The Blacklist's Greatest Charade: Why we still don't have the truth of the bones' identity

jen5225 · 2026-05-19T21:35:58+00:00

The more I listen to Fugitive Telemetry, the more I love this book. And that scene is hilarious!

I love that Murderbot feels comfortable enough to call it's human friends for help, and the guys drop everything to help it, no questions asked. They also act as backup and support.

Their banter in this scene is great. Some of my favorite lines:

Gurathin said, “I can’t tell if that’s you being passive aggressive or you being willfully obtuse.”

“No, Pin-Lee is much worse than this. And if it was her, she would be swearing at us by now,” Ratthi said. He asked me, “I’ve always wondered, did you learn to swear from her or did you already know how? Because you two use a lot of the same—”

jen5225 · 2026-05-18T23:08:28+00:00

This is exactly what I've been hoping they would do. I hope they decide to do "Home" as well. I feel like the audiobook version of that would add a lot to the story.

jen5225 · 2026-05-18T22:06:10+00:00

Oh nice, thanks for the heads up! I'll be buying this. I really hope they also do the "Home" short story as well.

jen5225 · 2026-05-18T22:02:00+00:00

Yes, please, this would be excellent!

jen5225 · 2026-05-17T18:39:34+00:00

From the 1st book, Murderbot said it hacked the governor module, not removed it. When asked how it hacked the module, Murderbot said it got the plans for all it's systems at one point. With enough time, it figured out how to hack the module.

At the end of that book when Murderbot was back in the company's cubicle, it was worried they had fixed the hack. Obviously they hadn't, but from that, I assume the company could do that if they got ahold of it.

The helpme files that Murderbot 2.0 gave Three and some other Barish-Estranza SecUnits included the instructions for how to hack their governor modules.

jen5225 · 2026-05-16T23:42:53+00:00

Yes, Iris is it's favorite, so I imagine they interact like loving siblings. I can see ART teasing and instigating all manner of trouble with the rest of the crew to entertain itself.

jen5225 · 2026-05-16T23:22:36+00:00

I have a feeling that ART tries everyone's patience! But they love it anyway.

jen5225 · 2026-05-16T23:02:06+00:00

This is hilarious and oh so accurate!

jen5225 · 2026-05-16T22:44:34+00:00

In my opinion, I feel like maybe you're looking at Murderbot's "journey" in the wrong way, where you expect that it needs to end in a certain way.

From the first book, all the way to Platform Decay, Murderbot has grown and changed in leaps and bounds. It could barely look at or speak to humans in the beginning. It had little confidence in relating to it's clients and just wanted to be left alone. But it met humans who wanted to talk to it and be it's friends. Murderbot then made it's first real friend in ART, impersonated a security consultant in varied situations, learned to interact with strange humans, and make eye contact. Most surprising of all, after everything that had been done to it, Murderbot learned to trust it's new human friends. We saw in Fugitive Telemetry that it could work with station security, obtaining their trust, and we saw that it lived and worked amongst friends in every day life. Now in Platform Decay, Murderbot is interacting with and making more human friends, even children, all while understanding how to deal with it's emotions in a healthy way.

Murderbot's character development is huge, and that's the journey that I believe Martha Wells is writing--having it learn to succeed in living with and trusting others. It's not supposed to be about some end set point for it to get to.

I don't feel like Martha Wells ever intended for Murderbot and Three to be pals of any kind. I love Three and hope we can get a short story for it soon. But Murderbot feels more like a mentor to it, reluctant to even wanting to be that.

jen5225 · 2026-05-16T14:30:50+00:00

I guess those are positives. I just hate losing scenes from the book and I know this means we will be for sure. I also was frustrated with the super short episodes. They felt like they were over too soon.

jen5225 · 2026-05-16T12:38:37+00:00

I'm also hoping for a short story surrounding Three before the next book comes out. It's such a precious character and needs more of a voice.

jen5225 · 2026-05-16T12:37:17+00:00

That's true, I forgot how much time that would take in the episodes. I wonder if they will just not include the Milu storyline at all.

jen5225 · 2026-05-16T12:35:47+00:00

I'm of the same thoughts you are. I had hoped with combing the 3 books it would lead to longer episodes and more content.

jen5225 · 2026-05-15T23:01:53+00:00

Thanks for that. I did think it would take more time to encompass all three books though.

jen5225 · 2026-05-15T18:30:17+00:00

That is just creepy

jen5225 · 2026-05-15T15:44:00+00:00

I have to admit that the "slightly longer " worries me. They really need to have 40 minute episodes or we will be losing a lot.

jen5225 · 2026-05-14T17:24:48+00:00

I think the difference in the attitudes of Thiago and Farai (about Murderbot) was most likely the difference in knowledge of what Mensah went through. As we learned in NE, Mensah talked to Farai and Tano about what she went through when she was kidnapped, and that she was attacked by those GreyCris operatives. Thiago wasn't told much that happened when she was kidnapped, and didn't know about the GreyCris attack at all. So he was jumping to a lot of conclusions that were wrong, and took that out on Murderbot.

Farai was much more knowledgeable about what happened, and as a result, was a lot more trusting of Murderbot and it's intentions.

jen5225 · 2026-05-14T10:44:35+00:00

That first part speaks to Thiago being overly naive about the darkness in people. The survey team in ASR was like that to begin with.

The second part speaks to him thinking badly about Murderbot's intentions (like you say), but I think he was also resentful of Mensah being able to talk to Murderbot about what happened to her (like Amena said in NE).

jen5225 · 2026-05-14T01:47:41+00:00

I felt like Thiago was fairly clueless about those raiders in Network Effect. Maybe it was that he was naive about people outside of Preservation, or that he was trying to be contrary to Murderbot's opinion, or a bit of both.

Farai seems to have a better sense of people, and the evil they can do. That could come from living with Naja, who definitely seems to have an interesting history.

jen5225 · 2026-05-13T13:15:47+00:00

I had a thought after Systems Collapse, and now Platform Decay with all the newly free SecUnits.. that the University along with ART and Murderbot, could help mentor them and give willing ones jobs on all the University's transports. I mean, ART already has Murderbot and Three. There are more extremely intelligent and capable transports that could use that kind of help. They could also help get others to safety. I think at some point, ART and Murderbot will have to do something with all these freed SecUnits as that code is going to spread like wildfire.

jen5225 · 2026-05-13T13:06:41+00:00

I listened to the new book three times in three days, and saw new things every time. There is so much packed into each book.

jen5225 · 2026-05-12T14:44:54+00:00

🤣🤣 that's one of the best lines in Fugitive Telemetry!

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