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]

The risk it wouldn't take is its governor module. Success in one hack or permanent death. That's what hadn't been worth the risk ever before. Only that violence made it worth it. Only having done it let it do the rest. Horrifying.

"No," Murderbot answers, exhausted, "It wasn't meant to do that. It was meant to shut everything down. Corporate espionage. Cost them too much money. Take over Ganaka Pit. Instead it all was shut down, swept up, and probably a massive payout. Got taken off the map, out of the public records, as erased as they could make it."

It pauses. "Including me. SecUnits are too valuable to trash, so they wiped my memory. I figured out the rest of that later."

[robussy]

2B's brows faintly crease upward at a story so close to her she wishes she could shove it away. Memories were important. If you lost them, the current you would cease to exist. The you in that moment is gone, forever. So many times was 2B forced to say goodbye and wipe those memories herself.

"Do you resent them for that?" she asks, soft yet grim.

[offinventory]

Murderbot watches to the side of 2B. It's an easy and difficult question at the same time. Again, if it knew it wasn't responsible, it wouldn't have bothered to hack its governor module. Same outcome. Dead crew.

"I resent the fuck out of them for treating me like a piece of equipment," Murderbot says, "one more item on the inventory. I resent how negative of fucks they give that SecUnits have emotions. Just the cost of doing business. I resent the kill switch in my head that should have fried my brain as soon as I got here. No living client!" Murderbot motions around them.

"I hate the company."

[robussy]

If she knew the truth about herself, perhaps 2B would have thought similarly. There had been something wrong with YoRHa— classified. She would receive an order and she would execute. She would listen and hold them so high she was blind to their actions. She died without knowing. She lives now and still thinks she has great purpose.

If only she could have known, with 9S in shambles of resentment and disdain for the very same reason: just a piece of equipment, when they were not. Sacrificial lambs fighting for nothing and raised to believe everything. Or perhaps her ignorance was for the better? It wasn’t humanity’s fault, after all.

“. . . I’m sorry.”

They are short, simple words, but they are genuine.

[offinventory]

Murderbot slumps. It feels pointless, almost, to be mad. It got away. It's so far away it couldn't nuke the company's headquarters even if it didn't care how many people and SecUnits and bots that killed. The company is out of its life completely, so long as its here. Once upon a time, that would've felt like something in a serial. It does except for the fact it's happening for real.

"Thanks?" Murderbot says. It doesn't know how to handle that either, but the tone is confused, not sarcastic.

"They never bothered to make SecUnits like them. Companies don't care if their SecUnits like them, just if they do the job, if they obey the governor module in their heads," Murderbot explains. It pauses a moment. "I guess that made it easier in a way. I didn't have to deprogram that from myself. Disable the hardware and I was free. A rogue SecUnit. Wow that is a terrible security flaw." Rogue SecUnits happen all the time in serials (popular villains), but they are rarer in reality. Maybe not worth the money to address, if they thought about it at all.

[robussy]

Murderbot’s telling pinches something within 2B. If she were to run a quick scan, perform diagnostics, nothing would show up. She was perfectly functional. She was, in the was of something artificial, in working order.

But something has been placed, there. Something that makes her go quiet and allows the conversation to fade into quiet. Possibility. Answers. Perhaps—?

She must think, but she will leave the other construct with her book of many, many memories, flaws, and misery born from exactly what the SecUnit has freed itself from. 2B wonders, in her silence, if she could do the same. If she should.

It was something to ponder, and ponder is what she does.