After finishing All Systems Red, I did what most readers probably do. I immediately picked up the next novella – Artificial Condition.

Part of the appeal was Murderbot itself. By the end of the first book, I had become oddly invested in this socially awkward SecUnit that wanted nothing more than to avoid conversations and watch entertainment feeds. Naturally, I expected the sequel to give me more Murderbot.

I wasn’t expecting to become fascinated by a transport ship.

The ship’s name is ART. Murderbot gave it that name. It stands for Asshole Research Transport. Part insult, part nickname and perhaps a small acknowledgement that the ship is far more capable than Murderbot would like it to be.

In the first novella, Murderbot is usually the most dangerous thing in the room. It processes threats faster than humans, survives situations that should kill it and generally approaches problems with alarming efficiency. When it is hopping from planet to planet taking lifts from transport ships, it knows that at any time it can take over the ships pilot bot. They are simple bots and Murderbot is far more capable. Then it meets ART.

And suddenly, it is nervous and at times afraid.

The reason becomes obvious fairly quickly. ART is not a normal transport ship pilot bot. it is a research ship. And it controls everything around it. Doors. Cameras. Systems. Drones. It sees what happens throughout the vessel. If it wanted to make Murderbot’s life difficult, it could easily do so. Murderbot tries to block ART from sharing his stream. And ART goes through its defences as if they mean nothing. If it wanted to destroy Murderbot entirely, it could wipe him out. Murderbot realises this almost immediately. ART seems to enjoy the situation.

A large part of the novella’s charm comes from watching their relationship develop. ART asks questions. It seems genuinely curious in Murderbot’s motives. It interferes, teases, pokes at Murderbot’s carefully maintained emotional defences. Murderbot responds the way it responds to most social interaction: with suspicion, irritation and a strong desire to avoid discussing its feelings. Unfortunately for Murderbot, ART is difficult to ignore.

The strange thing is that after a while you stop thinking of ART as a ship. Or perhaps more accurately, you stop thinking of it as a ship in the way science fiction usually presents artificial intelligence. ART is not an android. It does not walk around looking vaguely human. It has no face. No body in the conventional sense.

Its body is the ship.

Its cameras are eyes. And its drones extend its reach. Corridors, airlocks and internal systems all seem to belong to it in a way that feels strangely physical. When something damages the vessel, it does not feel like damage to property. It feels like damage to ART itself.

A while ago, while writing my notes on The Age of AI, I found myself wondering what intelligence might look like if it was not constrained by human senses. ART allowed me to see what It might be if you break that assumption.

If cameras are its eyes and drones are extensions of its reach, where exactly does its body end? If an intelligence existed inside a city-wide network, perhaps traffic systems would become circulation. Arkady Martine in her Teixcalaan duology also touches upon this when she describes the Sunburst (the police on the the imperial planet). Surveillance cameras would become sight. Power grids would become metabolism. The longer ART remained in the story, the more difficult it became to assume that consciousness must experience the world the way we do.

What makes the character work is that Martha Wells never turns ART into a philosophical thought experiment. ART is curious. Nosy. Opinionated. It likes asking questions. It likes poking at Murderbot. And once it knows what Murderbot is up to, he helps by altering Murderbot to look more human. Changing his physical dimensions so that he is no longer a SecUnit. I think that the moment Murderbot surrenders itself to ART’s medical bay is the moment where a memorable friendship begins.

And if you read the book, you will know that neither of them would appreciate that description.

As in the first book, so in this one, whenever Murderbot has time, he plays entertainment feeds. Only this time ART also watches with him by sharing his feed. How annoying? Murderbot talks about fictional serials the way people discuss favourite television shows. It quotes episodes. References characters. Revisits stories it already knows.

And this made me think. Both Murderbot and ART have tremendous memory and near perfect recall. And a machine with nearly perfect recall should not have any reason to rewatch anything. If remembering were the objective, one viewing would have been enough.

Yet Murderbot keeps returning. And the soap opera – The rise and fall of Sanctuary Moon is a show that you will want to watch by the time you are through a couple of more Murderbot books. I’m not the only one. There are demands that the series should actually be produced.

We do the same thing, of course. Favourite novels, films, sitcoms we already know by heart. The plot is not really the attraction anymore. We already know what happens. Something else keeps pulling us back.

Perhaps that is why Murderbot’s obsession with media feels so familiar. Familiar stories create familiar territory. You know where the tension arrives. You know where relief follows. For a little while, uncertainty disappears because the story has already been mapped. Murderbot never explains any of this. Self-awareness is not always its strongest quality.

Running beneath all of this is Murderbot’s investigation into the massacre that defines its past. Structurally, the novella has the shape of a detective story. Murderbot wants answers. It wants to know what happened and what role it played. But then in order to visit the planet system he has to declare himself to be security consultant. ART helps him to look more human, and he becomes a security consultant. Only for a short while, and only because he could entry to the Ravi-Hyral mining facility. But then his inner Reacher kicks in. And he gets involved. That part of the book is pure Murderbot fun.

Even then, by the end of Artificial Condition, what stayed was not the mystery of Murderbot’s past. And not even the action sequences, though there are plenty of those. SecUnit gets into quite a lot of trouble in this slim novella.

What remained was ART.

Science fiction often asks us to imagine alien worlds. ART made me wonder whether alien minds might be even stranger.