Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory

Context

This is a short story told from Mensah’s perspective, not Murderbot’s. It is the only Murderbot story narrated by someone other than Murderbot itself, and the difference is illuminating. We see how Mensah experiences the aftermath of her hostage ordeal, how she navigates the political complexity of having brought a rogue SecUnit into Preservation’s government seat, and how she processes her own trauma - none of which she would ever describe to Murderbot directly.

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The Political Meeting

Mensah is in a Preservation Station office, meeting with Ephraim, a fellow councilor who was planetary leader last term. The office is the same size as the room she was held in at TranRollinHyfa. She noticed this the moment she walked in and has been sitting with the fact ever since.

Ephraim is concerned - not hostile, but genuinely worried - about what it means that Mensah has brought Murderbot to the seat of their government. He uses careful language: “a product of corporate surveillance capitalism and authoritarian enforcement.” He is not wrong about what Murderbot was made to be. He is asking whether Mensah can separate the person from the product.

Mensah’s answer: she couldn’t. The person separated itself. This is both the answer and the problem. A person who can separate themselves is a person who can make choices - including choices that might not align with what Preservation needs.

Throughout the meeting, Murderbot is sending Mensah a series of increasingly absurd formal requisition forms through her official feed. The latest is for a gunship approximately the size of Port FreeCommerce’s transit ring. She responds: I think you made this one up. These exchanges are keeping her grounded. They are the thread she has been pulling on since TranRollinHyfa, when Murderbot’s pings through the feed meant rescue was possible - meant she was a person again rather than a bargaining chip.

She and Ephraim reach no resolution but an agreement that the rest of the council will need to have this conversation, probably several times.

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Bharadwaj’s Documentary

Bharadwaj comes to Mensah’s office to discuss a documentary project. The plan: a multi-part series about the treatment of constructs and bots under Corporation Rim law. The argument Mensah helps her refine is elegant in its simplicity - the propaganda claims constructs are not aware of their predicament. Murderbot makes it obvious this is false. Every construct is aware. The Rim’s system is institutional slavery, and the only cover for it is the claim of incapacity that Murderbot has spent four books disproving.

Murderbot, eavesdropping through the feed as always, sends them both a link to a weapons catalog. Mensah notes in the document that this is actually a useful argumentative thread: corporations have to hire someone to perform violence or enslave a construct to do it. The construct is aware of the violence being done.

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The Hotel Suite

The PreservationAux team is still at a Preservation Station hotel, finishing their survey reports. Mensah goes to work with them. It is easier than going back to her quarters, where she would have to tell people she is all right when she is not entirely all right.

Ratthi’s data tables are a disaster. Mensah volunteers to sort them, using the work as cover for staying in the room. The conversation that breaks out - about billing, about filing, about who broke what during the mission - is ordinary and domestic and exactly what she needs.

Murderbot, in a corner chair, is watching media in its feed and occasionally monitoring the room’s security. When it notices that the station’s systems include the billing feeds, it points out that the group never received the “Retrieved Client Protocol” - a standard trauma support package offered to survivors of hostage situations. In the Corporation Rim, you pay for it afterward. In Preservation, it’s simply available, and Mensah has not taken advantage of it.

She deflects. Says she’ll go later. Murderbot does not believe her. She can tell from the quality of its not-believing.

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The Journalist

Mensah goes to the pantry off the hotel lobby to get syrup for Gurathin’s coffee. Alone in the small space, she encounters a stranger - a journalist, not affiliated with any station, who has gotten past the hotel’s security by looking like a guest. He knows who she is. He just wants a statement.

She gasps.

Murderbot is behind her. It came from somewhere - she didn’t hear it, didn’t see it move, doesn’t know how it got there from the other room that quickly. It tells the journalist that station security is 47 seconds away. 46. 45.

The journalist runs.

Murderbot also caught the syrup bottle she dropped, and set it on the counter.

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The Offer

Afterward, station security is in the outer lobby taking her statement. Murderbot has slipped away into a corridor.

She finds it and says: “In all those requisition forms - is there something you actually want?”

It considers. Then says: drones. The small intel drones. Eyes in the places where Preservation has no cameras.

She says she’ll see what she can do. It asks whether that’s a bribe. She says it depends - would it work? Murderbot says it doesn’t know. It’s never had a bribe before.

Then it comes directly back to her: maybe she should go to the Station Medical trauma unit. Like Dr. Bharadwaj does. Like Volescu has been doing.

She says she’ll try. Murderbot makes a quiet, skeptical sound. They both know it’s not convinced. They both know she’s not either.

She goes to make her statement. Murderbot disappears before the security officers reach the corridor.

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What the Story Does

This is the story of what Mensah is carrying. The novellas are narrated by Murderbot, who processes feelings indirectly and deflects constantly. Mensah appears composed, competent, and in command in all four novellas because that’s how Murderbot sees her - and because she holds herself that way for everyone around her.

Here we see the room that’s the same size as her cell. The syrup bottle she dropped. The way Murderbot’s feed pings have been her anchor. She is managing her own trauma with the same careful deflection she uses to manage a government, and Murderbot sees right through it - is, in fact, the one being who consistently sees through it and does not take the deflection as an answer.

They are taking care of each other without either of them being able to name it.