Murderbot had been bracing itself for the arrival of - ugh - the students. But it thought that it knew what to expect - it had been on crowded transit hubs and stations. It was prepared.
(It was not prepared. It was so, so not prepared.)
Because the students were fucking everywhere. And they were fucking loud - get a group of them together and the statistical likelhood that they would begin to squeal would go up. And when one human started squealing, changes are the rest of them would join in too.
(Squealing was, in Murderbot's opinion, a noise that should be classified as instrument of torture.)
Desperate measures were required.
ART, it whines over the feed, after a particularly horrendous occurrence of eight (eight!) humans all squealing at once, practically in Murderbot's ear as it was patrolling a hallway just around the corner.
It would be an innocent tone, if ART was remotely capable of sounding innocent. It, at best, is capable of 'pretending not to know what this is about and waiting for you to initiate your request/complaint/stupid illogical processing of the situation.' It would probably claim that it was good for Murderbot to vocalize its feelings and learn how to communicate its needs in ways other than sulking, but in reality it's probably just being kind of an asshole.
Even if ART was capable of sounding innocent, Murderbot wouldn't believe it. It knows ART too well.
And it absolutely knows what Murderbot is pinging it about, the fucker.
They're squealing, it says. And then because the universe hates Murderbot, the group of human students repeat the noise. By this time Murderbot has turned down its audio sensors, and started making a tactical retreat in the other direction - but even at lower volumes, it's still fucking aggravating.
There is a pause of a few seconds- deliberate, obviously, ART hardly needs the time to consider what it's going to say or how to respond to that. Murderbot may well get the impression that it is thoroughly enjoying itself.
It is a common vocal stim from young children; I would consider it fortunate that this is the one they use when they are experiencing positive emotions as opposed to negative ones.
There's a horrified pause, as Murderbot contemplates the possibility of young human noises that are worse.
You could have warned me, it says, as it speeds up it's fleeing hasty retreat. Except as the drone that is currently ahead discovers, up ahead there are more students congregating.
Okay...new plan. It just needs to check all of the cameras, and recalculate a path out of here that is free of humans, and...fuck, there isn't one.
Dr. Mensah has children. I had assumed you were familiar.
That, at least, is probably true. Doesn't mean it's not getting a kick out of seeing that that assessment was wrong.
ART can't snort or express its derision in any sort of verbal fashion, but it's also not hard to sense through the feed. Firstly, they need access to most areas of the ship as they are onboard in order to acquaint themselves to the different mechanisms, it says, Secondly, there isn't a good reason to deny them access, or at least not one that would involve sharing more information than any of us would want. These students don't know what ART is, after all, that still being pretty confidential information. And they presumably don't know what Murderbot is, either.
Doctor Mensah only has five children, not hundreds of them, it grumbles. And she tells them not to annoy me.
Okay, not in those words specifically. It was more couched in terms like, "Kids, please give SecUnit space" and "Kids, SecUnit is very busy and doesn't have time to play" and "What did I tell you about touching SecUnit?", blah blah blah. But it was the same thing, really.
You are being ridiculous. There are 56 teenagers aboard at the present moment, with 8 adults not including either of us or Three. That is nowhere near 'hundreds.'
Yes it knows that's not the point. It doesn't care.
Would you like me to develop an educational module for them on how not to annoy rogue SecUnits? The risk here is that, while ART's tone is very dry, it's probably already rifling through things in the background and beginning to assemble such a thing.
Fuck you, it says. Which of course means that it doesn't really have any kind of good reply, and is having to resort to petty insults. Which was inevitable, really. It's what always happens when arguing with ART.
You know they're not supposed to know I'm a rogue SecUnit.
ART doesn't reply, just drops a file into the feed; it's a module/powerpoint titled 'Draft: How Not To Annoy Security Consultant Eden'.
If Murderbot deigns to open it, it will find there are multiple slides with varying titles- "Avoiding Security Consultant Eden," "How To Interact with Security Consultant Eden (When Unable to Avoid)," "How To Interact with Security Consultant Eden (When Needed for Security Reasons), and "Why it is a Bad Idea to Touch Security Consultant Eden."
It wanted to be stubborn, and to refuse to look at the files at all just to piss off ART.
But it also was curious, and really, really wanted students to stop annoying it. So it only held out for 7.3 seconds before opening the file and taking a few moments to review.
(Reading it made it feel...an emotion. A twisty, complicated one. It wanted the students to do all of these things, yes, but the thought of there being a whole education module telling them to do so was weird. And yes, there was absolutely a contradiction there.)
These don't mention Three, it says, avoiding any mentions of Feelings.
There's a slight pause, and the document is updated: "Draft: How Not To Annoy The Security ConsultantsEdenAboard Perihelion."
It has also started filling in the various slides; under 'Avoiding' there is a note to not going looking for them in their rooms, which seems mostly a not-so-subtle reminder that they can, in fact, retreat to the rooms ART made sure they didn't have to share. (Well, other than each other- ART would have very much liked to make sure that it could chill and watch media with Murderbot without Three necessarily being around but there simply wasn't a way to make that work.)
Weirdly, the change in title did actually make it feel...better. A presentation that was all about not annoying Murderbot specifically was just way too much concentrated attention. But if it was about security consultants, and Murderbot just happened to conveniently fall under that category, then it could pretend that this wasn't really all about it.
A few more seconds pass by, while Murderbot continues to Have Emotion. And then it makes its own edit to the document, by adding adding in the words 'no hugging' to the slide about touching. And formatting the text to be extra large, and extra bold.
ART more or less immediately fixes the font to be unbolded and in a normal size.
They are extremely unlikely to attempt to hug you unless you manage to endear yourself to them, it informs Murderbot dryly, At present I see very little risk of that happening.
Have you considered being nice to the children, Murderbot. Or at least less... this.
In a move it knows it will eventually lose, Murderbot formats the font back to being bold. And makes it even bigger than it was before.
Then it shares a video montage of the students, wherein a number of them see each other, squeal (ugh), and then practically launch themselves at each other with hugs.
Not even Preservation humans hug each other this much, it says. And Preservations hug each other a lot. The chance of these humans attempting hugs is 8% more likely.
Those are their friends. I shall reiterate, unless you suddenly decide to make friends with them, I would rate likelihood of them trying to hug you at approximately 1.3%. Frankly, it feels like that number is generous.
It's also filling in other areas, filling in things about staying in designated areas (for safety reasons and also for avoiding Murderbot purposes), not trying to force eye contact, and to not be alarmed if the security consultants just turn and face a wall while waiting for them to pass by.
I'm not going to make friends with any of them, it says, snappish. Although ART may nonetheless pick up a undercurrent of worry coming from Murderbot in the feed.
(It didn't want to make friends with any of its humans, either. Or ART's humans. Or ART. Or anybody. And yet somehow, people kept deciding that they were friends with it. Even ones like Amena, who it had been pretty sure had not liked Murderbot at all in the beginning. (And she was nearly the same age as the students, which just made for an even more worrying data point.))
Back to normal, almost too quickly. It's just showing off now.
Oh, that is a consideration it needs to make. ART is more likely to try and be friendly with humans, or at least the ones associated with his humans or the university. Murderbot meanwhile seems to just... acquire humans.
Unless we experience some sort of security incident, it amends, the likelihood remains at 1.3%. Security incidents tend to show much Murderbot actually cares, after all.
Right, and what's the likelihood of a security incident? Murderbot says, sarcasm bleeding into the feed as it warily checks it's assessments. Threat Assessment is only sitting at 3.4%, but Risk Assessment is a 18%. Probably because young humans are stupid, and are even more likely than the average stupid human to do stupid life endangering things.
It's Risk Assessment module's pretty shit, though. Could be that the actual number is even higher, ugh.
Back to normal. ART is content in the knowledge that it can do this forever, and Murderbot will give up eventually.
A large scale security incident, 1.2%, ART answers; because of how statistics works, it's actually higher thanks to the recent, other incidents they have been involved in. They actually are still well within reach of other ships and contact with the university, so there would hopefully not be anything too terrible. A security incident involving a small number of onboard participants with no outside influence would be 23.4%." Because... teenagers. But that could also just be a heated argument that needs An Adult.
Art's assessment is, unfortunately, correct. And Murderbot knows it, too. But for now, it's still being petty and stubborn and changing the font.
And dammit, it's risk assessment was off. (Also, ART had better not be counting Murderbot in the 'Adult Needed By Teenagers' category, because fuck that. It was only here to make sure none of them maimed or murdered each other.)
...Clearly, these humans could even trusted even less to take care of themselves. Murderbot adds in a new slide, titled 'Don't annoy the security consultants by doing this stupid shut, you idiots'. It populates said slide with a list of risky and dangerous behaviour, which quickly becomes several slides because the list is too long.
whoops html broke a little that last bit wasn't supposed to be italics it's fiiiine
Changed back. It considers embedding it as it is into the file to stop Murderbot from even being able to change it, but that's not as much fun.
ART more or less immediately re-titles the slide to 'Steps To Take To Avoid Onboard Security Incidents,' and begins rephrasing things to be less patronizing and/or full of swear words and deleting anything it would prefer the students not even think about.
Murderbot hasn't given up yet. It changes the font again.
But it leaves ART's edits to the 'Avoiding Security Incidents' slides largely untouched, since it doesn't particularly care about the rephrasing. Although it does have an issue with some of the removals.
Why did you take out the one on not getting dismembered by sticking any of their limbs and body parts into your mechanics? It demanded. Do you want dismembered humans?
Changed back, while also continuing to add things in other slides.
A few reasons, mostly concerning the fact that these are young adults and not small children, and therefore this sort of thing is something they already know not to do, ART answers, Past a certain age, the only time humans are likely to behave in that level of self-destructive behavior is if they are inebriated, which is forbidden for the students aboard. In most cases they would also have needed to take steps to access my mechanics and I would prefer they not even have that idea in their heads. If you don't tell them the option exists, they might not think about it on their own.
They do, but again, they have already been told not to and none of the students have access to my mechanisms anyway. Besides, I am also watching them if they attempt to do so. Please give the humans some credit. And ART, for that matter.
Changed again - and this time, it's Murderbot who tries to code in a lock to prevent it being altered further. It'll probably last about .3 seconds against ART.
...You sure there's no way they can get access? It's a far cry from how they did things in the Corporation Rim, when safety features usually cost more than anyone wanted to bother with. But ART's university was different. And maybe Murderbot could let it be if it could just...be sure, that the humans were at least safe from one hazard.
Oh that's cute. ART undoes it, changes it, and implements Murderbot's own code with some minor changes.
I can override all attempts to access my mechanisms, ART affirms, Including the manual overrides, which already would require codes none of the student possess. Baring any- Pause. -major malfunctions or absence- Such as being deleted, which it does not want to bring up. yes, I am sure.
Fucking asshole. The SecUnit furiously hacks its own fucking code, along with ART's bullshit additions, and then changes the font again. This time, it ads to the code an endlessly spawning error message that will trigger once ART touches it. (Said error message says: DON'T STEAL MY FUCKING CODE, ART).
Fine. You can leave it out. Then it pauses for .34 seconds. You're not gonna have any malfunctions or absences.
That wasn't allowed. The SecUnit wouldn't let it happen. Not again.
If you don't want it to use your code, don't try uselessly to code things in its way! It changes it back, with its own code this time, escalating in difficulty.
That is the plan. ART would also very much like to avoid any situation like that happening ever again.
It will work away at their slides a bit more before pinging SecUnit with a new media series. It can easily focus on both at the same time, after all (among everything else it's doing).
It takes the SecUnit a little longer to hack this time. And likely ART will be able to pick up on the growing furious irritation from it, because it knows that it can't win, and it's escalating to the point where it is going to lose very soon.
It's almost tempted to refuse to watch the new media series, just to be annoying...but this was one it had been looking forward to. And it really, really wanted to watch it. So it lets ART bring it up in the feed, and starts watching.
Haha, it's winning. It knew it would, and there's definitely an air of smugness in the feed as the SecUnit struggles with the hack.
Still, it will happily settle in to watch the new series with it, quietly adding and editing the document. It's starting to look like an actual education module. Now, whether or not it will actually use it...
The SecUnit attempts to keep up for a few more rounds. But eventually, it can't hack its way through ART's protections, and is forced to give up.
Fuck you, it says, shoving away the education module and refusing to touch it any further. But it also settles into to watch the show, which takes a considerable amount of heat out of the insult.
Of course, ART was fucking no help at all. Fucking asshole. Which meant that Plan A was a complete bust. Time for Plan B.
Murderbot pinged Three, and sent an invitation to join a workspace titled: Avoid All Students, Especially The Ones That Squeal.
It had only just begun work, but the workspace already contained detailed map of ART, a complete schedule of all of the student's classes and known extra-curricular activities, and all of Murderbot's available camera inputs. All of these were being funnled into a code that would track every student's location, mark them on the map - and, most importantly, highly the areas where they weren't.
There were gaps, though: Murderbot didn't have enough inputs. It needed Three's, as well as its help with the coding. Murderbot figured the chances of Three helping where high, especially since it was 98% sure that Three wanted to avoid the students just as much, if not more so.
Three spent thirty-six minutes and eight seconds in the presence of five of the adolescent humans currently on board Perihelion.
That was thirty-six minutes and two seconds longer than it needed to know it is not ready for hoards of slightly smaller and significantly noisier humans than the ones it has met so far. The six second window was how long it took before the first one actually addressed it and wanted to know its name. It had perhaps hoped for those six seconds that it could manage, but no. Definitely not.
It is currently hiding in one of the medical suite's surgery rooms, trying to be very quiet and hoping none of the adolescent humans get hurt and require medical attention and find it there.
The ping from Murderbot is actually unsurprising. Murderbot is probably even less happy with the surge of bodies than it is. It pings back and opens the workspace, finding itself even less surprised by what it finds there. It offers its own current hiding place as one of the "places they aren't" with the caveat "for now".
Murderbot, meanwhile, had been caught out in the middle of the hallways, with no easy access to someplace out of the way like the medical suite. It had been forced to hide in a cupboard in one of the corridors.
It considers Three's addition; for now. Three was right, they didn't just need to know where the students were at the moment, they needed to know the statistical likelihood of where they were going to be.
So Murderbot starts working on a new piece of code: one that would analyse all of the recordings it had of previous student movement, in order to create a predictive model. The model needed more data, though, so it sends Three a request to add in all of its recordings.
Unfortunate, then, that Three has almost no recordings yet of students. Just the thirty-six minutes from today. It sends the short splice from its visual feed with a kind of apologetic air and the explanation, I have never been stationed anywhere with students before.
Ugh. Well, thirty-six minutes is still thirty-six minutes more than they had before.
The code attempts to make its calculations, but it's clear that at this point the results are nowhere near accurate. Murderbot resigns itself to having to stay in the fucking cupboard for hours, if not cycles, while they collect more data.
Neither have I. Murderbot had spend most of it's time in mining stations and the like. There wasn't really much education happening in those. Which meant that in this case, it didn't have a lot of advice it could give.
You could slip out during an off-time and come hide in a slightly more comfortable spot with Three, Murderbot.
Did Perihelion offer any advice?
Perihelion hasn't offered that advice to Three yet, but Three also hasn't asked, so... maybe Murderbot knows more? It's actually friends with the AI, after all. Three is not. (Three thinks it pissed Perihelion off by interacting with the other ship's AI.)
Still, it does have the thought: It has students on board regularly. It should have records of their movements.
Murderbot makes the equivalent of a snort in the feet; apparently Murderbot hadn't thought much of ART's advice, whatever it was.
ART's an asshole and its advice is useless, is all it says, as it as a Student Arrival Assessment check to Three's safe zone. Now there's a marker featuring the percentage chance of a student arriving there soon (although since the number keeps wildly fluctuating, the data isn't there yet to make an accurate prediction). It thinks we should be "nice" to them.
It did sound like something a human would say. Probably it was something ART's humans had said to it once, and which had irrationally decided to apply to young humans and young humans only.
Then Murderbot pauses for .23 seconds. What did being nice involve?
Probably involves a lot of smiling. And hugs. (There is a shudder in the feed, as Murderbot contemplates the horror that is hugging.) ART can be nice all it fucking wants, I'm not doing it.
The very idea makes Three's performance reliability drop by three whole percent.
I am not doing either of those things.
Though it does bring up the question of how, if being nice involves smiling and hugging, Perihelion manages to be nice.
Perhelion cannot do either of those things.
Maybe it doesn't know how to be nice, either, and it's all just a gray uncertain area to all the bots and constructs around here. Maybe that's why Murderbot and Perihelion argue so much, neither of them know what they're doing.
(Three might be onto something there, because Murderbot doesn't really know what it's doing. Not when it comes to interacting with humans. It just knows marginally more than Three does.)
...It could use a drone for hugs, maybe? It says, after a pause. But it better not be using one for smiling. I don't want to see teeth on those things.
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ART: Students are terrible, part 1
(It was not prepared. It was so, so not prepared.)
Because the students were fucking everywhere. And they were fucking loud - get a group of them together and the statistical likelhood that they would begin to squeal would go up. And when one human started squealing, changes are the rest of them would join in too.
(Squealing was, in Murderbot's opinion, a noise that should be classified as instrument of torture.)
Desperate measures were required.
ART, it whines over the feed, after a particularly horrendous occurrence of eight (eight!) humans all squealing at once, practically in Murderbot's ear as it was patrolling a hallway just around the corner.
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It would be an innocent tone, if ART was remotely capable of sounding innocent. It, at best, is capable of 'pretending not to know what this is about and waiting for you to initiate your request/complaint/stupid illogical processing of the situation.' It would probably claim that it was good for Murderbot to vocalize its feelings and learn how to communicate its needs in ways other than sulking, but in reality it's probably just being kind of an asshole.
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And it absolutely knows what Murderbot is pinging it about, the fucker.
They're squealing, it says. And then because the universe hates Murderbot, the group of human students repeat the noise. By this time Murderbot has turned down its audio sensors, and started making a tactical retreat in the other direction - but even at lower volumes, it's still fucking aggravating.
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There is a pause of a few seconds- deliberate, obviously, ART hardly needs the time to consider what it's going to say or how to respond to that. Murderbot may well get the impression that it is thoroughly enjoying itself.
It is a common vocal stim from young children; I would consider it fortunate that this is the one they use when they are experiencing positive emotions as opposed to negative ones.
Yes, it could be worse.
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You could have warned me, it says, as it speeds up it's
fleeinghasty retreat. Except as the drone that is currently ahead discovers, up ahead there are more students congregating.Okay...new plan. It just needs to check all of the cameras, and recalculate a path out of here that is free of humans, and...fuck, there isn't one.
Can't you herd them somewhere?
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That, at least, is probably true. Doesn't mean it's not getting a kick out of seeing that that assessment was wrong.
ART can't snort or express its derision in any sort of verbal fashion, but it's also not hard to sense through the feed. Firstly, they need access to most areas of the ship as they are onboard in order to acquaint themselves to the different mechanisms, it says, Secondly, there isn't a good reason to deny them access, or at least not one that would involve sharing more information than any of us would want. These students don't know what ART is, after all, that still being pretty confidential information. And they presumably don't know what Murderbot is, either.
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Okay, not in those words specifically. It was more couched in terms like, "Kids, please give SecUnit space" and "Kids, SecUnit is very busy and doesn't have time to play" and "What did I tell you about touching SecUnit?", blah blah blah. But it was the same thing, really.
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Yes it knows that's not the point. It doesn't care.
Would you like me to develop an educational module for them on how not to annoy rogue SecUnits? The risk here is that, while ART's tone is very dry, it's probably already rifling through things in the background and beginning to assemble such a thing.
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You know they're not supposed to know I'm a rogue SecUnit.
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If Murderbot deigns to open it, it will find there are multiple slides with varying titles- "Avoiding Security Consultant Eden," "How To Interact with Security Consultant Eden (When Unable to Avoid)," "How To Interact with Security Consultant Eden (When Needed for Security Reasons), and "Why it is a Bad Idea to Touch Security Consultant Eden."
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But it also was curious, and really, really wanted students to stop annoying it. So it only held out for 7.3 seconds before opening the file and taking a few moments to review.
(Reading it made it feel...an emotion. A twisty, complicated one. It wanted the students to do all of these things, yes, but the thought of there being a whole education module telling them to do so was weird. And yes, there was absolutely a contradiction there.)
These don't mention Three, it says, avoiding any mentions of Feelings.
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EdenAboard Perihelion."It has also started filling in the various slides; under 'Avoiding' there is a note to not going looking for them in their rooms, which seems mostly a not-so-subtle reminder that they can, in fact, retreat to the rooms ART made sure they didn't have to share. (Well, other than each other- ART would have very much liked to make sure that it could chill and watch media with Murderbot without Three necessarily being around but there simply wasn't a way to make that work.)
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A few more seconds pass by, while Murderbot continues to Have Emotion. And then it makes its own edit to the document, by adding adding in the words 'no hugging' to the slide about touching. And formatting the text to be extra large, and extra bold.
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They are extremely unlikely to attempt to hug you unless you manage to endear yourself to them, it informs Murderbot dryly, At present I see very little risk of that happening.
Have you considered being nice to the children, Murderbot. Or at least less... this.
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Then it shares a video montage of the students, wherein a number of them see each other, squeal (ugh), and then practically launch themselves at each other with hugs.
Not even Preservation humans hug each other this much, it says. And Preservations hug each other a lot. The chance of these humans attempting hugs is 8% more likely.
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Those are their friends. I shall reiterate, unless you suddenly decide to make friends with them, I would rate likelihood of them trying to hug you at approximately 1.3%. Frankly, it feels like that number is generous.
It's also filling in other areas, filling in things about staying in designated areas (for safety reasons and also for avoiding Murderbot purposes), not trying to force eye contact, and to not be alarmed if the security consultants just turn and face a wall while waiting for them to pass by.
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I'm not going to make friends with any of them, it says, snappish. Although ART may nonetheless pick up a undercurrent of worry coming from Murderbot in the feed.
(It didn't want to make friends with any of its humans, either. Or ART's humans. Or ART. Or anybody. And yet somehow, people kept deciding that they were friends with it. Even ones like Amena, who it had been pretty sure had not liked Murderbot at all in the beginning. (And she was nearly the same age as the students, which just made for an even more worrying data point.))
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Oh, that is a consideration it needs to make. ART is more likely to try and be friendly with humans, or at least the ones associated with his humans or the university. Murderbot meanwhile seems to just... acquire humans.
Unless we experience some sort of security incident, it amends, the likelihood remains at 1.3%. Security incidents tend to show much Murderbot actually cares, after all.
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Back to bold emphasis.
Right, and what's the likelihood of a security incident? Murderbot says, sarcasm bleeding into the feed as it warily checks it's assessments. Threat Assessment is only sitting at 3.4%, but Risk Assessment is a 18%. Probably because young humans are stupid, and are even more likely than the average stupid human to do stupid life endangering things.
It's Risk Assessment module's pretty shit, though. Could be that the actual number is even higher, ugh.
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A large scale security incident, 1.2%, ART answers; because of how statistics works, it's actually higher thanks to the recent, other incidents they have been involved in. They actually are still well within reach of other ships and contact with the university, so there would hopefully not be anything too terrible. A security incident involving a small number of onboard participants with no outside influence would be 23.4%." Because... teenagers. But that could also just be a heated argument that needs An Adult.
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And dammit, it's risk assessment was off. (Also, ART had better not be counting Murderbot in the 'Adult Needed By Teenagers' category, because fuck that. It was only here to make sure none of them maimed or murdered each other.)
...Clearly, these humans could even trusted even less to take care of themselves. Murderbot adds in a new slide, titled 'Don't annoy the security consultants by doing this stupid shut, you idiots'. It populates said slide with a list of risky and dangerous behaviour, which quickly becomes several slides because the list is too long.
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whoops html broke a little that last bit wasn't supposed to be italics it's fiiiineChanged back. It considers embedding it as it is into the file to stop Murderbot from even being able to change it, but that's not as much fun.
ART more or less immediately re-titles the slide to 'Steps To Take To Avoid Onboard Security Incidents,' and begins rephrasing things to be less patronizing and/or full of swear words and deleting anything it would prefer the students not even think about.
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But it leaves ART's edits to the 'Avoiding Security Incidents' slides largely untouched, since it doesn't particularly care about the rephrasing. Although it does have an issue with some of the removals.
Why did you take out the one on not getting dismembered by sticking any of their limbs and body parts into your mechanics? It demanded. Do you want dismembered humans?
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A few reasons, mostly concerning the fact that these are young adults and not small children, and therefore this sort of thing is something they already know not to do, ART answers, Past a certain age, the only time humans are likely to behave in that level of self-destructive behavior is if they are inebriated, which is forbidden for the students aboard. In most cases they would also have needed to take steps to access my mechanics and I would prefer they not even have that idea in their heads. If you don't tell them the option exists, they might not think about it on their own.
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You've forgotten that humans are stupid, and they do things they know they're not supposed to do all the fucking time, It says. Adult humans included.
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They do, but again, they have already been told not to and none of the students have access to my mechanisms anyway. Besides, I am also watching them if they attempt to do so. Please give the humans some credit. And ART, for that matter.
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...You sure there's no way they can get access? It's a far cry from how they did things in the Corporation Rim, when safety features usually cost more than anyone wanted to bother with. But ART's university was different. And maybe Murderbot could let it be if it could just...be sure, that the humans were at least safe from one hazard.
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I can override all attempts to access my mechanisms, ART affirms, Including the manual overrides, which already would require codes none of the student possess. Baring any- Pause. -major malfunctions or absence- Such as being deleted, which it does not want to bring up. yes, I am sure.
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Fine. You can leave it out. Then it pauses for .34 seconds. You're not gonna have any malfunctions or absences.
That wasn't allowed. The SecUnit wouldn't let it happen. Not again.
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That is the plan. ART would also very much like to avoid any situation like that happening ever again.
It will work away at their slides a bit more before pinging SecUnit with a new media series. It can easily focus on both at the same time, after all (among everything else it's doing).
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It's almost tempted to refuse to watch the new media series, just to be annoying...but this was one it had been looking forward to. And it really, really wanted to watch it. So it lets ART bring it up in the feed, and starts watching.
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Still, it will happily settle in to watch the new series with it, quietly adding and editing the document. It's starting to look like an actual education module. Now, whether or not it will actually use it...
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Fuck you, it says, shoving away the education module and refusing to touch it any further. But it also settles into to watch the show, which takes a considerable amount of heat out of the insult.
Three: Students are terrible, part 2
Murderbot pinged Three, and sent an invitation to join a workspace titled: Avoid All Students, Especially The Ones That Squeal.
It had only just begun work, but the workspace already contained detailed map of ART, a complete schedule of all of the student's classes and known extra-curricular activities, and all of Murderbot's available camera inputs. All of these were being funnled into a code that would track every student's location, mark them on the map - and, most importantly, highly the areas where they weren't.
There were gaps, though: Murderbot didn't have enough inputs. It needed Three's, as well as its help with the coding. Murderbot figured the chances of Three helping where high, especially since it was 98% sure that Three wanted to avoid the students just as much, if not more so.
Re: Three: Students are terrible, part 2
That was thirty-six minutes and two seconds longer than it needed to know it is not ready for hoards of slightly smaller and significantly noisier humans than the ones it has met so far. The six second window was how long it took before the first one actually addressed it and wanted to know its name. It had perhaps hoped for those six seconds that it could manage, but no. Definitely not.
It is currently hiding in one of the medical suite's surgery rooms, trying to be very quiet and hoping none of the adolescent humans get hurt and require medical attention and find it there.
The ping from Murderbot is actually unsurprising. Murderbot is probably even less happy with the surge of bodies than it is. It pings back and opens the workspace, finding itself even less surprised by what it finds there. It offers its own current hiding place as one of the "places they aren't" with the caveat "for now".
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It considers Three's addition; for now. Three was right, they didn't just need to know where the students were at the moment, they needed to know the statistical likelihood of where they were going to be.
So Murderbot starts working on a new piece of code: one that would analyse all of the recordings it had of previous student movement, in order to create a predictive model. The model needed more data, though, so it sends Three a request to add in all of its recordings.
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The code attempts to make its calculations, but it's clear that at this point the results are nowhere near accurate. Murderbot resigns itself to having to stay in the fucking cupboard for hours, if not cycles, while they collect more data.
Neither have I. Murderbot had spend most of it's time in mining stations and the like. There wasn't really much education happening in those. Which meant that in this case, it didn't have a lot of advice it could give.
Sorry Three.
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Did Perihelion offer any advice?
Perihelion hasn't offered that advice to Three yet, but Three also hasn't asked, so... maybe Murderbot knows more? It's actually friends with the AI, after all. Three is not. (Three thinks it pissed Perihelion off by interacting with the other ship's AI.)
Still, it does have the thought: It has students on board regularly. It should have records of their movements.
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ART's an asshole and its advice is useless, is all it says, as it as a Student Arrival Assessment check to Three's safe zone. Now there's a marker featuring the percentage chance of a student arriving there soon (although since the number keeps wildly fluctuating, the data isn't there yet to make an accurate prediction). It thinks we should be "nice" to them.
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I don't know how to be nice. I can be polite.
Though if Murderbot has reviewed the footage, it can see that the being polite is mostly a veneer over internal panic.
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Then Murderbot pauses for .23 seconds. What did being nice involve?
Probably involves a lot of smiling. And hugs. (There is a shudder in the feed, as Murderbot contemplates the horror that is hugging.) ART can be nice all it fucking wants, I'm not doing it.
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I am not doing either of those things.
Though it does bring up the question of how, if being nice involves smiling and hugging, Perihelion manages to be nice.
Perhelion cannot do either of those things.
Maybe it doesn't know how to be nice, either, and it's all just a gray uncertain area to all the bots and constructs around here. Maybe that's why Murderbot and Perihelion argue so much, neither of them know what they're doing.
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...It could use a drone for hugs, maybe? It says, after a pause. But it better not be using one for smiling. I don't want to see teeth on those things.