serialmurderbot (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
serialmurderbot) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
route666rp2025-05-17 12:27 pm
serialmurderbot) wrote in route666rp2025-05-17 12:27 pm
[open] test environment
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.]
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.]
no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
"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?"
cw for brief implications of suicide
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
(Yeah, so much for that.)
"I went rogue so I didn't have to die for stupid reasons. That's different from humans doing stupid things to save me."
But it can feel itself getting backed into a conversational corner of its own making about why that's different, so it tries to turn it back around on Serph, instead. "Why do you think you should regret it?"
no subject
It all comes back to his demon, doesn't it? Knowing that the cost of living is killing. Certainly, humans need to eat, and they need to devour life of a different kind. But that is still a different kind of eventuality as knowing you'll devour your friends.
Serph doesn't reply for a beat longer than usual, his wings spreading briefly before they fold back up.
"There were other AIs who chose death over living with the Atma virus."
no subject
There's a term for that, something Dr. Bharadwaj would know, but it doesn't come to SecUnit in the half-second of searching it does, so it just powers on, instead. "Humans think we want to kill all of them, or that we're just confused pet bots, but that's stupid. They're projecting because they're scared of what they make their murderbots do, but if they wanted programmable murder machines they shouldn't have given us the human parts to make independent decisions with."
Where the fuck was it going with this? Hold on. "If you were going to shut down you would have done it by now. That's not... regretting it."
no subject
Murder machines, huh?
"We weren't supposed to feel. That was an unintended side effect of the Atma virus."
He'd spoken to Argilla of it before. How easy it used to be to pull the trigger. How much harder it is now, knowing the price of life. How they still do it without hesitation, even with that knowledge.
"So the price of my life, the sea of corpses left in my path... is it worth it?" All that's left of the Junkyard are a handful of people and a few reports. "Those humans who would do stupid things to save you... they decided a murder machine is worth it."