35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music

[offinventory]

who: Murderbot aka Eden Rin & others
what: The Entertainment Feed events, other plots with Murderbot.
when: All month
where: The Entertainment Feed, around Trench, in memories

content warnings: see individual starters. None in main post.
Note: This post includes open prompts for The Entertainment Feed. Feel free to write TL's and tag each other.

I don't care. I'm a cat. (Book Club)

This month, the book club meets Tuesdays September 13th and 27th. It is reading The Trials of Morrigan Crowe by Jessica Townsend, available via written or audio formats.

Murderbot mostly facilitates the conversation—asking questions about the idea of a person being cursed. Can a child truly be responsible for all the terrible instances in an area? What is it like living with a death sentence? How does Morrigan being plucked away from death and taken to a wholly different land strike everyone when they too have been plucked away from their homes, death sentence or no?

Given the memory shares, other books come up as well. Discussions without a common base not only derail the book club but raises some tempers. Eventually Murderbot stands up to someone exclaiming 'Eden!' and another 'Rin?' "How about you two go read those books and meet back afterward?" it asks deadpan.

All this pressure give me anxiety (Silent Disco)

This month, the silent disco happens Fridays September 2nd, 16th, and 30th. Headphones and music are available. Play your own music or listen to DJ's mix. (open)

Though Murderbot wears headphones much like anything else, the music is so soft as to be nearly silent. It listens more in its personal feed, where the sound quality isn't lose being routed to an external device and reprocessed with environmental sounds. It doesn't dance but walks around the disco and sometimes across the floor. When anyone appears in distress, it glowers at the 'guilty' party and offers what help someone might need.

Small drones, wispy smoky things, float amid the dim lighting, listening and watching everything and everyone. Recognition software (again for distress) helps Murderbot more inputs than it can otherwise handle. It bobs its head slightly to demonstrate it's chill, and rounds once more close to the DJ's set up.

We improvise, all right? (Fast & Furious viewings)

This month, two Fast & Furious films air Thursdays September 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd, and 29th. Come and go as you please. See one, see both, see them all. Watch missed movies at any time during the week in smaller viewing settings.

Sitting in the back, Murderbot watches the large viewing screen as cars are stolen, raced, and complete utterly unrealistic stunts. It's unlike any life it has lived, even when it stole modes of transportation, flew quickly, and were dramatically destroyed. It smiles at a quip, and when it's done, Murderbot lets everyone else file out first.

The question isn’t ‘what are we going to do’, the question is ‘what aren’t we going to do?' (Memshare books)

Murderbot is collecting as many of the memshare books as it can. Feel free to read and go into any memshare here, find your own book, etc.

On a special bookcase close to the entrance, special magical books sit. Engrossing reads. These are books Murderbot has found or been given. Within them lie any number of memories. Some of them Murderbot has gone to. Others it hasn't. They may be people's lives, but books are books. Historical themes are popular over and over again. Why wouldn't these?

Comments

[offinventory]

Oh, we're back on the boat bullshit. Murderbot sits and stays sitting, without leaning too far to either side. This boat is tiny, like most of the small vessels that visited the Preservation survey it was last on. It dislikes its location, but given it has no idea where it is and what dangers are in the water, it grumpily stays put.

"Penny," Murderbot says. It leaves its scan on but doesn't ping the android. It's been some time since the conversation on the network, but it feels as awkward as it did then.

"I have a bad feeling about this," it murmurs. Not because it's Penny but because getting taken to another location against one's will is never a promising sign. This place doesn't feel like a memory (not that memories feel like memories, but you read the book, you get a sense of what's going on, and in you go... or in you go with someone who did that).

[hacktivated]

The boat is, indeed, tiny. More importantly there's no threat nearby that Penny is actually capable of directly handling, just Rin, a boat, and a great deal of water. She lowers herself to sit a moment later, taking care to not literally rock the boat as she does.

Penny tries to not be a pessimistic person, but Rin's observation gets a grim nod from her.

"I do not recognize this area, but we should be cautious. If the Pthumerians transport you somewhere without warning, something dangerous usually follows."

[offinventory]

"I agree with your risk assessment," Murderbot says without enthusiasm. All because it's been trying to utilize the memory books for good and for other people to help themselves. There weren't due dates written in them or anything, only an unusual corvid enforcement policy.

Smell is an often overlooked sense, despite ties to taste, memory, and emotions. It connects things, rather than anyone sniffing over a smell the way they peer at photographs or listen to music or eat a favorite meal. As a construct, it retains something of an organic olfactory system, and that sends warning signals into its mind via neurological pathways. Alarm alarm alarm. Dead bodies, decomposition, and danger past or present (probably present).

Murderbot glances over at Penny. "Ready?" it asks. Except what greets them isn't anything they can fight. Whatever has happened here... has happened. "What are we supposed to do about—"

It stares at one body in particular, not organic at all but purely bot. Crumpled and ruined and just like any other model of its type. Except Murderbot checks the footage from that horribly short fight and matches most of the damage perfectly. It's Miki all right. As dead as before and slowly corroded.

[hacktivated]

Rin's response is unenthused (perhaps even a bit robotic) but Penny finds that's comforting. Rin may have left and come back sans memories, but it's still Rin. They'll be okay, so she answers Rin's question with a determined nod and a simple, "Ready."

Then the first body floats into view, and Penny is no longer certain that they're ready or that they'll be okay. Already she's seen more than she wants to, and a little further down the river she spots a corpse dressed in a distressingly familiar military uniform. Only then does it click that Rin has asked her a question.

"That's-- I do not know, but..." She trails off, thinking back to her previous encounters with the world's events. "Usually, when the Pthumerians do something to us, it isn't just because they think it's funny. Every other thing they've been trying to show us something, or make us understand something about ourselves."

Her gaze is forward and down as she speaks, fixed firmly on the bottom of the boat.

"If we ignore it we'll probably just be stuck here - if it doesn't just get worse."

[offinventory]

"This"—Murderbot motions toward the horrible scene—"is helping?" It's tone is flat but not sarcastic, not immediately rejecting everything out of hand. It stares at the bodies and all the gore. That alone doesn't bother it. It's been through too many fights and bloodbaths for that to bother it immensely. These deaths, whatever they are, seem to be whatever happened to people, as judged by Miki and the incredible variety of wounds among the corpses. So, they have to face, what, the dead?

I never talked to a bot like me before. I have human friends, but I never had a friend like me. Miki said that in its feed, one of the last messages it sent before the CombatBot, before that. Murderbot felt like such an asshole. It thought Miki was a pet bot the whole time because that was easier than recognizing that humans and bots could be friends and that Don Abene was Miki's friend, not just its owner, at a time when its own crew had treated it like a pet bot. The problem wasn't Miki or Don Abene. It'd been Murderbot and PreservationAux, and Murderbot hadn't given its crew a chance after they fucked up until it fucked up being there with Miki and Don Abene in the first place and getting Dr. Mensah kidnapped.

Ugh, it hated that some fucked up alien was right. About something. Though it probably doesn't understand what Murderbot understands, only somehow plucking it as SomethingThatMatters like the memories in the books. Which the books were useful, fine. It admits that, but let it keep them then.

This situation. Miki. Penny. It's not a hard parallel to make. "Pretty sure it wants us to be 'friends'," Murderbot comments, "Putting us on a boat to goretopia is a fucked up way to do that, even if that's the way I've met most of my—"

Not friends. It's not comfortable with that word for ART or Mensah or Ratthi or anyone. "People," it settles on. "Ratthi doesn't have to go through traumatic stuff to get to know people, and he knows everyone." Life would be a lot worse for a lot of people if that weren't the case.