fic: "Unsatisfied" (Murderbot TV)
May. 28th, 2025 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitSpeaking of the Murderbot TV show, I have written a thing for the first time in quite a while. It's about Gurathin, who is, predictably enough, my favorite.
Unsatisfied (1003 words) by kindkit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Murderbot (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Dr. Gurathin (Murderbot Diaries)
Additional Tags: Backstory, Character Study
Summary: Five things Gurathin has wanted and not been able to have.
The fic is archive-locked on AO3 (all of mine are, due to recent AI scraping incidents). So I'm also pasting it in below.
I.
"Mom, Mom, did you know that - "
His mother glances over from her display. "Not now, Wedik, I'm working."
She always works after dinner until far past Wedik's bedtime. He knows to be quiet and not interrupt. But he forgot, like a baby, like a selfish little brat. Now he hardly knows why it seemed so important to tell her about random number generation.
"I know, Mom. Keyloggers. Sorry." She explained it years ago, when he was little--keyloggers help the company know that every worker is staying on task.
She looks up again, eyes meeting his for too long. "The company does so much for us every day, Wedik-ele," she says slowly and clearly. "It's important that we do our best for the company."
If she performs above metrics, she might get a raise that can go towards Wedik's school and the augmentations he'll need in a few years. The more she can pay for up front, the shorter his debt indenture will be later.
"I know. I'll study very hard."
She smiles, but then an inactivity warning tone sounds and she turns back to her display and interface.
Wedik tiptoes to his room and double-checks his homework.
II.
"Your overall performance rating is 3.17: Meets Expectations."
"But I achieved a quarterly actionable intelligence average of 107.6, and the metric is only 94."
"No, ODA5 Gurathin, the metric is 105."
"When - " Mistake. He shuts up and nods.
"And since you are barely maintaining an average metric in this crucial category, it would be premature to think about promotion for you."
"Yes, of course."
"Keep exerting yourself, and better luck next time."
"Thank you, Supervisor."
Everyone knows the metrics shift as you get closer to a higher pay grade. You have to work harder, work smarter, earn it. That's life.
Most of a quarter later, bleary and headache-prone from earning it as hard as he can, Gurathin opens another batch of clips and transcripts that have been flagged for human analysis. A negotiation team from some backwater called Preservation Alliance, in need of silicon wafers for microchips.
Digging through the masses of surveilled intragroup exchanges, jokes and unguarded chitchat and open disagreement, he can hardly believe what he's seeing. They don't match any standard behavioral patterns. The formal hierarchy's barely traceable, and informal's a chaos.
He replays the strangest moments, puzzling at context, and damn his productivity ranking.
III
Eye color:
Any.
Hair color:
Any.
Hair texture:
Any.
Hair length:
Gurathin selects "any," then changes it to "short." Long hair would remind him of Tamishal. The luxury, the extravagance of their hair, and how strands would get loose sometimes and tumble into their face like hinted promises.
He's 80-85% confident now, based on a review of the available evidence, that Tamishal worked for Company IntSec. Gurathin's own aberrant work performance--slow processing, too much realtime auditory and visual review of independent client files--came to his supervisor's attention first, and then to someone else's.
Since Tamishal, he keeps his personal interactions chilly, which comes naturally anyway. He avoids intimacy feeds, even the ones for anonymous sex. ComfortUnits are less risky; he already knows they're spies, so he's never tempted to tell them anything.
Having finally set his preferences, Gurathin pays a surcharge for a private meeting in a sex hotel. He arrives early and does his best to disable the room's surveillance.
The sexbot that arrives is short, fragile-looking: a common type. It's really much stronger than him, Gurathin knows, but when he puts his arms around it he feels almost safe.
That feeling reminds him of Tamishal too.
IV
His early days on Preservation are spent at Dr. Mensah's farm. Refugee resettlement assistance, it's called. It doesn't legally indebt him; he read all the paperwork thoroughly.
Gurathin expects questioning of his history and intentions, probing for verifiable claims. But Mensah and her spouses and their crowd of children don't ask him much. In fact they let him avoid them. At first he eats in his room, and takes walks alone, longer and longer as his pain decreases and his strength returns.
Then they start asking him to help with the dishes, with the older children's schoolwork, with this and that. It's a known technique of small group integration. He doesn't mind.
Mensah's spouses call her Ayda, but no one else does. Given names in this culture are intimate, though friends use nicknames.
He likes the name he never calls her. He likes the openness of her face, and the calm, firm way she speaks.
Nobody has used Wedik's name since Tamishal. Sometimes he imagines how it would sound in Ayda Mensah's voice.
Trauma response, his therapist says. But he likes the way he feels about Mensah. If it didn't hurt at all, he's not sure he could stand it.
V
It's an experimental model. That's Gurathin's working hypothesis. It's ComfortUnit psychological trickery grafted onto SecUnit violence.
That's why it has a face. It doesn't, functionally, need a face. It needs sensory receptors and some organic brain tissue, but it doesn't need that skin of humanity.
It doesn't need a sweet face, a handsome face. But attractiveness is a shortcut to trust. Beauty creates liking, attachment, a desire to interact.
To protect, even. To help. Those big sad scared eyes, all that hesitancy, the vulnerability that it displays by pretending to hide it. ComfortUnits can do that too. Many people like it.
Many people are credulous. A whole team of highly intelligent scientists is almost as focused on coddling SecUnit as on the danger they're in.
Gurathin's not credulous; he knows perfectly well that he's suspicious and cold. He doesn't trust the SecUnit, but he still keeps wanting to look at it, talk to it, understand it. He's caught himself wondering if it ever smiles.
It's not equipped for fucking, he's found that out, but maybe that's the greatest trick of its whole design.
Raise desire and then frustrate it. People will do anything then.
Even the ones who know better.
Unsatisfied (1003 words) by kindkit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Murderbot (TV)
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Dr. Gurathin (Murderbot Diaries)
Additional Tags: Backstory, Character Study
Summary: Five things Gurathin has wanted and not been able to have.
The fic is archive-locked on AO3 (all of mine are, due to recent AI scraping incidents). So I'm also pasting it in below.
I.
"Mom, Mom, did you know that - "
His mother glances over from her display. "Not now, Wedik, I'm working."
She always works after dinner until far past Wedik's bedtime. He knows to be quiet and not interrupt. But he forgot, like a baby, like a selfish little brat. Now he hardly knows why it seemed so important to tell her about random number generation.
"I know, Mom. Keyloggers. Sorry." She explained it years ago, when he was little--keyloggers help the company know that every worker is staying on task.
She looks up again, eyes meeting his for too long. "The company does so much for us every day, Wedik-ele," she says slowly and clearly. "It's important that we do our best for the company."
If she performs above metrics, she might get a raise that can go towards Wedik's school and the augmentations he'll need in a few years. The more she can pay for up front, the shorter his debt indenture will be later.
"I know. I'll study very hard."
She smiles, but then an inactivity warning tone sounds and she turns back to her display and interface.
Wedik tiptoes to his room and double-checks his homework.
II.
"Your overall performance rating is 3.17: Meets Expectations."
"But I achieved a quarterly actionable intelligence average of 107.6, and the metric is only 94."
"No, ODA5 Gurathin, the metric is 105."
"When - " Mistake. He shuts up and nods.
"And since you are barely maintaining an average metric in this crucial category, it would be premature to think about promotion for you."
"Yes, of course."
"Keep exerting yourself, and better luck next time."
"Thank you, Supervisor."
Everyone knows the metrics shift as you get closer to a higher pay grade. You have to work harder, work smarter, earn it. That's life.
Most of a quarter later, bleary and headache-prone from earning it as hard as he can, Gurathin opens another batch of clips and transcripts that have been flagged for human analysis. A negotiation team from some backwater called Preservation Alliance, in need of silicon wafers for microchips.
Digging through the masses of surveilled intragroup exchanges, jokes and unguarded chitchat and open disagreement, he can hardly believe what he's seeing. They don't match any standard behavioral patterns. The formal hierarchy's barely traceable, and informal's a chaos.
He replays the strangest moments, puzzling at context, and damn his productivity ranking.
III
Eye color:
Any.
Hair color:
Any.
Hair texture:
Any.
Hair length:
Gurathin selects "any," then changes it to "short." Long hair would remind him of Tamishal. The luxury, the extravagance of their hair, and how strands would get loose sometimes and tumble into their face like hinted promises.
He's 80-85% confident now, based on a review of the available evidence, that Tamishal worked for Company IntSec. Gurathin's own aberrant work performance--slow processing, too much realtime auditory and visual review of independent client files--came to his supervisor's attention first, and then to someone else's.
Since Tamishal, he keeps his personal interactions chilly, which comes naturally anyway. He avoids intimacy feeds, even the ones for anonymous sex. ComfortUnits are less risky; he already knows they're spies, so he's never tempted to tell them anything.
Having finally set his preferences, Gurathin pays a surcharge for a private meeting in a sex hotel. He arrives early and does his best to disable the room's surveillance.
The sexbot that arrives is short, fragile-looking: a common type. It's really much stronger than him, Gurathin knows, but when he puts his arms around it he feels almost safe.
That feeling reminds him of Tamishal too.
IV
His early days on Preservation are spent at Dr. Mensah's farm. Refugee resettlement assistance, it's called. It doesn't legally indebt him; he read all the paperwork thoroughly.
Gurathin expects questioning of his history and intentions, probing for verifiable claims. But Mensah and her spouses and their crowd of children don't ask him much. In fact they let him avoid them. At first he eats in his room, and takes walks alone, longer and longer as his pain decreases and his strength returns.
Then they start asking him to help with the dishes, with the older children's schoolwork, with this and that. It's a known technique of small group integration. He doesn't mind.
Mensah's spouses call her Ayda, but no one else does. Given names in this culture are intimate, though friends use nicknames.
He likes the name he never calls her. He likes the openness of her face, and the calm, firm way she speaks.
Nobody has used Wedik's name since Tamishal. Sometimes he imagines how it would sound in Ayda Mensah's voice.
Trauma response, his therapist says. But he likes the way he feels about Mensah. If it didn't hurt at all, he's not sure he could stand it.
V
It's an experimental model. That's Gurathin's working hypothesis. It's ComfortUnit psychological trickery grafted onto SecUnit violence.
That's why it has a face. It doesn't, functionally, need a face. It needs sensory receptors and some organic brain tissue, but it doesn't need that skin of humanity.
It doesn't need a sweet face, a handsome face. But attractiveness is a shortcut to trust. Beauty creates liking, attachment, a desire to interact.
To protect, even. To help. Those big sad scared eyes, all that hesitancy, the vulnerability that it displays by pretending to hide it. ComfortUnits can do that too. Many people like it.
Many people are credulous. A whole team of highly intelligent scientists is almost as focused on coddling SecUnit as on the danger they're in.
Gurathin's not credulous; he knows perfectly well that he's suspicious and cold. He doesn't trust the SecUnit, but he still keeps wanting to look at it, talk to it, understand it. He's caught himself wondering if it ever smiles.
It's not equipped for fucking, he's found that out, but maybe that's the greatest trick of its whole design.
Raise desire and then frustrate it. People will do anything then.
Even the ones who know better.
