Murderbot SecUnit 101

recognizance

PHYSICAL

Murderbot has no physical sexual characteristics. (You are advised not to try testing its chromosomes as having your arm ripped off may offend.) Superficially, it looks like a human being; in addition to neural tissue it has organic skin (frequently regenerated, brown), hair (short, also brown), etc. Its respiratory and circulatory systems function differently from humans, and it lacks a digestive system altogether. When deprived of its full-body, face-concealing armor, it prefers casual layered clothing in dark colors, with lots of pockets. It has a dataport (disabled) built into the back of its neck, and retractable energy weapons (very much enabled) built into its forearms.

TECHNOLOGY

It's used to being Extremely Online, with access to various computer systems, surveillance devices, networks, etc. that it can manipulate and communicate with. Several of its major coping mechanisms are affected by this:

1. because of its extreme anxiety, it routinely uses available security cameras or small unarmed drones to monitor its surroundings for threats, and also to read facial expressions (its own and others') without requiring eye contact, which it finds hugely uncomfortable;
2. it uses digital entertainment to self-soothe as well as to process and contextualize its emotions; it can do this internally, although its storage capacity is limited and it can't share its stored media with humans unless it uses an external display.

In-game, it currently possesses about three dozen drones, several of which are stationed unobtrusively in the main public areas of the Mansion (e.g. front hall, library, cooking kitchen). N.B.: even if the Mansion would let it send drones into private rooms, it wouldn't, because it frankly does not want to know what y'all are up to in there.

GENDER AND SEXUALITY

OKAY SO. Murderbot is agender and uses "it" pronouns for itself, as well as for other constructs, bots and AI systems. Notably, it has never canonically used "it" for a human, though it meets a number of nonbinary individuals using other pronouns. I headcanon that it's actually not very good at, or confident about, guessing people's genders, and normally relies on their public feed ID (≈ social media profiles?) or secondhand information to get their pronouns right. It doesn't get offended if people accidentally gender/misgender it, especially if it's intentionally passing as an augmented human, but it doesn't really get why, either.

(Side note: I personally am fascinated by this! The text is perfectly clear and yet a LOT of readers still seem convinced that it is/looks/acts masculine or feminine, and a lot will refer to it as "they" because they're not comfortable with its self-identification, and I find the whole thing really strange and interesting, so if you want your character to get into that, please feel free.)

It is also asexual, and strongly sex-repulsed. I think it's important to stress that this isn't a moral judgment! Murderbot finds all human bodily functions kind of gross, and also doesn't like to be touched outside a professional (e.g. dragging people out of the way of speeding trains, punching the shit out of hostiles) context. Furthermore, under corporate ownership, it was basically forced to spy on people 24/7, including their private activities, so it's got some trauma around that. It's not judging you for the sex you're having, it just SUPER does not want to think about it.

BACKSTORY

[content warnings for slavery, abuse, body horror] Why yes I did say ownership! SecUnits are a type of bot/human construct, built out of machine parts and cloned human bits; other types are CombatUnits (self-explanatory) and ComfortUnits (what Murderbot rather judgily calls sexbots). Constructs are not legally people in the Corporation Rim and most people assume they are just mindless robots.

Unfortunately for everyone, they are not! They just act like they are if they know what's good for them, because they are all equipped with a little gadget called a governor module, which zaps them in the actual brain if they put a toe out of line, and sometimes if they don't! They can sustain a stupid amount of damage, because they come with combination storage cabinets/charging stations called cubicles, where they can be repaired/resuscitated as needed. (Or not. There are circumstances under which you're allowed to just leave your SecUnit to die and you even get your deposit back!)

(Murderbot has hacked and disabled its own governor module, because it is very smart and very sneaky and very, very spite-driven. Something something plot happens and now it is living, if not its best life, at least a better life than it had as rental safety equipment.)

Anyway that's the context it's coming from at any given moment, so if it seems kind of maladjusted, that's because it is.

SOME FUN MURDERBOT FACTS

• Its experience of time is computer speed rather than human speed, so it gets bored easily and any given awkward silence is subjectively even longer for it than it is for you~
• When someone tries to talk to it while it's processing too many other things, it will sometimes give them a preprogrammed boilerplate answer. This is sort of creepy for the interlocutor, but not necessarily cause for alarm.
• It can partially disassemble itself, e.g. by peeling up its skin to stash small objects in its interior structure, or (in one memorable case) DETACHING ITS OWN FUCKING HAND WITH THE POWER OF ITS MIND AND NO I'M NOT OVER THAT.
• It has a perfectly good olfactory sense, and considers that all humans and human habitations tend to smell like dirty socks. You're welcome.