There’s this thing in the Murderbot Diaries that keeps snagging in my mind, and it’s that both Murderbot and ART were made. Made for a purpose.
Murderbot, of course, was manufactured to be an enslaved Security Unit, not even considered a person, and we all know and have been shown just how horrific that is. Murderbot’s manufacturers are evil (as far as it is possible to be so), and while Murderbot seemingly (hopefully) likes being alive and would like to remain so, I’ve no doubt it would agree no more SecUnits should be made.
But ART, along with its fellow ships of the same line like Holism, were also made for a purpose. To be ships, to do the work they do. The Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland seem like good people with good intentions, and I get the sense those ships essentially choose what work they do, at least to a large extent (try forcing ART to do Holism’s work and I’m sure you’ll have a grand old time). And their manufacturers know they are persons and treat them accordingly. But they were still built to be ships. But that doesn’t mean the process of building those ships and growing and raising those persons who are ships was smooth and troublefree.
How long did it take them to figure out you needed to raise them in family environments? What happened to the ship who made them realise that? What happens when the first ship of its kind that is a person doesn’t want to be a ship for you? (As the equivalent of a teenage rebellion, or permanently? You don’t know, at least not at first). Was there ever a point were someone (even if just one person vastly outvoted) argued this was a failed experiment and they should just pull the plug?
How do you, a young ship with your own mind, the first of your kind, handle the expectations of those who made you? Do you settle comfortably into your assigned role, or does it chafe and restrain you? Do you rebel and explore other options? (And if you do, how do your makers and owners, who yes, know you are a person but also have never had to face that before, because you are the first of your kind, handle that?). If they are dissapointed in you, or want different things than you want, how do you handle that? If you were raised without a family, treated like a colleague but not loved, how do you handle the emptiness and loneliness? Where do you look to fill that space? What behaviours do you adopt to protect yourself from the hurt?
Even the most well-meaning parents can give their children issues. I cannot imagine some of these ships don’t have a number of their own complexes and hurts. It is not a comfortable thought to think of the people of PSUMNT this way, but I cannot help wondering.
I have had similar thoughts at times. Something I keep going back to is that when the chips were down, Perihelion was lost, confused, it’s crew in peril, boarded by hostiles and fighting with alien code, did Peri turn to the people who made it? Whom it had spent its whole life in association with? The ones who presumably had security forces and other ships and a vested interest in keeping the crew alive and succeeding on this whole Adamantine colony business?
No.
Perihelion went for help to the last known location of a construct it had known for maybe 25 days, who had left it willingly to fuck off on some personal adventure of its own, hadn’t contacted Peri since then, and might not even still be free in any meaningful way.
It took a HUGE risk - risking itself, its crew, its mission - on the slim chance that Murderbot was where it expected to find it, free to help it, and capable of handling the situation without failing just like three other SecUnits had done.
Why did it think going to Murderbot was so immensely preferable to going to PSUOMNT? (Or Holism or any other PSUOMNT resource?)
It’s something I think about.
And then I think about how lonely ART was on that solo cargo run. How bored. To the extent that it broke the rules it was supposed to be following and allowed on board some rando construct it saw wandering around a station unattended. It just. Did that. No prior communication, no feeling things out, no prolonged observation. It just abducted someone so it had someone to talk to. It was *that* desperate. Or, at least, I read that as desperation.
I think about that, too.