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Ep 2.6- Cyberpunk Sherlock, Solarpunk Lestrade
17 Plays1 month ago
here's been a murder! And despite what you might expect, it wasn't Murderbot's fault. It promises. And we promise topics including sleeper agents, queer assimilation, translation, and things that go blorp in the night.
Covers The Murderbot Diaries: Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (2021)
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Transcript
Humorous Musings on Moving to the Arctic
00:00:00
Speaker
I honestly, all of my banter ideas were just about how fucking hot it is outside. It is deeply, deeply horrible. I texted you earlier with a screenshot of the weather app in my location where I think the temperature was something like 83 and the heat index was 105. And I was asking you for the pros and cons of moving to the Arctic Circle.
00:00:23
Speaker
Well, and here's the thing. Because I did very much ah consider trying to do a master's degree at the Arctic University in Tromsø, which is up north of the Arctic Circle at the northern end of Norway, um and because I have attended ah some lectures there when I was in an undergrad course on Arctic ecology, I have actually thought about this extensively.
00:00:47
Speaker
And I knew that, and that is why I asked.
Contingency Plans and Political Concerns
00:00:50
Speaker
Because at least then that would be ah reprieve. And I could imagine life in the Arctic Circle for a minute while you told me about it. Yeah, I mean, pros, northern lights, depending on where in the Arctic you are, the mountains are fucking gorgeous.
00:01:04
Speaker
least up in that northern part of Norway. It's it's so pretty. Like, the wildlife is very, very cool. Downsides. Everything is expensive.
00:01:15
Speaker
No matter where in the Arctic you are, everything is expensive. Getting shit there is hard. It is cold a lot of the time, like very, very cold a lot of the time.
00:01:26
Speaker
And I know you and I are cold beasts, but it might even be too much for us. isn Midnight sun slash polar night, depending on your feelings about those things.
00:01:37
Speaker
feel like a little bit either way, you go a little insane by the middle. And no trees. um I do like trees. i like them quite a lot. Yeah, no, the trees are important.
00:01:48
Speaker
So like there there are positives and there are negatives. I really liked the Arctic. I thought it was a very, very cool place to travel and I would love to go back. I don't know if living there is a great plan.
00:02:01
Speaker
That said, Montreal? Yeah. If they'll have us, which according to our Canadian lawyer friends, they totally won't. We, during a period where the spheres terror...
00:02:18
Speaker
and ability to think through and make decisions during ah time when those briefly overlapped. We talked with our lovely, lovely friends who are lawyers in Montreal and said, okay, contingency plan.
00:02:32
Speaker
If we need to just fuck off and leave the country, how feasible would it be? What would be the steps to become permanent residents in Canada?
00:02:44
Speaker
And Their answer was basically, I mean, you can always come sleep on our couch, but the Canadian government is not going to want you. You're not going to be able to get jobs here, which I appreciated their frankness. But they were like, listen, it's not going to happen. It's like that makes a lot of sense. There were ways, you know, and hopefully it won't come to that, but.
The Adventures of Ricky the Cat
00:03:05
Speaker
Something else that's very nice that is completely unrelated is I have found one of the few good websites on the internet. And I will send it in our podcast chat.
00:03:16
Speaker
For our listeners, it is random.ricki.baby. And I will let Rin click it to see what this website has in store. I saw it in book club. And it is just a picture of someone's orange and white cat.
00:03:31
Speaker
His name is Ricky. And the website has one button. The button is another Ricky, please. And you click on it and then you will get another picture of Ricky.
00:03:42
Speaker
I found this from a Tumblr blog that is dedicated to this cat. And the post had about 32 notes when I saw it earlier. And I would love for this person to just see an uptick in views on this website when this episode comes out.
00:04:03
Speaker
Oh my god. It'd be a minor uptick because we don't have that many listeners. But but i think all of them would like to see a picture of Ricky. He is fat. He has a little orange spot on his snoot like he stuck his face into a bowl of Kraft mac and cheese.
00:04:20
Speaker
ah He seems delightful. You can see him sniffing an orb. If you get really lucky, I just saw one. There's a little blue orb in a person's hand. He's giving it a little sniff. He's pondering the orb.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah. Ricky, get away from the Palantir. no! Fool of a Ricky.
00:04:41
Speaker
Honestly, I feel like you could pass Ricky off as as a Hobbit name. You would need a good Hobbit last name, but I think Ricky could work. Rickert Took. Anyway, I'm already feeling the temperature increase in this room, so let's get started.
Nerdy Introductions and Influences
00:05:12
Speaker
Hello everyone.
00:05:15
Speaker
And welcome back to another episode of the Fandom Apprentice. My name is Rin. I'm one of your hosts. I'm a lifelong nerd. I grew up with various ah sci-fi and fantasy books read to me by my my parents, movies and TV shows as part of my life.
00:05:37
Speaker
And I've carried that love for fantasy and sci-fi into my adult life and into how I interact with the world, including... wasn't trying to say ranty.
00:05:48
Speaker
I was just putting a note in for later so I could remember to tell you that I saw a coyote puppy. It's just because your notes are directly in front of my face. Oh, that's not my fault. No, that's not.
00:06:00
Speaker
It was really cute. Fuck, where was I? ah i I like to inflict pieces of media that I experience on my friends mostly so I have people that yell at the yell about them to.
00:06:14
Speaker
The media, not my friends. Yeah. friend hello i'm sam i'm the other one i am also a lifelong nerd of many varieties and i'm just along for the ride rin sends stuff my way and then i consume it and on a completely unrelated note i saw a coyote puppy earlier on the way home and it was really cute adorable I thought it was someone's dog that had gotten loose. And then I saw it was like, oh my god, no, that's not a dog.
00:06:43
Speaker
There's a pack of them around here. It's not a dog. it's Yeah, you you get you see it from a distance. It's like, oh, cute puppy. And then you get close. It's like, oh, that's not a dog. No, but it was baby.
00:06:54
Speaker
They can still be baby.
Delving into 'The Murderbot Diaries'
00:06:56
Speaker
Last season, we spent a large amount of time going through lord of the Rings, which was a story that had a profound effect on me as a child and Sam experienced ah with me for the very first time.
00:07:07
Speaker
And for this season, we are returning to a series that I discovered in 2020 and then promptly yelled at all of my friends about until someone read it with me.
00:07:20
Speaker
And now it has fundamentally changed how we speak and interact with each other. It's been impactful, like the impact of a Hollerbot crashing down upon you.
00:07:31
Speaker
That series is The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. We've had several episodes so far. You can look just a little bit below this this episode in our feed. we are currently on We are currently on the fifth novella in ah series It was published in 2021 after the novel Network Effect, but chronologically takes place before that novel, which is why we've placed it here in our reading order.
00:07:57
Speaker
And yeah, but so let's let's hit the summary. Yeah, for context for our listeners, we are recording this while slowly being lowered into a pit of lava.
00:08:09
Speaker
It is 100 degrees outside and we have to turn our air conditioners off to record. So we are being efficient today. It does not help that the plot for this one took kind of a bit of puzzling out, so the summary's a little longer, but we'll just get right into it. We'll do our best.
00:08:25
Speaker
So, there's been a murder on Preservation Station, which is not typical. It's not Murderbot's fault, and it's very quick to tell us this. Yes, I know that its name is Murderbot, and so that would be sensible to deduce. But no, unrelated.
00:08:42
Speaker
We don't know who the victim is, and station security is not prepared to deal with it. Shockingly, a commune of space hippies doesn't really deal with a lot of cold-blooded murders. The scene has been tampered with.
00:08:55
Speaker
Mensa suggests that Murderbot work with station security to improve their chilly rapport and maybe also pave the way for a security consultant job in the future.
00:09:07
Speaker
We get some flashbacks slash context about how Murderbot has been received on preservation. and learn that Mensa is avoiding slash postponing getting therapy to deal with the trauma caused by the last book.
00:09:23
Speaker
Murderbot is aware of this, and she is bribing it not to press the issue. Murderbot is also helping Baradwaj with her documentary about Constructs, which is also serving as its own sneaky therapy for Murderbot, which Murderbot kind of knows but is also ignoring. There's a lot of feelings.
00:09:40
Speaker
It's also been helping Rothy with data analysis and hanging out and going to shows with him. But jumping back to the murder, Murderbot talks to a free bot at the hostel where the victim was staying, and we find a lead. Our victim was a person named Lutran.
00:09:55
Speaker
Murderbot checks out ships that he might have come in on and finds a weird one that seems to be sending coded messages for help. So Murderbot assembles the dream team,
00:10:06
Speaker
of rothy and garrothin who are the ones who are available and they find the scene of the actual crime two station officers get trapped slash held hostage on i was not clear if this was the same ship or a different sketchy ship It's a different sketchy ship.
00:10:25
Speaker
Okay. The Lalo is a different ship. Okay, cool. Yes. And Murderbot has to break its no hacking rule to save them because one of the conditions of it staying on Preservation Station is it can't just go around hacking everything, which seems fair.
00:10:39
Speaker
But station security is able to arrest the crew who are acting suspicious and the crew's story breaks down pretty fast. Turns out they are part of a group smuggling people out of corporate slavery.
00:10:50
Speaker
And station security assures them that it is not illegal to be or help refugees. Lutron was their contact on the station, and now the clock is ticking to figure out where these refugees are that he was supposed to help.
00:11:04
Speaker
Turns out they are in a cargo module attached to a ship, which is not designed to hold human beings for any length of time. And the moment that the bad guys figure out that there's a rescue mission, they will kill them all.
00:11:17
Speaker
Everything on the station is potentially compromised by someone with legitimate access. So the crew sets up a secret headquarters in Mensa's office. And the only way to get the refugees out is to use a literal antique piece of safety equipment, which we will talk about. i love it so much.
00:11:35
Speaker
There's a big fight. It seems like everything should be over, but something is still wrong. Plot twist! One of the seemingly innocuous bots that's been there the whole time.
00:11:47
Speaker
is there being on the station is actually a combat bot it's complicated ah other bots come to the rescue balen the evil question mark the the bot in question recognizes defeat and shuts itself down and station security offers murder bot an olive branch of more potential work and a hard currency card And a hard currency card. Yeah, that's... Murderbot doesn't want your fucking olives. Give it hard currency cards. It can't eat olive oil. There's no point.
00:12:17
Speaker
That's fair. So this is a big one. This is a beefy one. So where do you want to start, Bestie? Oh my god. um I, you know, I don't have, like, things in any particular order, right?
00:12:33
Speaker
i I love the murder mystery. I love that we have continued to tell different types of stories via Murderbot. I love that we've told you know horror stories. I love that we've had heists. I love that we've had you know combos of them. I love that we've had you know like backstory grappling with trauma and we have a fucking Agatha Christie style locked room murder mystery here.
00:13:00
Speaker
There was a review i was I was reading from, I think it's NPR, NPR Books, that describes this as ah as a locked room murder mystery, even though, like, the room is preservation station.
00:13:13
Speaker
No one can get out or... come into Preservation Station. All of your suspects are there. All of your, you know, potential evidence, potential escape routes are there.
00:13:25
Speaker
So it's it's a classic locked room murder mystery, which is just so much fun. But then you have the difficulty, you're sort of like bumbling investigators who are, you know doing everything by the book.
00:13:39
Speaker
And then you have your detective, Murderbot in this case, who's noticing all the little patterns, that the investigators don't and putting them together in ways that the investigators can't because it's outside of the normal functioning of the station to finally solve the mystery.
Societal Norms and Bot Rights in Preservation
00:13:59
Speaker
ah had another point to that. I don't know what it was. It was another point. That's all right. I have an unrelated thing, which in the very beginning, when they discover the body, we open on Murderbot and station security, all trying to figure out what's going on with this fucking corpse.
00:14:16
Speaker
And they're trying to get a response from station medical to come and collect the body and examine it and do whatever you do when there's a dead body. Ah, oh my God. And Stationpedical is saying, well, it's not an emergency.
00:14:31
Speaker
I'm doing preventative healthcare day at the school, so this can wait. And then there's all of this back and forth about them trying to convince this medical bot that actually, no, it is an emergency. Please come right now.
00:14:43
Speaker
And them going, well, the person's already dead. And it's very funny. And they eventually work it out. And this is not at all the lesson that Martha Wells wants us to take away. But as someone who is interested in death, it is true and it is a interesting piece of death positivity to think about the idea that a dead body is not an emergency.
00:15:07
Speaker
Just in general, when we're thinking about our own relationship with mortality, you know, if you are with a loved one in a peaceful place and they pass in a way that is expected and they've died, and then they're dead. There's no emergency. There's nothing that can be done anymore.
00:15:26
Speaker
You can take a second to process what has happened. You can get your thoughts together. You can call who you need to call. You can deal with it. Once a person dies, it doesn't mean that everything suddenly has to like be on fire.
00:15:40
Speaker
And now I need to go be taken advantage of by evil giant corporations who own all of the funeral homes, even though they retain their own branding. So it seems like they're independent. I could talk about that all day.
00:15:51
Speaker
But just the concept of a dead body not being an emergency does have a completely unrelated, legitimate thing. And I thought that was very funny. That is fun. i I've remembered my other point, which was not sort of not really related to the ah nature of the murder mystery, but where we've been exploring different genres that can be incorporated into a sci-fi setting.
00:16:14
Speaker
And i I think I mentioned, we've mentioned a couple of times before that Murderbot is operating in a different genre than everyone around it. Mm-hmm. And I feel like this is happening again here.
00:16:27
Speaker
Murderbot exists within a sci-fi universe that is like, it's it's in a cyberpunk world. You know, cyberpunk heavy corporate, you know, cyberpunk 2077, Blade Runner, Snow Crash, Altered Carbon. Like, that's the world it exists in. Mm-hmm.
00:16:49
Speaker
And meanwhile, preservation is like we're over here in our automated luxury space communism solar punk world. There's a line from the beginning that I love where it's talking about how unusual it is to find a dead body and how it's basically impossible to get yourself killed on preservation.
00:17:07
Speaker
I guess if you were really determined, you could find a way to get yourself killed by exposing the power connectors under the panels and shielding and, I don't know, licking them or something. But this dead human clearly hadn't.
00:17:19
Speaker
The full station threat assessment for murder was sitting at a baseline 7%. To make it drop lower than that, we'd have to be on an uninhabited planet. I was reminded really strongly of the mimicking of known successes by Malka Older reading this.
00:17:34
Speaker
you know And and i I wonder a little bit if that's just because that is also a sci-fi murder mystery. ah that one's much more Holmesian. But i I sort of, I think the other piece of that perhaps that ah that linked in my brain was that like, we're not dealing with like the cops here.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah. Station security, like, aren't cops. No, they just make sure that there's no hazardous material that's improperly secured and that people are submitting their paperwork on time. You know, this is not a punitive force.
00:18:11
Speaker
This is not a punitive society. um And in, and in the mimicking of known successes, the investigators aren't cops either. They show up to investigate issues. And that seems like it can be like, and I think also in this, like it, I don't know whether it's in this or it's in one of the short stories, but Where it mentions, like, station it's the the invest the special investigator that gets called up by station security is also involved in, like, investigating relationship disputes.
00:18:43
Speaker
Yes, that's in this one. And, like... That's just so funny and so ridiculous to me that like, yes, this person's job is to investigate things. And that can be murder or that can be, did you eat my casserole?
00:19:01
Speaker
Which, oh my God, it did not even occur to me to put these pieces together until just now. But in this society where, as we have said many times, non-monogamy is the norm, the number and types of relationship disputes i think it's nice that preservation government provides some helpful counseling and mediators because they're going to need it they truly are speaking of ah queer normative society we have a non-binary character tech to roll yes we love to roll
00:19:35
Speaker
Tural is just trying to do their goddamn job, please and thank you. And also, occasionally, they want to talk about the science really in depth. And in india Inda is like, no, let me argue with SecUnit and also fuck off and go away, please.
00:19:51
Speaker
Turrell's like, if you could just stop your stupid slap fighting with Sec Unit for half a second, maybe we could do our jobs. And meanwhile, ah you know, Sec Unit and Inda are over there waving at each other. like but but Like a pool noodle fight.
00:20:10
Speaker
Like rabbits boxing. how Like that actually is serious, but it looks so goddamn stupid. Yeah. Yeah. Just in general, we get so much about preservation society in this book and seeing all of the characters at home in their element.
00:20:27
Speaker
Mensa especially, despite the fact that she is avoiding therapy and has some feelings that she needs to process eventually, she's just in her element and not giving a single fuck.
00:20:40
Speaker
I love her so much. And I love her even more after having read um that short story that we read. There's a line after a big frustrating meeting where Mensah is so over it. She's calling her partners and telling them that they should take all the kids, siblings, their kids, and assorted relatives and move to a shack in the terraforming sector on an unsettled continent and start working in soil reclamation, whatever that was.
00:21:06
Speaker
Like she's just so frustrated by these pointless meetings that she's like, oh that's it, I quit. I don't want to be the planetary leader anymore. We're we're working in soil reclamation now. Back it up. We're moving to the middle of nowhere to fucking little house in the prairie this except, you know, without the imperialism.
00:21:26
Speaker
She's trying to parent teenagers while all of this is happening, getting calm messages from her kids about another kid stealing all of the squash dumplings. I fucking love, too, that like this is the kind of society where, yeah, you're respectful of your parents' job, I guess, but also like she's your mom.
00:21:48
Speaker
Doesn't matter that she's the fucking president. I'm going to yell at her because you stole my squash dumplings. Yeah. But also the not giving any fucks translates into her viciously defending sec unit, which we love to see and advocating for it in so many different ways.
00:22:09
Speaker
I think... I struggle to decide whether or not Mensa is putting herself in a mother role with Sec Unit or in like a caring friend role.
00:22:21
Speaker
And honestly, that's a really good segue into let's talk about bot rights. Yes, bot rights. Because we learn and and the personalities of bots.
00:22:32
Speaker
Mm-hmm. We can intuit from the way preservation law and practice seems to be that there are no other constructs in preservation. Mm-hmm. Right? There's no comfort units.
00:22:50
Speaker
There's no other sec units. There's, like, there's no other bot human construct. Mm-hmm. So you have, you know, quote unquote, free bots and humans.
00:23:03
Speaker
And we sort of have established and continue to establish through this book that what, it that bots don't necessarily have the exact same self ability to self determine their, their actions that like constructs and humans do.
00:23:20
Speaker
And bot So bot rights and preservation are that bots are full citizens, but they have to have a guardian, which sec unit always translates to owner.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah. And throughout this, I feel like watching humans interact with bots... It's pretty constantly like ah like a really smart pet interaction.
00:23:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. and i And I was like, how would thinking about how would we react in a situation where there's other sentients who can communicate and interact with us and with each other.
00:24:01
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:24:05
Speaker
but the way they act and the way they perceive the world is not quite exactly like ours maybe not quite to the level that we typically see for ourselves you know or we see it as lower than us because it's different Yeah, we can't perceive the fullness of what they're experiencing.
00:24:27
Speaker
Right. How does that, you know, how does our perception of this this situation change because we created them? Mm-hmm. You know, are they pets?
00:24:38
Speaker
Are they full citizens? Yeah. Or not. yeah we We meet a couple of bots by name. we meet Telus, the hotel staff. We meet Jolly Baby, who is holler bot for Port Authority. What's what's Jolly Baby's role?
00:24:54
Speaker
it It is a cargo bot. Cargo bot. And then Balin, ah who works for Port Authority and is some type of security for Port Authority,
00:25:06
Speaker
And is aka the combat bot aka the murderer. And then we have a bunch of unnamed bots who work in the port. And the unnamed bots who end up targeting Balin when Balin goes full combat bot at the end are, you know, they they want to protect humans who it it seems like they see as family.
00:25:30
Speaker
Mm-hmm. neither and you know jolly baby seems to have some sort of sense of humor so does tower but balin then is sort of helpless to its programming as were the combat bots we saw back on the terraforming station in book three to what extent are these other bots enslaves to their programming They supposedly choose their own jobs and they choose their own names.
00:26:00
Speaker
But like, can a Hollerbot go and work medical? Does a Hollerbot want to go and work medical? is that something that ever happens? Yeah, that's really interesting.
00:26:10
Speaker
The other piece that I pulled out was when we first meet Telus, Murderbot has a moment of being like, who the fuck is Telus? And then goes, oh, Telus was the bot the pet bot's name.
00:26:21
Speaker
They name themselves and hearing about it is exhausting. Murderbot, baby cakes.
00:26:29
Speaker
You named yourself. Yeah. Yes, people say that the things that we dislike in others are the things we dislike about ourselves. Maybe we have some issues with identity.
00:26:39
Speaker
i have ah little section from when it confronted the fact that there was a bot named Jolly Baby. It's saying, oh my god, you have to be fucking shitting me. Its name is not Jolly Baby.
00:26:51
Speaker
And this is a huge cargo bot. You know, this is not a cutesy-thrusy Baby. Yeah, three-story tall. Yeah. Jolly Baby broadcast to the feed ID equals Jolly Baby.
00:27:03
Speaker
The other cargo bots and everything in the bay with a processing capability larger than a drone all immediately pinged it back and added amusement sigils like it was a stupid private joke. I said, you have to be shitting me.
00:27:14
Speaker
I already wanted to walk out an airlock and this didn't help. The only thing worse than humans infantilizing bots was bots infantilizing themselves. Babe, but I think you may be projecting ah little teeny bit, Murderbot. I don't know if Jolly Baby feels the same way about that that you do.
00:27:29
Speaker
Does Jolly Baby have the capability to feel that way? we We still haven't really established the level of, is it interoception is sense of self?
00:27:41
Speaker
I know inter interoception, I think of it as perceiving your own physical body, like stuff like hunger and temperature and things. I don't know if that also applies the mind version. But you know what we're talking about, listeners. Yeah, the mind version of interoception.
00:27:56
Speaker
Like, do they have that level of self-sense? and Can they determine that? We know things like like Mickey perhaps have higher levels of processing power, but like Jolly Baby, tell us, the other like Hollerbots around the port, how do they perceive, yeah can they perceive themselves?
00:28:18
Speaker
And then, yeah, guess, you know, if they don't necessarily have the processing power to really perceive themselves, how does humans...
00:28:30
Speaker
Essentially treating them as children constantly by by saying, like, yes, you're a citizen, you have the rights of a citizen, but also you need somebody to take care of you and make decisions for you. You know how does that how does that influence the how the bots interact?
00:28:48
Speaker
And also, if I was more prepared, I could go on a tirade about the fact that children don't have the rights of full citizens. No. in the United States. they They have no fucking rights. you can And I think that there's a very similar tension there. it's Like, you could be the most loving, most educated, most woke, gentle parent ever in the world. Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
And you still inherently have so much power legally over your kid that they can do nothing about. You can compel them to do so many things that there is just no recourse for because we just chalk so many things up to, well, that's your prerogative as a parent.
00:29:31
Speaker
And I think that that then also applies to anybody who needs a higher level of care than what our society expects individualistic, able-bodied, neurotypical people to be able to do for themselves. You know, people taking someone needing help or needing care as proof that they are not able to handle having rights.
00:29:56
Speaker
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. There is the other piece that gives us, I guess, a hint into bot, I guess, sentience, is that Balin was apparently the only bot ever to request on its own refugee status in Preservation Alliance.
00:30:14
Speaker
Mm, yeah. All other bots that have ever come from out system have come with a human. And a piece of that we learn is because Balin didn't actually do that on its own. That was part of its programming by a now defunct corporate polity to plant it on preservation in case of future need.
00:30:35
Speaker
And we get some insight from Jolly Baby, actually, where Murderbot is trying to figure out what's going on. And Jolly Baby says, Balen off network. Intruder destroyed Balen. So we're trying to figure out, was there ah second bot consciousness? Was there a second set of programming that overtook the nice Balen that everyone knew?
00:30:55
Speaker
there's not. It was all just one Balen all along. But like, would... Balin have been happy to continue just working for the Port Authority if that other programming had never kicked in. Like, it's it's complex.
00:31:12
Speaker
Well, it was the other programming kicked in, but it it also sounded like Brehar Walhan, the evil corporate in this one. Mm-hmm. Obtained like codes for it. Yeah.
00:31:22
Speaker
And was able to activate it. And so it sort of had this, you know, deep cover, hidden combat bot ability that it kept secret for its mission.
00:31:34
Speaker
It's a little... Are you familiar with the illegals program? I am not. I don't think so. It was during during the Cold War. the Soviets and also supposedly the Americans too, implanted agents, deep cover agents into, but the confirmed ones, the Soviets who implanted deep cover agents into the States who like would arrive here you know, under under deep cover, like from a different European nation, or they'd create, you know, fully American identities, get married, settle down, have kids, get a job, go about their days until they got some sort of ah command from KGB.
00:32:24
Speaker
Hey, we need you to do X thing. Hey, we need you to do Y. Take care of this. um That is the plot of the show, The Americans. It's a fictionalized version of that, obviously. but and it wasn't And when the Soviet Union fell...
00:32:42
Speaker
Some of them stayed. You know, some of them continued to work for the FSB and some of them just stayed. It's i actually, i think the foreign Russian service the GRU.
00:32:54
Speaker
Maybe. Doesn't matter particularly. They worked for whatever inherited the KGB's mantle. And some of them just faded into American society, just stayed and kept living their created lives.
00:33:09
Speaker
I think it was in either the late 90s or the early 2000s, there was the FBI busted a ring of them that like hadn't been actively involved in espionage in 20 years, but you know could still be charged under under espionage ah laws.
00:33:31
Speaker
But like they'd just gone dormant. They were ex-KGB spies living lives in this in the US, and the Soviet Union was gone. They never expected to do any more work for that, and also never expected to go home.
00:33:47
Speaker
Damn. that's i mean and i Reading this, I was like, oh, that's what Baylin was doing. yeah and yet then there's the then there's the the bot piece of all this when balen knows it's defeated there's no like remorse there's no like i was right there's no fight its way out and try to cause maximum damage it's i've completed my mission i'm good i'm shutting down now what the fuck Yeah, I did love that there was no big blowout robot battle because that's what we've come to expect after this many books is there's going to be a big, giant, climactic fight. And we still get a big, giant fight in this one because it's Murderbot.
00:34:25
Speaker
But when you have just bots dealing with each other, there's not that emotional need for vengeance or maximum destruction. Like you said, there is the...
00:34:36
Speaker
Welp, I am outnumbered. You have figured me out. My cover is blown. Time to shut down, everybody. It's been good. Also, still on the subject of bots a bit, but shifting gears.
00:34:48
Speaker
Gears. I want to talk about the very gender feelings about how SecUnit is received. by Station Security and the requirements imposed on it.
00:35:01
Speaker
Mm, yes. Station Security has two requirements for Murderbot. It cannot hack any systems... And it has to identify itself in the feed as a sec unit.
Queer Assimilation and Identity Themes
00:35:12
Speaker
It has feelings about being forced to out itself in the feed. Because that's that's what's happening. It's being forced to out itself. It doesn't want to be seen as a human, but it doesn't, but knows that if humans see that it's a sec unit, they will think of it as a bot, as a mindless murder bot.
00:35:32
Speaker
Which ah highlights this again, this bot-human binary. And putting itself actively in the middle and identifying itself that way means it knows the humans find that different and weird and scary.
00:35:46
Speaker
They don't know what to make of it. Which is a very non-binary moment there. Yeah. That's a very... I have an X identifier on my government paperwork. My passport has an on my my passport has an x on it My driver's license has an X on it.
00:36:06
Speaker
I cannot do that for social security. I cannot do that um for my other passport that I have dual for the country I have dual citizenship for. I can't do that on...
00:36:20
Speaker
other other other forms and is that perfect that's you know i have weird feelings about that on the one hand i like having that option i like being able to say no i'm not a man i'm not a woman leave me the fuck alone and on the other hand i am actively saying to the government yes i am trans i don't love that yeah i can see that that being an issue You know, I'm actively handing to every border officer I ever meet.
00:36:49
Speaker
Yeah, i here, I'm i'm um a fucking... It's complicated. Like, yeah, no. On the one hand, if I had the choice, I would not be perceived as a gender.
00:37:01
Speaker
On the other hand, the There isn't really a choice to do that. The choice to do that is is actively putting myself in a position where a lot of people either won't understand or will be actively hostile about it.
00:37:17
Speaker
You know, if I ever get pulled over by a cop, you know, i have to hand them my license. I don't fucking know what that, you know, I know that they're cop, so I know they're a bastard by default, but like, I don't know what what that cop's politics are.
00:37:30
Speaker
Probably not good because again, cop. Yeah. But like, it's it's a weird situation to be in yeah the Yeah. Also sort of telling telling it, you must have a name, you must have an identifier.
00:37:45
Speaker
You must be able to be seen in a way that makes sense to us. We don't understand the way that you are. So you must make yourself palatable to us.
00:37:58
Speaker
Yeah. You know, we could talk a lot about queer assimilation. could. the the the The, you know, it two cis white gay men with with a white picket fence living next door to the straight couple and they, you know, go to their and jobs and our auto and other than the fact that they're gay, they're utterly indistinguishable from every other American on the block.
00:38:22
Speaker
And then there's, you know, the the radical queers, you You know, with their spiky hair and they stand out and they're different. Mm-hmm.
00:38:33
Speaker
You know, and they they, you know, wear their kink gear to pride and they... Gasp! You know, and that they're, you know, proudly polyamorous and they're...
00:38:45
Speaker
uh you know they they have funky names like like river and frog and leaf and leaf was gonna be the first one on my list yeah We love you, Leafs. If if you're a Leaf out there, we love you.
00:39:01
Speaker
but Honestly, amazing. i I have also used the noun name at various points and in various circles. They have new pronouns that don't make grammatical sense. Yeah, it's it's all the, like...
00:39:17
Speaker
You must make yourself palatable to fit in. You must make yourself palatable to be accepted. you know, we can't fight for trans rights now. That's too far. We have to allow people to slowly adjust to gay people.
00:39:30
Speaker
Then we can talk about trans rights.
Refugee Networks and Preservation's Role
00:39:33
Speaker
You know, we have to allow people to adjust that you're a free thinking bot. Then we can talk about, you know, you getting to hide.
00:39:43
Speaker
And luckily for Murderbot, it is not facing all of these issues alone because Pinley smells blood. The moment that it is suggested that Murderbot has to do this, it sends her a message in the feed saying, make a legal thing so I don't have to do that.
00:40:04
Speaker
And then Pinley is just frantically, the equivalent of frantically typing. And then ah she just goes, everyone who has a feed ID has one voluntarily. consensually one might say and she is just assembling documents to get senior inter removed from office for violating murder bots human rights saying like oh absolutely we are not forcing this issue my friend you have just stepped in it big time I'm a member of the Construct community, and this is my this is my friend, Pin Lee. She's an ally. Talk, Pin Lee.
00:40:40
Speaker
Ally. Talk, Pin Lee. I'm going to get you removed from office, you motherfucker.
00:40:49
Speaker
Anything else on bots? Because I have a ah sharp ah topic change. ah Bots and Constructs. The only other thing put a button on this is part of Murderbot's musing about what feed identifier it will choose.
00:41:05
Speaker
It does like the name Rin. Shout out to the name Rin. Great name. Fuck yeah. Spelled differently, but yes. you know Saying, I could use it and the humans on the station wouldn't have to think about what I was. A construct made of cloned human tissue, augments, anxiety, depression, and unfocused rage.
00:41:21
Speaker
A killing machine for whichever humans rented me until I made a mistake and got my brain destroyed by my governor module. I posted a feed ID with the name SecUnit. gender equals not applicable and no other information there's lot of wrestling I mean i do love it's no I also do love it's like yeah no fuck you I'll comply but I'm doing the bare fucking minimum also last little bit on this and then we'll move on just thinking about Murderbot expressing itself and i don't know and identity it's mad that there's not enough good shopping on preservation it really liked the little corporate
00:41:59
Speaker
clothing kiosk where you could pick out clothes and customize them with whatever little pattern you want it and i was going ew it's all these humans and they're handmade textiles this is stupid there's not enough good fashion here i love that and also that murder bots preferred fashion is ah hoodie and joggers i'm sure preservation can hook you up with some of those I'm 100% positive on that one.
00:42:26
Speaker
But now we can pivot. Cool. Let's talk about Lutron and the Refugee Underground Railroad. Yeah. Where do you want to start with that? ho I think let's start with Lutron and ah the smugglers from Wai Brogatan.
00:42:45
Speaker
um Because they're they're part of the same network. It's ah it's you know described as a compartmentalized network. Somebody picks up the refugees ah from Brehar-Walhan, from the asteroid field, transports them to Wabrogatan, hands them off to this other group, which transports them somewhere else, where they're picked up by Lutron, who transports them somewhere else.
00:43:07
Speaker
It's not confirmed whether or not there's also an additional step or not in there. Lutron might also have additional steps. And these people are not like the ones that we saw back in, think artificial condition, when Murderbot's playing security consultant on the ship for all the people who are shipping off to contract.
00:43:29
Speaker
So these are not like those people who had signed their lives away to the corporation under duress. These people were born into corporate slavery. there are There is generations of this horrible human exploitation happening just in case you thought it couldn't get worse and there is also a throwaway line towards the end about one of the humans having an infection because he ripped a corporate interface out of his forehead so they also have tracked they also have implants and augments against their will yeah
00:44:07
Speaker
um I also like the little the little bit about the auto translator being and in play. And there's like a couple of points where the auto translator doesn't get things quite right.
00:44:18
Speaker
And there's like one time or more where, you know, Murderbot comments on it. And there's a couple other times where Murderbot doesn't comment on it. But you can tell Martha Wells is kind of joking around with like the auto translators pulling a Google Translate here. It's doing a literal translation, but not capturing like the...
00:44:39
Speaker
the vernacular, whereas other times it's definitely getting the vernacular and we're not really sure. But there's the one line that I picked up on was, I know, penis move, right?
00:44:50
Speaker
ah So good. It was like, ah, we we meant to say dick move, but like. Very good. Penis move.
00:45:01
Speaker
ah sure hope it does. Yeah.
00:45:07
Speaker
But like, just in one axis of direction, I guess. I can't, have move on. To be very serious now, Lutron is dead.
00:45:19
Speaker
And so now, you know, we get this batch of people to safety. But he had been working for years across multiple different stations and systems.
00:45:30
Speaker
And so presumably because of their sort of cell structure of this organization, there will be someone else to fill that role. But what about all of the other people who might have been at an earlier stage of the pipeline who Lutron was going to get next, but now their contact isn't there anymore?
00:45:46
Speaker
How is this going to affect the broader network? Hopefully not too much because that's how... cell structures are designed to work but I worry that you know we have this one person who is doing incredible work but is still just a drop in the bucket of this atrocious galaxies wide system there's also you know on the one hand that there there's this sort of isolation of cell pieces of the cell but also they are so isolated that they don't even really know where they are
00:46:19
Speaker
um and we And we see this when station security picks up the smugglers from Wade Rogatown. Because the smugglers like take a couple of station security hostage, which is what ultimately leads Murderbot to hack into their ship, break in, and absolutely wreck shop without killing any of them.
00:46:42
Speaker
Mm-hmm. They, like, it's it speaks to the isolation and the paranoia that they're dealing with. Like, whether or not they were passing through preservation just this once, or they were passing through preservation this whole time, preservation would have helped them.
00:46:59
Speaker
Preservation is a safe place. It's a non-corporate polity. It's clearly more than one wormhole jump away from Brehar Walhan. Maybe they see it as not enough, but, like,
00:47:12
Speaker
you know Even if the the refugees don't want to stay on preservation, it's been mentioned in the past that like preservation will help people get elsewhere.
00:47:24
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Like, people who don't want to stay on preservation do not have to stay on preservation. And if you need help going elsewhere, they will help you get there. So, like, you know, they had reached a safe spot, and yet they were they were still so siloed that they were they were sure that they weren't safe.
Preservation's Historical Obsessions
00:47:46
Speaker
They were sure they were fucking screwed the moment that their cover was blown. There's a good line where the smugglers are being questioned.
00:47:58
Speaker
Station security is reading them their rights. It was a lot of rights. I was pretty sure it was more rights than a human who hadn't been detained by station security had in the corporation rim.
00:48:10
Speaker
Luxury space communism. who Our little, our little solar punk utopia here in the sky. Speaking of preservation and thinking about the origins of preservation on the colony ship that had escaped from ah corporate polity and declined to work with the corporation rim.
00:48:28
Speaker
Let's talk about safety equipment, safety and rights in yeah ah ancient preservation station. So ah one of the many things that we learn about preservation culture is it's kind of obsessed with itself. There's a lot in like a nice way, I guess, but there's a lot of informational displays about the history of preservation and beautiful projections of plants that you may see on the surface, plants that you should please and thank you, not touch.
00:48:59
Speaker
But, you know, it's just all kinds of helpful images. things and historical documentaries that people are constantly trying to force you to watch so much preserved history including ancient before there were evac suits there were life tender bags and a life tender is just a big old bag that you climb in And hope for the best.
00:49:29
Speaker
You hope that it'll get you out of your failing ship and to maybe somewhere else. Yeah, it's got like a rudimentary propulsion system and it carries like six people at once. so And that's it.
00:49:44
Speaker
And we love this fucking bag. Murderbot develops... a close bond with the bag it goes from oh god i have to use this stupid bag because it can't be tracked and so it'll keep the brehar wallhand guys from finding it and there's all kinds of reasons we have to use the bag and it's just going oh this is so stupid i have to get in the bag but then going from that to cheering for this bag you can do it blorp your way along the whole of the ship bag i was emotionally invested in the bag
00:50:17
Speaker
Then the bag bumped. It wasn't really a bump. It was more like a blorp into something so solid and stopped. I checked navigation and holy shit, we're here. And just the word blorp then gets used.
00:50:33
Speaker
The bag's sensor system was primitive, but it knew it had blorped itself up against the curving hull of a ship. Yeah, did. I got the bag to blorp along the hull over to where the module should be.
00:50:43
Speaker
My bag, blorping quietly to itself on the access hatch, was starting to look really friendly in comparison. And finally, the last message of the last mention of blorping was, I checked my input for the life tender.
00:50:56
Speaker
It had reached the colony ship's hull and was blorping along towards the airlock. Yeah, it was. We love you. i think that if this bag could name itself like Jolly Baby, it would name itself Blorpy.
00:51:08
Speaker
That's how I've referred to it in my notes. We love Blorpy. We love you so much. I was so excited because I was talking to Miles about reading Fugitive Telemetry and they were going, oh, that's the one with the refugees, right?
00:51:22
Speaker
And then that reminded me, this is the one with the bag. i'm so excited. Yeah, I was i was like and was thinking as we were reading through through some of the others, I was like, where does the Blorpy bag come in? Because that has stuck in my brain since I first read it.
Murderbot's Cultural Fascination
00:51:40
Speaker
i have one final...
00:51:43
Speaker
fun moment from this book, small little fun moment from this book. But if we have anything else to go over, I'm, my notes are exhausted much like murder bot after hearing about all these robots names.
00:51:58
Speaker
I mean, you, you should be the one to say this because it was your thought, but ah that murder bot doesn't say anything about not liking Garothan in this book.
00:52:09
Speaker
And just like the very sweet, shenanigans of rathi and groth and like standing in front of security cameras so murderbot can get into mischief i have a note that just says general sassing inda yeah i think just in general it it's fun to see everyone at home and relaxed pinley going off to take intoxicants with her friend humans murderbot going to shows with rathi it's great Yeah, I love that we don't know what sort of intoxicants they are.
00:52:39
Speaker
i love that it's not fit because it could be literally anything. I am sure that all kinds of drugs are legal on preservation, although there's probably excellent education about them. and So they're not abused.
00:52:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm sure there's incredible education and safe injection sites and, you know, treatment programs if people want that. And yeah, I'm sure that there is so much safety around drug use in preservation.
00:53:10
Speaker
But like she could be having a beer with her friends or she could be like smoking opium. Like, I don't know. pinley Pinley is way up in the sky with diamonds. And honestly, good for her.
00:53:22
Speaker
I have a note from our, which was, i just finished the book and I love preservation. Yeah. Earlier this week was just a message that I sent to you. And my, my final thing.
00:53:34
Speaker
Speaking of loving preservation, I love that there is just a food stand on Preservation Station called Starchy Foods! Three exclamation points! Starchy Foods!
00:53:48
Speaker
Like, Ritterbott fully mentioned, that's what it says in Preservation Standard Nomenclature, Starchy Foods! Three exclamation points. You know, I would go to Starchy Foods, that's all i need to know.
00:53:59
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, nothing else needed. I'm a fan of starchy foods. Yeah. Do you have a favorite? yeah I know that the standard comparison is potatoes, pasta, rice, but these are not equivalent comparisons.
00:54:14
Speaker
Tell me more. Pasta is one form of processing wheat into something edible, right? Like, you can use wheat and wheat flour to form so many fucking other things and being like, you know, it it's like saying fries, pasta, rice cakes.
00:54:40
Speaker
Like, picking one version of something, not the same thing. right you know i i feel like perhaps you know we've we've made wheat pretty versatile i guess particularly in in in like how we process wheat flour where's fucking corn on this list that fucking too where's corn show me the corn show me the most nutritionally complex ancient varieties of corn
00:55:13
Speaker
I was going to say ah ah it's it's mostly in probably some sort of like oil or or syrup format in actually a surprising amount of things.
00:55:25
Speaker
And honestly, actually a really concerning amount of things from our vast corn monocultures. The corn piration rim. I tragically do not have enough knowledge of the subject to really dive into corn and its effect on america the American economy and American farms.
00:55:50
Speaker
I believe there's a John Oliver bit about it. I'm nodding sagely, listeners.
00:55:57
Speaker
Hang on. I need to confirm whether this is true. John Oliver. While you confirm, i will answer your question and say that love is abundant and every starchy food is unique. I would never choose one starch above another.
00:56:11
Speaker
We are, hang on. Okay. Relations starch anarchists? We'll workshop it.
00:56:22
Speaker
Star relation chart. Star relation chart. That's what happens if you have too much of the starch. Too much fiber. Particularly if you're ah gluten intolerant.
00:56:38
Speaker
There is a ah last week tonight with John Oliver corn ah bit discuss the financial and environmental impact of corn in the US. So I adore John Oliver's little bits. they're They're wonderful starting points for things I didn't even know were a problem.
00:56:59
Speaker
So yeah, if you want to know more about corn, you can watch John Oliver's bit that's on YouTube. And I'll loop it back to murder bot real quick and then we can take it out yeah i am realizing now as we're talking so much about corn and starchy foods this book starchy foods sorry starchy foods that that's like heaven our free pronounces that yeah yeah we need a soundboard button for starchy foods that intrasure anyway in this book murder bot is observing and commenting on a lot of specific <unk> foods that the humans are eating in ways that it has not cared about
00:57:34
Speaker
In all of the other
Engagement and Farewell
00:57:35
Speaker
ones. In All Systems Red, it just mentions something offhandedly about food packets. And then later we get food packets and hot liquids. But now we know that people are eating squash dumplings and they're drinking tea. And there's starting to be just a little bit even though it can't eat and drink, just a little bit more interest in recording what specifically people are eating and just as general marker of its interest in human culture and caring about its friends. I think that's sweet.
00:58:09
Speaker
Yeah, I still, I still, i love the, like, the interest in human culture and yet the, the still desire to, like, I don't, I don't need to necessarily be a part of that. Yeah, that's good for you. Murderbot is the good for her Good for you.
00:58:24
Speaker
but Well, and the only ones who really seem to get that about it are the the survey team. But Bardwaj is trying to change that with her documentary.
00:58:38
Speaker
And I've got nothing else. um So if you like what you're hearing, please leave us a rating and or a review, depending on the podcast platform you're listening on.
00:58:51
Speaker
You can do both. Please do both. We'd really appreciate it. It Helps the podcast reach new ears. Gets us random emails from l LA publicists. Very cool. We did not take them up on that kind offer because it wasn't a good fit, but still wild.
00:59:07
Speaker
Yeah, so those numbers, it actually does make a difference and is really cool. Yeah, and if you if you are an LA publicist or if you are...
00:59:20
Speaker
Anyone else, any one of our other listeners, and you have, you would like to contact us about something. You would like to comment on something we said in the episode. You want to propose an interlude episode for us to do.
00:59:34
Speaker
You have more opinions about Have recipes for starchy foods. Starchy foods! You have more commentary on Murderbot and gender and the the non-binary feelings of having to label yourself to the government and to everyone who sees your identification.
00:59:57
Speaker
You can hit us up in the feed, aka on any of our social media, ah at fanapppod on any and all of our social media. We're pretty active on Tumblr. We're reasonably active on Instagram.
01:00:10
Speaker
And ah good luck with the others. You can send us an email at thefandomapprentice at gmail.com. You can subscribe to the podcast.
01:00:22
Speaker
I feel like need to leave a pause in there, but. You can subscribe to the podcast ah wherever you get your podcasts, wherever you are currently listening. And hopefully you will come back in two weeks to hear us with our next episode for more Murderbot. Mordorbot.
01:00:44
Speaker
Mordorbot is, it sounds... yeah I know. it sounds. It sounds. And with that, listeners, we will jump just at the last second away from the pit of lava that we've been lowered into this entire recording back into the safety of our air conditioning.
01:01:02
Speaker
Thank you all for hanging out. We'll see you next time. 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.
01:01:18
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.
01:02:06
Speaker
Mordor bot.
01:02:09
Speaker
A.k.a. Sauron.