[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]

As soon as Serph steps into its range SecUnit clearly alerts on him, drawing to a halt and going momentarily tense, but Serph gets at least part of his answer to that question immediately, as it doesn't raise its gun arms or react with any hostility. In fact, it goes awkwardly tense as Serph approaches.

It's never going to get used to that. SecUnit's eyes shift further away from Serph, settling on the side of some nearby vehicle rather than anywhere in the vicinity of his face as it processes the emotional reaction that it experiences at that simple phrase. Even with the facemask Jack made it, the process makes itself entirely visible on its face. It's good to see you. And it didn't even save Serph from anything. It's just... here.

It manages a stiff initial nod, then gives it a full five seconds of silence before it scrapes together any additional response. "... Status?" It asks, the buzzing redoubling its voice in an echoing hum.

[bufudine]

Hm. That buzzing he's come to associate more with SecUnit seems to have worsened. Serph doesn't let any of that concern show on his face, instead nodding and reporting on the things that aren't obvious from simply looking around, such as the strange gravity and the new drifters joining the Convoy.

"Largely unharmed, physically. We passed a hospital which held usable medical supplies, so our stocks are much improved. It was also rife with monsters." Of course. Serph folds his arms, the bottom pair of wings also folding across his waist. "There were signs that either experimentation or 'treatment' took place there. Some scanners were active. We register as infected."

[serialmurderbot]

There's no blood to drain from SecUnit's face, but its expression goes blank as it wavers. Its head is full of images - a human body, coated with a strange white crystalline substance, chasing after it. The certainty that when that thing catches up, it will be a piece of something else - left trapped inside its own mind.

The flash of horror is so intense that it takes another five seconds to respond, and by the time it manages to rasp something, it looks a bit like a gentle shove could unbalance it entirely, not at all like it's 'try me, fucker' stance.

"Fuck no," it says. "Not again." Then it takes two carefully placed steps away from Serph to drop to a seat, bracing head in hands.

[bufudine]

Serph doesn't approach; in all their interactions, SecUnit seems to have always preferred to maintain distance and a gaze turned out and away. And so he turns his own gaze away from where SecUnit appears to be dealing with a flood of negative emotions, instead keeping watch for anything that may attack them in the meantime.

When the silence stretches for longer than usual, Serph asks, "Did something similar happen in your world?"

He keeps his tone the same as always, calm and even, not reacting to SecUnit's distress with any particularly strong emotion.

[serialmurderbot]

Past experience with humans has taught it to expect awkward attempts at comfort. Past experience with ART has taught it to expect smug needling intended to get it out of its own head. Experience with Serph suggests that he's not the type for either, but it still feels weirdly... relieved? confused? too many fucking things at once, when he turns away from it, standing nearby.

It feels like the way a SecUnit would deal with this shit, and not just Murderbot.

That doesn't do shit for its cratering performance reliability, but it makes it marginally easier to get the words out. "There was an alien remnant contamination incident. It was a shitshow."