System Collapse

System Collapse (2023) Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries #7)

(According to Martyn, ART is of course capable of doing its own accounting, but it always ends up with extra numbers that no one can trace. So now Turi does it and has to keep a hardcopy ledger because otherwise ART would alter their data. No one knew if ART was making up numbers for the hell of it or if these numbers represented actual credit balances that ART was hiding somewhere.)

Iris yelled over both of them, “People! Calm down! We have soft-drop packs in the emergency locker. SecUnit can use one.”

She had large yelling capacity for a human her size. I had the feeling it came in handy.

On our private feed, ART-drone said, What the hell are you doing? Your stats are dropping.

I was just thinking about alien contamination, I told it.

Stop that immediately, ART-drone said.

Right, good luck with that.

I lack a sense of proportional response. I don’t advise engaging with me on any level.

Characters: Murderbot, Perihelion/ART, Ratthi, Overse, Pin-Lee, Dr. Mensah, Dr. Bharadwaj, Amena, Thiago, Iris, Tarik, Seth, Martyn, Karime, Matteo, Three, Sub-Supervisor Dellcourt, Bellagaia, Kaede, Danis, Variset, Corian, Turi, Trinh, AdaCol2, Lucia, Supervisor Leonide, Holism, Sum Total

Cover illustration by Jaime Jones

Publisher: Tordotcom

Rating: 9.5/10

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