[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]

"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.

[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?"

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."

[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."

[serialmurderbot]

"I don't regret it," SecUnit says, immediately. Not angry, but frustrated, maybe. Annoyed? Fuck Serph for having such a good handle on all of this when it's pretty sure he went rogue a lot more recently than it did. (Not that it has any actual answers for any of the horrifying existential questions of existence, but it should have a better handle on the scope of the problem than a newly aware AI, right?)

(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?"

[bufudine]

Hm.

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."

[serialmurderbot]

"That's doesn't mean you should," SecUnit argues, not quite looking at Serph, but coming close, as it glares across the length of the Convoy. "You don't all feel the same things just because the same shitty things happened to you. That's a - thing."

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."

[bufudine]

Is that an attempt at comfort? Serph can't help the small smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

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."

[serialmurderbot]

It's... not not that. But it's also doing a terrible job, and from the hunch of its shoulders it seems aware of that. It hates having this argument with humans who think it should be scrapped for parts, because it knows they won't get it when they think it's just a fancy, murder-y appliance. And humans arguing from the opposite end, that it's a person, is just as uncomfortable somehow. Arguing it with a fellow kind-of construct is new and also terrible, it turns out.

"They could've killed you too. The... corpses. Not the humans." It reconsiders. "Maybe the humans too."

Really fucking cheerful, there. "It's not fair, but fuck fair," it concludes.

[bufudine]

Serph lets out a huff of a laugh, his wings stretching out and the light of his glowing hair and eyes catching on his pinions. SecUnit might think it's not doing a good job at comfort, but to Serph? It's reassuring.

"They would have killed me, yes. In the simulation, that was the goal."

Serph folds his arms, his bottom pair of wings wrapping around his waist while the others tuck at his back, gaze out towards the floating environment. He's already died once. He doesn't have a good enough reason to allow it again.

"As long as there are threats, I'll keep fighting until we reach Nirvana."

[serialmurderbot]

The obvious follow up would be to ask what Serph intends to do after that, but given the amount of hours SecUnit has spent ignoring that question, the 'what next' of its own existence, it does Serph the favor of not asking like that. It's not like any of them know what's waiting for them there.

It's not like it knows what it can do either, if ART and Preservation never come to find it.

Instead, it finally starts picking itself up off of the ground. "Nirvana will probably still need fighters. It's surrounded by monster wasteland." Then, in the most abrupt change of topic it can manage, "If you're not patrolling, there's still episodes of Worldhoppers."

[bufudine]

Serph doesn't say anything about the Nirnana he seeks being different to the one the Convoy is travelling towards.

But he recognises the offer for what it is. Serph nods. Last time they were at a pivotal point, described as a cliffhanger.

"The rest of the report can wait until after."

[serialmurderbot]

SecUnit nods. It's - relieved, that's probably the word. It should finish getting Serph's report, because he was derailed in the middle by it having an emotion, but if Serph did what he should and led with the worst of it, then the rest of the description of the environment and weird glyphs can wait. It wants to not care about important things for a while.

"Common room?" It declares. Because at this point the last thing it wants to see is the inside of its room where the fragments of the husk shell are still scattered, and it's pretty sure Serph has been sharing a room.

[bufudine]

Serph agrees with a nod, unfolding his arms and wings and averting his gaze from their surroundings back towards the Convoy. That sounds good to him.

With that destination in mind, Serph starts walking, eager to see what happens next in Worldhoppers.

[ooc: And that feels like a good spot to tie things up :>]