Rogue Protocol

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of cursing and enslavement.

“Then there was Asshole Research Transport. ART’s official designation was deep space research vessel. At various points in our relationship, ART had threatened to kill me, watched my favorite shows with me, given me a body configuration change, provided excellent tactical support, talked me into pretending to be an augmented human security consultant, saved my clients’ lives, and had cleaned up after me when I had to murder some humans. (They were bad humans.) I really missed ART.”

Murderbot’s description of its complicated friendship with ART orients the reader in the overarching narrative that takes place across the first four novellas of The Murderbot Diaries. ART’s name also introduces the irreverent tone of the narrator, in which Murderbot uses curse words to cast a humorous light on its struggles with navigating a world designed to disempower bots and constructs. This helps establish the stakes of the text and inform readers that these stakes remain in place even (or perhaps especially) when Murderbot discusses them lightly.

“(If it wasn’t for the shows I downloaded from the entertainment feed, I would have thought the only way most humans knew how to communicate was by pointing and shouting.)”

Murderbot’s attention to television dramas (which are implied to be most like soap operas, with long, elaborate emotional arcs) serves both as a source of entertainment and as a source of knowledge about the mental and emotional processes of humans. This way of thinking and feeling is important to Murderbot, as it lives in a human-controlled world but does not have a human mind. Its claim that the shows introduce new ways of human interaction also indicates that humans are routinely hostile to bots and constructs.