Rogue Protocol by Martha WellsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
They were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn't want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little. A SecUnit's job is to protect its clients from anything that wants to kill or hurt them, and to gently discourage them from killing, maiming, etc., each other. The reason why they were trying ti kill, maim, etc., each other wasn't the SecUnit's problem, it was for the humans' supervisor to deal with. (Or to willfully ignore until the whole project devolved into a giant clusterfuck and your SecUnit prayed for the sweet relief of a massive accidental explosive decompression, not that I'm speaking from experience or anything.)
I do love Murderbot, who claims to hate humans, and then wades into their problems to save their slow processing minds from getting themselves scragged. If that's not enough to annoy a rogue SecUnit that just wants to watch some new media, then there are other technological beings to deal with, like Miki, designated by Murderbot as a pet robot. Murderbot has to carefully and completely lie to Miki, something which makes our favourite rogue highly uncomfortable. After one such encounter, it says, “I needed to have an emotion in private.” As the tag line on the dust jacket says, who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas?
Wells' notion of using the (supposedly) less than human SecUnit to explore the human condition is absolutely brilliant. I adore these novellas and I'm restraining myself from bingeing them (but that's getting more difficult by the week). What will I do when there's no more Murderbot? We must preserve Martha Wells at all costs for she is the source of this goodness. I hope Murderbot is on hand should she run into any hostiles of any kind.
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