Artificial Condition

 

By Martha Wells

Murderbot Diaries, Book 2

After Murderbot, the rogue SecUnit, was released on its own recognizance by Dr. Mensah, it slipped away from Mensah and the others of Preservation Aux it had protected. It was on a mission: to find out the truth about the mass murder it was told it committed at the RaviHyral Mining Facility Q Station. It doesn't have a memory of it, in fact its memory only goes back to a little more than three years.

But it refuses to accept what it has been told as a fact. It knows how unreliable facts can be and how easily manipulated. Manipulating facts is how it travels through everything, ever since it hacked its own governor module and continues to hack all the security systems and data feeds that would record its passage through various locations. 

It managed to locate a place on a cargo transport headed to RaviHyral that had no humans traveling on it or other SecUnits. It was being driven by a bot, a rather nosey and intrusive bot that Murderbot thinks of as ART or Asshole Research Transport. 

ART becomes an ally of Murderbot and helps it learn how to better pass itself off as a human. A SecUnit unattached to a proprietor is considered to be a rogue and extremely dangerous and unpredictable. But Murderbot isn't interested in enacting revenge on its creators, it just wants to understand itself and believes knowing the truth about its murderous past is where to start. 

So with ART's help and advice, Murderbot gets a job as Security Consultant to a group of young scientists who are desirous of obtaining research conducted by them on RaviHyral that was stolen from them by their former employer, Tlacey Excavations. Here Murderbot introduces itself to the three young scientists as Eden, the name of a character on its favorite serial, Sanctuary Moon. But looking at the situation, Murderbot is pretty sure that the scientists really do need a security consultant to keep them from being silenced. Plus it gets it the reason it needs to be on RaviHyral.

While not quite as action packed as the first book in the series, it does let the reader into the Murderbot's past a bit more. As in the first book, Murderbot is not willing to abandon its new set of charges, the three young scientists, to whatever evil fate awaits them. As it soon becomes clear, Tlacey is a very bad person and has no intention of returning their research. All she wants is them dead. And Murderbot is going to do its best to keep that from happening.