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Ep 2.4- You Beat Me To Hoopy Frood
17 Plays1 month ago
Murderbot has to go find some old friends! We're entirely normal about it acknowledging PresAux as friends. Other topics include consent, gender presentation/human-passing, the self and the body as separate but connected entities, and finally, as all folks hitchhiking on bot-driven transports across the galaxy must, we grapple with towels.
Covers The Murderbot Diaries Vol IV: Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
Recommended
Transcript
Exploration of Funk Music
00:00:00
Speaker
I've been getting really into like new funk. o Not that like I'm not usually into things like that, but like sort of splitting off of our love for Sammy Ray and the friends and going into like, you know, a lot of like Wolfpack and Snarky Puppy and like Ollie Parker couch stuff.
00:00:25
Speaker
there's a There's a bunch of others, but I was listening to, see, I call this modern. This is the problem. The song I was listening to was Us Three's Cantaloupe, Flip Fantasia, which is like a like hip hop-y remix of Herbie Hancock's Cantaloupe Island, which is a jazz standard.
00:00:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And I was calling this modern because it sort of is, but it does predate the both of us on this planet. So
00:01:00
Speaker
multiple years. modern years in architecture and design can refer to things in the fucking 40s and 50s. So all words are made up. Words are made up. But I was listening to this.
00:01:12
Speaker
Like listening to these like jazzy, funky, sort of 90s hip hop beats, driving through the pitch black, you know, ah driving a ah driving on the pitch black highways of New Hampshire.
00:01:29
Speaker
Like dancing around, bopping around to keep myself awake because it's like 1030 on more than one occasion, having to break and or swerve to not hit an animal.
00:01:41
Speaker
That could have been the last thing that both you and a porcupine heard. That would have been terrible. I thought I was going to perforate my tires on a porcupine. And there was a deer. And I only noticed the fucking deer because of the eye shine.
00:01:54
Speaker
Oh, no. ah the tepetum lucidum. um And then i was talking with ah my dear roommate, Tori, the other day about moose.
Adventures in New Hampshire and Maine
00:02:05
Speaker
So listeners, i took a I took a lovely little couple of days solo vacation with up to the White Mountains in New Hampshire, um which was gorgeous and wonderful. And I got some good hiking in and I am wildly the fuck out of shape for anything ah where there's an incline.
00:02:21
Speaker
What the fuck? You know, any hiking that I do around here is on flat ground. But I had a lot of fun. It was really good to do. i want to do a lot more of that.
00:02:32
Speaker
New Hampshire drivers are insane. o Like they will just tailgate you at 75 miles an hour, which is, by the way, the speed limit.
00:02:43
Speaker
And it's like, guys, I'm not, I know you want me to be going faster. And I will, in my, around my home city, perhaps make some unsafe driving decisions with regard to speed.
00:02:59
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Unsafe for myself on vi on occasion. But also, I know these roads, like I have a, and also, they're fairly straight. Mm-hmm.
00:03:11
Speaker
Like, it's a lot of, like, straight in one direction. And there's multiple, multiple lanes. Mm-hmm. Right? So there's a lot of room to move around if all of a sudden something comes out of nowhere.
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah. When you're on a one-lane highway, ah weaving between mountains, and also we passed the moose crossing sign a mile back, no, I'm not going faster than this.
00:03:38
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's reasonable. Because I was talking with my dear roommate, Tori, about moose. And they were saying they had a friend years ago who had visited like their pastor or something for dinner, and their pastor was in rural Maine somewhere.
00:03:56
Speaker
And as they were leaving, they were like, oh, watch for moose. And the people who were from you know the city were like, oh, ha ha, that's funny. And the pastor was like, no, watch for moose.
00:04:07
Speaker
Yeah. Because, you know, we think they're kind of dumb looking. They are Pleistocene megafauna that were too fucking stubborn to die with the rest of the Pleistocene megafauna.
00:04:19
Speaker
I mean, haven't we all seen the episode of Mythbusters where they make a life-size moose model and crash cars into it? Yeah, I think the myth was like, is it better to speed up right before you hit the moose or break right before you hit the moose?
00:04:34
Speaker
And I believe the result of the the myth was don't hit the moose. Yeah. um If you can at all help it, don't hit the moose. Yeah, you will die.
00:04:46
Speaker
And the moose, honestly, probably won't. Which is terrifying. The other thing about moose is they don't have that eyeshine that alerted me to the deer.
00:04:59
Speaker
Mmm. Like... they are member They are the largest member of the deer family. Moose don't have to pet a lucidum. They don't have eye shine. Their eyes will not reflect in the dark.
00:05:11
Speaker
They are just a large, darker shape in the dark. Which you as a goth, thankfully, can differentiate the shades of black, but the average bear probably is not able to do that.
00:05:22
Speaker
I think the average bear in New Hampshire avoids the moose, too, to be honest with you. I think that's fair. There was a Monster Fucker book that I recently read that was between a goth girl and a shadow creature.
Monster Fucker Books Discussion
00:05:33
Speaker
And the shadow creature is invisible to most people. But because she's so goth, her powers of being able to distinguish shades of black allow her to see this transdimensional creature in the shadows.
00:05:49
Speaker
And it's beautiful. I adore the Monster Fucker books that you read. They are creative. Some of them... Less so than you would expect. There was one that had a snake man with two dicks and it was boring.
00:06:05
Speaker
feel like you have to work hard to make that boring. Not even good or bad, just not interesting. The premise alone should be interesting and yet.
00:06:16
Speaker
It's like the Katie Robert monster fucker one with the dragon that had the two dicks. And people were like, you didn't even add double penetration to this book. and And Katie Robert was like, hang on, wait for a future book. I'm sorry.
00:06:30
Speaker
They did address that in the Octopus Man book. So- But then that book, like half of it is about getting a magic abortion, even though birth control pendants were introduced in the first book.
00:06:41
Speaker
The plot inconsistencies in these monster fucker novels. i I have some things to say to you, Katie Robert. And what I'll say to you is here's $10 a month because I support your Patreon.
00:06:54
Speaker
That is the only Patreon that I am subscribed to. Yeah. So, you know, obviously I'm very harshly critical. I love that for you for Katie Robert because we both read everything she puts out.
00:07:12
Speaker
God damn. um There is a lot of putting out in those books too. mean but but Someday we'll do a bonus episode. If we ever have our own Patreon, we'll do a bonus After Dark podcast series.
00:07:28
Speaker
Dark Olympus. so After Dark Olympus. I just had a vision in my mind of, because this was inspired by something that I saw on Tumblr, but you know, those experts react to whatever scenes in movies.
00:07:42
Speaker
I want Greek gods react to Dark Olympus by Katie Robert. Oh my god. Gods, specifically. good I would never say that, or actually, that's pretty realistic.
00:07:55
Speaker
We're like, hey, Persephone, are you free right now? and want to try something. Oh, my God. No, I don't know. I feel like I had other banter in a really wonderful trip. And I want to go back to the mountains. And just I sat on top of Mount Willard and I just sat there for an hour looking out at Crawford Notch.
00:08:17
Speaker
Which, it wasn't like, it's not like a terribly tall mountain, but the view was just so fucking pretty. isn And it had rained that morning, so everything was so green.
00:08:29
Speaker
Ooh. It was very, very fun. i would honestly do that so much more often, if not for the New Hampshire of it all. Yeah, that is kind of factor.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah. sure Also catch our downloads never ever going anywhere in New Hampshire again. Sorry New Hampshire. Your state is gorgeous. You just have some freaky people.
00:08:54
Speaker
Not like us. We're cool freaks. You have some conservatives.
Introduction to The Fandom Apprentice Podcast
00:09:18
Speaker
Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of The Fandom Apprentice. My name is Rin. I'm one of your hosts. I am a lifelong nerd.
00:09:30
Speaker
I grew up with all sorts of fantasy and sci-fi being read to be my by my father and have continued following various fantasy and sci-fi franchises throughout my entire life.
00:09:45
Speaker
And preferably finding kind of funky, slightly obscure bits of fantasy and sci-fi media, and sometimes not so obscure sci-fi media or fantasy media, and sharing that with my good friends, including...
00:10:03
Speaker
Hello, I'm Sam. I'm the other one. We are working on the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells this season.
Deep Dive into Murderbot Diaries
00:10:11
Speaker
And this is another piece of media that you have introduced me to, but that I have already read.
00:10:16
Speaker
So we are going back for, i don't even know how many times I've read this book. This might be a fifth go around for me and I will never, ever get tired of them. No, no. these are These are really, really good. And I've really enjoyed watching them like blow up in the public consciousness in the last couple of years.
00:10:34
Speaker
isn't Because like when i when I started reading them in 2019, 2020, yeah, the first couple had won various awards, but I felt like there wasn't like an online community around them.
00:10:48
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Whereas now, like, you know, between the books and the show, at like, you can you can find more Murderbot content. More fan art to look at. i love love the tasty fan art.
00:11:02
Speaker
Which is really lovely. And um as we are one of the bits of the Murderbot community, do we want to get into... ah what we're doing today.
00:11:13
Speaker
Yes, we are talking about Exit Strategy, which is the fourth novella in the series. This, I think, might also be my favorite of the novellas. I mean, we'll see if later on I change my mind, but this one has all the hits.
00:11:28
Speaker
And I have, as we have in previous episodes, prepared a short summary, unless you have anything to preface that. I didn't so much prepare a short summary as I ended up with like a bunch of highlights at various points.
00:11:43
Speaker
Oh, same. I don't even know. Let's see how many. i have 79 highlights for this book. Oh, wow. Okay. I have 30. So um i win.
00:11:55
Speaker
You do. You do win. There is much like the last one, a lot that happens in this honestly, very short little book. Mm hmm. We start off with Murderbot. It's the continuation of the story that's taken place over the previous three books.
00:12:13
Speaker
We start off with Murderbot returning to Havrat and Station to eventually return to Mensa or to get the evidence it has collected on Grey Chris's various nefarious goals, I guess, and past experiences.
00:12:33
Speaker
um And deliver, somehow deliver that to Mensa. But it opens up with, when I got back to Havret in Station, a bunch of humans tried to kill me. Considering how much I'd been thinking about killing a bunch of humans, it was only fair.
00:12:48
Speaker
yeah you can tell that the vibes are very much off. So it sneaks off its transport. finds a disguise, which is a good call because we have new bad guys. We have a company called Palisade. We'll get more into them later.
00:13:01
Speaker
Who are hunting down Murderbot. We find out that Dr. Mensa is missing, almost certainly kidnapped. And the optics in the news feeds are that Murderbot was her spy who she sent to go fuck Gray Chris over, which is kind of true.
00:13:20
Speaker
Except that it decided to do that. Yeah, it's kind of true. The company, Big C, doesn't know where Mensa is, which is a problem because she's their contracted client. Gareth and Pinley and Rathi are also unaccounted for.
00:13:34
Speaker
There's a whole section. When when it's finding its way around Palisade and disguising itself, there are multiple points where like it talks about how it it knew it was probably going to have to deal with some of this, not quite how extreme it's gotten.
00:13:49
Speaker
But then it knows but like then once it's actually actively dealing with it, it describes a lot of it's like its preparations and then how it's actively getting around security measures and making its disguises and using the identity clips that it stole from Wilkin and Girth last book.
00:14:03
Speaker
it Every time it mentions, like, I was passing off as an augmented human. I looked more human. This made me seem more human. Every single time it mentions that, it immediately follows up with, I didn't like it.
00:14:19
Speaker
Oh, yes. i have I have a lot to say about all of that after we do the the plot overview. Murderbot does some espionage. It finds everyone except for Mensa.
00:14:30
Speaker
And they all confirm that she's definitely being held hostage. They make a plan to fake some preservation assets to pay the ransom on Mensa, which goes badly. They pivot.
00:14:41
Speaker
Murderbot extracts Mensa in a big fight. And while they're sneaking off together, they also have a big feelings talk. Then everything goes to shit again because Palisade gets permission to storm the station and initiate a lockdown that leads Murderbot to sacrifice itself so Mensa can escape to the company ship.
00:14:59
Speaker
And you know it's really bad when the company is our only hope. Help me, evil corporate entity. You're my only hope. Trapped inside with Palisade closing in on all sides, Murderbot gets in another epic fight, but it is hesitant to kill the other sec units and offers to free them instead.
00:15:15
Speaker
They don't take it up on that, but it's a nice gesture. Yes. Yeah. Point point of order. It only offers to free the combat sec unit. True. Yes. But it's still a noble effort.
00:15:27
Speaker
Yes. Prezox extracts Murderbot. There's more feelings. Murderbot hacks the company gunship, causing a catastrophic failure of its own systems. And it wakes up en route to preservation.
00:15:39
Speaker
Then it settles in, explores preservation station, safe for now, and contemplates the future. That is the broad strokes of the plot. Yeah, i will I will also point of order the last your last couple sentences there. Okay.
00:15:53
Speaker
just Just how it hacks, because it doesn't really hack the company gunship. it so much as Because there's the whole thing with the disembodied combat bot.
00:16:04
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Which is hacking the gunship. So like it mentions it was like I had a partial hack here on the gunship. But like by that point, it's it's cooperating with the gunship bot pilot.
00:16:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's more of a full merging kind of situation. yeah it sort of it becomes one with the gunship so they can together fight off a greater threat to them both.
00:16:32
Speaker
Mm hmm. which I have many, many thoughts about the disembodied combat thought. um The fact that in the business, we call this foreshadowing.
00:16:44
Speaker
and um And we'll get into more of what that means in future books. It's fine. Everything will be so fine.
00:16:55
Speaker
Nothing bad will happen. But speaking of the that separation and merging of itself with the gunship, I feel like this book really starts getting a lot more into the separation of body and mind.
00:17:10
Speaker
theme that I feel like will play in the in the future books quite heavily. And also a separation of Murderbot and other sec units and how it now perceives itself.
00:17:26
Speaker
It's struggling to find a happy medium between, you know, I'm not like other sec units, but I'm not a human and I don't want to be a human. Mm-hmm.
00:17:38
Speaker
Is that my only option? Can I be a person? ah Do I want to be a person if person equals human? How do I relate to other people? I felt like a big theme in this book was what are we? Like the relationship question.
00:17:53
Speaker
Because now it's returning to its... preservation friends after two books worth of side quests. And it's had some of its own experiences without them, kind of testing out different ways of being perceived by different people.
00:18:08
Speaker
And now returning with that new knowledge, what are its relationships to these people? How does it define them? What are some things that might be scary to Murderbot about confronting the reality that maybe it has friends?
00:18:23
Speaker
there was There was the one highlight on, I have a i have many, many highlights, honestly, on on it's how it interacts with friends. But there was the highlight specifically where it's talking about how sec units are basically never used on station, which that's Chekhov's sec unit right there.
00:18:45
Speaker
We now know by the end of the novella that sec units are going to be used on a station transit ring. But it says, you know, the security companies would ship us, parentheses, them through the port as cargo.
00:18:59
Speaker
And that, you know, which that directly follows a couple of pages where on every single page it has brought up, like, I looked more human and I hated it, but it was necessary.
00:19:11
Speaker
You know, i I wanted to escape notice, but I didn't want to be human. There is... One part where it's talking about its disguises in a positive way.
00:19:24
Speaker
And it's gone into a little kiosk to pick out some new clothes. And there's a fun little shopping montage. And it says, when I put the new clothes on, I had a strange feeling I usually associated with finding a new show on the entertainment feed that looked good.
00:19:38
Speaker
I liked these clothes. Maybe I actually liked them enough to remove the quotation marks around liked. I don't like things in general that can't be downloaded via the entertainment feed.
00:19:49
Speaker
Maybe because I'd pick them myself. Maybe. So even amongst all of this complicated how are other people perceiving me nonsense, it still has the ability to exercise some free will and choose things for itself. And that feels good.
00:20:04
Speaker
And that is also scary. And so it is also, while it's genuinely grappling with these issues of not wanting to be perceived as a human, is also kind of trying to hide from those feelings because they are difficult to reckon with. I think that's something that a lot of queer people can understand ah saying, oh I might like this.
00:20:27
Speaker
What does that say about me? Am I prepared for this reality? I think we would murder lot. And then going back to its relationships with other people, like the first time it when when it really like decides its course of action to go Tranrol and Haifa and find Mensa and also Pimli and Garothan and Rathi, it says, i had to go meet some old friends.
00:20:57
Speaker
Mm hmm. Like, it it immediately acknowledges, fuck, we are, in fact, friends. Yes. And there's a whole quote where it's equivocating about what they are and if we're actually...
00:21:16
Speaker
friends let me find the clue and it says i know i could have contacted them by now either by establishing a secure connection on their feeds or just walking up and saying hi i just wasn't sure okay i was scared or nervous nervous scared were they my sort of human friends my clients my ex-owners though legally that was only dr mensa were they going to see me and yell for help alert security it's asking itself these questions when really it knows the answer.
00:21:48
Speaker
It also references having hundreds of hours of stored footage of all of the various Prezox people and saying, Rathi looked worried and I could tell because I played back the footage that I saved of him and he's making a different face than he had in the past.
00:22:05
Speaker
And Murderbot has said many, many times in narration throughout these books, that it dumps anything from storage that it doesn't care about. It has dumped arguably very important software in life-threatening situations because it wants to make more room for media.
00:22:24
Speaker
So hundreds of hours of surveillance footage of these random people, it would not have saved if it wasn't sentimental, if it didn't find that comforting.
00:22:35
Speaker
And that also answers the question for us, if there was any doubt about how Murderbot feels. Well, and and we also know Murderbot is a sarcastic asshole.
00:22:47
Speaker
Mm-hmm. um And there's there's a moment when it meets with Pinley fairly early on where, you know, it's talking about how Pinley had always been the tough one.
00:22:59
Speaker
You know, it likes Pinley. It thinks Pinley is logical and works together well. Then it goes, it's it's talking to Pinley about like, you know, here's your problem.
00:23:09
Speaker
Here's how I can help. But if you don't let me help, you know, you're on your own. Or you're on your own with Rathi and Garothan, which may be worse. She grimaced. I forgot what an asshole you are.
00:23:22
Speaker
Well, yeah. I said, I need intel to make a plan. And later on, when it's having ah big feelings talk with Mensa, which we can talk about separately, it comes to the conclusion that, oh, I wasn't afraid that these people weren't my friends.
00:23:39
Speaker
I was afraid that they are my friends and what that means for me. that they have the ability to influence me and I maybe have obligations to them as a friend.
00:23:51
Speaker
Yeah, there's that piece of it. And then I think the other piece, the really complicated piece of its relationship with Mensa is the fact that Mensa legally owns it. And so, you know, while it clearly cares in incredibly deeply about her,
00:24:12
Speaker
And that's a sticking point. And, you know, in their big feelings talk, which we'll we'll get to in a few minutes, Mensa's like, well, I don't like, see you as a piece of furniture, you're not out of possession.
00:24:24
Speaker
You're not an object. But it it has a lot of anxiety with, again, yeah, being forced to do things, you know, against either its will. And I think, you know, I think it's relating this, the you know, the obligations and fear that it has for its friends a little bit to its it's former character.
00:24:47
Speaker
governor module and its former contracts. Because in that case, it was also forced to do things. And I think it's it's struggling to define feeling like it has to because it likes these people and feeling like it has to because it doesn't have a choice.
00:25:05
Speaker
Yeah. And even with Mensa doing her best to communicate to Merida about that, you know, we're in a shitty situation. i am doing everything I can under preservation law to protect you. But yes, I do still legally own you, even though she doesn't see it as property.
00:25:24
Speaker
legally it still is and there is still that potential that if she wanted to abuse that power she could so murderbot acknowledges that she's doing her best and you know depreciates that but still it's not completely free and i think that that's a very valid concern for it to have no matter how good Prezox's intentions are, we've seen that they they can't make choices for Murderbot. Even doing their best with their best intentions, that's not a replacement for freedom.
00:25:57
Speaker
No, and Murderbot, as soon as it feels like it's having a choice made for it, it will shut down. Like, I mean, we saw we saw that at the end of the first book is... is Prezox came on kind of strong and was like, hey, you know, we've freed you. Now you can come to Preservation Ox with us.
00:26:18
Speaker
And it went, oh, fuck no. And skedaddled. isn um You know, like, thinking that it it it might want to go to Preservation, but like, it did not want to have that choice made for it.
00:26:31
Speaker
Yeah, there's something where it's talking to Pinley and Pinley's upset because it left without saying anything. And then it says, well, Mensa could say I could learn to do whatever I wanted.
00:26:43
Speaker
I learned to leave, which is true and ice cold and heartbreaking. And also a really interesting reclamation of power because it had not been allowed to leave.
00:26:56
Speaker
It had not been allowed to be more than 100 meters away from its clients up to then. And so, you know, them telling it, hey, you have free will to come with us.
00:27:09
Speaker
Its immediate response being, do I have free will or do I have free will with you? Where are the limits of that free will? And I think also in that same conversation with Pin Lee, it's saying, you know, you're questioning my loyalty, you're questioning what I'm doing here. Either that I am working for someone and I'm executing someone else's agenda or i work for myself.
00:27:32
Speaker
And are you going to believe me when I say that I am making my own free choices? And then Pinley says something about, well, what if you hired yourself to do?
00:27:43
Speaker
And Murderbot goes, oh, I like that. I hired myself to do something. That's awesome. That's cool. Okay, Pinley, we're friends. Well, and then, you know, It's having this whole conversation with Rathi and Garothan and Pinli.
00:27:56
Speaker
And I did just think of a ship name for Garothan and Rathi. um Not that there's any indications of this in the book, but Garothan is just too good. That is very cute. I like that.
00:28:07
Speaker
And Garothan makes some overtures towards friendship in this book. It asks what Murderbot has been up this whole time, doing a kind of awkward, hey, bud, how's it going?
00:28:21
Speaker
And Murderbot actually responds to that positively, and it makes Garroth in a little video. It makes a little YouTube documentary and sends it over to him.
00:28:32
Speaker
and I don't remember what Murderbot titled that video. Murderbot impersonates an augmented human security consultant. Yeah. And then Garotten sits and patiently watches the whole thing.
00:28:45
Speaker
And we are we are seeing him soften a little bit, which is very fun. And then Rathi is just, of course, himself, unchanged, perfect.
00:28:57
Speaker
I love him much. He's fucking delightful. That's a golden retriever of a man. One of the other pieces that I love in this is you can see the Prezox team working to get over their prejudices and, like, previous assumptions and also their, like, fear and hesitation. Mm-hmm.
00:29:22
Speaker
In that initial conversation with Pin Lee, and then there's a conversation with Raffi and Garofan after that, where Murderbat is making its case to them. Mm-hmm. Their response is like, are you sure you can do this?
00:29:37
Speaker
Karathin, you feel you're qualified to make that call?
00:29:43
Speaker
And Murtabot says, I'm the security expert. You're the humans who walk in the wrong place and get attacked by angry fauna. I have extracted living clients from situations that were less than 9% survivable.
00:29:54
Speaker
I'm more than qualified to make that call. Yeah. And to which you can you can see all of them in the next three lines. Garothan sat back slowly.
00:30:07
Speaker
And then Murderbot's like, I'm go to leave until you make your decision. And Pin Lee goes, nope, we've made it. We need your help. looks at Rothy and goes, right. And Rothy's like, yep. And then Garrothin goes, we're agreed.
00:30:21
Speaker
They have all in that moment gone, oh, nope, it's here to help. yeah The argument it makes there, like that's the argument when you're like, no, we're done fucking around. Let me do my fucking job.
00:30:34
Speaker
And it is still impacted by this conversation because the line immediately after that scene is, I wasn't sulking or hiding. The lobby was a better strategic position.
00:30:46
Speaker
its It had this confrontation, but it didn't like it. yeah because it it immediately walks out. Yeah, it goes, okay, Just, it's so good.
00:30:57
Speaker
I love how much joy Murderbot seems to get from being good at its job. Yeah. You know, there are, there's other sort of, when it has, it describes its, you know, experiences with heirs and the others and the way to have rotten being like, I, you know a few times I've broken up fights, been forced to give relationship advice and the infamous cracker wrapper in the sink incident she where it clearly was like, that wasn't fun, but it did have
00:31:29
Speaker
exchanges I'd tagged so I could critique my performance later. Between that and its argument of like, I have saved humans from certain death. It wants to do well.
00:31:42
Speaker
You know, it knows it was, it was, you know, on the one hand, like, this is the, what is free will? What is my choice? What is set before me thing of it was created to do security.
00:31:56
Speaker
So like it has that ability. But now we've seen over the course of the last two novella where it has in multiple occasions been like, well, fuck, I actually want to help these humans.
00:32:09
Speaker
Going from it is required to be doing this to no, it's making the conscious decision to do this and realizing i can do this better than them. And it can do its job better because of its free will. There's a lot of examples, especially in this book, where because it's a rogue unit, because it's hacked its governor module,
00:32:30
Speaker
It has skills. It has knowledge of the world. It can approach problems creatively in a way that other sec units and inferior human security just can't.
00:32:43
Speaker
And it just loves being better at things than other people. I love the little piece of, I pressed my ear to the door and up my hearing and managed to pick up Surratt saying, I don't have time to teach you the facts of corporate relations.
00:32:57
Speaker
That gave me his relative position. Then I hit the door release. As the door slid open, Surat started to turn towards me. I crossed the room, grabbed his wrist and forced it down and sent a targeted pulse through my arm to fry the power cell of his tiny, cute little gun.
00:33:11
Speaker
Amazing. this Then I used my other forearm to pin his throat to the wall. This all happened her really fast.
00:33:19
Speaker
It's sort of re relevant to the hyper competence and it being sarcastic. I love that it refers to systems it takes over as its best friend. saying something about how it could concentrate on my ongoing relationship with Hotel Sexis and my new best friend, Mobsis.
00:33:36
Speaker
Or in the last book, when it takes over a bunch of drones and goes, I had 30 new drone friends. Because on a certain level, it does feel genuine affection for other systems. But also, it just likes to go, you are friends now. no and and early on when it leaves, it you know, by ship, you were there when it counted.
00:33:54
Speaker
Like, that's just cute. Yeah. I feel like the next thing that I have is the emotional conversation with Mensa as they're fleeing for their lives.
Murderbot's Emotional Journey
00:34:05
Speaker
Yes, that's what I wanted to talk about next too. Yes, please. Okay, fuck yeah. So Murderbot manages to extract Mensa, having sent the Prezox group to get away. And it choked out the first Grey Chris operative sent to negotiate slash deal with the Prezox people.
00:34:25
Speaker
And then it takes out straight up kills, ASEC unit that is escorting Mensa um and then either kills or takes out like six other human guards with her.
00:34:42
Speaker
It does mention... it pressed down on one of the the people's carotids until she passed out. And um then I had to think about, was it doing the same thing? Like my brain went, okay, this is a really interesting descriptor considering the description of Surratt was choking out Surratt until he passed out.
00:35:06
Speaker
Was it using the same technique? Yeah. depriving the brain of oxygen is by and large a really bad idea there are ways to do it safely in well-negotiated scenarios because murder bot doesn't give a fuck about the well-being of the people it's choking out so i was i was interested that it chose the you know blood flow method on the one security ah the one human security consultant and potentially the same or some other method on the other one.
00:35:45
Speaker
But it defaulted regardless into both of those are theoretically non-lethal. And it makes a point of saying that with the first one of like, I didn't want to kill him.
00:35:57
Speaker
And I wonder how much of that also is not wanting to further traumatize Mensa. Because as they're walking away and the conversation is starting, it says, I asked, are you all right?
00:36:09
Speaker
What if they tortured her? Everything in my emergency med slash psych assistance module involved accessing a med system so it could tell me what to do. My company supplied education modules were crap, I may have mentioned.
00:36:20
Speaker
And we take this and contrast it to way back in the beginning of book one, where it's taking Valescu back to the shuttle or to the, I think it's to the hopper, regardless, taking them back somewhere and pulling lines from Sanctuary Moon, not even realizing that it's doing it, making small talk. And that's our first inkling that there's free will happening here.
00:36:42
Speaker
Going from that to intentionally, consciously asking a human, are you okay? How are you doing? because it cares. It's not faking anything. It's not pulling media from somewhere else. This is genuinely direct from the heart.
00:36:58
Speaker
I don't think that it wants men to see more violence than absolutely necessary. This is this is probably true. And a lot of violence is absolutely necessary, unfortunately.
00:37:10
Speaker
Well, and we are going to get more into that in the next book. And we may have to do a side bit on the short story. um that comes in between these two. So it is, yeah, walking with Mensa to its extraction point as much as it could be and discussing like, yeah, sorry, that was me at Milu.
00:37:33
Speaker
who i decided to go there. You know, I have the evidence, you know, I sent it to your home on preservation. And she's like, you ah basically, she, she,
00:37:47
Speaker
She asked this one question. The great Chris executives who questioned me about this said you destroyed some combat bots. Three. She took a sharp breath. Good. That is a, that's a scared mom.
00:38:01
Speaker
Oh yeah. That is a, that is a, you did something incredibly dangerous, didn't you? And you're telling me this after the fact. Okay. I'm going to not freak out about this.
00:38:13
Speaker
Well done. But you know and you know what it does to help her not freak out? e Do you can i can I read the yeah quote? OK. Yeah.
00:38:24
Speaker
So as it is trying to comfort Mensa, it is then pulling on its media knowledge and going, oh, shit. Oh, fuck. How do humans comfort each other? What am I going to do? OK. ah You can hug me if you need to.
00:38:38
Speaker
She started to laugh, then her face did something complicated and she hugged me. I upped to the temperature in my chest and told myself it was like first aid. Except it wasn't entirely awful. It was like when Tapan had slept next to me in the room at the hostel, or when Abena had leaned on me after I saved her.
00:38:53
Speaker
Strange, but not as horrific as I would have thought. It hugs Mensa. It tells Mensa that she can hug it. the hug The hug is so important to me. This is one of my favorite moments of their relationship because we know what a massive deal this is for Murderbot.
00:39:10
Speaker
And it's upping its body temperature to comfort her. There's a lot of touching in this yeah book with Murderbot. The preservation team has very much realized Murderbot does not like to be touched.
00:39:26
Speaker
However, it understands when that is helpful to us or to its cause. And so long as we give it warning and the ability to say no, it's okay with it.
00:39:41
Speaker
consent kids and rule number one do not touch security consultant rin so they're getting to their extraction point and mensa asks is it better you know if we're talking is it easier for talking and sec unit is like maybe and this is a little bit to me like mensa also needs to be talking Yeah.
00:40:06
Speaker
Like she she just let it do its job if she was okay with that. But I think she also needs the reassurance. But she asks it about Sanctuary Moon.
00:40:18
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And why Sanctuary Moon is its favorite. And its response is, in a quote, but just in the in the text. Yes, that we can talk about. I actually felt the organic tissue on my back and shoulders relax.
00:40:35
Speaker
And, you know, Mensa has watched a couple of episodes. Mm-hmm. She got interested when Rothy and Murderbot in book one were talking about the the colony solicitor murdering the terraforming supervisor who is the secondary donor for her implanted baby.
00:40:53
Speaker
She was framed. Excuse you.
00:40:57
Speaker
um It's watching it. yeah And she goes, then I got involved. Meanwhile, wow while this conversation is going on, Murderbot is also interjecting like, I'm deflecting scans. i'm doing like It's having this whole conversation with Mensa while also telling us we are still actively in danger and I'm still handling all of it.
00:41:22
Speaker
And then it mentions, you know, it likes Sanctuary Moon the most because it was the first one. It was the first piece of media that it saw. And it made it feel like a person specifically is what it says.
00:41:35
Speaker
To which Medusa goes, you are a person. then Murderbot goes, oh, that we can't talk about. Yeah. Not legally. Then, you know, she keeps bringing it back because she's, Mensa's a great conversationalist, even when she is in the middle of a traumatic experience.
00:41:51
Speaker
And Murderbot's talking but more about why it likes Sanctuary Moon says, it kept me company without without making you interact, she suggested, that she understood even that much made me melt.
00:42:05
Speaker
It made Murderbot melt. That's so sweet. And i think that's actually the second time in this series that it's used the word melt to describe an emotional reaction. And that's just so sweet. It really loves Mensa.
00:42:19
Speaker
It's really, really cute. ah It's really wonderful. But this is about, because this is where everything goes to shit, basically. Yeah. And three sec units and a bunch of armed station security show up on the transit ring. And it starts to try and avoid and evade and manages to get Mensa through a security gate.
00:42:48
Speaker
away and stays behind, you know, does the self-sacrificing of, have you know, we got this open, you go first, I'll be right behind you, and then shoves her through and shuts the security gate behind it.
00:43:01
Speaker
And with an added layer of tragedy, dramatic irony, it does this by appealing to the company, by pretending that it's still company property, sending the correct signals and saying, I have a client who is in danger, please help.
00:43:16
Speaker
And so not only is it sacrificing itself, it's also putting itself in the incredible uncomfortable position of pretending that it belongs to the company again, all to save METSA.
00:43:27
Speaker
isn And then, when of course, we have our stack units on the station. isn And it has a whole battle, not like, not so much, there's a battle where like it does, it does, you know, shoot things.
00:43:40
Speaker
But there's also like, it's been hacking the holler bots around the transit ring, and the drones. And so it's using all of that to distract and deflect and cause problems while it takes out the other security units until it realizes one of them is causing more problems than a sec unit should.
00:44:04
Speaker
And this is where we start to like, we've heard mention of combat sec units before, but I feel like this is where we really get a distinction between them, right? Sec units are designed to kill things, right?
00:44:17
Speaker
just in their in their general confirmation, but more so they're designed to prevent death, to protect, to do security. Combat sec units are what happens when you take sec unit and give it just more power to kill.
00:44:33
Speaker
That's their whole function. They don't seem to, from you know what they're allowed to do, And what they are, how this combat, this combat sec unit talks to Murderbot, along with how the combat bots talked to Murderbot last time.
00:44:52
Speaker
It feels like the combat sec unit is much more, much more focused on just murder and death. Yeah. Because it can leverage all that organic material that sec units have. it is what Murderbot could be if it was evil.
00:45:09
Speaker
I mean, yeah. that that is murder Because Murderbot has free will, it can it's a level up from normal sec units.
00:45:20
Speaker
Which means it's on basically a level with the combat sec unit who has... extra powers and no scruples. And, you know, the combat sec unit is the only thing that makes Murderbot leave.
00:45:35
Speaker
Yeah. Because it's like, it was expecting to go out in a blaze of glory and like save Mensa and everything would be fine. But it was like, no, I can't do that with a combat sec unit here. Like, fuck no. Nope.
00:45:47
Speaker
Yeah. And some of that blaze of glory situation is also tied to its whole not wanting to confront the reality of its situation. And there's a lot of internal monologue saying,
00:45:59
Speaker
I didn't want to get ripped to pieces exactly, but I also don't know why I wasn't quicker to respond to my friend's attempts to rescue me, but I definitely didn't want to die. It's having a very complicated time saying, I want to kill everything. I want to defend my clients.
00:46:19
Speaker
I also am scared about facing my life outside of this moment. It's there's a lot of layers of feelings happening in the combat here, which as a person who has many times said that I zone out during combat scenes in everything.
00:46:33
Speaker
This keeps me engaged, which is saying something. he is I remember you having that conversation with me when you were first reading this, but being like, I didn't zone out that whole time.
00:46:46
Speaker
I was paying attention to the whole thing. and it just, it manages to make it engaging. Yeah. So they head back to the ship or they head back to the shuttle. They all get on the shuttle.
00:46:57
Speaker
And as they're going away, Palisade launches a ship after them and Murderbot goes, well, fuck, and contacts the gunship. I love the just system, system, acknowledge, active, hazardous retrieval and progress, bonded clients, go, go, go, go. go go go
00:47:18
Speaker
It's like, you know, technical, technical, technical, motherfucker move. yeah Go, go, got got go, go, go. The reply was received.
00:47:30
Speaker
I love seeing how bots and sec units talk to each other because obviously a lot of it happens in code packets that are not readable to us as humans. But even just getting a little bit of indication of what their communication is like is fun.
00:47:45
Speaker
It is. It is. But they have various... They have an argument with the crew the company crew of the gunship because the crew does not want to let Murderbot come on board.
00:48:00
Speaker
um They're like, that is a danger. That is a that is a weapon. To which... Is this where Pinley... No. pinley Pinley does do some stuff here. pinlet Pinley does do some such stuff.
00:48:12
Speaker
Trying to remember, this this isn't the point where she touches Murderbot, tells Murderbot, I'm going to touch you, don't freak out. yeah yeah Yeah, this is a person, an angry person. that's Yeah, that's the early Grey Chris operative thing.
00:48:27
Speaker
But eventually... it They get onto the gunship. You can tell at this point, Pin Lee and Mensa in particular are so fucking done with the company.
00:48:40
Speaker
Like both, gar like Garofan's a systems analyst. So like he's okay with certain types of like hacking and systems stuff.
00:48:51
Speaker
Rothy's just so out of his fucking depth. Yeah. I'm kind of, I kind of don't know why they brought him. Yeah, he's a biologist. I don't know exactly what he's doing here.
00:49:05
Speaker
But, you know, he's there for moral support. Listen, I'm a biologist. And can I be good in a crisis? Sure. Do I want this to be my crisis? no There was something earlier about how they were all traveling light and didn't have to go back to their rooms.
00:49:26
Speaker
The only things that they're carrying with them were a few hygiene items, Pinley's medication, Garothan's specialized toolkit, and Rothy's lucky spare interface. So all absolutely essential things. And then Rothy's emotional support iPad.
00:49:42
Speaker
I love him so much. I also ah loved in that quote that random line about Pinley's medication. Pinley has some kind of condition that requires medication that she cannot be separated from. And that's not really ever expanded on, but it's just sort of casually dropped in there. And I think that that's really cool.
00:50:02
Speaker
I agree. There's a whole conversation where pinley Pinley refers to the gunship as a flying vending machine. It's everything I hate about the corporates wrapped up in one heavily armed package.
00:50:16
Speaker
And Murderbot goes, you could say that about me, too.
00:50:20
Speaker
But this is when the gunship gets hacked by something else. And the various augmented humans on the crew are Yeah.
00:50:31
Speaker
incapacitated by some sort of code and murderbot realizes that this isn't like ah code bundle this isn't this isn't some sort of computer code this is a bot without a body this is just in intelligence that is itself a physical being which this is really really interesting So we've seen Murderbot leave its body. We've seen Art ride along and move through Murderbot out of its body into, you know, other bot piloted transports and such.
00:51:03
Speaker
But this is the first time that we've seen a bot that does not have a body at all. Yeah. And, you know, Murderbot refers to it as a disembodied combat bot.
00:51:15
Speaker
But then the bot pilot of the of the gunship asks if a attacker, who's what they label the bot as, was a construct created from human neural tissue rather than a bot and indicated points in the analysis that would confirm that theory, which that is really, really interesting of, so somewhere there is a physical creation, but it has been able to completely separate from that to now just be code.
00:51:46
Speaker
Because you can't transmit neurons into a computer. You can transmit information from neurons into a computer, but that allows Murderbot to figure out a way to trick it into going because it it seems to travel through the system rather than like be everywhere at once.
00:52:09
Speaker
So it tricks it and and gunship trick attacker into going into the shuttle system. where attacker thinks that Murderbot has stored the evidence from Milu.
00:52:22
Speaker
And then before attacker can get off of that, the shuttle system and back into gunship systems, they jettison the shuttle. And so it's completely disconnected and then they blow it up.
00:52:37
Speaker
So then there's, then, you know, I do have the question of, is that, does that kill, like completely kill, Attacker, is there now just a defunct bunch of neural tissue lying around somewhere that Attacker was originally created from?
00:52:52
Speaker
Or will Palisade like reload the last save into this neural tissue and still have their dis their combat bot that can move about at will?
00:53:04
Speaker
Just an interesting piece of... Also interesting to learn about other intelligences created with human neural tissue. Yeah. Yeah, I had a connection to way back in the beginning of the book, one of the series that Murderbot is watching is an old fictionalized documentary. And it's saying, well what the fuck is a fictionalized documentary? What am I watching?
00:53:27
Speaker
But it's talking about these basically prototype versions of sec units from the past. They didn't use cloned human parts, but actual human parts from humans who had catastrophic injuries or illnesses and had decided to have their parts used for what they called augmented rovers.
00:53:48
Speaker
Some of the humans in the primary storyline had actually known one of the ARs when it was a human, and they were all still friends. And that is somehow more horrific to me.
00:53:59
Speaker
That's very ancillary justice, corpse, soldier, terrifying butchery of humans and machines.
00:54:10
Speaker
But it was cool to see also just like a little bit of history that this technology evolved from somewhere. It was not always this very elegant thing. sec unit or neuron bundle that can hop into rovers and ships.
00:54:27
Speaker
It started out as fucking Frankenstein monsters and everyone was cool with it at that point and it just kept going. There is a short story about this that Martha Wells wrote that I have read and it's it's quite good and I think we should talk about it.
00:54:42
Speaker
think you sent it to me but I didn't read it i I definitely did. apologies. I think we should definitely talk about it on the pod because it's it's really, really interesting to see the history.
00:54:54
Speaker
Yeah. And it's not like a direct link, but you can kind of assume that this is what Murderbot was talking about. Mm-hmm. But this attempt to, or this this successful destruction of the disembodied combat bot leads to Murderbot having basically catastrophic
Murderbot's Recovery and Future
00:55:12
Speaker
organ failure. Mm-hmm.
00:55:14
Speaker
And it just, it shuts down completely. And it seems to shut down for weeks. Yeah. To the point where like it gets all the way to preservation or almost all the way to preservation before it figures itself out.
00:55:30
Speaker
And there's a few different things that... That help it figure itself out. And like, you can tell that, you know, the Prezox team has been there the whole time.
00:55:41
Speaker
Rothy asked me, how do you feel? The only tag I can access on Rothy is a partial that says, my human friend. Yeah. That's strange and unlikely, but the pre-catastrophic failure version of me seemed sure about it, and I didn't have anything else to go on.
00:55:53
Speaker
Fine. Possibly it's obvious that I'm not fine. Rothy said, Do you know who you are? I didn't have an answer. My buffer said, Please wait while I search for that information.
00:56:05
Speaker
Okay, Rothy said. Okay. Yeah. What the fuck?
00:56:12
Speaker
Again, it had deep in its memory tagged Rothy as a friend and that comes back to it before other memories. And then the next thing that comes back is that was Garofan.
00:56:25
Speaker
I didn't like him. I don't like you. I know. He sound sounded like he thought it was funny. That is not funny. I'm going to mark your cognition level at 55%. Fuck you. fuck you Let's make that 60%.
00:56:39
Speaker
it's There's lots of little, throughout this chapter, there's a lot of like little parentheticals where it it it's talking about, you know during during the actual text, it talks about like this is me slowly rebuilding my memory. And the parentheticals are the interactions with the rest of the team that help it put this all back together.
00:57:01
Speaker
And then... The thing that connects the most dots is Sanctuary Moon. As soon as it starts finding some episodes and watching them, almost everything comes back to it.
00:57:15
Speaker
And I love that this symbol of its free will, the first media that it ever consumed, is also helping bring it back to itself. Well, and that's really, really interesting to see because this is something that is done with dementia patients where you play them music and that they've That they know or show them books or movies or TV shows. like
00:57:46
Speaker
These bits of media stick in our memory and they help us connect dots. They help us make sense of the world. And so, you know, when you have a person whose brain is struggling making those connections, giving some other sort of memory that might help can help sort of like, you know, if you can't go in straight line from memory A to memory B,
00:58:14
Speaker
Well, okay, i can I can insert memory C. Memory C connects to memory D, which connects to memory F, which connects back to memory B. So there's no connection between A and B, but if I go from a C, F, D, B, that does the job.
00:58:31
Speaker
Which is just, that's really interesting. That's really fun. Yeah. And there's a couple of other pages where, like, it slowly starts to get back to itself. It gets a little bit more with each page. they' It's on It gets to the preservation transit ring.
00:58:49
Speaker
They get a they you know give Murderbot a little network for it to explore in the feed. Which they made just for it because preservation cares about privacy and doesn't really have a lot of security surveillance like in the corporation rim.
00:59:06
Speaker
But they put up a bunch of cameras and made a little network just for Murderbot. And I thought that was really nice. There's In later books, Mensa will talk about Murderbot's drones being basically medical devices, that it needs these things to be able to properly experience the world.
00:59:24
Speaker
And yeah, we're seeing that. They understand that this is absolutely essential for Murderbot, and they do it. I think that's nice. I love when Arada and Oversay arrive, which I fucking love Arada and Oversay.
00:59:41
Speaker
I may have mentioned here before, there's there's a fan artist and i I will have to find their name and mention it in a future episode. But there is a fan artist on Tumblr who has a what who did fan art that is basically my mental image of the Prezox party these days.
00:59:59
Speaker
Ten Owls. Yes. They have some really, really incredible Murderbot fan art. It's very, very fun. Yeah, their designs are my headcanons for basically all of them.
01:00:13
Speaker
Besides maybe Garothan, because TV show Garothan has grown on me a lot, but everybody else. But also all the different interpretations are part of what makes it so fun.
01:00:24
Speaker
And the image of Oversay connects to my like fan casting of Oversay as ER Fightmaster. Yes, you have told me this. Who is just so incredibly hot.
01:00:37
Speaker
um And i was, you know, a little disappointed that Oversay was not in the show. Not that the show would magically have cast ER Fightmaster as Oversay, but they should. Yeah.
01:00:52
Speaker
And, you know, Arada tries to be like, hey, you can come and do security with us. And Pinley's like, not yet it can't.
01:01:03
Speaker
It can't enter into any contractual agreements until it completes its memory rebuild. And Murderbot gets a little... like pissy about this. Why? i asked her because my owner says so. No, asshole. Pinley said because I'm your legal counsel.
01:01:20
Speaker
I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I'm not going going to let anybody take advantage of you because you don't know what's going on.
01:01:27
Speaker
Eventually, if there's the there's the little bit. Rebuild process complete at cognition level 100%. At 37 hours since arrival, I sat up. I said aloud, that was stupid. Note to self, never ever jump into a gunship with a bot pilot and fight off a construct attacker code again.
01:01:46
Speaker
You almost deleted yourself, Murderbot. It'll never make that mistake again. Oh, no, certainly not. a But then, and this is this is one of my favorite little bits.
01:02:01
Speaker
Yes. It immediately runs, but it doesn't. It immediately basically makes it clear that it's running away, makes it so it's trackable, and then doesn't, and then goes to Mensa's office and sits there.
01:02:19
Speaker
Basically, it wants to see if the Prezox team is actually serious. It wants to see if anyone's going to try and stop it. And no one does.
01:02:31
Speaker
You know, whether or not they noticed, because as we mentioned, preservation doesn't have a lot of like security. But if they if they noticed, they went, OK, that's just what's happening.
01:02:42
Speaker
And then we meet one of Mensa's kids. Yes. Oh, my God. Mensa's sorry. Mensa's small human.
01:02:54
Speaker
Small human. Now, I don't think we get a name for this small human. So I don't know which small human it is. No, we do not. And I don't think it's the one we meet later because the one we meet later like like 17 18.
01:03:08
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, this small human I imagine as being like eight max. Although, as we know, murderbot is not the best judge of ages. Hello, I said. I'm your mother's pet security consultant.
01:03:21
Speaker
She nodded. I know. She said if I asked you your name, you probably wouldn't tell me. She's right. We stood at each other for 10 seconds. Then she decided I was serious. She added, she also said you saved her from a bunch of corporate goons.
01:03:35
Speaker
Okay. I love this kid. ah So you're a sec unit. Is that weird? It was a complicated question with a simple answer.
01:03:48
Speaker
Yes.
01:03:51
Speaker
And then, well, and then Mensa goes, Mensa basically tells it, I thought you were leaving. And, but doesn't say anything of like, I'd be sad about it. Like it doesn't, she doesn't try to convince it not to.
01:04:06
Speaker
It just says, yeah, I thought about it. And then she goes, okay. She takes that in and sort of goes, well, it's still here. So let's go on to what's next. It's so wonderful.
01:04:18
Speaker
We like, we've learned a little bit more about preservation in this chapter. And we close out the book with, because there's, there's a, there's like a two page discussion where they're sort of figuring out whether Murderbot wants to do security, whether or not Murderbot should work with Bardwodge on a documentary Bardwodge wants to make about constructs.
01:04:41
Speaker
hmm. whether Murderbrot just wants to watch media. And Mensah says, there's no rush about any of this. I just want you to know you already have options here and I expect you'll have more offers for your services or advice as security consultant and that you have friends here you can discuss things with, whatever you decide to do or wherever you decide to go.
01:05:00
Speaker
i had options and I didn't have to decide right away, which was good because I still didn't know what I wanted, but maybe I had a place to be while I figured that out. Bet you didn't expect to get your heart warmed in a series called The Murderbot Diaries, did you?
01:05:15
Speaker
I expected to up my core temperature to... administer emotional force me....assist in the trauma recovery protocol. I'm excited to for our next read to spend more time on preservation.
01:05:30
Speaker
Yes. um Because I like preservation. It's fun. Anything else we want to discuss on exit strategy? Yes. There is one very silly thing that is probably maybe my favorite silly moment in the entire series, which is The towel conundrum. So very early Murderbot rents a fancy hotel room with one of Wilkin and Gert's hard currency cards. And it only gets to spend a couple hours in there.
01:06:02
Speaker
But It is simply bamboozled by the arrangement of this room. It drops its bag, lays down on the bed. it was huge. Why have a bed that could easily accommodate four medium to large humans when you only had one hook for towels in the bath facility?
01:06:18
Speaker
Were the humans supposed to share the towel? And then later, it's in a different hotel room and talks about there being an appropriate number of towels. And I am just confounded. why We know that this is a world where non-monogamy is the norm.
01:06:33
Speaker
Sure, you could have a bed that could fit four people and that's normal. But why is there only one towel hook? Why are there not more towels? This is never explained or addressed, but it is extremely funny and I love it.
01:06:47
Speaker
I have an answer. Tell me the answer, please. Because it is well known that you are expected to have your own goddamn towel when traveling through the galaxy.
01:06:57
Speaker
So true. Take away my nerd card. You cannot. Listen, listen, you got to have space for all of these people to sass each other.
01:07:11
Speaker
But otherwise, you know, but any real Hoopy Frude is going to have their own damn towel with them. You beat me to Hoopy Frude. I would almost make that the title of this episode. You beat me to Hoopy Frude. But that is not and relevant to the content at all. But I think it that I'm. but No, it is. That's it's a great title.
01:07:33
Speaker
done i just listeners a little peek behind the curtain rin writes all of our titles and episode descriptions but occasionally i'll have a burst of inspiration and i will humbly submit a title and then those are just like little jewels in my podcast crown oh look there's one title that i came up with amazing but other than that that's it this is a wonderful wonderful book This is, it's a good one. I really enjoy it. I enjoy, again, that we keep learning things about the differences between different types of bots and different types of constructs in this universe. And that there's, you know, clearly types of of beings that Murderbot doesn't know about or understand.
01:08:17
Speaker
isn But regardless of what type of being it is, if that being has autonomy in any way, It tries to respect that autonomy to to the point of, you know, when the other sec units are trying to kill it, it kind of goes, well, that's that's their choice.
01:08:37
Speaker
You know, ah particularly with the combat sec unit, it's sort of like, well, I offered it a way out and it said no. So now we have to deal with that problem. Right? So like, you know, it under it tries to, it understands that, you know, it has free will, which means so do other constructs and thoughts as much as it can give them.
01:09:00
Speaker
Yeah. Even if that free will is in direct conflict with its own. So next time we'll be discussing ah the fifth novella in the Murderbot Diaries series, Fugitive Telemetry.
01:09:13
Speaker
and This was published in 2021, believe, and was published after the novel Network Effect, but it takes place in between exit strategy and Network Effect chronologically.
01:09:26
Speaker
We may Also, we may have to figure out a time to discuss some short stories. isn Maybe we'll do a little bonus episode, like ah like a short thing where we discuss the Wayfar prequel with the augmented rovers.
01:09:46
Speaker
And there's a short story with Mensa as the main character that takes place in this time frame too. Mm-hmm. So we will have to find a time to discuss those and we will pick up next time with fugitive telemetry.
01:10:03
Speaker
So until then, Thank you so much for joining us. You can follow our podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Engaging with The Fandom Apprentice
01:10:11
Speaker
Leave us a review, five stars, please, if you like us, if you like what you're hearing.
01:10:16
Speaker
um Leave us a written review or a comment if the podcast platform you're listening on allows that sort of thing. Follow us on our social media, at Fan App Pod, on whatever social media websites we're on.
01:10:27
Speaker
That is primarily Instagram and Tumblr these days, but give us a follow other places too. Why not? You can send us an email at thefandomapprentice at gmail.com. And keep a keep good track of your towel until we next get together.
01:10:44
Speaker
And most importantly, don't panic. See you next time. The Fandom Apprentice is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music is composed and performed by James.
01:10:56
Speaker
You can find more of his work on Spotify and Bandcamp under Bayruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z. Our art is by Casey Turgeon. You can find more of her work at KCT Designs on Instagram. The content discussed is the property of the original copyright holders and is used here under fair use.
01:11:51
Speaker
See you next time, y'all. Just make Hitchhiker's Guide references and do not mention it's Hitchhiker's Guide the whole time. Listen, if the people don't know, then that's on them.