Artificial Condition & Rogue Protocol

The volumes 2 and 3 of The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells are likewise novellas -- fairly entertaining quick and easy reads.

Artificial Condition answered my question about the origins of Murderbot's organic parts: apparently they are grown as clones. I suppose there is some benefit for the partial organicity, even if the book's setting seems to support highly intelligent, completely artificial entities.

One effect of the organicity is being able to digest entertainment media made for humans, like the shows Murderbot watches. Murderbot hitches a ride aboard an autonomous research vessel, which gets dubbed Asshole Research Transport. Despite its vast computing power, ART is incapable of understanding the shows without Murderbot working as a half-voluntary interpreter, translating the required emotional responses into digital form.

At the end of the first novella, Murderbot got released from its corporate shackles by the team it was working for. Murderbot found the situation awkward and slipped away the first chance it got. In Artificial Condition, Murderbot investigates the murder spree incident that led to it hacking its governor module in the first place -- if the incident even happened.

During the investigation, Murderbot offers its services as a security consultant (masquerading as an augmented human), and when meeting its clients, the bot makes a note beforehand that one of them insists on being referred to with some odd pronoun -- due to being something I already forgot.

I also managed to forget about that detail even over the short form story and got really confused for a moment towards the end when it seemed like there was an extra person present when the pronoun was used capitalized. I feel that the translator Mika Kivimäki could've almost ignored the nonsense like Hannu Tervaharju did with On the Steel Breeze and used the sole third person pronoun Finnish has.

Rogue Protocol was a less significant story, I'd say. Murderbot continued its investigation on the questionable stuff its former owner appeared to have done.