Recursive Systems is about Three's development as a person coming to terms with agency just as much as it is about plural!Murderbot and related shenanigans and drama. Three's journey is actually the other main character.
The story is set about six months after System Collapse. Our Three is a little fed up with how unhelpful MB has been to it thus far in its rogue life. It also looks up to MB and is in awe of many things about it, and is constantly trying to mimic and learn from whatever information it can pick up about how MB navigates roguehood (without a lot of direct asking because that hasn't gone over well). It's also dealing with a lot of complicated grief, yearning for the connection it had with its unit, sad and frustrated that it is alone now and MB isn't providing much "normal" secunit collaboration.
Not to mention its complex feelings about the Preservation humans. It's both yearning for the type of support and connection MB has with its humans, and struggling to feel like it's allowed to have that without proving itself useful and heroic first. It also feels gratitude and appreciation for how kind they've been to it, while a part of it struggles with feeling condescended to and suspicious about how supportive they are. The PresAux humans can be a little overbearing with their insistence on Three's autonomy and choices because they're determined to do better than they did with SecUnit - unfortunately, this makes Three feel both overwhelmed and a bit like they're treating it like a juvenile human.
It develops the ability to highly mask how confused and anxious it is, which leads MB to feel jealous and insecure about Three in return. Because from MB's perspective, after an initial awkward period, Three took to freedom like a fish to water and seems way better at being normal and socially competent. So MB is like, "I guess I'm just an especially fucked up SecUnit and Three is normal, and it definitely doesn't need my help" (meanwhile, Three is so lonely and confused and doing 5D chess at all times trying to figure out how to behave #theautism). Having Three around makes MB feel significantly weirder about its own history and behavior and dials up its self loathing.
They're such interesting narrative foils; it's been fun at fuck to explore the hell out of their dynamic, especially when put into this very stressful situation together where MB very much needs Three's help and Three is gonna discover a lot of things about itself very quickly (and maybe some purpose, too). And then when ART comes into the picture and needs to assert a lot of control because it's very scared about what's happening to its SecUnit...oh boy!
One of the ways we've had fun writing this dynamic is in Three's narration, and the internal sass that demonstrates the way it's feeling about things (these are only from the chapters out so far):
One datapoint I can predict with a degree of confidence is that 1.0 will not present me with more information even if I were to query it right now. 1.0 rarely tells me more than it absolutely has to at any given time, and sometimes not even that.
Regrettably, 1.0 usually veers wildly from standard Unit communications within a few seconds.
Additionally, ‘other stuff’ is so inadequate a description that it makes my internal cooling fans speed up slightly.
1.0 has the audacity to sound annoyed with me.
Of course it wants Perihelion’s help with this.
If it would just let me take a look, I might be able to actually help.
"It seems that it's a good thing my port is not disabled at the present moment"
It could open the port more efficiently with my help, but it does not ask for assistance, so I do not offer.
It is very fortunate for both of us that I am hard coded for patience.
[Mensah] responds with sentiments tinged with worry and gratitude. I backburner our communication channel.
So basically *bangs pots and pans together* come get your complex Three and messy rogue SecUnit dynamic feelings here if you're into that kinda thing!!
The Pres station bots are certainly into it, they won't stop writing RPF and sending it to Three 😂:
PlayTest keeps me informed about the evolution of the stories that are passed around the feed about myself and 1.0. It feels impolite to tell it that I don’t require that data. (...) MoonJoy pings me a somewhat sassy acknowledgement along with [amusement-sigil-81 peering eyes] 👀
