★★★★☆ Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy, by Martha Wells
How does Perihelion REALLY feel?
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy
Martha Wells
How does Perihelion REALLY feel?
The last episode of Apple TV+ Murderbot, Season 1 was released yesterday, Friday 11-July-2025. As, I suppose, a kind of celebration, Martha Wells released a new story in the Murderbot Diaries, Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy, which you can read for free in Tor's Reactor Magazine. It's a 7,500-word novelette.
It is not, strictly speaking, a story about Murderbot who, although in the thoughts of one of the characters in the story, is not otherwise present. Rather, it is about Murderbot's friend Perihelion, also known as ART ("Asshole Research Transport"). Peri is a spaceship registered to the Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland. In Artificial Condition Murderbot hitched a lift aboard Peri to escape servitude and they bonded over buddy-watching TV series.
Although Goodreads lists Rapport as #7.5 in the Murderbot Diaries, it comes immediately after Artificial Condition in internal chronology and could, I believe, be read at that point. It takes place after Murderbot and Peri have parted.
In this story Peri and her crew investigate a Corporation Rim-owned space station. The story is told mainly from the point of view of one of the crew members, Iris. Iris (and the rest of the crew) notice some surprising changes in Peri's state of mind. Peri reveals that it learned some things from a new friend, and its affection for this new friend becomes evident.
This was all revealing, because in Murderbot's relationship with ART/Peri, ART always seems to be the dominant partner. Despite the sardonic (but accurate) nickname, Murderbot respects ART and ART's abilities, and listens to its advice. In this story, however, Peri seems to have been knocked a little off-balance, a little not-in-control-of-its-feelings, by its affection for Murderbot. It does not look, on Peri's side, like a purely professional relationship.
Good story.
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy in Reactor