MrCelleOshkosh.

I’m writing a h/c fanfic about Murderbot, Three and Perihelion, dealing with SecUnit-PTSD and grief (Three misses 01 and 02).

It is in such a terrible and lonely position and yet there are moments of normality.

And in the same way it’s so sad but interesting at the end of ASR when mb first sees the human part of the station. It is so so impressed by all the stuff it sees and compares it to media and is so distracted by looking at all the sights that it can’t even focus on anything that happens around it.

So SecUnits are made from organic and inorganic parts. The organic parts are made from cloned material (from humans).

But SecUnits never go through a childhood, so their organic parts have to be grown seperatly before the SecUnits are assembled. Probably all organic organs, muscles, neural tissue just is pre-grown in a laboratory and then there is a phase after assembly, when it properly grows into one being (still in the laboratory). That process must be quite complex to get their whole fluid system going and integrated. Some sort of synthetic blood for the organic parts, lubricants for the machine parts and possible other things too. All needs to be seamlessly integrated into one system that contains the organic and inorganic parts.

Either the SecUnits go through some sort of training/calibration phase, or the organic neural tissue can be programmed/trained by the inorganic parts somehow. After all neural tissue needs to learn too and needs to bild up the right neural connections and so on. I guess there must be some sort of calibration and adjustment phase for that to happen before a unit can be first deployed.

Even though it only says "cloned" in the books, I think the genome has also been heavily edited. I imagine that each company has their own patented and proprietary genome. (They agree on using standard body types though, so that units can be identified by scanning and also possibly use the same equipment). SecUnit organics are also relying on oxigene (SecUnits have a lung) but they don't eat and get their energy from power cells (that can be recharged, maybe externally, or maybe by some fusion reactor inside the units?). So the organic parts take their energy directly from that (just like the inorganic parts do). Some genetic editing probably is needed here. And besides that, I bet the companies did a tone of genetic modification. No sexual development in the secunits, enhanced strength and durability, possible some sort of engineered endocrine system (that is different from a human system).

I also think that the genome has been designed to perfectly work together with the inorganic parts. Normally an organism would have an immune reaction to foreign parts (even if those are organic too). But I bet their medicine and genetic engineering has gotten past that without disabling the immune system. I bed SecUnits have their genome edited in a way that makes their organic parts recognize the inorganic parts as part of their organism.

Does MB explain that at some point?

I remember one scene when Pin Lee wants MB to wait before signing some contract until it isn’t acutely injured and in distress and MB is like “so I can’t do that, because my owner says so?!”

It feels like humans want to patronize it at best and sell it for spare parts at worst. And it isn’t wrong. Even the preservation humans have biases. But they have good intentions and I think sometimes it’s difficult for MB to believe that.

ART on the other hand has completely different experiences with humans in general and specifically its crew. Seth, Martyn and Iris are its family and they treat it with love and respect. The way it behaves it seems to me that the university supports its independence or at the very least makes it so that Perihelion can get away with acting independently.

This might lead to some tension between MB and ART. especially towards ART’s family. Murderbot likely will distrust them to some degree and ART likely won’t get how Murderbot can not see that those are nice people. Or maybe Murderbot gets uncomfortable with the way ART interacts with its humans. The things it allows them to get away with. Maybe ART shares a childhood memory of little Iris is coloring on little ART’s drone body. They both wanted to and it’s a fond memory for Iris and ART, but Murderbot is appalled. ART lets humans draw on it? How demeaning, worse than logos!