Murderbot

''“I’m the security expert. You’re the humans who walk in the wrong place and get attacked by angry fauna. I have extracted living clients from situations that were less than nine percent survivable.”'' (Exit Strategy, Chapter 4) Murderbot is the point of view character for all the stories in The Murderbot Diaries except Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory.

Murderbot is a bot-human construct, specifically a SecUnit. Like all SecUnits, it has no gender or sex related parts, and it repeatedly states that sex-related things are uninteresting and, like all human things, somewhat disgusting to it. Other characters reference it using the pronouns “it” and “its” and Murderbot does not object, using the same pronouns for all other bots and constructs in its various encounters.

Approximately 35000 hours (4 years) before the start of All Systems Red, Murderbot hacked its governor module and has spent most of its free time since then browsing entertainment media, especially its favorite serial, The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

As a SecUnit, Murderbot is designed to interact with SecSystems and has skills in surveillance, data mining, combat, and computer systems. Murderbot has energy weapons built into its forearms, a skeleton of synthetic bone and metal, the ability to survive with very little air and no food (it can't eat; see also: SecUnit), and is considerably faster and stronger than nearly all humans, even augmented humans.

Since hacking its governor module, Murderbot has developed considerable skills in hacking other systems, including the ability to manipulate security camera footage to remove its presence.

Murderbot is subject to social anxiety around humans, and claims not to care about them, but spends much of its time worrying about and protecting them, even after it is no longer forced to do so by its governor module. Murderbot does not like being looked at, so much so that it exhibits physical symptoms of stress ("My jaw was so tight it triggered a performance reliability alert in my feed. I said, "You don't need to look at me, I'm not a sexbot.""), and the PreservationAux team repeatedly describe it as "shy."

It physically removes itself when it feels overwhelmed, especially when forced to talk about its feelings ("That was too much attention. I turned around and walked into the corner, facing away from them."), and generally only looks at people it's speaking to through drones or security cameras. It strongly prefers to wear SecUnit armor with the faceplate opaqued, but by the request of Dr. Mensah, it keeps its helmet off. During uncomfortable social situations, Murderbot will sometimes mention wishing it had its armor, and considered taking armor from a dead SecUnit before evaluating that the armor was likely badly damaged.

Murderbot claims early on that it is impossible for constructs to have “friends,” but has a number of close acquaintances, including:


 * Dr. Ayda Mensah
 * Dr. Overse
 * Dr. Arada
 * Dr. Ratthi
 * Dr. Bharadwaj
 * Dr. Pin-Lee
 * Dr. Gurathin
 * ART (a nickname for the advanced bot-piloted research and teaching vessel Perihelion)
 * Miki, a human-form bot
 * Amena Mensah

Murderbot generally only refers to people by one name, sometimes with an honorific (like “Dr.”), regardless of how many names they may use among humans. According to the author, this is because internally Murderbot actually refers to humans by their feed addresses.