Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries #2) by Martha Wells

It has a dark past – one in which a number of humans were killed. A past that caused it to christen itself “Murderbot”. But it has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more.

Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

What it discovers will forever change the way it thinks…

Format: audiobook
Narrator: Kevin R. Free
Performance: 🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑
Story: 🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑

Can an artificial intelligence make friends with another AI? If constructs and bots can keep secrets from humans, what kind of secrets would it be? If a bot got bored, what will it do?

Exhibit B: ART aka Asshole Research Transport

I’m accustomed to assisting my crew with large-scale data analysis, and numerous other experiments. While I am in transport mode, I find my unused capacity tiresome. Solving your problems is an interesting exercise in lateral thinking.

“So you’re bored? I’d be the best toy you’ve ever had?” When I was on inventory, I would have given anything for twenty-one cycles of unobserved downtime. I couldn’t feel sorry for ART. “If you’re bored, watch the media I gave you.”

Lovable snarky construct, Murderbot continues  his adventures in search of answers hidden in abandoned mining facillities.  On his way there, he bribes a Research Transport with some of his downloaded media in exchange for boarding. The Research Transport, christened ART started talking to him.

"You were lucky"

“Why am I lucky?”

"That no one realized what you were."

The two bored bots then had a marathon of space serials, wherein Murderbot gives ART the bot equivalent of hand holding as they go through the tragic scenes and engage in an in-depth discussion of how to pass as human wherein ART convinces Murderbot to undergo an experimental procedure to alter his features to look more human. This is the part where I felt a wave of outrage because Murderbot is too good to sully himself and I am of the strong opinion that he is fine the way he is. Fortunately, I was able to get past Murderbot's downgrade and then it wasn't so bad. I guess it was a necessity for him in order to maintain his autonomy.

The rest of the story involves Murderbot voluntarily working for a team of, in his opinion, not very sensible humans as a security consultant in order to find information about Ganaka Pit. As with the first book, Murderbot, this time with ART's judicious assistance, does everything to keep his humans safe and I realized Murderbot does like humans, he just doesn't trust them with themselves. And if ART had eyes to roll, he would be rolling them off their sockets.

I phrased it as a question, because pretending you were asking for more information was the best way to try to get the humans to realize they were doing something stupid. “So do you think there’s another reason Tlacey wants you to do this exchange in person, other than … killing you?”

The revelation at Ganaka Pit was not the self-altering experience that Murderbot expected it to be. He didn't explicitly say it but it must be a relief to know the truth anyway. I suspect it's that wave of I don't care washing over him. Funny how a construct has to keep fighting apathy and pretend to deny his personhood. When you have zero fucks to give, you Netflix and chill.

There a mass of conflicting feelings regarding this book. On one hand, I don't want Murderbot and ART humanized because I want to see something where humans are not the default. On the other, I enjoyed the construct and the transport exhibiting very human emotions of sarcasm, boredom, empathy and mutual love for space soap operas. I also love the fact that Murderbot remained adamantly asexual and agender inspite of ART's suggestion of adding private parts. I only use he in this review because of the male narrator, Kevin R. Free who was beyond brilliant in bringing Murderbot to life. The story also showed that caring about people could be, simply, entirely that, caring. Without the romance, the sex or any other stupid complications humans tend to bring into the equation.  

I love Murderbot! I love ART! Together, they fool humans into thinking they were just a security consultant and his friend working together.  Nobody was any wiser as they hack Secsystems, forge feed signatures and delete gazillion bytes of data to cover their tracks. They really make a good team. I hope their paths will cross again.  Who says bots can't be emotional at good byes?

For review of All Systems Red, click here.

SOUNDTRACK

One More Robot - Sympathy 3000-21

Flaming Lips
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robot

Unit three thousand twenty one is warming
Makes a humming sound - when its circuits
Duplicate emotions - and a sense of coldness detaches
As it tries to comfort your sadness 
One more robot learns to be
Something more than a machine
When it tries the way it does
Makes it seem like it can love 
Cause it's hard to say what's real
When you know the way you feel
Is it wrong to think it's love
When it tries the way it does...
Feeling a synthetic kind of love
Dreaming a sympathetic wish 
As the lights blink faster and brighter 
One more robot learns to be
Something more than a machine
When it tries the way it does
Makes it seem like it can love 
Cause it's hard to say what's re

When it tries the way it does...al
When you know the way you feel
Is it wrong to think it's love

https://www.azlyrics.com

Rest In Peace
Mille Fille
Good Kitty
2013-2018