i like to think that in system collapse... okay, you know when murderbot comes out of its tête-à-tête (ratthi: "he's joking") with leonide, and it's super angry and irate and spiraling, but then it gets an idea and by the time it's done thinking through what all the moving parts are, it's crouched down into a huddle with its face in its hands?
i like to think it crouches down in slowwwwwwwwwwwwwww mmmmmmmmotiioooooooooon.
bc like, humans drop down into a crouch fast either because we intend to end up in a crouch asap, or, even if we wanted to go as slow as possible, there's a bit of a limit to how slow the vast majority of people would be willing/able to go. executing that motion, you're moving from a position where our bones are well-stacked into a position that's not stacked but very well-supported by other bones, fat, and muscles.
the first one requires almost no effort from the muscles and we can generally hold that position "indefinitely," maybe only shifting weight side-to-side
the second one requires quite a lot more muscle engagement, and the less flexible you are (the less snug your crouch), the more effort. but it's still pretty damn passive and can still be maintained for a good long while if challenged to do so or if really flexible and comfortable
but the in-between? oh lord, there are so many isometric (unmoving/static) muscle-building exercises that exist around this in-between state specifically because the bones aren't fucking stacked, they're not supported by anything, and literally every single additional degree of deviation from the center of gravity requires more effort from the muscles. it's tiring to go slow. if you go slow enough, you will start shaking, maybe even sweating, your body will be sending increasingly urgent signals that it's had enough
in comes our protagonist. murderbot
you know. the secunit. secunits don't get tired from physical effort. secunits can run all the way until they need a recharge cycle without getting tired.
isometric postures mean NOTHING to it
and it's so wrapped up in its spiraling/planning that it is absolutely not paying attention to its face or movements. it's surprised to find itself in that position when it looks up
without any conscious intention to act upon, its body just... threw up its hands and made a fucking call. "let's set it down gently, lads!"
so what the humans see on adacol2's camera visuals — (and i'm assuming it shared that with the humans either directly to a native screen device or via feed through its connection with Perihelion-drone. if it wasn't already sharing the nearest camera view when Murderbot came out, it would have absolutely done so after the strange behavior started, at the very least in the "what is wrong with it? is it supposed to do that?? it's not responding!" sense, so yeah, they can definitely see it, is what i'm saying) — and what they see on adacol2's camera visuals is murderbot standing around looking at nothing, like it usually does, except also looking like it's about to pop a blood-vessel from pure anger. but then it just sort of starts to...
slide so slowly that it's a completely indiscernible motion to the humans even though it's measurably no longer standing straight
it's lowering itself slower than you have ever seen a pneumatic door slowly close. it's lowering itself slower than the thickest crystallized honey can goop off a spoon. watching paint dry would take less time.
okay, okay, subjectively, as murderbot would say.
objectively, it probably managed to speedrun both its whole emotional meltdown and its eureka elation all within the space of five minutes.
anyway, if you read all of this, uh... oops, sorry. there's no actual big reveal or conclusion at the end of this. (wait, what the fuck? this post is unnecessarily long;;; i thought it would be three short paragraphs??)
i just wanted to say i think it crouched c o m i c a l l y s l o w.
and that mental image is hilarious and shall feed me for the next five winters, at least. after all of the things they have been through together, all the anomalous situations, all the weird and shocking shit ratthi had seen it do before... nothing could have prepared him for this. i think the humans were squawking and yelling and violently jumping in place from consternation and worry as they watched the transmitted video, their souls yearning to laugh until they cried, but too bound by stress to do so
i think!! that maybe!! there was even a bit of a pneumatic hisssssssss~ coming from murderbot as it sank, and yes that is also hilarious to me
and, most vitally, most ridiculous and delightful of all, i think it had absolutely NO idea about any of this; its assumption was that it had squatted down "naturally." why wouldn't it? it makes sense, it's the only way people move, it's just how you squat, and in any case, murderbot would know that it had still been running its move-like-a-human code, and— forget all that, none of these justifications occur to it bc it can't even imagine that it would have done this basic action any other way
until adacol2 and ratthi both independently send it a copy of the recording
and it just stands there, stupefied, "..................................what."
(after recovering from this whole misadventure, ratthi absolutely shares the clip with amena. i hear she still pulls it up and watches it whenever she needs a good laugh)
