#murdermetamay week 1:
The other day I saw a post about Murderbot's name, and I've been doing a lot of thinking about it.
Did anyone else notice that it called all SecUnits "murderbots" and all ComfortUnits "sexbots" until it saw the data the ComfortUnits saved in the mine disaster? Its name was more of its own label for a type of construct, not just itself, until the end of the second book. I think this is when it starts to understand personhood. Maybe not for itself just yet. I think that was in Exit Strategy. I think it even does that in Platform Decay with [spoiler].
I also love that the PreservationAux team tries to accept its personhood, but struggles with it. The way they handled getting it from the company -- it got out, but it had to have the autonomy to explore who it is and that's where they ultimately were unsuccessful in the first book. And it's really only in Exit Strategy when Pin-Lee gives it the currency cards and IDs that Murderbot even feels like it can stay -- because it wants to, not because it feels like it has to. I think that comes up over and over again in the series. Murderbot even starts to recognize it in Three. In Exit Strategy the whole PresAux team also gives Murderbot its own time and space and private feed(!) to recover. Its not required to be with them, but... it can if it wants to. I think that turning point is probably one of my favorite in the series. And you see Murderbot start to reflect some of what it learned about how you care for other people in Platform Decay that was just... so, so good.
And then when it says "Before I was a person" in Network Effect (System Collapse?)? I totally cried. And that it recognizes that Three is another personSecUnit, not a (lowercase) murderbot, a machine used to provide "security". And then it advocates for Three and is like "hey, it needs to figure itself out before we can just ask it to do stuff" shows how much it understands that now.
