#rogue protocol

[bubblesandpages]

My understanding of Murderbot as of four books in

[skydaemon]

the all systems red > artificial condition > rogue protocol timeline is so funny. MB leaves mensah's team because it doesn't want to belong to anyone but secunits are basically livestock guardian dogs and it keeps accidentally picking up humans to look after like:

[chaoticats3]

Miki: oh man do I love my friends, Rin you are now my new friend yippieeeee

Murderbot: why is this bot so trusting and cheesy and thinks its humans are it's friends, it almost like it wasn't abused and lied to and-

Murderbot:....

Murderbot:

[zalaznyart]

'I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private.'

[silas-lehnsherr]

I’m not sure this will make sense to anyone else, but Miki was a client. Arguably, Miki is THE client in Rogue Protocol. It’s Miki that essentially hires Murderbot, not the humans. It’s Miki that asks for assistance, not the humans. (Granted this is because MB implies it’s there as extra security, but still, the person turning to MB for help is Miki not the assessment team). But the fact that Miki is a bot obscures that fact from both MB and the audience. MB helps humans, protects and saves humans, so it doesn’t fully understand where the guilt it feels comes from. It’s not just that Miki wanted to be its friend; it’s that Miki was a client who died. In fact, it’s the only client in the series who does die. And worse, Miki died trying to help. Given that so much of MB’s identity is wrapped up in being able to protect and save its clients, no wonder it’s so messed up about what happened to Miki.

[distracteddaintydemon]

“I’m not Rin. Rin is—”

Abene was powering up the digger control station. Not looking at me, studying the console’s interface in the feed, she said, “Consultant Rin is your supervisor, yes, I’m sorry.”

I'm a bit impressed how hard Abene went "do not look gifted SecUnit in the teeth". I mean. It's clearly "dear, you saved our lives 5 times in last 30 minutes, you can call yourself resurrected Queen Victoria if you want to" kind of agreement. This SecUnit can have all the fictional supervisors it wants

[spacecadetery]

re-re-reading in advance of platform decay coming out and am still noticing new things.

in this moment, secunit doesn’t tell us what the what the “actual emotion” is or what its expression looks like. but miki’s reaction makes it clear that it doesn’t look angry or annoyed… it looks scared. possibly even terrified. at the concept of a human touching it.

we knew already that it doesn’t like being touched, but it had never reacted this strongly before. and the fact that the touch was based in care and worry, the same attention that abene had regularly shown towards miki? gut punch

[kettle-bird]

I was tired of pretending to be human. I needed a break.

[ASR | AC | ES | NE]