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Ep 2.2- Be Queerplatonic, Do Crime
16 Plays7 days ago
Murderbot travels to RaviHyral to investigate... well, murder. That it may or may not have been responsible for. Join us as we grapple with concepts of non-human personhood, gender, terrible bosses, queerplatonic relationships formed on threats of terrible violence, and murder! So much murder.
Covers The Murderbot Diaries Vol. 2: Artificial Condition by Martha Wells
Recommended
Transcript
Blood Draw Techniques in Birds
00:00:00
Speaker
Where do you get blood from on a bird? Wing joint. Oh, um so their elbow. ba or Sorry, not elbow. Their armpit, basically. And if you feel on your own, you've got that big. There's a big like vein right here.
00:00:14
Speaker
oh yeah. Listeners at home, especially if you're on public transportation or you're hanging around other people, just start poking your own armpit. That'll be that's a real good one to do in public.
00:00:26
Speaker
Yeah. Do a little pinprick. You take a little hematocrit tube and just hold it there in capillary action. Pulls a little of the blood little of the blood out. And then you put a little bit of the... It's not scopolamine.
00:00:41
Speaker
That's what I want to say it is, but it's distinctly not scopolamine. I mean, if you said that with confidence, I'd believe you because I have no way of knowing what it is. No, that's a that's a drug that wipes your short-term memory.
00:00:56
Speaker
Oh, that's not good. No, it's... they use that in anesthesia or something? Now I need to know. We're just going down a medical rabbit hole or bird burrow. I'm sure there are burrowing birds. Medication used to manage and treat post-operative nausea and vomiting.
00:01:12
Speaker
Typically. But, adverse effects, confusion, restlessness, seizures...
Veterinary Anecdotes and Humor
00:01:21
Speaker
I'm always very curious about where blood is drawn from on various animals because I am married to a vet tech.
00:01:28
Speaker
And whenever I go and get my own blood taken by, what do you call The blood goblins? the Blood gremlins? No, the brain gremlins. The blood goblins. Brain gremlins, blood goblins. Yes, when the blood goblins take my blood.
00:01:42
Speaker
then I usually will distract myself by making small talk and telling them about animal blood draws. that i have Like, hey guys, want some blood facts? I think I may have said this on the show before, that I just treat most medical procedures, especially unpleasant ones, as my own personal comedy hour.
00:02:00
Speaker
I have a captive audience and they know that they're torturing me, so what are they going to do, not laugh at my jokes? It's great. It's very rewarding. I don't remember what the chemical is, but the chemical, it its it's the same one that like if you like nick yourself shaving, they make like little sticks and you can like put it on there and it seals it very quickly.
00:02:21
Speaker
It hurts like a motherfucker. o ah kid It stings and it definitely starts with an S, but I can't tell you what it is.
00:02:31
Speaker
That's fine. That's okay. This isn't a test. But you use that after you take the bird's blood. You use that after you take the bird's blood and it seals their wound and, you know, stops them from bleeding out in the air.
00:02:46
Speaker
And then you let them go. Well, no, the last thing, typically right before we let them go, is you weigh the bird. Oh, yes, the most dignified part of the process.
00:03:00
Speaker
ah Depending on the size of the bird, you have to keep the bird immobilized on the scale. Mm-hmm. So depending on the size of the bird, you either... We... Because we were working with very small songbirds.
00:03:13
Speaker
And the one time I was banding ah little owls, little saw-wet owls, those those went upside down into a Pringles can. Oh, no.
00:03:25
Speaker
Like one of the short little Pringles cans. The songbirds went into a toilet paper roll. That's so undignified.
00:03:35
Speaker
Well, and then when they're done... you like You make sure you have that like bottom end cut out because when you're done, you just slide it off. And the bird kind of flops and then goes.
00:03:48
Speaker
Imagine them trying to explain that to the other birds later. i think about that all the time, especially animals that get taken to wildlife clinics and get but some kind of major surgery or like procedure done.
00:04:00
Speaker
And it's basically being abducted by aliens and being probed and having an experience that this animal could not possibly comprehend. Yeah. Jerry got abducted by aliens and now he's got no balls.
00:04:12
Speaker
Jerry got abducted by aliens and now his broken leg is better. Like, absolutely bananas. I was just thinking about, like, street cats. I mean, yeah, there's all kinds of... You know who else can perform surprisingly complicated medical procedures?
00:04:48
Speaker
who's going to
00:04:51
Speaker
I thought you were going to say, you know, who else has no balls? mean, also true as far as we know.
Introduction to 'Fandom Apprentice' Podcast
00:05:01
Speaker
I just, if a research transport had balls, would it have them like this or like this? Where would they be? It's like truck nuts, but for your research transport, I think art would want that.
00:05:13
Speaker
Yeah. Get some fan art of that. Jesus Christ. Yeah, man, I was gonna I was gonna change my discord status, but right now it's she desecrate my object till I divine sense. And I think that's pretty good.
00:05:27
Speaker
It's a solid one. Thank you. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to another episode of the fandom apprentice. My name is Rin. I'm one of your hosts.
00:05:41
Speaker
I am a lifelong nerd. I grew up on fantasy and sci-fi of various sorts and have made it my mission to infect my friends with as much of the media that I love as I possibly can.
00:06:03
Speaker
Hello, I'm Sam. I'm the other one. I am also a lifelong nerd and I'm just along for the ride.
Exploring the Murderbot Diaries Series
00:06:09
Speaker
This a very fun ah revisiting of a series that we both absolutely love, Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells.
00:06:19
Speaker
If you have not listened to our last episode on the first book, All Systems Red, would recommend that because we are going to head right into the second one today. Yeah, we're covering, today we're covering Artificial Condition, which is the second novella in the Murderbot Diaries.
00:06:35
Speaker
We both have read these books multiple, multiple times. So we are diverting from our last season's format around Lord of the Rings. But before, ba actually, on your comment on All Systems Red, actually, I had a note through this book that I i felt like Martha Wells did a really good job of providing exposition and explanation for readers who either it's been a while since they've read All Systems Red, or maybe they haven't picked it up. Maybe this was, you know, the only one available at the library and they took it out.
00:07:12
Speaker
You know, I feel like readers who haven't read All Systems Red, reading Artificial Condition, are gonna be confused. But not like up a creek without a paddle. Yeah, you can follow what's going on. You're gonna be missing some important context, but the world makes sense, the characters and their motivations make sense.
00:07:33
Speaker
You can jump in if this is what makes sense for you. Yeah, well, and and Martha Wells does, ah I think, a good job of, like, providing definitions for the different, like, terminology she's using. Like, you know, what what do I mean by augmented humans?
00:07:50
Speaker
But without the narrator coming out and being like, this dear reader who has never heard of this thing is what this means. um I feel like it's it's a well-done explanation.
00:08:05
Speaker
Yeah, it also helps that Murderbot is very inexperienced with the world at large. So it's very convenient to slip in little pieces of exposition for the reader.
00:08:17
Speaker
Murderbot is, it's it's kind of funny to see what they're experienced with and what they're not experienced with and like what they focus on as being important. Mm-hmm. Also, just thinking of lingo, there's so much sci-fi, future-sounding language like nutrition packet, heating cubby, all of these things that are probably just normal microwave with popcorn, but Murderbot does not know or care what they are, so it just defaults to the most generic descriptors, which then make everything sound more futuristic and advanced than it probably is.
00:08:53
Speaker
Well, and there's the one point where, you Murderbot always makes the distinction between humans, augmented humans, constructs, and bots. Right? Whereas the only reference we see to people making the distinction here is um one of Murderbot's clients going, you're spliced, right?
00:09:14
Speaker
You know, like, you're augmented. Mm-hmm. And cool. That's, that's all they needed. I guess before, before we continue our waxing poetic on the various fun pieces of Murderbot's world, quick summary of the book.
00:09:36
Speaker
So to somewhat briefly summarize the plot, we have Murderbot on the transit ring after leaving the Preservation Ox crew, and it has some task that it needs to do that is unspecified.
00:09:51
Speaker
Disguising itself as an augmented human, it finds bot-driven research transport that it bribes with hundreds of hours of media to share. Turns out, this transport is hiding a lot of things, but like Murderbot, it just wants to watch media and is also a sarcastic asshole.
00:10:07
Speaker
We learn that Murderbot is trying to get to a place called the Ravi Hyrule Mining Facility, which is the site of its mass murder that it committed. but see It bonds with the transport, gives it a nickname, ART, which is short for Asshole Research Transport.
00:10:23
Speaker
ART gets Murderbot to open up about its situation. They make a plan together. which includes some fun experimental surgery to change Murderbot's appearance and disguise it. After that, pretending to be human, it goes to a job interview, just a normal job interview to get a work permit to get to Ravi Hyrule.
00:10:44
Speaker
The humans hiring it were working on Ravi Hyrule, researching strange synthetics, which is alien materials, and they had their data stolen. There's some fighting with bad guys. They make it to the planet.
00:10:57
Speaker
Murderbot goes to investigate the site of the incident TM. It finds a computer interface and realizes that there was a much more widespread security problem when the incident TM happened, and it wasn't the only one affected.
00:11:13
Speaker
The bad guy Sexbot shows up and tries to intimidate Murderbot, asking about its hacked governor module, which it somehow knows about. It wants out, but like Murderbot, it has a part to play, so it has to be low-key about the whole seeking freedom thing.
00:11:28
Speaker
The bad guy in this book who took the data from the clients has something to do with the incident. and wants Murderbot captive for some reason, there's a big fight. Murderbot saves its humans, liberates the sexbot, sends its clients off to safety, and then Art leaves it with a comm interface just in case they come within range of each other again.
00:11:47
Speaker
And that is, in broad strokes, the plot. For, yeah, for such a short, such a short book, it's got two full plots.
00:12:01
Speaker
Mm-hmm. you know it's It's got its A plot, which interestingly I feel like it focuses less on, which is the getting to Ravi Hyrule and determining whether the mass murder at Ganaka Pit, um which was the site of the facility, was its fault because it had its memory wiped about that situation And then the B plot is the, hey, I took on this fake so this sort of fake security job with these three humans to get their data back from ah their former employer who stole it from them and kicked them off the planet and may now be trying to kill them.
00:12:41
Speaker
But oops, I actually now I'm going to actually do this job and help them. It can't help but get attached. Right. the So we have we have our cast of characters again.
00:12:55
Speaker
these are These are ensemble books. we like Last time we had all of our Preservation Ox folks. This time we've got Murderbot. We've got Art, who I don't think we get Art's official designation this time around.
00:13:07
Speaker
We do not, though. That is later. We have Murderbot and Art. We have references to the Preservation Ox people, but they're just kind of off in the background. We have Rami, Maro, and Tapan, who are three members of a seven-person collective slash group marriage.
00:13:28
Speaker
Oh, I missed that part, that they were all in a relationship. They're all in a relationship, and they have five kids. Oh man, I missed that. Somehow. yeah Damn.
00:13:40
Speaker
Yep, between the the various people. But I also do think, you know, at least Rami Mero and Tapan are all, like, according to Murderbot, young. Yeah, Murderbot refers to them as kids at one point.
00:13:54
Speaker
Yeah, it refers to them as, you know, not children, but barely out of adolescence. So it was like, oh, they're in like their early twenty s And later on, it does say something about the kids were in trouble or the kids needed something referring to them.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah. And, you know, maybe maybe some of their partners are older, but, you know, the this group of them is as a whole is is not old. And they have they have several children and and also they're all business associates.
00:14:26
Speaker
I had a thought before then. Rami Marotapan. And then there is the comfort unit, aka the sex bot. And Talasi and her goons.
00:14:41
Speaker
That's the important people, right? Oh, and Murderbot's assumed name is Eden. Yes. Which I think is after a character on one of its shows, if I recall correctly. Sanctuary Moon, to be precise. Yes.
00:14:54
Speaker
The rise and fall of Sanctuary Moon. So while we're on characters. Yeah. I love art so much. I love art the most. Art is so good.
00:15:04
Speaker
There's, i feel like many things to talk about with art throughout the episode. But if we wanted to just do a quick zoom in on art specifically, like a little bit of its personality, a little bit of its vibe. but So I have some quotes here and here here and there and in response to your things.
00:15:24
Speaker
So it claims to be a research transport vessel owned by a university. Like I said before at the outset, it's sassy.
00:15:35
Speaker
It is extremely powerful. There's a moment where just for a split second, it lets Murderbot see the full extent of its powers.
00:15:46
Speaker
And it says, it could have squashed me like a bug through the feed, pushed through my wall and other defenses and stripped my memory. Probably while also plotting its next wormhole jump, estimating the nutrition needs of a full crew complement for the next 66,000 hours, performing multiple neurosurgeries in the medical suite, and beating the captain at Tavla.
00:16:05
Speaker
Which, for the record, Tavla is actually a real game. It's a Turkish name for backgammon. Oh, I didn't know that. Very nice. And that 66,000 hours comes out to seven years, six months, two weeks, and one day.
00:16:17
Speaker
Oh my god. Yeah. So it is just obviously has more going on than meets the eye. It knows Murderbot's whole deal already. It's saying, hey, this is you on the news. You have a hacked governor module. Here's your whole deal. Don't try to lie to me.
00:16:32
Speaker
And it also has big giant secret weapons, which it says are just a debris deflection system. Haha, lol. I have a debris to play deflection system. You have a weapon system for debris deflection.
00:16:46
Speaker
I was starting to wonder just what kind of university owned art. There's only one way to deflect debris. So obviously, it has its own secrets, and it can kind of empathize with sec unit situations.
00:17:00
Speaker
But I feel like the thing that first stood out to me when I was first reading this book that still is really significant beyond all of the exciting robot stuff is that it needs to experience media with a buddy.
00:17:16
Speaker
Because it's just kind of looming over SecU in its shoulder while it's watching its shows. Yeah, and we learned that it really likes watching media with humans and, in this case, a construct with organic components, because it needs their reactions to contextualize what's happening in the show.
00:17:37
Speaker
And that's what makes it fun. that one's That's kind of interesting to me because
Character Dynamics and Moral Dilemmas
00:17:42
Speaker
Murderbot manages to bribe the other bot transports that it hitchhikes with with media, but none of them are nearly level the level of art sophistication.
00:17:54
Speaker
So I have to wonder, like are they so far below art's level of sophistication that like they can't even conceptualize that they might need additional context for the media? Yeah.
00:18:07
Speaker
To what level are those other bot transports processing this media? Yeah, I think this is sort of planting a seed for future episodes. Also, because art has a unique relationship with its crew, it might be more aware of the differences between how it perceives media than how humans do.
00:18:29
Speaker
But it gets really stressed out if it watches shows where humans are in danger. um Sec Unit talks about there being multiple times where it needed to pause a show because something scary was about to happen or replay something when a character turned out to be okay.
00:18:47
Speaker
Art points out at one point that none of the shows that they're watching have Sec Units on them. And Murderbot says, well, yeah, because we're always portrayed negatively and it reminds me of work. Why do you want to watch shows that remind you of work?
00:19:01
Speaker
Because art likes shows about research and space exploration. It's very fun to see that despite needing a filter to, like we said, contextualize the shows, it obviously has very strong emotions and is really affected by the fictional characters that it's seeing. It hates to see humans suffering.
00:19:24
Speaker
And sort of related to that while they're having that conversation, we learn that art loves its function. It loves being a research transport. It loves its crew. It's just happy to be there.
00:19:36
Speaker
And it's really hard for it to understand why Murderbot doesn't love its function. They do come to an understanding about it, but they're coming from very different places as far as their jobs go.
00:19:50
Speaker
Well, and we will we will see art again. They do part ways at the end of Artificial Condition, but we do see art again. And we'll we'll learn that it's, you know, it's always been treated like ah like a member of the crew in ways that Murderbot didn't experience until its last contract with Preservation Ox.
00:20:12
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And so, you know, I think Murderbot's level of caring about its humans might approach art's level of caring.
00:20:25
Speaker
But for the time being, Murderbot really has only ever known abuse at the hands of humans. yeah and it's kind of distressing for it to be in a situation where its suddenly being trusted and treated well again it's like okay i just had this whole existential crisis with prez oin people keep treating me like a person and I can't handle this. I mean, art, despite its initial threats, they their threats, I was trying to think of a nicer word, but no, it makes it very clear that it could kill Murderbot if it wanted to. Despite that, it pretty much immediately says that it considers Secunit a friend and doesn't understand why it's being so cagey and not trusting it, even though it's obviously so smart and great. Like, why would you not want me to help you with your plan?
00:21:16
Speaker
But that's weird. This is emotional whiplash for poor Secunit. Why would you not want experimental surgery? Yeah. Murderbot has an interesting line where it says that bots and constructs can't trust each other.
00:21:32
Speaker
There can be no solidarity between them because they ultimately have to answer to humans, which I feel like has many interesting implications. And then Art points out that, well, there's no humans here right now, so we're good. And you have a hacked governor module anyway.
00:21:48
Speaker
But it has a very pessimistic outlook, not just on humans in general, but also on other constructs that could potentially relate to it. Which also gets borne out in this book.
00:22:02
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Yeah. you know, we see we see both sides of this. We see that we see that the the sex, that Talaisi's sex bot genuinely wants her dead.
00:22:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah. I love that our character who's literally named murder bot just wants to watch tv and the comfort unit wants to kill all humans well and and you know it it says that it wants to kill all humans on tlacy's orders but then murder bot's like oh but there was a motion there like that didn't just come from nowhere yeah that's how tlacy thinks bots talk to each other but you meant that when you said that you said that with feeling
00:22:50
Speaker
This time, I've read this book at least four or five times. And this time, I think, was was really the first time that I, like, again, we're now reading these books, not quite at the close level that we were reading the the Lord of the Rings series, but, like, much closer than I typically read them. And I was really noticing just, holy shit, Talasi is terrible.
00:23:15
Speaker
terrible. She is a absolute garbage pit of a human being who there's a line at one point where, you know, first, first of all, she's fully willing to kill innocence so long as it will also kill Tapan, Mara, and Rami, who, as we've noted,
00:23:42
Speaker
aren't the only members of their party. They're just the ones who are in charge of interfacing with Talasi to get their data back. And so like, would the rest of the party come after her? It was basically the death meant to be a warning, like a step the fuck off, go away.
00:24:03
Speaker
She also has a line at one point when Murderbot speaks up in their final confrontation I like a mouthy bot. This is going to be interesting. Ah, hate, hate, hate, hate.
00:24:15
Speaker
Kill with fire. that and That combined with her personal sex bot that clearly does not want to be doing what it's doing, either in its sex bot capacity or in its extracurricular activities, and Talaisi seems to know that and enjoy it.
00:24:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Ugh. And we learn that, much like sec units, comfort units have governor modules. Ah!
00:24:43
Speaker
Ah! Ah! but Oh, boy. Yeah, which which just brings in a whole host of ethical qualms.
00:24:54
Speaker
And it's to the point where... Murderbot, at this point in its life, doesn't question the existence of sec units. they're Not sec units.
00:25:07
Speaker
Murderbot, at this point in its life, in its journey, doesn't question the existence of comfort units. It's not saying that it's unethical for them to exist. But it does say that one of the things that Tlacy asks her comfort unit to do is unethical, which is sending...
00:25:25
Speaker
it down to Murderbot's hotel room and trying to intimidate it and saying, you should not ask a comfort unit to do a sec unit's job. That is too far. So if it's going so far that even Murderbot is saying, whoa, that was evil of you, that's pretty bad.
00:25:45
Speaker
ah Yeah. the The existence of both comfort units and sec units in general you know we We know the opinions of Prezox and we'll learn the opinions of other groups people The Pan System University of Mihira, New Tideland of... I think those those are the the named ones.
00:26:10
Speaker
We know that like their opinion is that like having constructs that can't say no to orders that might put them in pain, kill them, maim them, hurt them, harm them...
00:26:26
Speaker
To give them free will and then also take it away in the same instance is slavery. But clearly, you know, the the hyper-capitalist world that exists in the corporation rim doesn't see it that way.
00:26:45
Speaker
Or does but doesn't care. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't treat humans any better. Yeah, we'll we'll see lots of that. And while we're on comfort units, I loved in this story that, you know, they're not just helpless sex bots. They played a really, really important role in the Ganaka Pit incident.
00:27:08
Speaker
And Mertibot has a lot of big feelings about it. So... When the whole security system issue went down in the Ganaka Pit, the comfort units recognized what was going on.
00:27:24
Speaker
And they were the ones who came up with a plan. which was to try to basically shut down their sex system and reset everything to factory settings. They had a code bundle that they knew was malware, that they were forced to install anyway, and sacrificed themselves to give everyone else a fighting chance to escape, basically.
00:27:51
Speaker
And it's in honor of their sacrifice that Murderbot ends up hacking the governor module of Tlacy's comfort unit. Because it does not like the comfort unit. They are not friends.
00:28:02
Speaker
But at the end of the day, after learning the truth about what happened in the Ganaka pit, it can't abide knowing that this comfort unit is out there being enslaved. It has to give it a chance.
00:28:16
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Because it values freedom, even to people who are horrible to it. Speaking of the difference between comfort units and Murderbot.
00:28:31
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Sec units in general and Murderbot in particular. We talked a little bit last time about like some of the difficulties with reading Murderbot as arrow ace.
00:28:44
Speaker
But then you get bits like art offering to give it genitalia. oh I have when it does its experimental surgery. Absolutely not an option.
00:28:56
Speaker
No, thank you. no No. Yeah. I didn't have any parts related to sex and I liked it that way. Yeah. So it is, yeah you know, after being given the option, still saying absolutely the fuck not.
00:29:14
Speaker
And m after the surgery, which gives it longer hair, slightly shorter arms and legs, just a little bit different from the sec unit standard to help it blend in better with humans in general.
00:29:30
Speaker
It has another existential breakdown. There's a lot of those. Mortarbrot's going through a lot. And it looks... Looks at itself in the mirror. I told myself I still looked like a sec unit without armor, hopelessly exposed.
00:29:44
Speaker
But the truth was, I did look more human. And now I knew why I hadn't wanted to do this. It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person. I have said before, just in conversations about Murderbot, and I'll say it again, that Murderbot does not want to be human.
00:30:01
Speaker
It has no interest in being human, but it knows that it's a person.
Murderbot's Identity and Competence
00:30:05
Speaker
And in a world where person equals human... That's a really weird thing to try to navigate. It is extremely difficult. That, I think, is why it struggles so much with the way that Prezox treats it, because they're applying human expectations and human feelings to it, which kind of apply a little bit. It's better than treating it like a mining drill.
00:30:30
Speaker
But... Very few people besides art, and I am counting art as a person, are really meeting it where it's at. And it's having an experience that is so unique. And because of the nature of governor modules and the nature of its job and the fact that it doesn't think it can feel solidarity and friendship with other constructs, it's really lonely.
00:30:56
Speaker
And so how are you supposed to express that feeling, let alone tell other people that they are not relating to you in the way that you want? That's a lot. It's a lot.
00:31:06
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Well, I don't even know that art is meeting it on its on its level, at least at first. you know I think they are both speaking different languages at each other.
00:31:19
Speaker
they are They are both these non-human... if if They're NHPs, if anyone's played Lancer.
00:31:29
Speaker
Non-human persons. And it it takes them a minute to figure out how to relate to each other. Because I think Murderbot is starting out with the assumption that, oh, I can relate to this like I relate to a bot.
00:31:44
Speaker
isn' And art is starting out with the assumption, oh, I can relate to SecUnit halfway between relating to a bot and relating to a person.
00:31:57
Speaker
Because that's what it is, right? And like in last book where Murderbot talks about how it's not half bot, half human, and that's a mistake. even Even art is not free from preconceived notions.
00:32:10
Speaker
Right. and they And they have to figure out how to relate to each other off of that. They do so many crimes. They do. The two them. They really do.
00:32:22
Speaker
Oh my god. ah Beyond, first of all, one of the other things that I noted from this is this book is just Murderbot's startling levels of competence and in the face of anything. Right.
00:32:40
Speaker
Just like its ability to hack security, to plan, to outsmart its enemies, to to figure out and and and and anticipate its clients' needs and meet them even when it's not 100% sure how to do that or not 100% comfortable with how to do that.
00:33:05
Speaker
It is just startlingly competent. at all times, especially when you consider that it comments on multiple occasions. I had no education on this.
00:33:17
Speaker
I don't know anything about this. I've lived my entire life inside a box. Like, ah I'm a piece of equipment and I've never had to deal with this before. um it's It's fantastic.
00:33:32
Speaker
And then art, art is the hide-a-body friend. oh Absolutely. partly because it legitimately helps Murderbot hide the bodies. there's There's literally a line, we have evidence to destroy.
00:33:49
Speaker
Is literally line towards the end of the book. And Murderbot in this book does in fact do murder. It kills Talasi and at least two of the others.
00:34:00
Speaker
But in defense of its clients. So, you know, they had it coming by getting between and Murderbot. They only had themselves to blame. If you'd have been there, if you'd have seen it, I bet ye you you would have done the same bump. but Ba-na-na-na-na-na.
00:34:22
Speaker
dedication to its humans not just prezox but these three poor kids is so sweet and speaks to the fact that it can still embrace i'm trying to think because this is a very nuanced thing that i want to thread the needle on so i may have to think out loud a little bit but so it was created to be a security unit it had no choice in being a sec unit But it still embraces that part of its nature and saying, you know what, I'm good at security. I am hyper competent at security.
00:35:02
Speaker
I care about it. I care about humans being safe. I care about specifically my clients being safe even more than humans in general, although it does have a certain level of care for humans in general.
00:35:13
Speaker
And then that care is ratcheted up so much when it's able to freely choose to do that. And there are a lot of moments where it kind of reflects on this, but I had ah quote from T'Pan asking if Murderbot will stay on to help them with more stuff.
00:35:34
Speaker
And saying, will you help me please? I'll understand if you say no. I had forgotten that I had a choice, that I wasn't obligated to do what she wanted just because she was here. Being asked to stay, with a please and an option for refusal, hit me almost as hard as a human asking for my opinion and actually listening to me.
00:35:51
Speaker
I sighed again. i was having a lot of opportunities to do it, and I think I was getting good at it. So it tries to deflect with humor a little bit, but going, oh, I do have a choice here.
00:36:03
Speaker
And this affects me deeply and makes me care about these people even more is so good. And it really is able to bond with our little crew. It cuddles with Tapan at one point.
00:36:17
Speaker
She's feeling scared. And she crawls into its bed. And it's like freezing off. Like, oh my god. but it the The human is near me. The human is near me. And Art's going, she finds you comforting. It's fine. It's fine. Just relax. Just breathe.
00:36:31
Speaker
It's like, okay, okay. But it tolerates it. It's sweet. The narration is extremely dry. Mm-hmm.
00:36:42
Speaker
But you can you can, one, you can tell how much it cares. And you can get its little sense of its sense of humor through the narration.
00:36:53
Speaker
You know, you've got you've got the little joke like you mentioned. You've got Target 2 accidentally, I'm guessing here. Maybe they just didn't care for each other. Stabbed Target 1. Mm-hmm.
00:37:05
Speaker
It just makes these little jokes and then proceeds to very dryly talk about how it murders three people. ah um But when it fucks up towards the end, when it's humans get hurt, it is devastated.
00:37:20
Speaker
I was used to taking orders from humans and trying to mitigate whatever damage their stupid ideas did to them. But I had wanted to work with the group again. i had enjoyed how they'd listened to me. I had put my need to get to Ravi Hyrule above the safety of my clients.
00:37:33
Speaker
I was just a shit at being a security consultant as any human. So for Murderbot to say that its choices made it feel like it was a bad security consultant? That's as serious of an emotional state as it will express.
00:37:49
Speaker
That's huge. It really takes its job very, very seriously. This a formatting question for you. yeah In your text or whatever app that you're using to read the text,
00:38:06
Speaker
isnt How is art's dialogue formatted? Because for me, it not italicized. It's not bolded. It's not set aside in any way. There's no quotation marks.
00:38:18
Speaker
It is just in the text. Oh, that's interesting. Any dialogue in the feed looks indistinguishable from the rest of the text.
00:38:34
Speaker
In mine, it's italicized. And I would have to scroll through, but I believe Murderbot... Yes, Murderbot talking to art in the feed is also italicized. So feed conversations are in italics.
00:38:48
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. And i don't have my I don't have my text edition here. I think my roommate has it. So I will and we'll have to see that at some point. it It may just be the app that I'm working with.
00:39:03
Speaker
I'll have to see when we get to later books when art is speaking out loud to humans if that changes. Because it communicates in the feed, but it also can just talk. So I will be intrigued.
00:39:16
Speaker
Yeah. Couple of, I guess, sort of plot inconsistencies between this book and All Systems Red.
Diversity and Representation in Murderbot Series
00:39:25
Speaker
thing one was ah construct faces there's a line and i couldn't find the exact line but i thought it in in all systems read i thought it said something about its face just being sec unit standard which sort of implies that like they're all the same whereas in this book It explicitly says that construct faces were all slightly different, owing to differences in the genetic material used to grow their ah human tissue.
00:39:59
Speaker
I have, thanks to my ancient, ancient nook that is still breathing... I found the line in All Systems Red where it's talking about Prezok saying I didn't even know it had a face and how it's usually in armor.
00:40:14
Speaker
The only part of me they would have seen was my head and it's standard generic human. So I think that is consistent with sec units looking different from each other. That's just generic human. It doesn't have any particularly distinguishing features. It doesn't have at the handlebar mustache or something like that.
00:40:34
Speaker
I think from Murderbot's perspective, especially in the first book, it would make sense for it to think that there is a generic human look and most humans kind of look the same.
00:40:46
Speaker
I could have sworn the line sec unit standard was used somewhere in one of these books, but like I couldn't find it. So it must not have been. It might be. Let me...
00:40:58
Speaker
I don't see the phrase sec unit standard. That's definitely somewhere. It might have even been in this book or in one of the others. But I had always envisioned there being a small variety among sec units just because the reason that they have organic material is to compensate for the things that constructed intelligence and constructed bodies can't do.
00:41:22
Speaker
So it makes sense to just have a little bit of variety in the gene pool. And then they bring up strange synthetics, which in the previous book we referred to as alien remnants. And in the last book, it was explicitly mentioned that the whole planet on the discovery of alien remnants would be placed under interdict and closed off to anything but archaeological surface.
00:41:45
Speaker
That's clearly not the case on Robbie Hyrell. It does explicitly say that strange synthetics are off limits to commercial development, but not that like there's other kinds of...
00:41:59
Speaker
There's other kinds of research that might be allowed besides just archaeological work. And clearly the rest of Robbie Hyrule is open to commercial exploitation.
00:42:10
Speaker
Yeah. clearly there is Clearly there's motive for corporations to seek out strange synthetics and get around this ah legal boundary. Again, we talked last time about who is governing these sort of like inter...
00:42:29
Speaker
intergalactic law. Where do these intergalactic laws come from? Who's governing them? What force do they have? Yeah. Who do the courts answer to and who answers to the courts?
00:42:42
Speaker
Especially if every corporation is its own micro state or macro state for some of these. So we'll, we'll see more about strange synthetics and alien remnants in the future.
00:42:55
Speaker
And also in the rest of the series. I had a couple of random other little things that I noticed in this book. We have our first non-binary human that we meet in this book, which is great.
00:43:08
Speaker
It's a gender category that Martha Wells has created, which i pronounced as Tercera. Which in Spanish just means third. Yeah, so that makes sense. So that is fun to see. We also last time briefly brushed on Murderbot's aversion to eye contact, but we get more of that in this one as well. But it really, really, really does not like eye contact and vastly prefers to experience the world through the perspective of whatever cameras or drones happen to be nearby. The other thing with, I guess...
00:43:47
Speaker
i So I was looking with one of the characters being Tercera shortly after it introduces that character. Murderbot says that you know it had listed its own gender on the feed as indeterminate.
00:44:04
Speaker
And I went and I looked through to see if Rami, Merrow, and Tapan ever referred a murder bot by a pronoun. And I didn't see one.
00:44:16
Speaker
That's a good point. Which is very clever on Martha Wells' part. But clearly... Martha Wells here has, okay well, this this one third gender group is specific to this one world.
00:44:35
Speaker
I assume similarly to how there there are culturally specific third gender groups on Earth. But the concept of non-binary people or the concept of people who don't want to reveal anything about their gender is...
00:44:50
Speaker
not unfamiliar and is like there are options for that on the feed and that is not uncommon and no one gives a shit queer normative worlds we love it it's it's so comfortable it's just it it's a breath of goddamn fresh air and you know that the real world is bad when the capitalist hellscape dystopia it's a breath of fresh air Speaking of, it um early in the book identifies the ah the the first port that it was on, which was where it left Mensa and Prezox, as Port Free Commerce, which is a ridiculous fucking name.
00:45:36
Speaker
I love it. It's so over the top. That's like our friend of the podcast, Gungus, who is a Twitch streamer, plays a lot of Helldivers, which for those unfamiliar as I was before i started watching it, is a sort of super American dystopia where you are going to spread freedom and democracy by liberating aliens through bombs and killing them.
00:46:03
Speaker
And the place that humans hail from is called Super Earth.
Comparative Settings and Construct Intelligence
00:46:08
Speaker
And so I feel like Port Free Commerce has the same vibe as Super Earth of just wildly not meaning the thing that it is.
00:46:18
Speaker
Now, when Murderbot questions what kind of university owned art because of its weapons systems, sorry, debris deflection system. Yes, thank you.
00:46:28
Speaker
my My first thought was literally any American university. Woof.
00:46:37
Speaker
My first thought was, is this just all the weapons contractors that American universities have invested in Is this just what that comes to? Probably. Probably.
00:46:53
Speaker
There's a lot of questions that this book in particular raises about the difference, the different levels of intelligence and sentience of bots, ships, AIs, and constructs and what this implies for sort of all of their rights, personhood, ability to interact between themselves and among humans, and you know, I think the base level is humans underestimate the level of intelligence that all of these beings have.
00:47:35
Speaker
The other thing that this sort of brings up, you know, we know that Murderbot has a very limited view of its world. But as far as it seems to be aware, the level of intelligence displayed by sec units and comfort units is sort of more or less the pinnacle of of i will use the term artificial intelligence here as in like an actual sapient sentient artificially created being not in the bullshit machine that has been inserted into all of our tech yeah this is not chat gpt 5000
00:48:10
Speaker
five thousand No, this is this is an actual, li like more or less living, learning, artificial life form. But as far as it knows, when it meets art, art is wholly unknown to Murderbot.
00:48:30
Speaker
Which suggests that things like art are either, you know, they range from being not common to utterly unheard of. Throughout the, I will say throughout the galaxy, because we don't actually know how wide this sci-fi space extends.
00:48:49
Speaker
Yeah. We could just be through the local cluster. Who knows? Who's to say? Where the wormhole goes. Ha! did
00:49:02
Speaker
And art is not above bullying smaller bots. There's a thing towards the end where Murderbot has to comfort a bot pilot on a little shuttle because the big mean transport is bullying it.
00:49:16
Speaker
And I love that it's just like, like hey cool it. This is fine. I mean, it was terrified of art. I can see how something that doesn't nearly have Murderbot's level of response would be even more scared.
00:49:36
Speaker
Yeah. It's like putting your very small dog in front of an elephant. Mm-hmm. And then being like, don't be afraid of the big elephant.
00:49:49
Speaker
It's like, this is going kill me. Yeah, while also knowing that the elephant can also kill you.
00:49:57
Speaker
i miss art. I think we deserve more art than we get. In this book or in the series in general? In general.
00:50:08
Speaker
Yeah, I feel like it's been so long since I've read the other books. that I have lost my sense of how prominently it features in the series because it's just so at the forefront of my mind.
00:50:20
Speaker
We will not get art again. So spoilers, but skip ahead 15 seconds. We won't get art again until Network Effect. oh with the thing is that when there's the thing ah the end of network effect that made me yeah okay yeah um so that skip ahead again that's the novel the two novels at the end of the series is when it comes back it doesn't it's not in any of the other novellas Okay, I'm done. We're back. Here we go.
00:50:51
Speaker
Spoilers are done for the future books in
Podcast Engagement and Credits
00:50:54
Speaker
the series. We can encourage you to read along with us as we go through. We're doing one novella, an episode. Before I take us out, do you have other other thoughts on artificial condition? My notes are tapped.
00:51:07
Speaker
No, I think that's about it. There's all kinds of little funny one-liners and things to observe, but I think that's just all magic that I want listeners to experience for themselves. It's a delight.
00:51:18
Speaker
I'm so happy to be back with art. I love art so much. i'm I'm also very happy to be entering the next two novellas because they sort of, they tie into each other nicely.
00:51:34
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And into the into the first, into All Systems Red really nicely as well. So that means next time we are going to be reading the 2018 novella Rogue Protocol, which is the third novella in in the series.
00:51:55
Speaker
And if people want to hit us up with thoughts about the first two books or about any of the other books, where can they find us? You can check us out on any of our social media at fanapppod, that's F-A-N-A-P-P-P-O-D,
00:52:10
Speaker
on whatever social media sites we're on. That these days is primarily Tumblr and Instagram. You can also find us through our email, thefandomapprentice at gmail.com.
00:52:24
Speaker
You can ah leave us a review on whatever podcast platform you're listening on. ah Depending on the platform, you might be able to leave us a room a written review.
00:52:36
Speaker
If you're listening on Spotify or on YouTube, you can leave us a comment. If you are listening with access to none of these things, you can shout into the void and...
00:52:48
Speaker
We won't hear it, but it'll be out there. So true. So true. You can hit us up on the feed at fanapppod. At the fanapppod.gmail.com if you want to send a longer data packet.
00:53:02
Speaker
ah Just please don't be malware. Yeah, that would be nice. I think if you just say, please don't be malware, then legally nobody can send you malware. Yeah, it's like it's like somebody has to tell you you're they're a cop before they entrap you, right?
00:53:16
Speaker
Exactly, yeah, which I don't even think that that's true. but and Unfortunately, no. Thank you all so much for listening. Thank you for hanging out, and we will see you next time. We will see you on the other side of the wormhole.
00:53:30
Speaker
See you next time. Bye. The Phantom of Brentis is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music is composed and performed by James. You can find more of his work on Spotify and Bandcamp under Bayruz, B-A-E-R-U-Z.
00:53:46
Speaker
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.