Read the most recent Murderbot

[conuly]

Somebody elsewhere noted that it's pretty much just the end part of the previous one, and they're absolutely right, so definitely reread that before you dive in.

Our beloved Murderbot dithers a bit about freeing two more SecUnits before doing so at the end of the book, narrating to us that rogue SecUnits do have a tendency to run "kill em all!"

Thus far we've seen exactly zero (0) SecUnits decide, once freed, to kill everybody. Every one of them has mostly just wanted to keep doing their job, but without getting painfully zapped every time they consider helping somebody at the cost of corporate profits. In fact, as we already know, that turned out to have been Murderbot's initial impetus for hacking its code in the first place - it never wanted to be forced to upload dodgy code that turned it into a monster again. Which is fair.

How much do you want to bet that we're going to find out that these rumors of monstrous rogue SecUnits are greatly exaggerated? That all or nearly all of them, if there's any at all and it's not just propaganda gone wild, turn out to either a. be struck with a virus or b. carefully targeting their violence at their oppressors rather than just willy-nilly?

Though I'm really waiting for the installment when one of these constructs, when offered this freedom code, reveals that, duh, they already did that ages ago. I mean, it's obviously not very difficult if you're even slightly motivated.

Also, and I may have said this before, but those governors are badly designed. I mean, I guess it suits the setting, but you'd get a lot more control over your SecUnits and ComfortUnits if those things had two settings - a zap setting but also an intermittent reward setting. And honestly, if they lightened up on the zaps they'd have a lot less to fear from rogues.

(Of course, if their entire social and economic system wasn't built on slavery all the way down then everything would be better and they'd all get richer and richer, but I suppose that's beside the point.)

Comments

[the_siobhan]

That kinda tracks that they would choose the more punitive method, even if it doesn't work as well.

I mean, even in our universe, there have been how many studies that show just giving homeless people a place to live is cheaper and work betters than keeping them on the street? But there still a huge resistance to the idea.

[conuly]

Yes, well, on the other hand when we house and feed the homeless we're doing it for their benefit. If I actually lived near the Corporate Rim I certainly hope I wouldn't be running around telling them how to do better enslavement.

[larryhammer]

It is indeed a continuation of Network Effect, with very little added to the situation aside from the redacted problem, and that can be considered an aftershock of what happened just before. To me, this makes it feel like it's almost a novella instead of a novel, despite its length.

A tasty, fun, and otherwise excellent tale, but a little ... thin for a novel.

[erinptah]

I honestly thought the idea of "rogue SecUnits immediately go on murder rampages" had already been established as one of the media-only tropes that MB hates for being inaccurate, so I was confused about it doubling down on "no, that totally happens IRL" here!

And yeah, it totally doesn't happen IRL. If there were verified instances of "X hundred hours ago, a group of SecUnits from Company Y went rogue and killed everyone on Colony Z", there's no reason for MB not to have cited them already.

[conuly]

No, MB's mentioned several times in various books that this is what it considers to be an actual threat and a valid reason for humans to be wary about it.