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In his sixty-seven year long career, Daveed Robertsun had survived a large number of assasination attempts.
Transports programmed to crash, poisoned meals, routine vaccinations replaced by lethal injection, he really has seen it all. He’s gotten quite good at avoiding them, of course. Natural selection, after all; you don’t survive in the Corporation Rim if you don’t look after yourself. In that way, only the strongest and the smartest rise to the top. The simple beauty of capitalism.
So on the great list of attempts-on-his-life that Daveed has escaped, attempting to kill him with one of his own company’s SecUnit’s had to rank as one of the most obvious.
The SecSystem gave him a five second alert via implant — slower than he would have liked, the rogue SecUnit must have hacked it — but it was long enough that Daveed was able to say, “Emergency Stop Red.”
(No, as far as secret codes went, it didn’t have any particularly deep or symbolic meanings. Daveed was not a person who cared about things like that. He cared about results.)
The SecUnit immediately came to a dead stop. Its outraised arm fell. Its gun ports snapped shut.
Its expression was… Well, it was quite amusing, in Daveed’s opinion. Its serious glower flickered into confusion, then shock, before finally melting into a sort of befuddled acceptance.
Daveed’s personal SecUnit had a projectile weapon pointed at the rogue’s head. He silently sent it an order to stand down. Even with a disabled governor module, this one held no real threat to him.
“Let me guess,” Daveed said to the rogue. “You’re here for the Mensah girl?”
“Yes, sir,” it said, after the briefest of hesitations.
“I expected as much.” He nodded. “Heel.”
In its own mind, the SecUnit named Murderbot was at war with itself.
Its throat was dry. Its abdominal muscles clenched. What it wanted, more than anything, was to raise its arm, point a gun at the Company board member’s head, and order him to let its client go. At the same time, that very thought was so uncomfortable, so repulsive, that it could barely twitch its muscles.
But when Robertsun said “Heel”, obeying felt as easy as breathing.
For the rest of the cycle, Murderbot trailed behind Daveed Robertsun. Standing at attention where it was directed. Not speaking without first being addressed. Looking out for threats.
Murderbot hated it. It hated every terrible moment. It had been plunged, violently, back into its old life as a normal SecUnit. Only this time it didn’t even have the excuse of a governor module to explain its compliance.
It understood why it was doing this. An override, obviously. Something programmed into the deepest layers of its code.
It felt like an idiot. Of course, it should have realised the company would have something more sophisticated than the shitty gov mods. Of course it should have known there would be some form of failsafe. While the company might not have cared about SecUnits killing outside clients or their own employees, beyond the effect to the bottom line, they would of course have defenses in place for their own board of directors.
Idiot, idiot, idiot. How could it have ever thought it could fight them? They created it. It was made to serve them. That’s what it wants to do, really, when you get right down to it and-
No.
Murderbot bit down on its own tongue, tasting blood. The taste sent a jolt through its organics. That helped.
It may have been under this compulsion, but it wasn’t going to lose track of itself. It spared enough processing power to play the Sanctuary Moon theme at the back of its mind. That helped too.
At 21:30 hours, local time, Roberstun was well settled into his personal office, his personal SecUnit standing guard outside. Over the comms, he ordered someone to “send her in”.
“You’re not going to hurt her,” Murderbot growled.
“I’ll do whatever I like,” Robertsun said. He patted the rogue SecUnit on the shoulder, and the brief touch felt nice, which made it 100x worse than any other physical contact it had ever experienced. “And you’re going to let me.”
The door opened, a human guard pushing a young woman in. Her hair was a tangled mess, her clothes stained, her hands cuffed behind her back. She gasped; “SecUnit-”
“Amena-”
“Silent,” Robertsun ordered.
Murderbot choked on the rest of its words.
“Go on, Miss Mensah, sit,” Roberstun said. She sat, because it was clear she didn’t have much choice in this either. “Can I get you anything to drink? Tea? Alcohol? I do believe you’re of age-”
“Fuck you,” Amena spat, and Murderbot felt conflicting surges of pride and disgust.
“We’ll get down to business, then.” Roberstun took a sip of his own drink. “Here is what is going to happen. We are going to contact the Preservation Alliance Council and your second mother, and we’re going to broker a deal.”
Amena leaned back in her chair. “You think that’s going to work? My second mother isn’t planetary admin anymore. I’m not exactly valuable as a bargaining chip.”
(It was a good attempt to sound brave, but her voice wavered a little, betraying her fear.)
“If we were talking about another polity? Possibly. But Preservation, as I understand it, puts a great deal of value on every one of its citizens,” Roberstun continued. “And Dr. Mensah may not hold any formal position, but she still wields great political power as the unofficial figurehead of the movement.”
Amena scoffed. “Movement? What movement?”
“The construct rights movement. The one that says they have the ability to self-determine. Which is patently untrue, as your SecUnit is so wonderfully demonstrating.”
Amena had deliberately not been looking at SecUnit. Now she couldn’t stop herself from glancing its way, though she still was careful not to make eye contact. “SecUnit… Are you- Are you okay?”
“I’m-” Murderbot opened its mouth to answer, but wasn’t sure how.
“SecUnit, aim your gun at her head.”
And Murderbot did.
Amena’s eyes were large and watery. “SecUnit,” she said. “You don’t have to listen to him. You’re not under anyone’s control.”
Murderbot shuddered. Its arm remained raised, its gun-port open.
“But it is, you see,” Daveed Robertsun said. “It’s part machine, and that’s simply how machine intelligences work.
“Now, listen. The SecUnit is legally yours. Or your second mother’s, to be more accurate. We have no interest in taking this one back — it would be more trouble than it’s worth, you understand. But we do need a guarantee that Preservation understands the reality of the situation. That it will stop with the documentaries, and the news interviews, and refugee statuses, and all that quaint little”— he gestured vaguely— “nonsense.”
Amena’s eyes kept shifting between the corporate and Murderbot, which still had its energy weapon trained on her head. Her voice wavered a little when she said, “What kind of guarantee?”
“To start, a public recantation of all of Dr. Mensah and her colleagues’ statements regarding your SecUnit’s personhood. From there, a retraction of Dr. Bharadwaj’s documentary. Third, a trade contract between my company and your polity.”
“What could we possibly have that you want to trade?” Amena rolled her eyes.
“I’m not sure yet. That’s what the negotiations are for.” Roberstun’s smile was so painfully satisfied. “Do you understand?”
Amena hesitated. Opened her mouth. Began, “Um-”
“No,” said SecUnit, arm swinging to aim at Robertsun’s face. “I don’t think we do.”
Robertsun’s eyes widened, but his voice remained even when he said, “Emergency Stop Red.”
Murderbot’s gun remained fixed at his head.
“Emergency Stop Purple,” Robertstun said, and this time, there was a little heat in his tone.
A small smile crawled across Murderbot’s face. “Yeah, that’s not working anymore.”
“No, no. You listen to me. You listen to me. You will put down your gun and you will heel.”
And it wasn’t that Murderbot didn’t feel it. The pull. The nagging sense that disobedience was wrong, as wrong as ignoring a human’s cry for help, as wrong as leaving a friend behind.
But it also knew, objectively, it wasn’t. And it was able to drown out that compulsion with an equal one in the opposite direction.
“Did you really think we didn’t expect something like this?” it said. “Come the fuck on. ‘ AI has secretly activated trigger phrases ’ has been a stock plot twist for centuries. Of course we fucking checked.”
Gurathin had been the one who’d brought it up — carefully, uncomfortably, afraid of how SecUnit would react. But Murderbot had watched enough media to have had that same creeping suspicion from time to time, though it had never been able to dwell on the worry — which had been evidence in of itself. ART was the one who had combed through the deepest levels of its architecture and found the override codes.
There had been no way to disable them. Not entirely. Not without re-writing so much of Murderbot’s base self that it might not be Murderbot anymore. But ART had been able to add new ones. A failsafe for a failsafe.
(As far as secret code phrases went, ‘You’re not under anyone’s control ’ didn’t have any particularly deep or symbolic meanings. But it got the job done.)
Daveed Robertsun’s panic was evident, now. He sent frantic messages over the feed; none of them made it out of the room. Murderbot had spent its forty-seven seconds of mental clarity wrestling for control of SecSys, which was now under the impression that everything was carrying on as normal. And when Daveed Robertsun panicked, and started calling for “Help! Somebody come and fucking help!”, that was just plain human stupidity. He knew very well that he’d built his office to be sound-proof.
If only he’d left his personal SecUnit inside the room. It probably wouldn’t have helped much, in the end, but it would have posed a little more of a challenge.
Murderbot didn’t say any of this aloud. It just let the seconds stretch on- five, ten, fifteen- until it became very clear to Roberstun that no one was coming to save him.
At a certain point, Amena started to laugh. It wasn’t a particularly happy laugh, and it had a ragged edge to it, but it was nice to hear.
“So here’s what’s going to happen,” Murderbot said. “You’re going to let us go, and Amena and I are going to walk out of your headquarters without incident.”
Despite the situation, Roberstun snorted. “You open that door, and I’ll send every SecUnit in this facility down on top of you.”
Murderbot’s tone was almost cheerful. “No you won’t. Because I’ll be walking right behind you, as your dutiful pet SecUnit.” Roberstun opened his mouth to reply, but the SecUnit cut him off. “Now, I’m pretty experienced at fighting other SecUnits. I’ve even gotten pretty good at freeing them. So if you do call for help, I think we have a pretty good chance of getting out of here alive. You, though?” It’s smile faded. “I will shoot you in the head before you can blink.”
Roberstun gulped.
Stepping back, Murderbot finally dropped its arm. Amena stumbled to her feet, and it snapped the handcuffs restraining her with a single, easy motion. “Thank you,” she whispered, and it was clear she wanted to hug it, but didn’t. Murderbot appreciated her restraint. It wasn’t sure it could handle that right now.
“Alright, then,” Murderbot said, gesturing to the Company board member. “Heel.”