Rogue Protocol Quotes

“There needs to be an error code that means “I received your request but decided to ignore you.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“I hate caring about stuff. But apparently once you start, you can't just stop.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas. (Yes, that was sarcasm.)”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Or Miki was a bot who had never been abused or lied to or treated with anything but indulgent kindness. It really thought its humans were its friends, because that’s how they treated it. I signaled Miki I would be withdrawing for one minute. I needed to have an emotion in private.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“They were all annoying and deeply inadequate humans, but I didn’t want to kill them. Okay, maybe a little.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“If you had to take care of humans, it was better to take care of small soft ones who were nice to you and thought you were great because you kept preventing them from being murdered.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Right, so the only smart way out of this was to kill all of them. I was going to have to take the dumb way out of this.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“I was tired of pretending to be human. I needed a break.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Why yes, I did want to disengage the safety protocols, thanks for asking.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Somewhere there had to be a happy medium between being treated as a terrifying murder machine and being infantilized.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Miki said, “That’s not good.”

See, that? That is just annoying. That contributed nothing to the conversation and was just a pointless vocalization to make the humans comfortable.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Then there was Asshole Research Transport. ART’s official designation was deep space research vessel. At various points in our relationship, ART had threatened to kill me, watched my favorite shows with me, given me a body configuration change, provided excellent tactical support, talked me into pretending to be an augmented human security consultant, saved my clients’ lives, and had cleaned up after me when I had to murder some humans. (They were bad humans.)”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“I was getting an idea. It was probably a bad idea. (When most of your training in tactical thinking comes from adventure shows, that does tend to happen.)”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“I looked down. I was dripping onto the floor, a mix of blood and fluid. I hate it when I leak.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“That’s the other problem with human security: they’re allowed to give up.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Nobody grabs SecUnits. I hadn’t realized this was a perk until now.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Frankly, I didn’t know what station security was going to do about it, either. In fact, I’m sure station security was now shitting itself almost as hard as I metaphorically was.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“The reason why they were trying to kill, maim, etc., each other wasn’t the SecUnit’s problem, it was for the humans’ supervisor to deal with. (Or to willfully ignore until the whole project devolved into a giant clusterfuck and your SecUnit prayed for the sweet relief of a massive accidental explosive decompression, not that I’m speaking from experience or anything.)”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Fucking up a planet, even part of a planet, for no reason was kind of a big deal, and I was surprised they had gotten away with it. Okay, no, I wasn’t surprised.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“there’s the right kind of unrealistic and the wrong kind of unrealistic.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“I needed to have an emotion in private.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“humans are so fucking unreliable when it comes to maintaining data.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“I tuned down my pain sensors and the impact sites faded from explosions down to embers. (I know that’s actually not a permanent solution and pretending bad things aren’t happening is not a great survival strategy in the long run, but there was nothing I could do about it now.)”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“I stared straight ahead. If there was one thing good about this situation, it was reinforcing how great my decisions to (a) hack my governor module and (b) escape were. Being a SecUnit sucked. I couldn’t wait to get back to my wild rogue rampage of hitching rides on bot-piloted transports and watching my serials.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Miki, damage report.” “I am at eighty-six percent functional capacity.” It held up its arm stump. “It’s only a flesh wound.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“It was a security consultant’s job to be skeptical of their clients’ assurances that everything was fine. (SecUnit clients, at least, only assured each other that everything was fine while you stared at the wall and waited for everything to go horribly wrong.)”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“As a SecUnit, a large part of my function was helping the company record everything my clients did and said so the company could data mine it and sell anything worthwhile. (They say good security comes at a price and the company takes that literally.)”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“I didn’t want to see helpless humans. I’d rather see smart ones rescuing each other.”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol

“Maybe it was something subliminal. Actually, it felt pretty liminal. Pro-liminal. Up-liminal?”
― Martha Wells, Rogue Protocol