Exit Strategy

“(Deleting memories like that doesn’t work. I can delete things from my data storage, but not from the organic parts of my head. The company had purged my memory a few times […] and the images hung around like ghosts in an endless historical family drama serial.)”

This parenthetical aside establishes the narrator’s hybrid machine-organic nature as a source of inescapable trauma. The simile comparing haunting memories to “ghosts in an endless historical family drama serial” illustrates the motif of entertainment media, showing how Murderbot filters its complex experiences through the lens of fiction, which is its primary tool for processing a reality it was not programmed to understand.

“(Possibly I was overthinking this. I do that; it’s the anxiety that comes with being a part-organic murderbot. The upside was paranoid attention to detail. The downside was also paranoid attention to detail.)”

This moment of self-analysis highlights Murderbot’s distinct narrative voice, which is characterized by dry humor and acute self-awareness. The phrase “part-organic murderbot” is a concise expression of its conflicted identity, while the repetition of the phrase “paranoid attention to detail” frames a single quality as both a survival tool and a psychological burden. This internal commentary reveals how its programmed function and organic components are in constant, anxious tension.

“When I put the new clothes on, I had a strange feeling I usually associated with finding a new show on the entertainment feed that looked good. I ‘liked’ these clothes. Maybe I actually liked them enough to remove the quotation marks around ‘liked.’ […] Maybe because I’d picked them myself. Maybe.”

This passage marks a significant step in Murderbot’s development of selfhood, directly linking personal choice to an emerging sense of identity. By equating the feeling of “liking” the clothes to the pleasure of discovering new media, the narrator frames a new emotion within the only comfortable