As a free being, Murderbot is struggling with personhood, with how being a free person means your personhood comes before function. That it might even be able to rewrite its function. But! it’s at the veeery beginning of this after experiencing a lifetime of trauma. And the lifetime of trauma has left some deeply damaging coping mechanisms.
Canonically, according to MB, it gleans self-esteem from the following: when people recognize it’s there to help them, when it solves something in a clever way (bonus if a human sees), and when it successfully saves its people. These have to do with people recognizing it’s a smart, independent entity who is good at its function. But I would counter that the majority of Murderbot’s self-esteem actually comes from its easy ability to be a martyr. To destroy itself for others, maybe even as a sort of final proof that it’s “good” and “safe.”
Murderbot’s got a lot of anxiety around people perceiving it as dangerous. It often talks at great length about how frequently it was shot with friendly fire on past contracts, how the reason it’s awkward around humans is that humans are afraid of it. And then there’s that scene at the end of Network Effect, where Murderbot says that ART had told its crew about it, but that it had made MB sound safe and not like a terrifying Murder Machine. being described neutrally, let alone positively, feels off to it.
I mean! Murderbot’s got complicated feelings about itself! There’s the SecUnit fights, people misusing SecUnits as CombatSecBots, combat overrides, and even code attacks/glitches like Ganaka Pit. All of this not even touching on the thorough propaganda.
We don’t have to look further than its chosen name: “Murderbot” is a pejorative like “sexbot,” which reduces constructs—these incredibly complicated machine/organic hybrids—to a crass understanding of their function. That MB calls itself this is a little tongue-in-cheek and a little genuine self-abasement.
But despite the name, the propaganda, and its experiences, SecUnits were not created to murder, they were created to protect. And the way Murderbot has interpreted that function is via self-destruction. To sacrifice itself for humans. Even if it wasn’t literally coded into it, MB was definitely shaped this way via a “social development” that ensured it experienced dehumanization and alienation.
This dehumanization and alienation it endured at the hands of the company made it associate bodily harm with good things (or positive things, at least). Let’s start by looking at when it was still with the company: getting injured meant time in a cubicle, where it could have some uninterrupted time for itself. it could watch media in an enclosed space where it didn’t have to worry about anything but itself for a bit.
Then once it’s with the PresAux crew (or ART), it gets tangibly *physically* cared for when it is injured. People show it care and regard and help put it back together.
It’s worth mentioning that when MB is hurt, its cognition is often down. This means it can’t be as guarded. It’s vulnerable, and in this state it is treated with care. It is finally getting some direct emotional support in these moments. It’s also tangible proof that people are considering it, that they have not abandoned it like the survey instruments at the beginning of ASR. Getting rescued is something we know really melts it. It’s almost like a really painful test: if Murderbot proves it’s not evil by destroying itself, its reward is people going back for it… but the test is still predicated on usefulness.
So we have all of these examples of how Murderbot’s self-esteem is tied to its own physical harm, and that it gets positive feedback in certain key ways when it’s injured, but i think it goes further than that. There are actually at least three examples of deliberate self-harm in System Collapse:
When it is having a mild freak-out about the shuttle landing when they’re first looking for the separatists, Murderbot says to let it jump out of the shuttle at like 20+ meters (+66 feet), which everyone obviously gets upset over.
After Leonide torpedoes their diplomatic approach with the separatists, Murderbot is so distressed it thinks about how it wishes it could smash something, especially itself.
Later, MB observes Iris almost throw her interface, and it says: “Been there. Threw my whole body at a wall once.” This is more frustration than straight up distress, but the impulse to harm itself to combat negative feelings still holds.
Its body is a thing. The company owned it. There are logos on it that it can’t remove, and any record of its self-sacrifice is erased. Swiped clean. Its physicality is that of an appliance it has no control over, but maybe its physical destruction can redeem it in the eyes of others. So, harm is evidence of a good job, it is a means of proving itself, it’s a release valve, and a means of receiving care.
But all of this disregard for its body goes deeper into really upsetting existential territory that I will get into in another post.
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