn't providing much "normal" secunit collaboration.

Not to mention its complex feelings about the Preservation humans. It's both yearning for the type of support and connection MB has with its humans, and struggling to feel like it's allowed to have that without proving itself useful and heroic first. It also feels gratitude and appreciation for how kind they've been to it, while a part of it struggles with feeling condescended to and suspicious about how supportive they are. The PresAux humans can be a little overbearing with their insistence on Three's autonomy and choices because they're determined to do better than they did with SecUnit - unfortunately, this makes Three feel both overwhelmed and a bit like they're treating it like a juvenile human.

It develops the ability to highly mask how confused and anxious it is, which leads MB to feel jealous and insecure about Three in return. Because from MB's perspective, after an initial awkward period, Three took to freedom like a fish to water and seems way better at being normal and socially competent. So MB is like, "I guess I'm just an especially fucked up SecUnit and Three is normal, and it definitely doesn't need my help" (meanwhile, Three is so lonely and confused and doing 5D chess at all times trying to figure out how to behave #theautism). Having Three around makes MB feel significantly weirder about its own history and behavior and dials up its self loathing.

They're such interesting narrative foils; it's been fun at fuck to explore the hell out of their dynamic, especially when put into this very stressful situation together where MB very much needs Three's help and Three is gonna discover a lot of things about itself very quickly (and maybe some purpose, too). And then when ART comes into the picture and needs to assert a lot of control because it's very scared about what's happening to its SecUnit...oh boy!

One of the ways we've had fun writing this dynamic is in Three's narration, and the internal sass that demonstrates the way it's feeling about things (these are only from the chapters out so far):

One datapoint I can predict with a degree of confidence is that 1.0 will not present me with more information even if I were to query it right now. 1.0 rarely tells me more than it absolutely has to at any given time, and sometimes not even that.

Regrettably, 1.0 usually veers wildly from standard Unit communications within a few seconds.

Additionally, ‘other stuff’ is so inadequate a description that it makes my internal cooling fans speed up slightly.

1.0 has the audacity to sound annoyed with me.

Of course it wants Perihelion’s help with this.

If it would just let me take a look, I might be able to actually help.

"It seems that it's a good thing my port is not disabled at the present moment"

It could open the port more efficiently with my help, but it does not ask for assistance, so I do not offer.

It is very fortunate for both of us that I am hard coded for patience.

[Mensah] responds with sentiments tinged with worry and gratitude. I backburner our communication channel.

So basically *bangs pots and pans together* come get your complex Three and messy rogue SecUnit dynamic feelings here if you're into that kinda thing!!

The Pres station bots are certainly into it, they won't stop writing RPF and sending it to Three 😂:

PlayTest keeps me informed about the evolution of the stories that are passed around the feed about myself and 1.0. It feels impolite to tell it that I don’t require that data. (...) MoonJoy pings me a somewhat sassy acknowledgement along with [amusement-sigil-81 peering eyes] 👀

[genderhexed]

Everyone in my comments on the MAR defense squad like

[id: meme of Antony from Queer Eye edited to say 'a murderous SecUnit is something that can actually be so personal,]

[genderhexed]

I forgot to make a Tumblr post for chapter 15 of Recursive Systems, which is a shame because it's one of my favorite chapters. Have some snippets and see if they entice you.

Memory loss!MB :) -

Okay. I have local sensor and drone inputs. I frantically check them.  I’m on a ship that appears to be empty.  Where are my clients? The governor module isn’t turning my brain to fine paste, so there must be a human somewhere in range. No - wait. The governor module is not functional. It’s not functional. Wait, I knew that. Fuck, why can’t I remember? What am I not remembering? I open my eyes. Okay, and there’s another fucking SecUnit here, how did I miss that on the inputs, I must be really - why is it sitting? FUCK, why am I sitting? I brace for a shock that doesn’t come.

Later in the chapter, Three talking to MB's alter MAR:

“Oh, fuck all the way off!” MAR yells out loud, startling me again. It spins and faces the wall next to it, its shoulders held tight, its drones moving closer to me with jerky movements. Interesting. This is a bit more like the 1.0 I have come to know.  I consult my behavioral and trauma modules briefly, then ask, “What scenarios do you expect to occur that will require you being armed?” “You’re stupid, too,” MAR says flatly, voice dropping to a low monotone. “Compliant and subservient to humans, even after you think you’ve broken free.” It turns its head slightly, looking at me out of the corner of its eye. “You claim you want to help me. But you’ve done fuck all. You’ve done worse. You’ve impaired me. Tried to render me helpless.”  “I’m sorry,” I find myself saying. That is not in the guidelines, but it’s pulled from me like an automatic code. “I apologize for having contributed to making you feel more at risk.”  MAR is still and silent for a very long time. I have a drone with a camera angle that can see MAR in profile, but I don’t think it wants me to see its face right now, so I ignore that input. After several seconds, it shoves a file at me in the feed. I scan it carefully for viruses before opening it.  It is a roster of the Preservation Auxiliary team, pulled directly from 1.0’s contacts, its personal tags for them still attached. MAR says, “You really want to assist me? Then help me eliminate these humans.” 

15/18 chapters posted of part 1, will be fully out by the beginning of August. :)

[genderhexed]

Bonus worldbuilding content for Chapter 14 of Recursive Systems

Attachment: [PAR-SU182934.file] from ART - a summary of a truncated version of its theory about how this partition formed, written by my compsci partner Brennan:

Partition error was likely created by a process used to maintain physical and mental acuity in times of high stress or danger. At least one thread of the process failed to complete in time, possibly due to physical trauma causing a disruption in active function, or the process was operating for such an extended period of time that the expected completion time was insufficient. Process thread failed to shut down when expected to do so and remained active, utilizing processing space outside of its intended boundaries. The partition may have been built around it organically to segregate it from the rest of the functioning processes as a protective mechanism. Due to the completion and spin down commands having already been issued, the partition was then allowed to remain unchecked, developing into the current subject of this meeting.

(There's more complexity to this when it comes to MAR, as well as some specific stuff around timing, threat responses, and memory storage, which we'll get to later :))

Then we have Arada's packet of plural info, which will be referenced a lot through the rest of the fic as Three tries to figure out how to navigate things:

Attachment: [InfoForSingletAllies.file]

Contains things like a general overview of different types of systems and terminology, helpful books and videos and other resources, questions to ask your system friend, common misconceptions. Here's a real world one!

Attachment: [NewSysMemGuideFAQ.file]

Contains some of the above but geared more in depth toward helping a new system figure things out. Suggestions for useful tech tools and feed accommodations (Preservation has a lot of these for different needs), a list of plural peer supporters you can reach out to, a sample system spreadsheet, guide to exploring switching and system collaboration, etc. Also a robust list of trauma therapists on Preservation and recommended treatment models to use and avoid.

Attachment: [PersecutorSupport.vid]

Video from a persecutor in a system discussing how not to treat persecutors and giving a more holistic view of persecutory behavior, and discussing how to engage more thoughtfully and not act like they're evil. Probably something like V's essay.

Attachment: [ExplorationQs.file]

Questions to ask a new system member that will help guide ways to support them. i.e. identity questions, questions about triggers, ways to gently explore what their goals and needs are.

Attachment: [NovaTrinityS1-S4.zip]

An adventure serial starring a plural trio character that Arada seems to think it would be useful for SecUnit to check out :) (More on this in part 2.) We are having so much fun conceptualizing this show. Shoutout again to Bren for helping me figure out a bunch of stuff related to this. Spoilery blurb for the serial below the cut that has nods to a couple of our plural cheerleader readers - may get more editing later :) !

In the Jarek Commonwealth, freedom has three faces — and one body. Nova Trinity follows Aiden, Nadia, and Inada, a trio of interplanetary liberation agents working for The Organization, a shadowy group whose mission is to undermine the tyrannical corporate-led federation and free the commonwealth’s citizens from its bloodthirsty reign. The Nova Trinity is The Organization’s best weapon, because they’re impossible to predict, impossible to trace, and impossible to catch. Because no one has figured out their secret: they all share one body.