Martha Wells

"Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory" is a short story set in the world of Martha Well's Murderbot Diaries. This story was originally given free to readers who pre-ordered Network Effect, the fifth entry in the series. The events of "Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory" occur just after the fourth novella, Exit Strategy. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Tor.com Original

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory

Sabrina D. 

Ephraim is a good person and he won’t make the argument that SecUnit is not a person, not qualified as a refugee under Preservation law. Because they are all refugees in the Preservation Alliance, descended from people who were left to die because rescue was deemed not cost-effective. Because they stand on this station built from the ship that saved their grandparents’ lives, that helped them for no other reason than because it was there and it could. Instead Ephraim asks her, “Can you separate that person from the purpose they were created for?”

The Corporation Rim has always been a slave state, though it calls its institutionalized slavery “contract labor.” The production of human/bot constructs is just a more horrific twist, a mental slavery as well as a physical one. At least victims of contract labor are free to think their own thoughts. But we tell ourselves that constructs aren’t aware of their predicament. What SecUnit makes us realize is that this is not true; they are all aware of what they are and what’s been done to them. But the only choice they are ever offered is obedience or pain and death.

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory quotes

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