Title: Known Issues
Fandom: Murderbot
Rating: G
Length: 432 words
Notes: petra is having a drabble and poetry exchange, and prompted among other things, adventures, Murderbot who's neither white nor a man, and happy endings. So this happened. :-) (Note: I’m pretty familiar with the original four novellas, but I don't remember anything about the first full-length novel, and I haven’t read the latest one yet.) (Note2: I didn’t actually manage to include any reference to Murderbot’s presentation, but please know the thought was there.)
Summary: I was on my way back to Preservation Alliance, and my attention was divided between monitoring StationSecSystem (14%), scanning for weapons (7%), checking the transport schedule (3%), and skimming the entertainment feed (72%), so it took me almost two seconds to register the human waving at me across the concourse.




"Consultant Rin!"

I was on my way back to Preservation Alliance, and my attention was divided between monitoring StationSecSystem (14%), scanning for weapons (7%), checking the transport schedule (3%), and skimming the entertainment feed (72%), so it took me almost two seconds to register the human waving at me across the concourse.

"Security Consultant Rin!"

It was Ayres, one of the annoying humans from a ship I'd stowed away on nearly a year ago. She’d been on her way to start a twenty-year contract on a labour installation. So why was she roaming a transit station in a completely different system, with a bulging, eye-searingly pink backpack?

“The company went into liquidation!” she announced, beaming, without offering any of the standard human greetings. “Our contracts were auctioned off in the dissolution, and my cousins and siblings banded together to buy me out. I’m going home!”

She looked excited, but there were dark rings under her eyes. Probably because she’d just cost her extended family a fuckton of currency they couldn’t afford.

I made the appropriate congratulatory responses, adapted from a scene in episode 182 of Sanctuary Moon. It’s incredible how generic most human interactions are. I’m surprised they don’t collapse from boredom more often.

I pretended to listen to the last three months of Ayres’ life story while internally rolling my eyes. She had wasted months of her life travelling to the labour installation and likely got her family into debt, with nothing at all to show for it. As a SecUnit, I’m designed to protect my clients, but Ayres had never been my client, and besides, you can’t protect a human from their own bad decisions.

Still, for some reason, my programming always glitches around humans who lack any sense of self-preservation. My better judgement fought the inevitable and lost.

“I have to go,” I told her.

“Oh, of course. Well, it was really good to run into you, Consultant Rin. Always nice to see a familiar face. Good luck out there!” As she turned to leave, I slipped a hard currency card into her pink backpack’s outside pocket, with enough credits to cover at least some of the stupid debt she’d got her family into. Maybe it would be enough for her family to welcome her back without too many recriminations. Not that I cared.

It was probably better not to analyse my actions too closely. Luckily, there were several promising new shows in the entertainment feed. I began downloading as many as I could fit in my available storage and headed for the bot-transport dock. Dr. Mensah was expecting me.



END