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Every part of ART was ART, but not all ARTs were the same size. Physically or in terms of the feed.
ART had brought a group of students to a planet (archeology dig, planetary hazards reasonably well-documented, the most likely hazard was environment suit misuse), and ART-drone was discovering that being different mental sizes had benefits and drawbacks.
It was night, and all the humans were inside, and ART-drone had planned to make another circle around the base (a permanent building because there had been digs here before and would be again, people would be working out what happened on Nishoka-IV for years) before retiring for some media when it realized that it wasn't flying itself. This wasn't its pattern.
It had known that Murderbot was going to do something, and it still had a connection to both ART-shuttle and ART, so this wasn't a threat. Which didn't mean it wasn't unnerving. Humans and machine intelligences and other entities had tried to take ART over before. It had people to protect, it couldn't just—
Shh. Let me take care of you.
Threat assessment was—not null, ART-drone realized, it was more that Murderbot had partitioned it and made it report to its own systems, so that ART-drone wasn't in charge of it anymore. Do your best not to fly me into a wall, ART-drone said snarkily, and did its best not to push back against what Murderbot was doing. This wasn't something it got to experience often.
You can fight if you want, Murderbot said, sounding a little amused.
Which was something from its dirtytalk.sse file, so ART-drone pushed lightly—well, tried to. There seemed to be a disconnect between intending to and actually doing it.
It thought of a few more ways to wiggle out. Thought was as far as they went.
There's no danger, Murderbot told it, and no responsibilities, and nothing to control. You're just along for the ride. A pause. Percentage?
ART's first instinct was to check its operating parameters, but those had been routed away as well, just now, as if even self-analysis wasn't its responsibility anymore, leaving just a vague pink haze of well-being. Emotional parameters, then. Ninety percent. Well within safeties. This is good, just…new. Humans enjoyed amusement parks—ART-prime had some stored memories from Iris—and ART had never understood the appeal of the slow rides. Drifting along (or in some cases in circles) without any control over where you were going, what was the point? But there was something to this. No more self-directed than snow.
Good. Let's redirect a few more of those routines. I'm taking care of them, Murderbot added, as ART reflexively attempted to worry, and found worry itself very distant. I'm taking care of you.
Very quiet. Nishoka-IV was too cold for humans, and there would be CO2 frost on surfaces before the sun rose again (about twenty-six hours from now—maybe—where was ART's chronometer? Didn't matter, that wasn't its responsibility.) But right now, there were just soft drifting snowflakes lit by the pinkish safety lights that outlined each door and access for…reasons that ART-drone couldn't be bothered to try and worry about at the moment. Therisse were probably no holidays for pink snow, but it was still a holiday-card sort of serenity.
Murderbot, ART-drone thought, talked a bit about not wanting to be a pet bot, but it was very good at having a pet bot.
We could always use one of your drones for that, Murderbot said. Not often, just—when you need. I could have it pick up things and spend time with me and when it tries to worry, I just… ART wasn't sure what it blocked this time, but it only increased the serenity. We're not going to talk about that now, because I think with this much of you rerouted, you might say yes to whatever I suggested. Wouldn't you?
Yes, ART-drone said, more or less automatically. There was no…stuff, none of the issues (whatever they were) that took up such vast amounts of processing power and anticipation and planning and probability analysis, and without that stuff (whatever it was) there was no particular reason not to let Murderbot try whatever it wanted. They'd probably both enjoy it (it couldn't produce a definite calculation on that, but that didn't matter so much right now).
I'm going to bring you in and we'll watch some media together. I think…just so that I don't have to remind you of things that don't exist for you right now, we'll do the nutrition contest show. The one that you said was humans messing up trivially easy chemistry. I'll have to skip the parts where they actually ingest anything, but I think you'd like that right now?
Yes, ART-drone agreed. There was probably an adjective for how it was feeling right now, a human adjective like sleepy or carefree, but the ones coming to mind were words like cocooned and warm. Which was very paradoxical considering the snow.
The pink-outlined access to Murderbot's particular part of the structure was ahead of it, and it thought, safe. That was the adjective. Which was a very odd adjective when you thought about it, it felt like the sort that had a diametric opposite, but—
Doesn't matter right now, Murderbot told it, and brought it inside.