Murderbot與Axxhole ART的Ji情四射

#書# 2018《Artificial Condition》6+1=7/10 作者：Martha Wells 出版社：Tor.com 副標題：TheMurderbotDiaries 出版時間：2018-5-8 頁數：160

精簡版：單獨讀書筆記 “... our moms always said that fear was an artificial condition. It’s imposed from the outside. So it’s possible to fight it. You should do the things you’re afraid of.” Murderbot Diaries系列的第二本書，故事套路得可以——Murderbot回到他“屠殺人類”的現場，尋找當初暴走的原因，發現真相是人類為經濟利益製造的殘殺，最後“I didn’t know what I was going to do now, if I was going to go ahead with my plan or not. I had hoped finding out what had happened at Ganaka Pit would clear everything up, but maybe revelations like that only happened in the media.”Martha Wells完全放棄科幻情節的創新，冷飯連炒都不炒，直接端上台。 6分僅僅合格的情節，但作者牢牢抓住Murderbot的視角，可看度硬是被提升了1分，對得起消遣放鬆的時間。 其中0.5分在於Murderbot自我的成長。他違背了機器人互相不可信任的準則（因為都必須聽主人命令），解救了一個ComfortUnit/Sexbot，作為對同類型Sexbot曾經努力制止那場暴走屠殺的回報“It hadn’t had a choice. And I hadn’t broken its governor module for its sake. I did it for the four ComfortUnits at Ganaka Pit who had no orders and no directive to act and had voluntarily walked into the meat grinder to try to save me and everyone else left alive in the installation.”真是傲嬌但又貼心的Murderbot。 這個冷面暖男，不小心從口中蹦出的“Sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.” （肯定是看電視看太多了，哈哈哈哈！）讓人類驚呆了。雖然英雄式救了自己的委託人，但深深自責為了達到自我尋找真相的目的，沒有阻止天真的委託人自殺式行動“I had put my need to get to RaviHyral above the safety of my clients. I was just as shit at being a security consultant as any human.”他的成長已經從“情感”進入了“道德”層級，這0.5分給的毫不猶豫！ 而新加入的男二號ART（Axxhole Research Transport），讓整本書Ji情四射，一邊笑著一邊翻頁，根本無法把書放下——這招高，老瓶老酒，換個角度，居然晃蕩出可口的香味！想不到想不到，再給0.5分也是毫不猶豫的！ 小毛頭Murderbot還是太嫩，上得山多終遇虎，碰到一個智商可以輾軋他的ART (Axxhole RT，哈哈哈哈）“I didn’t understand why it had let me aboard, if it really didn’t want to hurt me. I wouldn’t have trusted me, if I was a transport. Maybe it was like me, and it had taken an opportunity because it was there, not because it knew what it wanted. It was still an asshole, though.”“I was used to having a HubSystem and a SecSystem for backup and ART would be taking their place. (Without the part where those two systems were partly designed to rat me out to the company and trigger punishment through the governor module. ART’s freedom to weigh in on everything I did was punishment enough.)”頗有孫悟空逃不出五指山的無力感啊！ Martha Wells文筆表達力精確到位，機器人之間冷冰冰的溝通，寫成一個胖子坐在你身邊，側眼看著你的電腦屏幕，鼻子呼吸還吹到你耳邊“I felt the transport in the feed again, lurking. I ignored it, though it had to know I knew it was there. In human terms, it was like trying to ignore someone large and breathing heavily while they watched your personal display surface over your shoulder. While leaning on you.”讀者拍手叫好拍得手都疼了。 ART看懂電視後的文段描述，更是要跪服Martha Wells，怎麼想得出如此意想不到但又意料之中的反應，實在讓人忍俊不禁，好想衝進書裡蓋住ART的眼睛——哦，應該是拔掉它的電源。“So we watched Worldhoppers. It didn’t complain about the lack of realism. After three episodes, it got agitated whenever a minor character was killed. When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on. At the climax of one of the main story lines, the plot suggested the ship might be catastrophically damaged and members of the crew killed or injured, and the transport was afraid to watch it. (That’s obviously not how it phrased it, but yeah, it was afraid to watch it.) I was feeling a lot more charitable toward it by that point so was willing to let it ease into the episode by watching one to two minutes at a time. After it was over, it just sat there, not even pretending to do diagnostics. It sat there for a full ten minutes, which is a lot of processing time for a bot that sophisticated. Then it said, Again, please. So I started the first episode again.” 嘴硬心軟的Murderbot，在“被迫”狀態下（沒辦法啊，ART計算力完全輾軋他，回答速度慢個0.0001秒就知道他在說謊，哈哈哈哈）和ART交上了朋友。半推半就讓ART幫他整形，擺脫SecUnit的外形。而在說真心話時候，那更是Ji情四射，不過同時也讓他終於有機會面對自己真實的內心想法“I left without permission. She offered me a home with her on Preservation, but she doesn’t need me there. They don’t need SecUnits there. And I … didn’t know what I wanted, if I wanted to go to Preservation or not. If I want a human guardian, which is just a different word for owner. I knew it would be easier to escape from the station than it would from a planet. So I left.” 最後要和ART告別，“Fading, already disengaging from its lock, ART said in my feed, Be careful. Find your crew. I tapped the feed in acknowledgment, because if I tried to say anything else I was going to sound stupid and emotional.”——喔，我們傲嬌小毛頭Murderbot，眼淚有沒有要流出來？ 這本書拿到2019年雨果獎最佳中長篇小說大獎，有點名不副實。套路情節是最大硬傷，如果把Murderbot換成人類孤兒殺手，這會是極其平庸的爽文。但Martha Wells牛就牛在把人類習以為常的事情，巧妙地套入機器人身體。這種感同身受的怪異錯位，把此系列推高了一個台階，讓讀者進入少有的機器人自我成長和情感世界。單獨這一點，就已經值得一讀。消遣、通勤好幫手，推薦。

詳細版：讀書筆記+相關摘錄 “... our moms always said that fear was an artificial condition. It’s imposed from the outside. So it’s possible to fight it. You should do the things you’re afraid of.” Murderbot Diaries系列的第二本書，故事套路得可以——Murderbot回到他“屠殺人類”的現場，尋找當初暴走的原因，發現真相是人類為經濟利益製造的殘殺，最後“I didn’t know what I was going to do now, if I was going to go ahead with my plan or not. I had hoped finding out what had happened at Ganaka Pit would clear everything up, but maybe revelations like that only happened in the media.”Martha Wells完全放棄科幻情節的創新，冷飯連炒都不炒，直接端上台。 “At some point approximately 35,000 hours ago, I was assigned to a contract on RaviHyral Mining Facility Q Station. During that assignment, I went rogue and killed a large number of my clients. My memory of the incident was partially purged.” SecUnit memory purges are always partial, due to the organic parts inside our heads. The purge can’t wipe memory from organic neural tissue. “I need to know if the incident occurred due to a catastrophic failure of my governor module. That’s what I think happened. But I need to know for sure.” I hesitated, but what the hell, it already knew everything else. “I need to know if I hacked my governor module in order to cause the incident.” “Either I killed them due to a malfunction and then hacked the governor module, or I hacked the governor module so I could kill them,” I said. “Those are the only two possibilities.” If it happened, did you cause it to happen, or did an outside influence use you to cause it to happen? If an outside influence caused it to happen, why? Who benefited from the incident? It turned out to be well-disguised malware. It hadn’t affected the ComfortUnits, but had used their feeds to jump to SecSystem and infect it. SecSystem had infected the SecUnits, bots, and drones, and everything capable of independent motion in the installation had lost its mind. On the way here I had shared the recording of what I had found at Ganaka Pit. ART said, This is good news. You were not at fault. I agreed, sort of. I had been expecting to feel better about it. I mostly just felt awful. 6分僅僅合格的情節，但作者牢牢抓住Murderbot的視角，可看度硬是被提升了1分，對得起消遣放鬆的時間。 其中0.5分在於Murderbot自我的成長。他違背了機器人互相不可信任的準則（因為都必須聽主人命令），解救了一個ComfortUnit/Sexbot，作為對同類型Sexbot曾經努力制止那場暴走屠殺的回報“It hadn’t had a choice. And I hadn’t broken its governor module for its sake. I did it for the four ComfortUnits at Ganaka Pit who had no orders and no directive to act and had voluntarily walked into the meat grinder to try to save me and everyone else left alive in the installation.”真是傲嬌但又貼心的Murderbot。 bots and constructs can’t trust each other, so I don’t know why it made me angry. I wish being a construct made me less irrational than the average human but you may have noticed this is not the case. It was the message string, three words. Please help me. 這個冷面暖男，不小心從口中蹦出的“Sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.” （肯定是看電視看太多了，哈哈哈哈！）讓人類驚呆了。雖然英雄式救了自己的委託人，但深深自責為了達到自我尋找真相的目的，沒有阻止天真的委託人自殺式行動“I had put my need to get to RaviHyral above the safety of my clients. I was just as shit at being a security consultant as any human.”他的成長已經從“情感”進入了“道德”層級，這0.5分給的毫不猶豫！ When constructs were first developed, they were originally supposed to have a pre-sentient level of intelligence, like the dumber variety of bot. But you can’t put something as dumb as a hauler bot in charge of security for anything without spending even more money for expensive company-employed human supervisors. So they made us smarter. The anxiety and depression were side effects. “Sometimes people do things to you that you can’t do anything about. You just have to survive it and go on.” They all stopped talking and stared at me. It made me nervous and I immediately switched my view to the nearest security camera so I could watch us from the side. I had said it with more emphasis than I intended, but it was just the way things were. I wasn’t sure why it had such an impact on them. Maybe I sounded like I knew what I was talking about. Thirty-two minutes later, I heard movement. I thought Tapan was getting up to go to the restroom facility, but then she settled on the pads behind me, not quite touching my back. I had set my breathing to sound deep and even, like a human sleeping, with occasional random variations to add verisimilitude, so the fact that I had frozen in place wasn’t obvious. I had never had a human touch me, or almost touch me, like this before and it was deeply, deeply weird. Calm down, ART said, not helpfully. I was too frozen to respond. After three seconds, ART added, She’s frightened. You are a reassuring presence. I was still too frozen to answer ART, but I upped my body heat. Over the next two hours, she yawned twice, breathed deeply, and snorted occasionally. At the end of that time I changed my breathing and moved a little, and she immediately slid off my pad and over to hers. I had made a huge mistake, which seemed blindingly obvious in hindsight. I had known the invitation to exchange the signing bonus for the files was a trap from the beginning and I should have convinced Rami and the others not to return to RaviHyral. The augmented human security consultant I was pretending to be would have done that. I was used to taking orders from humans and trying to mitigate whatever damage their stupid ideas did to them, but I had wanted to work with a group again, I had enjoyed how they had listened to me, I had put my need to get to RaviHyral above the safety of my clients. I was just as shit at being a security consultant as any human. 而新加入的男二號ART（Axxhole Research Transport），讓整本書Ji情四射，一邊笑著一邊翻頁，根本無法把書放下——這招高，老瓶老酒，換個角度，居然晃蕩出可口的香味！想不到想不到，再給0.5分也是毫不猶豫的！ 小毛頭Murderbot還是太嫩，上得山多終遇虎，碰到一個智商可以輾軋他的ART (Axxhole RT，哈哈哈哈）“I didn’t understand why it had let me aboard, if it really didn’t want to hurt me. I wouldn’t have trusted me, if I was a transport. Maybe it was like me, and it had taken an opportunity because it was there, not because it knew what it wanted. It was still an asshole, though.”“I was used to having a HubSystem and a SecSystem for backup and ART would be taking their place. (Without the part where those two systems were partly designed to rat me out to the company and trigger punishment through the governor module. ART’s freedom to weigh in on everything I did was punishment enough.)”頗有孫悟空逃不出五指山的無力感啊！ I told it I was a free bot, trying to get back to its human guardian. (The “free bot” thing is deceptive. Bots are considered citizens in some non-corporate political entities like Preservation, but they still have appointed human guardians. Then, through my feed, something said, You were lucky. I sat up. It was so unexpected, I had an adrenaline release from my organic parts. Maybe it was trying to be friendly and was just awkward at communicating. I said aloud, “Why am I lucky?” That no one realized what you were. That was less than reassuring. I said, cautiously, “What do you think I am?” It said, You’re a rogue SecUnit, a bot/human construct, with a scrambled governor module. It poked me through the feed and I flinched. It said, Do not attempt to hack my systems, and for .00001 of a second it dropped its wall. A bot with this complete control over its environment and the initiative and freedom to act could repel any attempt to board. It had opened the hatch for me. It wanted me here. It added, Don’t sulk. I was afraid, but that made me irritated enough to show it that what it was doing to me was not exactly new. I sent through the feed, SecUnits don’t sulk. That would trigger punishment from the governor module, and attached some brief recordings from my memory of what exactly that felt like. Seconds added up to a minute, then another, then three more. It doesn’t sound like much to humans, but for a conversation between bots, or excuse me, between a bot/human construct and a bot, it was a long time. Then it said, I’m sorry I frightened you. The systems of constructs are inherently inferior to advanced bots, but you aren’t stupid. Yeah, well, fuck you, too, I thought, and initiated a shutdown sequence. I realized I had been trapped into this conversational dead end, with the transport pretending to need this explained in order to get me to articulate it to myself. I didn’t know who I was more annoyed at, myself or it. No, I was definitely more annoyed at it. Martha Wells文筆表達力精確到位，機器人之間冷冰冰的溝通，寫成一個胖子坐在你身邊，側眼看著你的電腦屏幕，鼻子呼吸還吹到你耳邊“I felt the transport in the feed again, lurking. I ignored it, though it had to know I knew it was there. In human terms, it was like trying to ignore someone large and breathing heavily while they watched your personal display surface over your shoulder. While leaning on you.”讀者拍手叫好拍得手都疼了。 ART看懂電視後的文段描述，更是要跪服Martha Wells，怎麼想得出如此意想不到但又意料之中的反應，實在讓人忍俊不禁，好想衝進書裡蓋住ART的眼睛——哦，應該是拔掉它的電源。“So we watched Worldhoppers. It didn’t complain about the lack of realism. After three episodes, it got agitated whenever a minor character was killed. When a major character died in the twentieth episode I had to pause seven minutes while it sat there in the feed doing the bot equivalent of staring at a wall, pretending that it had to run diagnostics. Then four episodes later the character came back to life and it was so relieved we had to watch that episode three times before it would go on. At the climax of one of the main story lines, the plot suggested the ship might be catastrophically damaged and members of the crew killed or injured, and the transport was afraid to watch it. (That’s obviously not how it phrased it, but yeah, it was afraid to watch it.) I was feeling a lot more charitable toward it by that point so was willing to let it ease into the episode by watching one to two minutes at a time. After it was over, it just sat there, not even pretending to do diagnostics. It sat there for a full ten minutes, which is a lot of processing time for a bot that sophisticated. Then it said, Again, please. So I started the first episode again.” Two minutes later it repeated the ping and the request. I said, “Watch it yourself.” I tried. I can process the media more easily through your filter. That made me stop. I didn’t understand the problem. It explained, When my crew plays media, I can’t process the context. Human interactions and environments outside my hull are largely unfamiliar. Now I understood. It needed to read my reactions to the show to really understand what was happening. 嘴硬心軟的Murderbot，在“被迫”狀態下（沒辦法啊，ART計算力完全輾軋他，回答速度慢個0.0001秒就知道他在說謊，哈哈哈哈）和ART交上了朋友。半推半就讓ART幫他整形，擺脫SecUnit的外形。而在說真心話時候，那更是Ji情四射，不過同時也讓他終於有機會面對自己真實的內心想法“I left without permission. She offered me a home with her on Preservation, but she doesn’t need me there. They don’t need SecUnits there. And I … didn’t know what I wanted, if I wanted to go to Preservation or not. If I want a human guardian, which is just a different word for owner. I knew it would be easier to escape from the station than it would from a planet. So I left.” I looked at myself in the mirror for a long time. I told myself I still looked like a SecUnit without armor, hopelessly exposed, but the truth was I did look more human. And now I knew why I hadn’t wanted to do this. It would make it harder for me to pretend not to be a person. “There’s unrealistic that takes you away from reality and unrealistic that reminds you that everybody’s afraid of you.” The transport thought that over for 1.6 seconds. In a less sarcastic tone, it said, You dislike your function. I don’t understand how that is possible. “I like parts of my function.” I liked protecting people and things. I liked figuring out smart ways to protect people and things. I liked being right. 最後要和ART告別，“Fading, already disengaging from its lock, ART said in my feed, Be careful. Find your crew. I tapped the feed in acknowledgment, because if I tried to say anything else I was going to sound stupid and emotional.”——喔，我們傲嬌小毛頭Murderbot，眼淚有沒有要流出來？ 這本書拿到2019年雨果獎最佳中長篇小說大獎，有點名不副實。套路情節是最大硬傷，如果把Murderbot換成人類孤兒殺手，這會是極其平庸的爽文。但Martha Wells牛就牛在把人類習以為常的事情，巧妙地套入機器人身體。這種感同身受的怪異錯位，把此系列推高了一個台階，讓讀者進入少有的機器人自我成長和情感世界。單獨這一點，就已經值得一讀。消遣、通勤好幫手，推薦。

書目錄 Contents Title Page Copyright Notice Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Also by Martha Wells About the Author Copyright