First Entrance: Murderbot

[awkwardbot]

The first time I stumbled into Milliways, it was such an abrupt change from the station transit mall where I'd been that my performance reliability dropped by a couple of percentage points. (Apparently it's that kind of surprise for almost anybody, at least the first time.)

The air felt different; it smelled different too, although it still had that faint dirty-sock smell that gets into any place inhabited by humans. And it looked like something out of a historical drama series, with the roof beams and floors and the fireplace.

But the weirdest and most uncomfortable part of it all was what happened to the feeds. The transit mall had been full of feeds, from the Port Authority and the stores and all the humans and augmented humans. And here, there was nothing, except for occasional pings from some devices I didn't recognize. It was like stepping from a crowded, noisy room into near-total silence, and I hadn't been expecting it at all. No wonder my performance reliability took a hit. I tried to find some cameras I could use to get a better view of my new surroundings. Nothing.

At least there didn't seem to be anything trying to shoot me, capture me, or eat me, which was nice. I couldn't say that about every place I'd been.

A single feed suddenly came online, presenting a brochure. I isolated it and scanned it for malware or killware first. (Because I'm not stupid. Well, not that stupid.) Then I read it in my feed.

I read it again.

"...you have got to be shitting me," I said to nobody in particular.

[OOC: Please read Murderbot's profile before tagging! Thank you.]

[Tinytag: Murderbot]

Comments

[undead_radish_seller]

"I am not!" protests the very pale young man nearby. "Erm, sorry. If you were addressing me, young master."

Wen Ning sees a person of determination and strength, and hence thinks 'fighter'.

[awkwardbot]

"No, I don't mean you. I think." Whoever they were, they looked male, but without a feed displaying their gender I couldn't be completely sure. They had very fair skin (the kind that you can usually only get with cosmetic enhancement) long dark hair, and what looked like jagged tattoos on their neck. I thought they might be young, but I'm not good at judging human ages.

"You don't run this place, do you?"

[undead_radish_seller]

"No," Wen Ning says. "I only came here today for the very first time. I don't know who runs this."

Pause, then he formally bows, his hands put together in front of his chest. "My name is Wen Ning, courtesy name Qionglin."

[awkwardbot]

There are some cultures in our universe that use courtesy names, so I wasn't completely unfamiliar with the concept. "My name is Rin," I said, quickly offering up a human alias I'd used before.

(Murderbot, courtesy name Rin.)

I figured that Qionglin couldn't see my gender on my public feed signature any more than I could see theirs, so I offered helpfully (though awkwardly), "My gender is indeterminate, and I use they/them pronouns." That's one of the ways that humans and augmented humans handle things when there aren't feeds for some reason, or someone's feed interface is broken.

[undead_radish_seller]

"I am male," Wen Ning says. Apparently, that is something that's part of introductions here. "People refer to me as he."

[awkwardbot]

I'd thought so, although it helped to know for sure.

"Did you come here by accident too?" I wondered how common that was.

[undead_radish_seller]

"Yes, I was going to Yiling to sell radishes and must have taken a wrong turn in the woods," Wen Ning says, nodding eagerly.

[awkwardbot]

"I was going into a transport tube in a transit ring mall. I don't think I went the wrong way."

I looked back at the door I'd used to come in (which I had been expecting to lead into a transport tube, at the time). It was still there, which was good. Part of me wanted to go back through it and get out of this extremely weird place. But another part of me saw this as an anomaly that needed to be investigated.

"A place like this wouldn't be in a transit ring." On a planet, sure, but not on a space station.

[undead_radish_seller]

"No it's not," Wen Ning says. "I don't know what that is, though. I came through the woods."

[awkwardbot]

"There's a brochure that explains things about this place. Did you get one of those?"

Qionglin couldn't get it the way I'd gotten it, through the feed. But maybe we could get a version on a tablet, or something like that.

[undead_radish_seller]

"No, I didn't get any introduction booklet," Wen Ning says. "What's in it?"

[awkwardbot]

"The rules, what kinds of things there are in here and outside, how this place works. I think we can get one from the Bar." That seemed to be the source of the feed I'd gotten the digital version from.

I realized that I had, once again, accidentally gotten myself a human client. Sort of. At least the human wasn't in physical danger, or doing something stupid that would put him there. That as a nice change of pace.

[undead_radish_seller]

"The lion told me about the rules," Wen Ning says. "He said there are only three, though."

[mane_event]

A lion cub, curled up in a comfortable ball on the nearest chair, opens up one eye, and says: "Huh?"

[awkwardbot]

"What?" I know, it sounds dumb, but it was the first time I had ever encountered anything that could talk and wasn't human or made by humans.

[mane_event]

Simba blinks both eyes open sleepily, peering up at the human.

"What?"

[awkwardbot]

This conversation was going nowhere fast. "I'm sorry. I didn't expect to be here, and I don't know what you are."

(Yeah, not a great first impression, even for me.)

[mane_event]

"I'm a lion," Simba says, almost challengly. If this person says anything about manes, he's gonna lose it.

[awkwardbot]

There were certain people I knew who would be very, very excited to meet a talking non-human, non-construct, non-bot life form. But for me under those circumstances, meeting one was just the latest in a long line of confusing things that had happened to me in the last few minutes.

"I'm an augmented human," I said, because I wasn't sure what else to say. "My name's Rin." It was a human alias I'd used before. I already had my feed signatures set for it.

(But the lion didn't have a feed: they probably couldn't read mine.)

[mane_event]

"Okay."

Now he's a little more out of his nap, he debates two possible questions, and decides on both of them.

"What's augmented?" And "Are you new?"

[awkwardbot]

"Augmented humans like me have inorganic implants to help us do things like work with computer systems better. Or we get them to replace parts we've lost."

That was almost word-for-word from one of the crappy education models the company gave me, way back when.

"I'm new. I just got here. I'm guessing you've been here a while?"

[mane_event]

(No.)

"Oh I come here all the time," says Simba.

"Okay, so: this is Milliways. It's Magic. There are three rules: Don't kill your own food, don't do potty inside, and don't try to take over anyone else's Pride."

And then he'll ask about computers.

[awkwardbot]

"I read the rules in the digital brochure," I said. Well, not those rules exactly. "What do you mean by 'don't take over someone else's Pride?"

It sounded like something was getting lost in translation.

(Speaking of which, how were we talking to each other anyway?)

[mane_event]

"Oh."

Simba pauses, trying to figure out what it means. "Like, don't try and take over power or anything? It's a Lion thing."

[awkwardbot]

That seemed like a version of the "no violence of any kind" rule.

"I think I can manage not to do that."