This month, the quest to bring down GrayCris continues with the third and fourth novella in Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries, Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy.
Once again, Murderbot finds itself on a bot-driven transport. Unfortunately, this time it’s full of humans. Bickering, thieving, petty humans, all of whom apparently decided Murderbot, currently posing as Security Consultant Rin, would solve all their problems. It thought working with the Preservation Alliance humans was irritating enough, but these people are even more draining. I think its frustration has more to do with it not being able to use being a SecUnit as a shield. It has to actually engage with humans while also pretending to be human. Twenty-six cycles of constant masking would drive any neurodivergent person up the wall; hell, I can barely get through an eight hour work day without wanting to crawl into a ball. The other thing that bothers Murderbot about this situation? That the humans are walking into indentured servitude under a sham contract that will bond them for the rest of their lives, and there’s nothing it can do about it. It hates feeling powerless or trapped, and it hates the idea of anyone, even humans, being enslaved. Between that helplessness and the overstimulation, it can’t wait to get off the transport vessel.
Murderbot is headed for Milu, a planet outside the Corporate Rim that GrayCris once had a mining contract for. According to a news burst, Mensah suspects GrayCris got up to no good there, and Murderbot has decided, of its own free will, to get that evidence for her. Knowing what GrayCris did in Artificial Condition to cover up its crimes, it’s safe to assume they’d done something similar with other sites. From the station SecUnit hitches a ride in the cargo hold of a small ship piloted by two human security consultants hired by a research group, GoodNightLander Independent. GI took over GrayCris’ abandoned terraforming claim on Milu and is there to see if it’s worth anything.
From there, the plot is basically a fun house mirror version of All Systems Red. Murderbot gets conscripted into helping a bunch of non-Corporate Rim humans, led by a tough but fair woman (Abene), who are largely naive to corporate scheming. GrayCris gets in a solid double-cross, and Murderbot is the only one who can get the humans out alive. Instead of modified SecUnits, Murderbot has to deal with combat bots—think SecUnits but bigger, stronger, and with more limbs and weapons and better hacking capabilities—and a human-form bot, Miki. I keep saying this, but I love how Wells trickles in worldbuilding instead of info dumps. Human-form bots are used for some labor, and often play rogue SecUnits in the entertainment feed.
Miki and Abene seem to have a genuine friendship, and this relationship puzzles Murderbot. It can’t trust their insistence that Miki is a companion, not a slave or a plaything or a tool, anymore than it could trust that ART actually cared for its crew. At this point, Murderbot can still only see bot-human relationships as transactional. Or, rather, it is choosing to see those relationships as transactional. It can justify doing all this leg work as just returning a favor to Mensah, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that those are lies it’s telling itself. No one puts their life in danger multiple times to pay someone back who doesn’t even know there’s a debt.
By the end, Murderbot finally understands Miki and Abene’s friendship, and, by extension, what possibilities are available to it with its own humans. This shift in perception also reshapes what happened in the previous book. In Artificial Condition, the sex bots sacrificed themselves to help humans. From Murderbot’s perspective, it was a choice motivated by their programming. But Miki and ART’s existence begs the question “What if it wasn’t?” What if other bots have different experiences with their programming and/or governor modules? What not every bot sees relationships as transactional or humans as solely owners and abusers? How much of Murderbot’s perspective is true for all bots (very little, as we’re beginning to see), how much is true for all SecUnits (still unanswered), and how much is Murderbot being an unreliable narrator (probably a lot)? Earlier in the story, Murderbot ponders Miki and Abene: “Was I jealous of a human-form bot? I didn’t want to be a pet robot, that’s why I’d left Dr. Mensah and the others. (Not that Mensah had said she wanted a pet SecUnit. I don’t think she wanted a SecUnit at all.) What did Miki have that I wanted? I had no idea. I didn’t know what I wanted.” You’re so close to getting the point, Seccy, so close.
Rogue Protocol ends abruptly, with the mission turned tragic. Murderbot has the intel it needs, but someone else paid the price. “I hate caring about stuff. But apparently once you start, you can’t just stop.” It flees the GI survivors, unable to face them, and sneaks aboard another bot-piloted ship, this one headed to HaveRatton.
Exit Strategy picks up with Murderbot’s arrival at the station just in time for someone to try and kill it. While making its escape, it notices it can process more information faster than it could as just a SecUnit. “ Part of it was learning the quirks of the different security systems I was encountering. But what really helped was that all this coding and working with different systems on the fly had opened up some neural pathways and processing space…Hard work really did make you improve; who knew?” So, not only has Murderbot changed itself (by hacking its governor module) and then its body, now it’s also changed its mind. Murderbot is becoming a real person, not just a puppet or a robot or someone playing pretend.
It also discovers that Mensah is now being held hostage on the station TranRollinHyfa by GrayCris after the latter accused the former of corporate espionage. Murderbot needs to get the data chip with evidence of GrayCris’ criminal activities on Milu to Mensah, but before it can do that it has to rescue her. And before it can do that, it has to head back into the belly of the beast, aka the Corporate Rim, where it’s at risk of being outed as a rogue SecUnit and killed. Murderbot doesn’t even hesitate.
On TranRollinHyfa, it reunites with Pin-Lee, Ratthi, and Gurathin. The others had returned to Preservation Alliance, while these travelled to the station to pay the ransom GrayCris is demanding. In the finale of the first season of the Murderbot TV show, Gurathin and Murderbot have a lovely moment of mutual respect and understanding. In the books, we don’t get that moment until the fourth book, and it happens over several scenes. Gugu and Seccy partner up to rescue Mensah, and he earnestly tries to get to know it a little more. Instead of acting like even more of an asshole than usual, Murderbot shares a packet of data about what it’s been up to since it left. He says, “I”m not your enemy. I’m just cautious.” To which Murderbot snaps at him then immediately regrets it. “It made it sound like I did care. Which I didn’t.” Yeah, sure Jan. Surprising no one, GrayCris betrays PresAux and threatens them with a SecUnit. It takes a lot of finagling, all that new processing power, Mensah’s cooperation, and the help of Pin-Lee, Ratthi, and Gurathin to attempt to extricate Mensah from GrayCris’ clutches.
Interestingly, Murderbot gets a chance to offer another bot freedom. It rogue-ified a bot in Artificial Condition and now tries to do the same to one of GrayCris’ SecUnits. Here’s where we get an answer to that earlier question of is Murderbot’s black-and-white perspective of the world true for all SecUnits; so far the answer seems to be “yes.” This SecUnit does want something: to kill Murderbot. Murderbot also does something interesting. In the first book, it tried to sacrifice itself to save Mensah. In the third book, it watched as another character pulled a similar stunt and died because of it. Now, Murderbot once again has the opportunity to lay down its life for Mensah, and it does so willingly. Understandably, Mensah is furious over it.
Before Murderbot can ponder why she was so afraid of losing it, GrayCris launches one final attack. The result is something else we saw in the TV show: Murderbot’s mind fractures. Days pass in a haze as it slowly recovers its memories, one by one. The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon is key to the reboot, as is Gurathin. In the show, Murderbot uses its recovery time trying and failing to get used to being part of the PresAux crew. Here, its memories coming back help it figure out what it wants—its humans—even if it doesn’t know how to get it without giving up part of itself. Murderbot tries to leave PresaAux again, but this time Mensah is able to talk it down. Murderbot’s transformation is nearly complete. It is no longer a SecUnit, nor is it human. It is Murderbot. It is a person. A strange person, but a person nonetheless.
Rogue Protocol and Exit Strategy make for a nice pairing because they both explore different sides of the question of personhood and perception. What Murderbot knows and what Murderbot sees are often at odds with each other, something it is only just now starting to understand.
Next month we’re reading Network Effect. I can honestly say I don’t remember much about it except that it features the return of ART, the introduction of one of Mensah’s offspring, and it’s the only full-length novel of the series (so far???). See you soon!
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Network Effect
In Exit Strategy, the GrayCris Unit is a Combat unit – militarized, faster, with programming optimized to act independently and win. Murderbot was up against a legit killer. MB’s increased processing power and ability to improvise enabled it to survive.
I’m looking forward to the discussion of Network Effect. A couple of MB readers in my orbit felt it didn’t measure up to the novellas, while I enjoyed it so much I immediately reread it.
I enjoyed Network Effect the first time I read it, but I enjoyed it even more when I recently reread all the Murderbot stories together and the earlier ones were fresh in my mind.
I only discovered the Murderbot Diaries this summer and I’ve already read all the books three times!! Miki is still living rent free in my head and I’ve created a Murderbot blanket as there is no merch in the UK!
Network Effect is probably my favourite book, I love ART and their relationship. I loved the short story Rapport, where you see how Murderbot has changed ART and his “understanding of trauma”.
I’m excited for it. I haven’t read it since it first came out, and my memory of it is thin. I do remember liking it a lot, but let’s see how it holds up.
but before it can do that it has to recuse her.
Rescue?
Updated, thanks :)
I’m curious about which book you will review after Network Effect? The next one published was Fugitive Telemetry, but to read the story chronologically we need to skip to System Collapse immediately following Network Effect and then circle back to Fugitive Telemetry last. Some of us just don’t have enough mental RAM still functioning in order to do it in order of their publication.
I’m going by publication order. I haven’t decided yet if I’ll do both Fugitive Telemetry and System Collapse as a dual entry like I did here or if they’ll be solo entries like I did the first two books in this series. But otherwise, my overall rule is publication order. When I cover the short stories, I’ll probably do them all together as one big entry.
That said, Network Effect should come out in Dec (assuming I don’t get waylaid by life stuff), and the next one after that in Jan. In Network Effect I’ll announce what the next book or books are, so check back then. You can jump around to your heart’s content.
I just finished rereading both Network Effect and System Collapse. SC follows the events of NE within a short time period. Fugitive Telemetry could have happened before NE. A couple security episodes mentioned in NE happened on Preservation.