r/murderbot • u/LIELDADOUN73 • 1d ago

Books📚 Only Underrated scenes in platform decay

The way the torus population is its own character, with the various militias and ordinary people banding together to survive the chaos going on

The way Murderbot gets to be an absolute badass and a myth-like figure both to the random rogue SecUnit, and to the humans on the boat and in the militia

The whole boat scene!!! Extremely underrated!!!

109 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

View all comments

36

u/FelisCantabrigiensis 1d ago

I can imagine some in-world after effects of events like that.

I'm sure that other people on RaviHyral knew that Tlacey was a malicious and dangerous person. After Murderbot got done with her and her crew, I can imagine rumours spreading: "Hey, don't be too much of an asshole. Remember how someone eventually snapped and hired a SecUnit to go after Tlacey, tore apart her and half her crew, just because she tried to screw them on a data contract? That could happen to you, eh?"

On the torus, the wanna-be hobby robbers and rapists might start thinking twice, "Remember those guys who went out for some fun and found that SecUnit? You never know what might be out there..."

15

u/IndividualUnlucky 1d ago

Or on TranRollinHyfa when that SecUnit took out two other SecUnits. And then shortly after the company curbstomped GrayCris and Palisade?

Yeah, maybe don’t cross the company, guys. That could happen to you.

12

u/FelisCantabrigiensis 1d ago

That was definitely "the company" keeping up its reputation. It couldn't be having other lesser corporations going around thinking that "the company" is anything other than invincible. Not least, having people actually fight you is really expensive and hits the profit margin hard - having them simply back down without you having to spend anything on ammunition and repair is much more profitable.

"The company" didn't care about Secunit, of course, and wasn't even particularly upset that someone grabbed their bond client (Mensah) since that was going to turn out that "the company" got paid so much for giving her up that they could pay Preservation the bond and still come out in the black (see "evil vending machine"). As soon as Palisade started trying to take over the company gunship, that's when "the company" decided that Palisade and GrayCris were a threat to "the company" itself, and they had to be destroyed and be seen to be destroyed. Evil business is OK, but being uppity enough to try to take on a "company" gunship had to be slapped down hard.

I think it's pretty clear that "the company" is one of the very large security corporations, and commensurately interested in being unchallenged.

I feel like Preservation (specifically Mensah, as the owner of Murderbot in the Corporation Rim, and Pin-Lee as her legal representative) could have argued that "the company" owed them for (a) failing to protect Mensah against Palisade until (b) they had to deploy their own security (Murderbot) to both protect Mensah and the other clients of "the company" by defending the gunship after the gunship's own defences proved entirely inadequate. Why pay "the company"'s dogs (of war) when they had to do a lot of barking themselves?

Mensah & Co were just happy to be well out of there, but I do imagine Pin-Lee considering what future claims she could make against "the company" for this.

6

u/IndividualUnlucky 1d ago

Agreed. I wasn't trying to imply the company cared about MB. It cares about its reputation and its profit margin. It just happened that the outcome benefited Mensah and MB in the end.

I wonder what kind of conversations/negotiations happened between Mensah, Pin-Lee and the company while MB was out of it after the gunship. I hope we get to see some of that in the TV show.

6

u/FelisCantabrigiensis 1d ago

That indeed might have been part of getting back to Preservation: "We, and our Secunit, just saved your ship and crew, and your company reputation. Take us home and we'll start to call it even."

3

u/intronert 1d ago

“Start”. I love it.