the soul of this machine has improved

[securityconsultant]

Player Information

Name: Toni
Age: 33
Contact details: artoni or artoni#1824 at discord!
Other characters: None

Character Information

Name: Murderbot (it/its)
Canon: The Muderbot Diaries
Canon Point: Post Exit Strategy, pre Fugitive Telemetry/Network Effect
OU/AU/CRAU/OC: OU
Age: Adult minded. It's never really stated in the books how many years it's been functional, but it's been at least 4 years or so since it hacked its governor module.

World Information: Casually drops a wiki link!
TL;DR - Humans colonized space. Many different ways of running the place(s), including hella capitalist places where companies (or at least the Company) utilize SecUnits - Security Units - to protect people who go on planetary missions. These are hybrid cyborg/android/robot-with-flesh-bits that basically do whatever's needed to keep their charges safe, and are controlled via governor nodules which further regulate the units and/or keep them 'in line'.
Murderbot kind of hacked its own nodule after an Incident, and after a number of shenanigans, is the closest thing to a 'free' SecUnit there is. That is...not necessarily a good thing. All it wants is to A) do its job B) watch Sanctuary Moon all over again. The entire series.

Personal History: What Murderbot did prior to its contract to RaviHyral Mining Facility Q Station isn't specified. Presumably it had a few other contracts beforehand, regulated by the Company and its governor module. However, during the duty on the station, something happened. Something very, very big that was promptly very, very hushed up and hidden.

For a long time, Murderbot wasn't certain of the details due to a memory purge; however, such purges were always incomplete due to the organic parts of the system. It had just enough memory of the incident to wonder if its own governor module had suffered catastrophic failure, if it had hacked its own to slaughter a number of its own clients, or whathaveyou. We'll get in to what actually happened later, but suffice it to say, Murderbot - even during its recovery, where its memory was purged and so on and so forth - committed the unthinkable to prevent this from ever happening again. At least, by its own hands.

It disabled the governor module that gave it commands, allowing it for the first time in its life to choose whether or not to obey, and very, very quietly, went rogue.

'Quietly' is important to note. While most media portrayed rogue SecUnits as murderers who turned on their former masters, Murderbot - as it had just-as-quietly began to refer to itself - felt more lost than anything. But with newfound access to the humans' entertainment feed, it promptly turned to such for at least some form of guidance, and its first find was the show Sanctuary Moon. As would later be described, it kept Murderbot company without forcing it to interact; it knew very well that it was watching fictional stories of fictional people, but it was a lifeline as it pretended to still be part of the company, and as nearly four years of this passed, it would continue to be a source of comfort. Other shows would be downloaded, watched, passed over, deleted, favorited, but Sanctuary Moon would remain in its archives to be rewatched to help pass long hours in the cargo bay, or other periods which didn't require its full attention.

Time passed. Over 35,000 hours of Murderbot continuing to be an obedient and efficient SecUnit, of fulfilling contracts for the Company and dealing with humans who really, really needed its help. Thankfully, the greater majority of those contracts only required so much direct (much less social) interaction between it and the clients, so it was...as happy as one could be in its position.

And then came the PreservationAux contract. In short, not only did the team discover that Murderbot was no longer ruled by its governor module, but their lives were in danger and it was that very fact that allowed Murderbot to keep them from falling prey to fatal sabotage. In the end, Dr. Mensah - a human Murderbot had actually grown to like, despite itself, possibly because Mensah treated it as a person even before the revelation - sought to purchase Murderbot from the Company. But Murderbot was familiar that even 'free bots' required human guardians, and while it appreciated her presence, it wasn't ready to leap so far, so fast.

And so it ran away. First, finding passage to RaviHyral, needing to understand the truth of what happened. In doing so, it came across one Asshole Research Transport (ART) with whom it developed a...sort of friendship here. We use the term 'sort of' because it was very much full of friction, mainly because ART was A) far more powerful in processing than Murderbot to a terrifying degree, and had no qualms about displaying this for the .00001 of a second Murderbot needed to understand trying to hack the bot would be an incredibly bad idea, 2) really fucking good at understanding Murderbot's mind and cutting through Murderbot's own ways of thinking to land at the heart of the issue. Still, ART did help it change its appearance, some, and get it to where it needed to go - even assisting a bit in helping Murderbot pick up a cover persona, story, etc etc, what it needed to get things done (and also assist some young, stupid humans along the way).

There, Murderbot found the truth; it didn't cause the incident. Malware did, hijacking itself as a code update to another class of constructs (ComfortUnits) and infecting the SecuritySys as well as the SecUnits, and anything else that had a mind. The resulting feelings were...complicated, especially for someone who was still trying to understand themselves, much more where they were to go from there. But the ComfortUnits had sacrificed themselves to try and save the humans from the then-effectively-insane machinery, and for that, Murderbot was...grateful. Grateful enough to spare another one that had worked against its humans, hack her governor module, and tell her to go away. (Too much stress in trying to save its humans + realizing it was a shit 'security consultant' + the revelations of the Incident = one unhappy Murderbot).

And then Murderbot saw Dr. Mensah on the newsfeed, talking about another planet related to the company they believed responsible for the prior sabotage, and there, at least, it knew where to go next. That particular clusterfuck resulted in it befriending a 'free bot' who was treated as an equal by its human, that bot choosing to sacrifice itself to save Murderbot, its 'friend', and just- Murderbot may have found incriminating evidence against GreyCris, but fuck, it just wanted a brea-

oh. Dr. Mensah was taken prisoner by GreyCris. okay. cool. great.

Needless to say, Murderbot was quick to turn the hell around and go to rescue her, dealing with some of its lingering (problematic!!!) emotions in the process, and...deciding to stay. At least for then. Considering it had a catastrophic processor failure after a barely-there win against some killware (yay organic bits once again saving the day? they come in useful once in a while, but at the same time, "The bad thing about having emotions is, you know, OH SHIT WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO ME.") Nonetheless, as Murderbot recovered, it found that there was a group out there that wanted to hire it for a job - rather, one of its aliases for a job (the one it had used just before rescuing Mensah), citizenship immaterial, thank you for saving their assessment team (well, most of the team) from contract killers by the way - and that another of the PreservationAux team was suggesting it publish its story as part of a documentary. But Mensah stressed it didn't have to choose right away, but more importantly, one thing was clear to Murderbot;

It had a place to be while it figured things out.

Personality: "As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."

It's not that Murderbot in itself is or isn't heartless; it's just that it's very much trying to understand its own heart. And it's not that it's not a killing machine; heavens, no! Murderbot is very aware that it is very good at killing - it can't even call itself 'too good', because that is literally what it was made for. Fighting, so humans wouldn't have to. Really, the main reason it has a humanoid form is because it accompanies humans so often, and as such, the Company decided that something that at least *looked* fairly human would be the best way to get used to them.

At the same time, though, most people are...wary of SecUnits, at the very least, if not outright afraid. And why not? When you're *portrayed* as a heartless killing machine, that sort of thing tends to stick with people. And Murderbot doesn't blame others at all for that wariness; hell, if anything, it thinks people trust each other a little too easily when it's a little to easy for them to hurt each other. Better to assess the threat, then go from there; ideally, no false platitudes, no knives-behind-smiling-faces, it tends to be able to read that sort of thing without much trouble (part of its design) but it would be so much nicer if humans just...were less. Human?

"I have to make myself do things I don't want to do. Like talk to humans."

No, that isn't the way it wants things. It likes humans, for the most part, aggravating as they can be. It's just...that tends to come with so many other things. They're a package deal it's used to taking, and there's so many that come with so much baggage! Not that it doesn't have its own; far from it. Murderbot may not be human, but with less than five years of free thought under its belt, it finds what many things others take for granted as...excessively complicated. Social interaction? Social? For so long, it only gave and received orders (or, well, gave 'advice'); it's been pushed out of its comfort zone so far and so fast that it's actually fairly easy to agitate, even if it doesn't always show it.

Really, it's damned good at hiding what it feels. During those years of 'freedom' without being free, it had to be, in order not to betray itself. And it's partly because of that, that Murderbot has such issues with social activity; it stifles its own emotions, its own thoughts, putting the mission first. And while it's usually pretty damn good at doing so, occasionally those emotions can bubble up and inhibit its effectiveness. Really, really annoying when that happens. Refuse to deal with them too much and its efficiency just spirals down as its processor gets more and more clogged.

"...all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is."

Which!!! It doesn't like. Doing its job is comfortable, familiar, something it knows it can do and do fairly well. Protecting people - especially those it can tolerate - is absolutely at the highest of things It Wants To Do. One might even say it can enjoy such - not as much as it enjoys watching Sanctuary Moon, but. There's a satisfaction that comes from knowing one's fulfilling one's purpose, and moreso, what one has chosen as their purpose. It's fairly lucky that these two just happen to align, but really, what else would it do?

Key themes: PTSD. Personhood, and accepting one's own. Also, what is interaction with other people.

Main Motivation: BEING LEFT ALONE
okay, no, not quite. In general, Murderbot is still very much a child when it comes to its own identity, and it's aware of that at least on some level; it very much wants to move past that because there's so many goddamn emotions and confusing shit that goes along with it. So one might say, it wants to understand itself? At least to the point where it can actually feel confident moving forwards without stumbling in to so many metaphorical walls.

Skills: Murderbot essentially has adopted the job title of 'security consultant' - which ranges from understanding a variety of tactics (protecting an individual, a group, a location, etc) to physical combat to hacking to being able to run a wide range of simulations in its mind to calculate how high or low a percentage of failure is and thus how BAD an idea yours is compared to its own-

-it also has the strength and skill to back up that knowledge. With inbuilt weaponry ("small energy weapons built in to both arms" - essentially, lasers!) and the ability to self-repair both its organic and inorganic bits given time and energy, Murderbot is fairly self-sufficient when it comes to combat and recovering from combat, as was designed. While a MedSys or the like would certainly be useful for heavy injury - especially if its self-repair itself was damaged - Murderbot knows what it can do, knows how it can do it, and can adapt on the fly as needed. While straight computers or AI systems tend to be more single-minded, only doing what they're programmed to do, Murderbot's synthesis of flesh and steel allows it to make judgement calls at speeds that neither system could really do on their own.

Now, there are things that outclass it; there are units built specifically for combat which it can't stand toe-to-toe with in a straight fight, and there are AIs with far more processing power than it could hack (and could, indeed, hack it in turn). In general, though, SecUnits are good things to have on your side - 'rogue' SecUnits (as Murderbot would be classified) are often used as bad guys in various media where it's from, warped killing machines - as long as you don't mind the Company spying on you through their eyes. But since Murderbot isn't tied to the Company anymore, you really only have to worry about its judgement. And while it doesn't particularly like most humans, you can't have imaginary ones on shows without the real things in real life, so it's inclined to help them out if they're in life-threatening situations. (Unless they're assholes, or GreyCris. Fuck GreyCris.)

...that said, please do not put it in front of any social-heavy situations. It. It is not very good at talking with others. Awkward is an understatement. The most talent it has in this area is keeping itself from physically reacting to things that alarm it.

Item: A helmet with a visor that can go opaque or clear on command, part of its old armor set. Which is strange, considering it doesn't have that anymore...

Sample: How about that TDM, eh?

Notes: It goes without saying that Murderbot can't hack the train. Train would probably squish it like a bug. Other than that I'll probably set up an opt-in permissions post re; such, and otherwise ask on a case-by-case basis for people who haven't posted to it! Murderbot tends to hack very casually, and I definitely don't want to step on anyone's toes on that regard.