Network Effect by Martha Wells
You know that feeling when you’ve had enough of the people at work and the boss comes in with yet another task that needs to be completed immediately or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge-watch your favourite shows? And you’re a murderous sentient machine designed for annihilation? Thank you for becoming Murderbot.
Stay for the most relatable AI you’ll read this century; come for the pew-pew space wars. Most of my troubles originate in my head, where I am most often by myself. Murderbot must decide between inaction and severe action when its human associates—not friends, never friends—are caught and another not-friend from its history needs assistance immediately.
Network Effect by Martha Wells
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The storyteller is the main character. Murderbot. It’s a cyborg, a combination of human and artificial elements made as a Security Unit, owned by a company or person who purchased it similarly to how one may purchase an inanimate thing, such as a lawnmower, or similar to how slaveowners acquired their slaves not all that long ago. As long as it doesn’t go against a few fundamental pre-programmed restrictions, the owner of the Unit can instruct it to perform anything they like. Units aren’t thought of as people. They can be placed to sleep while not in use. When damaged, they can be thrown away or even have parts used to make another Unit. The narrator, This Unit, lacks a unique personal identification.
Some characters in the story refer to it as “it” or “SecUnit,” which is what it was created as but is no longer the case.
In a previous episode, SecUnit managed to destroy its governor module. It hasn’t been a commodity or possession since that time; it’s been rogue, a free-standing, autonomous thing. Through time, the Unit has begun to establish connections with a select group of individuals, including some humans and at least one other AI. It occasionally finds this new emotional baggage upsetting and uncomfortable. When it was merely a tool, a very effective killing machine, decisions were easier. That baffles even the folks he encounters with.
Some believe it. Some compare it to a pit bull; while it may not be aggressive right now, you can’t rely on it when things get stressful. Also, because it isn’t a human, you can’t tell how it feels about people.
The beginning of Network Effect begins with the hostile takeover of the research vessel that Murderbot and many humans are sailing in. This is the backstory of the film. Murderbot and one of the humans, Amena, are pulled into an extraterrestrial spacecraft when a transport beam captures their ship. The ship quickly enters a wormhole, eliminating any chance of outside assistance until it reenters regular space. Amena and Murderbot learn that the ship has been taken, hostage.
Murderbot learns that the ship was formerly commanded by his AI companion, a robot ship pilot named ART, as they rescue two of the original crew members.
ART was slain by the aliens, but he left code that allows Murderbot to revive him without memory of his time out of commission. Moreover, Murderbot learns that ART tricked the aliens into landing on Murderbot’s ship before it self-destructed because ART mistakenly believed Murderbot could defeat the invaders while knowing it couldn’t. The story then quickly picks up. Alien invaders are vanquished. ART is given back control of its incredibly potent vessel.
The ship makes its way down to the colony where the aliens, diseased offspring of the colony’s original occupants, arrived in order to free the crew of the ART that had been abducted and was being kept prisoner there. Murderbot is taken, and they are saved. ART launches an assault using all of its incredible tools. Murderbot escapes with the help of another SecUnit, whose governor unit it has disabled, and by creating a second software version of itself that allows it to temporarily operate in two locations at once. Once the humans go back to their homes, Murderbot agrees to accompany ART on its upcoming mission.
