[open] test environment

[serialmurderbot]

Who: SecUnit and OPEN
What: The husk hatches! This is actually good news.
When: Around the 19th.
Where: In and around the Convoy.
Warnings: Insectoid features, depictions of PTSD, others TBD.

1. Reactivation

[Forced shutdown: restart

failure: retry
failure: retry

retry

restart]

There's something wrong with its eyes. They won't focus, and it's staring at a... something. Wall? It takes a whole 7.9 seconds to determine that the abstract line it's looking at is, in fact, the corner of a room where the ceiling meets the walls. Which feels wrong. It's pretty sure the last time it was stuck like this, the ceiling blended into the wall.

It hopes this isn't like the last time it was stuck like this. It mostly remembers being very fucking bored.

Then the rest of it snaps online, and SecUnit has access to all of its memory files. Which doesn't help, actually, because there's something wrong with its systems. Analysis of visual records indicates that the light coming in through the slatted window and the hints of terrain are distinctly different from the time it shut down, and yet its internal record has no record of how long it's been shut down.

Okay. No need to freak out just yet, even if the situation starts to send prickles through the organic parts of it, and threat assessment is beginning a slow climb. It starts to get off of the bed where it's been leaning back, and promptly fucking overbalances and hits the ground with a crash.

It doesn't move for a second, because this really is like its memory rebuild, and maybe it should just sink into the floor and never move again instead of paying attention to the diagnostic warning it now has unhelpfully warning it that its legs need calibration before use due to extended inactivity and potential obstruction. There's shards of - something on the bed and the ground around it, metal that leaves the remnants of a shell.

One hand and arm is still coated in it.

SecUnit reacts, extremely fucking reasonably by its measure, by punching the hand into the closest wall, it's entire mind a scream of oh shit.

-

2. Around the Convoy

By the time it's gotten its legs working again - and, more importantly, ensured that there's no corruption to its memory archives, SecUnit slips away from the room it's apparently spent the past two weeks in. The Convoy is stopped for the evening, and most of the humans and human-adjacent organics should be handling their meal break, leaving SecUnit the chance to patrol the shields mostly undisturbed. It makes a sweep, aiming ultimately for the weird floating islands that start spiraling up from the ground at the edge of the shields.

It gives the strange glowing plants a wide berth, remembering the weird colored water of the oasis. Threat assessment keeps trying to spike at every unexpected twitch of movement, every unfamiliar noise, flooding its organic parts with stress chemicals, so it's slow going for SecUnit, who's trying not to stop dead and keeps doing so anyway.

It has to start running processes in background, filling its head with three simultaneous floods of data to try and even out the performance reliability that sits somewhere in the low seventies as it does - one analyzing all of the vehicles around it for signs of damage, a second in background playing Sanctuary Moon (Episode 206, which it's paying less that 18% of it's attention to, it's just there for background, and isn't working as well as it would hope at making it feel better), the third plotting a route to ascend to the top of one of those floating islands, all the while it patrols, alert for any signs of monsters. Or worse, people.

And underneath it all; there's no corruption, code analysis comes up clean. Get it together, Murderbot.

[ooc: feel free to use brackets or prose! I'll swap to match. Also if your character has any of the plant effects this month, feel free to have them pick up on what Murderbot here is thinking/feeling.]

Comments

[serialmurderbot]

It can, and it doesn't look happy about that, from the way it scowls over the very thought. It crosses its arms over its chest, glaring into the middle distance. It's not arguing. It's very purposefully not arguing about that. It definitely wants to argue anyway.

But also...

"How the fuck did the hospital grab people. Is it bot-controlled?"

[wereperrito]

"Maybe," Jack says, thinking back uncomfortably to the experience. "They were kind of like robots? There were these devices that came out of the walls and tried to tie up and cage anyone with monster traits." He gestures to his tails sheepishly. "They didn't like me much. I don't know what controlled them but given the visions people seem to be having in the hospital of the history of this place, they were trying to contain the monster traits in people, so it was probably mechanical more than magical."

[serialmurderbot]

There's a snorting sound Ratthi makes when he's trying to convey something approximately like 'yeah, no shit, me too,' and SecUnit can approximate that despite its lung design, so it does. "I have had to interact with far more offputting humans."

There's also the fact that it's usually considered highly offputting itself, but given everything about the way it's been acting, it figures that's pretty fucking obvious.

"You're obviously not from the Corporation Rim."

It follows along towards the truck, its gaze narrowing - the design is different, but it recognizes the mode in which the vehicle was built. Sturdy, unaesthetic - exactly the kind of thing it would see on survey.

[serialmurderbot]

4.1 Seconds of silence, while SecUnit almost stares at Jack. "Wow," it says, once it's finished processing all of that. "I thought this place couldn't get any worse."

And then it hesitates again, because it doesn't know how to say the next part, and because the examples it's pulling from its archived media all don't sound like something it would say at all.

What comes out in the end is, "You don't have to go back in there. That's supposed to be my job."

[bufudine]

Contamination causing highly divergent physical and psycholological changes...

Serph doesn't quite have a full understanding of constructs like SecUnit, but catastrophic shutdown seems another term for 'severely wounded to the point of losing consciousness'. And 'integrated into the contaminated central system' sounds a lot like having an altered mental state forced upon it.

He keeps his gaze outwards, but there's the smallest hint of sympathy in his voice. "Are you worried it's happening to you again?"

Worried that it'll lose control of itself? Worried that it'll become something it doesn't want to be?

[wereperrito]

Jack's expression goes a little soft, at that. "It's okay. I haven't gone back in after that. There are not many things that actually frighten me, but being caged is not a thing I enjoy. At all. I've been staying outside, offering first aid to anyone who goes in, and setting my traps so people will have meat to eat."

[serialmurderbot]

"You can't argue that I'm not contaminated."

There's no point in gesturing, it knows Serph has seen the mandibles, the weird grey plating. Serph was the first one who saw the full extent of what the Moon Warp could do to it, and while the effects have shifted in the time since then, they haven't gone fully away.

"The last time I lost control of my systems fifty-seven people died," it says, and it can hear itself saying the wrong thing for this argument (is it an argument? It feels like one, an argument and not a discussion, even though Serph isn't mirroring its agitation at all). If ART or Dr. Mensah or Dr. Bharadwaj were here, they would all immediately be able to point out how it's twisting facts for this. But they're not here. "If that happens again and I can't be subdued, I have to be killed." It doesn't sound reassured by that thought, just... resigned. Frustrated. Unhappy.

It's been a while since it felt the wave of I-don't-care threatening this strongly.

[serialmurderbot]

Okay, it can't help making a face at that - though 'making a face' in this circumstance means less a proper grimace and more twitching movements of the mandibles that now frame its jaw, a kind of bristling gesture that's definitely involuntary.

There's some dots to compare in there, about the chains Jack picked up, but - some other time, probably. It doesn't have the anything to worry about asking Jack about something as personal as the details of what he's afraid of. "At least you understand safety protocols and not being reckless."

[solitarysoul]

Levi's been in the medbay and few times and once went through all the drawers and cubbies out of curiosity, so he knows where the scalpels are kept. He pulls one out and looks between it and the husk remaining on SecUnit's arm. These things were sharp and he'd seen Daan do a lot of damage with one, but he had no idea if it had the strength to cut off the husk remains.

What he does know is that SecUnit wouldn't appreciate him just trying so he holds the scalpel out, handle first. "H-here. I've never cut anything like that but I've done some field medicine so, um, I-i dunno. I can try to help, if you want."

i bonk dreamwidth with my comically oversized hammer

[hexrot]

[ murderbot is echoed back in question, so much question— but the creature does not retreat. instead, he towers. don't let it touch you? it's that bad? those are the first fleeting thoughts that come, all before deliberate words are pressed:

jayce talis, gruff. tired. irked, but he does thinking back: secunit? ]

[bufudine]

Serph has no intention of arguing that point. If anything, contamination (infection) is almost assured.

"I understand." Serph's gaze falls to his hand, flexing his fingers. In another form, a twitch of his fingers would be all it would take to remove the limbs from someone. "I gained my demon when I was infected with the Atma virus. Many lost control of their demon and killed all in their path. If I were to lose control, the same would happen to me."

All it would take is for the Convoy to pass through an area with no monsters for an extended period of time. He would starve and grow weak from hunger, and the demon would eventually take over and devour his new comrades travelling with the Convoy until he was forcibly stopped.

"If either of us fully lose control, people here will die." There's no question. He and SecUnit have seen the way each other fight. Brutally efficient, made for killing. There would be many who would be dead before they knew what was happening. "What do you think you should do?"

[serialmurderbot]

Good choice, Levi - a human walking up to it with a sharp object is always a little bit alarming, even if a scalpel wouldn't do excessive damage to it. Spotting the handle being extended towards it, SecUnit takes it, weighing the options. Its hands are steady and it trusts its own ability to keep from using too much force and accidentally stabbing itself, but the leverage it has on its own arm isn't great, either.

It also doesn't want to see how easily its fingers can be reattached here.

"Start up at the joint," SecUnit says, holding back out the scalpel. Once Levi takes the blade back it pulls up the sleeve, to expose the part of the shell still collected by the elbow.

[serialmurderbot]

Jayce? [Both tone and mind are echoing with what the fuck still, albeit more disbelieving and incredulous than halfway to firing, the way it was before. The lack of further movement is - something. The calculations resume in the background, mostly out of the forefront of its mind - a brief echo of a woman's voice saying, 'You are the most paranoid person I've ever met, and I've worked in criminal reform for twenty years.']

What happened to you?

[SecUnit?, Jayce asks. It doesn't acknowledge the question-confirmation out loud, but there's a yes/no dichotomy playing out in its thoughts: Only because the humans don't like it when their murderbot is self-aware enough to call itself Murderbot.]

cw for brief implications of suicide

[serialmurderbot]

"I know what I should do."

It shifts its arms, where the gun ports sit inert for the moment. It sounds... reluctant. Even if it knows, it doesn't have to like it. And it doesn't have its nice, friendly, smart humans here to fix it afterwards. The humans here, the people here... they'd try to save it anyway. It doesn't know if they can. Thinking about it feels like someone hollowed every piece of organic material and equipment out of its torso and left it empty.

"... I don't want to," it admits. "They should have left me behind, but I didn't want them to."

[solitarysoul]

Its basic safety, you don't hold a knife out to someone with the blade first. But it making him appear non-threatening is also good. He blinks when the blade is offered back to him but takes it and moves to get a better look at SecUnit's arm and the remaining husk.

"O-okay..." He takes a moment to study it, so he can figure out what the best angle is to go at it, before starting where SecUnit's noted. He's not sure how tight the thing is on there, or exactly where the husk meets the skin, but he tries to stick the knife in right at that point.

[hexrot]

[ jayce could feel himself twitching, if he still had the facial muscles to show it. his ears do the job, instead, and a single, thick string of saliva ribbons off his hidden lower mandibles.

i don't know, he admits. doesn't matter, either. for the most part, the flashes of his earlier panic come without filter. there is blood, a strange purple splash of it staining bedsheets. viktor trying to call his name, being overcome by a hot, modulated voice with no emotion before he escalated into full blown anxiety attack to flee and leave his beloved before more harm was done.

there is something better to focus on.

is that your real name? ]

[serialmurderbot]

[SecUnit twitches in response to those flickers of panic, as though priming to respond to a threat that it knows isn't there. If it takes in the clearly intimate setting or the emotion involved in that voice switching into something else on Viktor's part, it doesn't keep that at the forefront of its thoughts, might in fact be trying to avoid it entirely.

It can't play it back like it with the camera feed from its eyes, but it reconstructs and reanalyzes the splatter of blood (?), the speed of the transformation as best it can estimate through the flashes.

And then it promptly tables all of that, because there's a very particular question to answer.]

It's private.

[Yes. There's a whole cascade of emotions that hit at that. Defensive bristling, but just as much a feeling of fit the way it never has with SecUnit, or Eden. Those idents are all for other people. Murderbot is its own.]

[wereperrito]

"I like to think I do," Jack agrees easily, even if even he is probably a bit more reckless than SecUnit would like in his scavenging.

But now that they've both ascertained that they're both okay, or mostly okay, he can pivot to, "I do have your masks finished. The ones that I promised before. You can come get them any time you like."

[firstsoldier]

Shinra at least made resilient vehicles. The thing's taken a beating since even before Sephiroth got his hands on it and then crashed it through the countryside at top speed repeatedly. That the only thing badly damaged is one door, tons of what looks like bullet holes and a fender is astonishing. "No, definitely not. My planet is a ... unremarkable little backwater in the middle of nowhere. We're not aligned with any interplanetary corporations."

Just the one on the ground, which ran everything.

There's no tailgate but this doesn't prevent him from climbing right in to fetch the small collection of tools he'd been gradually growing with each stop. Half are the wrong measurement, he doesn't know what 'imperial' is but metric seems obvious and now he's got some of both.

A wrench or two. Hammer. Pliers. Maybe there'll be something useful in all of it, dragged to the back for easy reach. "Probably for the best. Are you capable of feeling sensation in the .. silver parts?"

[bufudine]

Even though he knows his existence is one that would seemingly bar him from Nirvana, even though his demon made a peaceful life impossible, Serph can't help but do all he can to survive. He is living, despite his intentions back in 'Nirvana'. His goals have changed, slightly, but he's determined to see things to their end.

Even if it means others have to die for it.

"You've chosen to live." Serph turns his gaze skyward, the sounds of waves rolling up a sandy shore echoing in his mind. "There's no point in regretting it, whatever comes next."