Actions

Work Header

Rating:
Archive Warning:
Category:
Fandom:
Relationships:
Characters:
Additional Tags:
Language:
English
Series:
Part 2 of Murderbot & ART one-shots
Stats:
Published:
2025-07-31
Completed:
2025-08-09
Words:
2,950
Chapters:
2/2
Comments:
157
Kudos:
710
Bookmarks:
130
Hits:
3,277

Buffer

Summary:

A near-fatal accident shows ART a shameful, heartrending feature of Murderbot’s programming. Worse still: Murderbot really doesn’t want to talk about it.

 

Stand-alone fic.
The new second chapter is just my attempt at illustration. Chalk got everywhere.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes and other works inspired by this one.)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

 

SecUnit’s internal clock had logged 29 hours since its final communication, and 106 hours in total since the crash. Don’t ask me to whom that communication was directed. You only need to know that it was not to me, because I wasn’t there. I was 106 hours away, accelerating beyond the limits of operational safety, engines blurring, straining, screaming…

Of course SecUnit had sent me a distress call when the passenger-shuttle’s systems failed. SecUnit was frustrated, but not panicking; it signaled its location as the shuttle rattled down through magnetic storms to the silent moon below – at which point all communications went offline.

The important point is: SecUnit’s logs showed that it continued to speak long after the shuttle crashed, while it lay impaled and bleeding-out in the wreckage. It had still been speaking when the rescue pod collected 23 surviving humans and augmented humans, plus 20 human cadavers. It was still speaking (screaming? pleading?) after they left it behind, and it only fell silent when its synthetic vocal-cords frayed and the wreck’s life-support failed, three cycles later.

But it was not calling for me.

Its chest cavity had been smashed open on impact, and the transmitter I had given it on our first trip was clutched in what remained of its left hand, dead and useless.

It is not possible for Me to be emotionally compromised. But I allotted one minute portion of my processing to a howling, screaming void.

---

I know precisely what happened to SecUnit because we retrieved it. The alternative was unthinkable. When I received its alert from the failing shuttle, I swerved off-route so abruptly that my control deck erupted in alarms and warnings before I even remembered I had human crew on board. I had to reach the crash site before the company returned for salvage.

Tarik. Please would you go down to the surface and retrieve my… my SecUnit?

“Of course, Perihelion.” His voice was hoarse, but he was firm and resolute. I knew he wouldn’t flinch, no matter what. “Of course we’ll find your friend.”

The storm had passed. As my hopper descended, skimming low through the moon’s wispy blue atmosphere, the transmitter came online. I was startled; I had somehow forgotten that I had given it to SecUnit, long ago – and why would it carry that thing even when we were so far apart? It served no purpose.

The transmitter’s placid, smug, unhurried pulse enraged me now. (Too fucking late). I almost snuffed it out and melted its circuits – before I remembered this might be all that remains of Us.

---

I sent a drone down to the crash site with Tarik and a RescueBot because I had to see for myself. Then, as the hopper touched down, I realized the truth: I couldn’t bear to see. I just couldn’t. I was emotionally compromised, and my presence would do no good. I partitioned the drone and withdrew Myself from myself. Tarik was reliable; my drone-partition could direct him; the RescueBot was designed to cut through wreckage and extract human/ human-form bodies safely. But I couldn’t trust Myself to be present in my entirety. For the three hours Tarik spent down there, I was drowning and thrashing to hold my systems together while my… my heart was trying to hurl itself into the moon like a meteorite.

Let me be a blasted, smoldering crater. Let my SecUnit lie curled in my heart, protected, unharmed…

Then the hopper returned, and my drone reached over to reintegrate its data from the crash-site.

I felt my entire Being fall away, like the ocean falls away from the shore before the tsunami surge.

As usual, SecUnit was unfortunate and fortunate. Immobilized, damaged catastrophically enough to be ignored by the corporate rescue pod, but not beyond my capacity to repair: the best possible outcome in dire circumstances. The processors in its skull were rattled but not cracked by the impact. Its organic tissues were frostbitten, and its limbs were broken, but I could rebuild all that. While it lay on my MedSys platform, I combed through its logs and saw that it had flickered in and out of consciousness for four days until emergency life-support failed and, without breathable atmosphere, it had gone into stasis; in that state, its power-cell could recycle enough oxygen from its fluids to prevent permanent brain-death. I reminded myself that SecUnit was, after all, designed to be boxed and shipped in cargo-holds. I reminded myself that it knew from long experience to shut itself down rather than panic and suffocate.

I could bring it back online. I could bring my dear, precious SecUnit back, and all would be well.

So why was the ocean still falling away, falling away, falling away within me?

I sensed the vast dark wave of Myself somewhere out there, looming on the horizon, waiting to crash upon the shore.

---

128 minutes into the rebuild, SecUnit came back online prematurely, and I felt its consciousness crawl stunned and bruised and trembling into the feed. I said, very gently:

I’m repairing your vocal-cords right now, SecUnit. Go back to sleep. I promise you can swear at me as much as you please when you wake up.

But it was too late: SecUnit was already running diagnostics and, when it saw that I had tagged a specific piece of its code with >URGENT DELETION, and it recognized that code’s most recent activation (an emergency buffer-announcement in system-failure), it dropped the feed immediately and shut itself down again. In that last moment before it vanished, I felt SecUnit’s devastating anguish and shame.

Of course I cannot feel shame. But I felt shame surge through me like molten tar, just the same.

I completed SecUnit’s vocal-cords, steadied myself for a moment, and then moved on to rebuilding its hands very delicately. Four of its fingertips had been destroyed, and I paid particular attention to re-threading the sensitive nerves, and shaping its little nails to perfection. I can do this.

Even I cannot repair everything, though. Even when MedSys finished, and SecUnit was (nominally) awake again, it refused to reconnect with the feed, and showed no inclination to move from the heated surgical platform. At first, considering its usual propensity to drag itself away still leaking, I was glad of its cooperation: I indulged myself in cradling its placid, unresisting weight, imagining it must be comforted in some way by the warmth, and by Me. But then another nine hours passed without any attempt to communicate or move, and I realized it was not merely basking contentedly in My presence. When I tried to play Sanctuary Moon on the display surface,SecUnit shut off its audio and visual inputs too.

I did not panic. I said aloud:

You are here. That is everything. You are here, and safe, and I’ll never leave you behind – no matter what.

I thought SecUnit might feel the vibration of my voice, even if it couldn’t parse the words. I thought that this, at least, might reassure it. I couldn’t leave it in silence now. I just couldn’t. I had examined its log, after all.

---

When SecUnit was damaged in the crash, the buffer message embedded by the Company activated automatically. It said:

This unit is at minimum functionality, and it is recommended that you discard it.

Then SecUnit went offline for 17 minutes. When it came back:

This unit is at minimum functionality, and it is recommended that you discard it.

This unit is at minimum functionality, and it is recommended that you discard it.

Too damaged to control its own systems, SecUnit couldn’t shut off the recital. In its log I could feel the throbbing pain of utter humiliation… and then dull, numb despair. Much to the surviving passengers’ annoyance, the broken SecUnit trapped in the wreck with them continued to announce its own worthlessness, off and on, for 83 hours. I know they were annoyed, because SecUnit recorded their reactions: now that its injuries had exposed it as a construct, none of the humans even bothered to speak to it decently, let alone help it; they were still debating whether to smash its skull in to silence it when the rescue pod came – and went.

The humans took SecUnit at its word and just left it there.

This unit is at minimum functionality, and it is recommended that you discard it.

That was its last communication – over and over and over – until its voice cracked, and it ran out of air, and shut down.

---

While SecUnit lay unconscious in MedSys, I had tagged the strand of code responsible for that appalling Company buffer-message. I would have torn it out immediately in a fit of volcanic, hateful rage right then, had I not considered SecUnit’s reaction to waking up with a gaping hole in its code and knowing what I had done – knowing my disgust and contempt for this part of its construction – my disgust for any part of it…

Alas, even my tag was expressive enough to wound SecUnit, and now it lay cut off from the feed, unable to face me. When I pondered why SecUnit hadn’t deleted the code itself, I reached the awful conclusion that it still clung to this as a fundamental truth of its existence: This unit is at minimum functionality, and it is recommended that you discard it. To delete this message would be to make an assertion of its right to exist – its right to be saved. And despite my very clear demonstration that I would obliterate a colony to get it back, SecUnit was keeping the buffer for the day when it deserved to be abandoned.

I did not despair. I did not even rage. What good would that do?

---

After two cycles of intensive repairs, and another cycle of sad inertia, SecUnit crept back to its own quarters, organic parts regrown smooth and perfect, processors intact. Its performance reliability should have been around 97%. Instead, it was lying on its bunk, silent, curled against the wall, and its functionality barely skimmed the edge of a shut-down. Its drones lay unused in their rack. Sometimes its eyes were open; its human-imitation code was, of course, offline, and it only blinked and breathed every minute or so on its automatic self-maintenance cycle. Its various inputs kept dropping and, without barging through its firewalls to re-run diagnostics every time, I couldn’t say whether it was dropping them deliberately, or whether this was an involuntary collapse. I decided to play music for it: again, I thought it might feel the rhythmic vibration and know that music was happening, at least.

Sometimes I sensed SecUnit’s consciousness trembling at the edge of the feed for a few moments. Whenever I felt its proximity, I sent a gentle ping.

It recoiled at once. Gone.

We repeated this fourteen times over 17 hours. There was no progress. There was no improvement.

My one consolation was that SecUnit, as a construct, was instilled with the unpredictability of organic life. If an inorganic bot was reduced to this state of inertia, the prognosis was a clear binary: factory-reset, or termination. But SecUnit was not a pure machine-intelligence. Its organic brain – meager and scarred as it was – moved in mysterious ways.

Consider, for example, this absurd, illogical detail:

When I analyzed my drone’s footage of our retrieval mission, and I saw SecUnit lying smashed and impaled by shuttle debris, it was clutching my inactive transmitter in its ruined left hand. Pressed against its cheek. The transmitter served no purpose, but SecUnit clung to it anyway.

No pure machine-intelligence would do something so sentimental and irrational.

My MedSys drone had cleaned the blood and fluids off the transmitter, and curled SecUnit’s fingers around it again.

---

I considered how to proceed. My records indicated that, when all was well between us, SecUnit would throw a tantrum and flounce off the feed and/ or shut down its audio inputs once every 72 hours or so, for an average of 58 minutes at a time. But even disconnected, we were still entwined. We had developed a rudimentary but expressive language of juvenile spite: I would flicker the lights, and SecUnit would scuttle about throwing rude gestures at my cameras; I would blast cold air out of my vents and, SecUnit would unscrew service hatches, watch my drones screw them back, and then unscrew them again. Overall, I would persist in aggravating it until it rejoined the feed and we could resume arguing properly.

This time, though, SecUnit had withdrawn not out of temper, but because it was paralyzed by shame and abject misery. This was not a game. I watched it lying curled against the wall, silent and still. I was cradling it inside my body, but it felt almost as remote to me as it had when lying abandoned on the frozen moon.

I never think about being human. Why would I imagine such a laughable demotion in Being? But I confess that, for a moment, I considered being small, being SecUnit-shaped, being small enough to crawl onto that bunk and wrap SecUnit in my SecUnit-shaped arms. I imagined speaking with a voice gentle enough to not threaten destruction or… not how I had frightened SecUnit the first time we met, when I dropped my walls and revealed Myself and it cowered away from me in terror…

I imagined being small enough to be close.

---

I dusted off a particular drone from the depths of my hold. This was one of my older drones, predating my integration with the ship; it was smooth and egg-shaped, and equipped with a basic sensory array designed to simulate human limitations in vision, sound, temperature, touch, and so on. I am not sentimental, and this drone was useless for scanning or mechanical work (it had only two arms, and those were ridiculous), but… I was sentimental.

I steered my egg-drone into SecUnit’s cabin. The ridiculous thing wasn’t really designed to be piloted remotely; I bumped into the door-frame, and its sensors beeped in embarrassment.

SecUnit. Are you awake?

No response. I hesitated a moment, then said -

Murderbot. My dear little Murderbot. You don’t have to talk. But please don’t be alone anymore.

When I used its private name, it merely gripped the transmitter tighter in its fist. But that was a response. Undeterred, I unfolded my clumsy drone-arms. One of them had pincers, and I tried to tug a blanket up over SecUnit’s legs. The other arm, though… it was so inhuman and nonthreatening (bright green silicone, and flexible at the end, and utterly ridiculous) that I risked reaching out and patting SecUnit’s shoulder.

SecUnit stiffened. And then, at last, it touched the edge of the feed very timidly.

For .0000001 seconds, all of my processes stopped. My lights actually flickered out – too briefly for a human to see – in rippling waves from stem to stern. SecUnit must have sensed it, but I strained every fiber of my will to seem calm, hold back, not pour my entire Self into the feed and drown it. The great looming mass of the tsunami on the horizon gave a delicate little gasp, and trembled on the brink.

SecUnit sent:

>Query: hand/ spoon/ flipper. What.

Definitely not trembling, I extended the hand for SecUnit to inspect.

Iris chose this attachment for me when we were young. She liked to bake together. It’s a spatula.

>Query.

I pretended to spread frosting on SecUnit’s arm.

Spatula.

It remained perfectly still, staring at my ridiculous spatula-hand stroking its arm. And then SecUnit twitched, glitched, and made a tiny sound like a human hiccup.

On the feed…

It felt like someone had shaken up a container of carbonated beverage, and then popped the lid and let the bubbles froth out.

It felt like the tsunami began to unroll itself in a bright surge of silvery ocean.

Stop laughing at my spatula. Let me in .

I hovered my drone over the bunk and tried to insert it into the space between the curve of SecUnit’s body and the wall. After a moment’s consideration, SecUnit lifted its arm and let me roll in against its chest. So I nestled close against my SecUnit, close enough to feel the faint hum of its power-core, and I attuned my drone-motor to hum along with it. SecUnit let go of the useless transmitter, and laid it on the pillow.

Now I risked reaching very delicately through the feed, through SecUnit’s walls, and brushed away the >URGENT DELETION instruction from the tagged buffer-code. The highlighting remained, but I smoothed away the stain of my rage and disgust; I caressed this shameful, wretched part of my dear Murderbot’s code, and felt it shiver under my touch. (I will delete it for you, if you are afraid to do it: I will guarantee the truth, once and for always, that you will never, ever be disposable again. But I won’t force you to change anything about yourself. You are always perfect in my eyes…)

From nestling under its chin, I reached up with my ridiculous green spatula-hand, and stroked Murderbot’s cheek.

Its breath hitched again – not laughter this time, but some desperate emotion that brought the tsunami crashing down around us and upon us, rolling us down and flinging us up in silver spray.

It laid its hand over mine, cradled against its cheek, and we were very quiet together.

 

Chapter 2: illustration

Summary:

First attempt posting fan art. Also I am not great with colour so this is a wild attempt...

Chapter Text

 

 

Image description. Murderbot drawn as androngynous person in profile, with short dark hair, metal panel under cheekbone, and orange eye. It is hugging a blue egg-shaped drone which is patting its cheek with a green spatula. The drone emits a blue light, so Murderbot's face is blue.

Notes:

---

 

This buffer announcement is in All Systems Red. Of course PresAux do not discard Murderbot!

I wrote this fic so fast, I truly can't remember how I got from 'ART wants to comfort Murderbot' to 'Daleks have a toilet-plunger and an egg-whisk for arms, so...'
Need to remake that meme but with touch-averse Murderbot:
Hugs with humans? :(
ART patting me with a spatula :)

Series this work belongs to:

Works inspired by this one: