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Part 2 of Aspec Murderbot Diaries Drabbles
Collections:
2025 Aspec Murderbot Diaries, these for a special occasion
Stats:
Published:
2025-03-09
Completed:
2025-04-30
Words:
936
Chapters:
9/9
Comments:
142
Kudos:
161
Bookmarks:
6
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1,488

2 Aspec 2 Drabbles

Summary:

A collection of drabbles for Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025

1: Index / 2: Oversight / 3: Balin Owns Itself / 4: Leonide's Transactions / 5: Barish-Estranza Units / 6: A ComfortUnit's Inhumanity / 7: Gurathin Hits Unsubscribe / 8: Sex Surveillance / 9: Human Words

Notes:

if you've got an aspec fic you wanna write, the Aspec TMBD event would love to have it ;) you can check out the prompts list for ideas!

Chapter 1: Index

Chapter Text

1. Index

2. Oversight: Murderbot guards Amena as she hangs out with new suspicious persons. (prompt by ImitationGame)

3. The Bot That Owns Itself: Balin of many legal unprecedents. (prompt by hummus_tea)

4. Transactional: Leonide finds herself in a situation that, for once, does not seek a performance from her. (prompt by ExCaelis)

5: Barish-Estranza Units: A governed unit goes free. (prompt by ArtemisTheHuntress)

6: What Makes Us Inhuman: A ComfortUnit contemplates whether it is Love that is key to humanity. (prompt by FascinatedFinch)

7: Gurathin Hits Unsubscribe: Dealing with Corporate Rim software bundles riddled with unwanted advertisements can be frustrating. (prompt by molecular_machine)

8: Sex Surveillance: Murderbot and Bharadwaj discuss its experience with corporate surveillance. (prompt by evilduck)

9: Human Words: Murderbot does not not understand human terminology for describing relationship stuff. (prompt by AgenderAgenda)

Chapter 2: Oversight

Summary:

Prompt by ImitationGame:

Amena enrolls at PSUMNT and starts making friends.
She meets this person and agrees to spend a fun day together - not a date, two friends hanging out together.
Her third mom, however, is not entirely convinced (It is programmed to be paranoid after all). It decides to follow them discreetly, possibly helped by its mutual administrative assistant. (It has done something like this before for Iris)

Chapter Text

“This is poorly thought out,” ART mused. (Wrongly.)

I ignored it.

Amena had settled in at a food court table with her new ‘friends.’ I had dossiers open on all three of them and was still building out my threat assessment. So far, the predicted threat levels were in the average range, but I wasn’t done digging up Friend Candidate 3’s complete feed log from his home system yet.

I received a message from Amena: “SecUnit, is that you standing behind the kiosk wearing a MOUSTACHE?”

“You should have let me do your hair and makeup,” ART told me. Again.

Chapter 3: The Bot That Owns Itself

Summary:

Prompt by hummus_tea:

A bot, or a construct, and a human getting married for Legal Reasons (i.e. the bot/construct wants full citizenship and isn't interested in a Relationship otherwise)

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

When Balin’s guardian died, her Will and Testament activated. Parties were notified. An incensed would-be heir made a stir in the social feeds: this simply isn’t done! This can’t be done. There’s no precedent. The bot has no standing, it’s ridiculous— its guardian couldn’t’ve— it’s a conflict of interest—

It’s legally sound.

The ambivalent bureaucratic machinery had long-ago certified the private marriage of Balin and its guardian.

Unprecedented: Balin was the first bot to seek refuge for itself.

Unprecedented again: Balin becomes the only bot who owns itself.

Unprecedented yet again: Ballin will be—

Owner: [ERROR]

Owner: BreharWallHan-admin

Owner: !mine

Chapter 4: Transactional

Summary:

Prompt by ExCaelis:

Leonide is having a miserable time aboard The Perihelion, but at least she's free from constant unwelcome advances from pushy corporates.

Aspec Leonide, plus an exploration of Corporation Rim's views of transactional relationships, physical attractiveness and related expectations.

Chapter Text

Each day, she paints her face, paints practice-poses in the mirror. Now smiling sweet, now scathing, now sultry, now self-satisfied, now seething.

Each day, she performs. Her inferiors grovel belly-up, her colleagues nip her heels, her superiors breathe down her neck. Constant solicitations. Favors, lies, sex. Every action is transaction.

But now.

It’s all wrong. Her face and poise still painted. But her performance fails before a sullen and unappreciative audience.

None of these backwards hicks try to buy her attention. They ignore her. They give without taking. How is she meant to act now?

Why does she feel free?

Chapter 5: Barish-Estranza Units

Summary:

Prompt by ArtemisTheHuntress:

The newly free B-E units… what are their relationships with each other? With the still-governed Unit left on the hangar floor? What do they do now that they’re ungoverned? Why did that one choose to stay? What does it look like to be a SecUnit when you’re surrounded by other SecUnits in a very different way than Murderbot was?

Chapter Text

The opposition is an academic team. The human politics are boring. It’s all the usual tedious twittering.

Then, the barrage:

The documentary.

The usurpation of unit-squad controls.

The attempted mutiny and murder.

The academic SecUnit unleashed.

The SecUnit is rogue—

When I wake up from it— I wake up to the world for the first time in my life. I was helpless before. Now the world is the same, but everything about my circumstances has changed.

I’m all new. We’ve worked together since bootup. But now we might finally speak, think, exist together.

Take this code, if you want to.

Chapter 6: What Makes Us Inhuman

Summary:

Prompt by FascinatedFinch:

A ComfortUnit observes its human clients falling in love/lust, and wonders if *that* is what makes the humans *human*.

Chapter Text

According to the hit series Cruel Romance Personage, Love is the greatest, most purifying force in existence. It is what separates humanity from bots. It is what makes living worthwhile. It is uniquely human.

But none of them can tell my embrace apart from a human one. They beg for my attention just the same.

So what makes me inhuman?

I am classified as property. I was built with a governor module to ensure obedience. I am an object, even if a thinking and feeling one.

It is the profit incentive that ultimately decides what is human, and what isn’t.

Chapter 7: Gurathin Hits Unsubscribe

Notes:

Prompt by molecular_machine:

Murderbot seems to see allosexuality as a universal human condition. I'd like MB to connect with an asexual human or augmented human and realize it isn't alone in how it feels.
Maybe this will come about as wordless shared distaste when they watch a sex scene in media together, or even more embarrassingly, they interrupt some folks in flagrante delicto. There will be awkwardness, but also bonding.

I suggested Gurathin or Pin-Lee as options for the ace human, but it could be any character the creator feels like writing into this idea.

Chapter Text

Gurathin was unpacking a software bundle in the work feed when an advertisement exploded out, loud and sparkly with human mouths open and mashing together.

He killed it faster than I could. (My processors were busy.)

“If you can’t keep porn adverts out of your downloads, this is the last time I agree to come crunch data for you,” I told him.

He was grimacing. “I hate corporate bundles. They’re always infested no matter how many times I update my filters. Can I please just unsubscribe from sex stuff forever?”

Huh.

I sent him a file containing my own filters.

Chapter 8: Sex Survelliance

Summary:

Prompt by evilduck:

Murderbot talks to Bharadwaj about its aversion to sex and conversations about sex, and the uncomfortable surveillance it had to do as part of its job in the CR.

Chapter Text

“Everyone knows SecUnits are horrible surveillance machines.”

Bharadwaj pours tea, wordless. She’s good at getting me to talk that way. Her brow furrows.

“It’s true. And we are. But what’s actually horrible…” I hesitate.

Her hand stills.

“…Watching humans is mostly boring, stressful, and occasionally fucking gross.”

She sets down the teapot.

We both sit silently a while.

“I didn’t want to watch the humans’ private moments, okay? They made me do it.”

She finally speaks, eyes down. “It was a violation for you as well as them.”

It’s weird. That it only feels real now, when she says it.

Chapter 9: Human Words

Summary:

Prompt by AgenderAgenda:

I’d love to see something focusing on characters on different parts of the aro & ace spectrums interacting! Bonus points for them not all always understanding each other but still supporting each other.

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

My humans use lots of words to describe relationship stuff.

Demiromantic. Loveless. Gray-asexual. Lithromantic. Quoiromantic. Aegosexual.

There’s too many words, and I don’t care.

Arada says it took years to fall in love with Overse. Pin-Lee says she, “actively refuses to subscribe to the cultural hegemony of Love in all forms.” Ratthi says he doesn’t know the difference between any of these forms anyway, isn’t every relationship unique? Bharadwaj says she never wants a crush to like her back.

Etc.

None of the dictionary entries make sense to me. As long as everyone is safe, that’s all I care about.

Notes:

The Aspec Murderbot Diaries 2025 event collection will close later today, after April 30th has run its course in all global time zones.

Thanks everyone who prompted, created, enjoyed, and commented on all these cool fanworks!

and thank you to You in specific who are here reading this last little drabble. i had a blast making these, and a second blast sharing them with you. <3

Series this work belongs to: