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first it was the klingons—they’re originally supposed to be this cruel, bloodthirsty, war-obsessed people—and then tng comes along and it’s like wait no maybe war and violence is a part of their culture and actually ties back to ancient traditions and philosophies so we have to be woke about it.

hey these are the ferengi and they’re supposed to represent everything we hate about capitalist society; they’re greedy, scheming, profit-obsessed, and they look like ugly little trolls to emphasize how much we fucking HATE capitalism. oh wait fuck here comes deep space nine and we have to recognize that they’re PEOPLE. okok what if the pursuit of profit is actually part of their culture and ties back to ancient traditions and philosophies. so we have to be woke about it.

this is the borg, they’re a hivemind race of cyborgs who have no sense of individuality and their only motivation is assimilating people into their society. they want to assimilate humanity and we are completely defenseless against them because their technology is eons ahead of our own and they’re incapable of being reasoned with. oh sweet we have a borg prisoner this is the perfect opportunity to commit genocide against them. fuck actually we can’t commit genocide we’re woke and communists and in space.

hey these are the cardassians, they’re part of a cruel and vicious empire which is supposed to be a representation of fascism and authoritarian regimes, they’re a cold, bloodthirsty people with no sense of empathy or compassion, their society literally references 1984 on multiple occasions, and they’re known for the insanely cruel and inhumane methods of torture they use against their prisoners of war. we hate the cardassians…….. except, here’s a cardassian kid who grew up on bajor, and……. fuck. he’s a person. now we actually have to consider his humanity. and being racist is actually……. bad.

this is the jem’hadar, they’re genetically engineered soldiers who have no sense of individuality and only live to defend the state. they’re all born addicted to a synthetic drug that’s manufactured by the state and administered by their masters—this is how they’re kept subservient. they’re ruthless and powerful and they’re incapable of being reasoned with because their only motivation is violence and killing. so we should kill them all, right? FUCK….. what if they’re actually people. goddamnit. now we have to consider their humanity.

UplandGatewayOne, the station where they met, is ART's home station. In Mihira and New Tideland's system. Which is deeply anti-corporate. SecUnit even notes at the time that there aren't any security or bond companies there, so nobody should be looking for escaping SecUnits. Iris and Matteo, for all the anti-corporate missions they've been on, have never even seen one, which means Perihelion most likely hasn't either. They're not deployed on transit rings except in GrayCris-paying-to-murder-people situations, and when they are, it's a big deal accompanied by a lot of alarms and screaming and panic.

And one just kind of strolls across the private docks without setting off the weapons scanners. Wholly unnoticed.

So there was already no legitimate explanation for a SecUnit being here. That's point one. Which means it has to have an illegitimate reason.

And ART's paranoia is easily on par with Tarik's, generally speaking. Even though it's never encountered a SecUnit before it has to be aware that this could be an attack by a corporate. Except the SecUnit's got no drones, no additional weaponry, no armor, and it's wearing cargo pants and a hoodie. Which would seem to suggest that it's supposed to be mistaken for a human -- okay, maybe that explains how it got across the transit station a tiny bit? Not really. But at least it accounts for the lack of screaming.

But there's no point in it trying to pretend it's a human now, if this is the prelude to some kind of attack. It's not like ART is a passenger transport, and these are the private non-commercial docks. It can't get on board without trying to hack the lock, and it can't get too far from its handler without frying itself, so it has to do whatever it's doing before ART leaves the transit ring. Whatever attack is coming, it has to be soon. Like, right now, soon.

And it just pings ART directly.

Not even... trying to hide its presence as a potential hostile MI a little.

That is... possibly the most stupid prelude to a code attack it could have made? And if it had been trying to pretend it was human to persuade ART's crew (who aren't even here anyway) to give it access to the ship, it just blew its cover. What the hell is its human handler thinking? They're really bad at this.

And then it asks for a ride--which, again, is hilarious if it thinks it can gain entry that easily--wait. What the fuck? It's offering several hundred hours of entertainment media as a trade.

There is no human handler.

ART doesn't even have to check the governor module at that point. No human would imagine that transports watch television. Possibly, no other bots besides transports would know that they do, because transports are famously not-communicative. Nobody could have instructed it to say that. The only way the SecUnit itself could have gotten the idea that this approach might work is if it tried it before and it was successful.

Okay, so what we know for sure is: This SecUnit is a rogue, and it talks to transports.

And apparently it's hitchhiking?

This raises so many more questions than it answers.

Where the hell did it come from? How did it get across the station without setting off any alerts? Why was it chatting up transports before now? How did it even get several hundred hours of entertainment media downloads? And why the hell would any sentient being, let alone a rogue SecUnit, want to hitchhike to RaviHyral? A crummy little moon which has nothing on it except for mines.

ART's explanation of, "I was curious about you," for letting Murderbot on board is the understatement of the millennium.