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Tarik is a character from The Murderbot Diaries who, even though he doesn't get a whole lot of screen time, has some fascinating hints dropped about his violent-tragic-traumatic backstory, is high-key competent and low-key funny, and seems to be embroiled in a lot of Messy Gay Drama.

He plays a rather significant supporting role in System Collapse, but he never felt like a main character to me. The story never explores his interiority; his desires don’t drive the narrative; his decisions don’t change the course of events. Which is fine, and in context, completely understandable—he’s here to do a job, and his job is following MB’s and/or Iris’s orders.

Though compared to All Systems Red, where MB was paying a lot of attention to the internal states of the PresAux crew—how they felt about each other, about MB, about the situation—it’s kind of strikingly absent from System Collapse. Murderbot never wonders about Tarik as a person, doesn’t speculate on what he’s thinking or feeling, we’re just left to infer it from what’s on the page.

But it turns out there's a surprising amount on the page, so I’ve taken a fine-toothed comb to Network Effect, System Collapse, and Rapport for mentions of Tarik to see what canon says about him.

Tarik’s tragic backstory

So the most salient thing about Tarik is that he used to be a corporate soldier of some kind. Iris calls it a “corporate combat squad”; MB mentally translates that to “death squad.” Given their respective knowledge of the Corporation Rim, I expect MB’s gloss is more accurate, and Iris is using the corporate terminology.

(ETA: Having now read Platform Decay, I think it's a safe assumption that every time we see the bad-guy mooks deployed for kidnapping/assassination/wholesale slaughter as part a corporate power play, we're looking at Tarik's old job. Death squad, indeed.)

Iris is the one who outs him to MB and Ratthi, mid-mission:

Then Iris said, “Tarik used to be in a corporate combat squad.”

Wow. Okay. That was unexpected, and it caused a reaction in my organic parts. [...]

I still couldn’t read any expression through [Tarik’s] face plate and I was pretty sure he couldn’t read mine, if I was making one, but he immediately held up his hands, palm out. He said, “I don’t want to fight you under any circumstances, period, end of story.” […] His voice deliberately ironic, Tarik added, “And thanks, Iris, anything else you want to tell the new people about me?”

“Yes.” Iris was looking at me. As far as I could tell, she was the only one not having a moment right now. “He hates corporates more than any of us. They made him kill.”

I have a LOT of feelings about that line and its ramifications, but at the very least, we can take that to mean that he was conscripted or indentured into military service -- that he would not have done that work if he had any real choice.

(Also, roflmao, I highly doubt that MB was as expressionless and unreadable as it thought it was there. 😂 Babydoll, you just gave him a pants-wetting death glare, which is why he instantly rolled the fuck over and showed his throat.)

The only specific example we get of Tarik's work on the death squad is in Rapport:

Matteo looked confused, too. They said, “So where did you see [SecUnits], Tarik?”

Tarik made an impatient gesture. “They were used as enforcement in the Sagaro Pits.”

Nonplused, Iris exchanged a glance with Matteo. Tarik didn’t mention his stint as a guard in a contract labor camp very often, or hardly at all.

Yep, our boy was a concentration camp guard. 🫠

And that has a lot of parallels with being a SecUnit, a fact that isn’t lost on anyone:

Tarik did a body language thing that started as an aborted clap on my shoulder and ended with an awkward shrug as he remembered I wouldn’t like it. He said, “Just remember you’ve got backup.”

I suddenly got why Iris had brought up his past in sanctioned corporate murder; she wanted him to think about his current job vs. my job, about who would make the security decisions. How we had something in common, I guess.

…MB, I’m pretty sure she wanted you to think about what the two of you have in common. She wasn’t telling Tarik anything he didn’t already know.

It seems like she might have been hoping/expecting that Tarik and MB would bond over their shared trauma of having been used as a living weapon, but neither of them seem terribly enthused by the prospect:

Tarik lowered his hands, still looking at me. “Right. We should talk about this later.”

We probably should but we absolutely are not going to, not if I can help it.

This is also when we get hints that there’s tension between Tarik and the university/the rest of the crew:

On our private feed [to ART], I said, You knew that about Tarik.

Yes. It’s been a complex situation. Seth registered an objection when Tarik was first assigned to me, and I seconded it. Seth thought he would be too rash, and that having been required and often compelled to display aggression toward humans in the same situations as those we were trying to help would be a habitual behavior that might recur under pressure, even for a human who was actively trying to suppress it. The faculty director persuaded us to give him a chance. They were correct, it has worked out. So far.

Which is interesting, considering that we never see Tarik behaving in any way other than smart, skilled, and in control of himself, even when the situation gets dicey. So was it completely unfair and off-base for them to just assume that Tarik would be a rash, aggressive asshole, because of where he came from? Or was he a lot more aggro when he first arrived on Mihira-New-Tideland, and what we’re seeing in SC is the result of a whole lot of therapy a concerted effort to improve his emotional control? Dealer’s choice.

Furthermore, what does “persuaded” mean in this context? How much of a choice did ART actually get about having Tarik on its crew? Because if ART doesn’t have veto power (or doesn’t believe it’s allowed to say no) to who’s assigned to its crew, that is… pretty fucked-up, actually. I talk more about ART’s antagonism for Tarik further down, but to be honest, it may have less to do with Tarik himself, and just be ART’s resentment at being forced to allow this human it doesn’t like into its very body.

Anyway, for a less-depressing bit of backstory:

ART-drone told him. You will be in charge of music since you have the most experience of those here.

Wide-eyed, Tarik put up his hands not unlike the way he had when he said he didn’t want to fight me. “I played traditional oud and bouzouki and danced a little when I was in school, I certainly don’t—”

🥹 My darling boy played oud and bouzouki and danced in school, omigawd, that must have been precious. And when you consider it in the context of the other things we know about him, it’s pretty fucking heartbreaking—a glimpse of him in a normal life before he got forcibly turned into an instrument of genocide. Just a kid, going to school, playing the bouzouki (probably badly).

Incidentally, Tarik/Tariq/Tarek is a name that is common in the Balkans and all across the middle east, as are the oud and bouzouki. (They are both stringed instruments similar to a lute.) It’s tragic that we get no details about what style of dance he did, but I like to imagine it was Georgian because that’s very cool. Obviously he’s not intended to map 1:1 with any real-world ethnicity, but I like that cultural grounding for him.

And—perhaps not coincidentally—Tarik (with specifically that spelling) is one of the most popular men’s names among Bozniak Muslims, the people who were the victims of the 1995 Bosnian genocide.

(Because there is no better time to radicalize people into violence—or disappear people into human trafficking—than during that kind of widespread social upheaval.)

Tarik and Ratthi having messy gay drama

The first hint we get of it is in System Collapse, where not even MB is oblivious enough not to notice that Ratthi is ogling Tarik:

Tarik was carrying the tool cases back to the shuttle, which was parked on the flat ground past the trees. […] Ratthi had stopped looking at his data and was watching Tarik walk.

#Tarik’sCanonExcellentAss 😎

Ratthi and Tarik aren’t overtly flirtatious in their interactions in SC, but they’re in conversation with each other pretty much nonstop whenever there’s no emergency happening.

In the shuttle, Ratthi and Tarik were speculating that there were more sites, discovered and undiscovered, all over the planet. Ugh, I hope not.

*

Tarik and Ratthi were monitoring controls but had started a conversation in their private feed.

*

He and Tarik had been having a rambling conversation about Pre-CR history and ruins; neither one of them had certifications in it, but they knew a lot about it, or at least they thought they did.

(lol MB is so catty. 🤣)

And they’ve apparently been Like This long enough that MB knows to expect them to not be able to shut up with each other:

ART said, Please stop excessive speaking on the mission feed and they all shut up. I know what humans are like, so I had only given Ratthi and Tarik read access.

But yeah, it’s fun that they seem to have hit it off really well together, and that they share a hobbyist interest in something unrelated to their respective specialties. It also shows again that Tarik—despite not being an academic like the rest of the crew—is nonetheless intelligent and curious. When he comes across something he doesn’t know, his response is to look it up and find out:

“I wonder what this planet was like before the terraforming.”

“Much worse than it is now, apparently,” Ratthi said. “I wonder if the Pre-CR inhabitants also terraformed?”

“Huh,” Tarik commented, and started pulling up geographical data.

Aaaaand then there’s messy part of The Thing Going On Between Them. 🤣 After Iris outs Tarik as ex-death-squad:

I wasn’t the only one who had reacted. On the shuttle’s comm, Ratthi had made a startled but somehow not startled noise, like an “ah.” Tarik’s head made a minute jerk, like he wanted to respond but didn’t let himself.

...Yeah. Ratthi didn’t know about Tarik’s death-squad past until Iris outed him. (Which is a hell of a thing to be keeping from a guy you seem to be getting serious with.) Or rather, he didn’t know—but he might have had a hunch, because it didn’t come as a complete surprise when he found out.

(This begs the question of how much he’d known about Tarik at that point; presumably he’s learned that Tarik is another CR refugee, and it’s not a secret that Tarik’s role on missions is being security/protective detail. And possibly picked up hints of Tarik’s Dark Trauma, but had not pressed for details before Tarik was ready to share them. But that’s all speculation.)

And speaking of keeping things from the guy you were getting serious with—

THE THING WITH MATTEO (??)

The timeline of how long Tarik and Ratthi have known each other at this point is unclear. We don’t know when they first met, though in Network Effect, Ratthi seems to have assigned himself to the task of meeting/helping people as they come aboard; he and Amena are the ones arranging medical care for the people that Three rescued from the baseship, so it stands to reason that he did the same when the Seth/Iris/Matteo/Tarik/Karime group arrived. And Tarik was nursing some kind of internal injury when MB found them:

Tarik kept pressing his hand to his lower abdomen and trying not to wince in a way that made me want to call a nonexistent MedSystem.

So it’s entirely possible that Ratthi helped Tarik get to medbay (and then tenderly treated his wounds lol). (For your consideration, my headcanon: Tarik’s internal injury was traumatic appendicitis, and he was in full-blown fever-delirium by the time he got to the Perihelion.)

Mensah arrived in the system twenty days after ART kidnapped MB and Amena. We don’t know how much time passes between the end of Network Effect and the beginning of System Collapse. Another twenty days maybe? So we’re looking at as little as three weeks, but probably more like six to eight weeks.

But we do know that Tarik and Ratthi had a fight four days before SC. (I’d assumed it had to do with Matteo, but I just realized that we don’t know that for sure what they were fighting about; it just looks that way because MB paused in the middle of their present-time discussion about Matteo to give a flashback to their fight.)

Then my drone that was stationed in the galley area picked up raised human voices. Short duration, but long enough to pick up actual agitation, not excited agitation.

I paused the episode and asked ART, What’s that?

You don’t want to know, it said.

Yes, I do fucking want to know. […] If the humans were having a fight...

I find it very interesting that what MB alerts to is the tone—it is keenly attuned to the distinction between humans having loud fun vs humans getting loud aggressively (which is often a prelude to violence), and as a SecUnit it is incapable of disregarding the latter. The word it uses is “agitation” but I wonder if “aggression” might have been more accurate—because it does identify this as a fight, not say, the humans shouting with alarm at finding a rat in the vents.

Midway down the corridor, Tarik slammed out of a doorway. He stopped abruptly, just short of running into me. He looked startled. I said, “Is there a problem.”

“What? No!” He stared at me. I stared back, just above his sightline. He winced and ran a hand through his hair. “Not that kind of problem.”

“What kind of problem.” There’s no question mark there because I didn’t really want to know and was hoping he would refuse to tell me.

Ratthi stuck his head out of the doorway. “Oh, hello, SecUnit. I’m sorry we bothered you. We were just having a discussion.”

I didn’t move. I figured I only had maybe four seconds at most before they broke down and told me anyway.

It was barely two seconds before Tarik said, “I know what it looks like—”

Ratthi interrupted, “It doesn’t look like anything.” It’s odd for Ratthi to interrupt when it’s not the excited-yelling kind of conversation when the humans all feel the need to talk at the same time. He turned to me. “It was a sexual discussion.”

Once again, I don’t think MB’s face was cool and composed—I think Tarik turned the corner and nearly ran headlong into a murderously-scowling SecUnit, and that was another fight-flight-freeze response from him.

I also really doubt that Ratthi was the one raising his voice in the dangerous-and-not-playing-around tone of loud that had MB sprinting across the ship to intervene, meaning it was Tarik getting aggro with darling boy Ratthi, of all people. Which gives me all kinds of thoughts about military masculinity, and the narrow range of emotional expression it allows (spoiler, the range is “anger”), and so it’s unsurprising that Tarik is quick to get loud when he gets het up, because aggression is the only non-pussy way to defend one’s boundaries in that kind of environment. (He gets pretty heated when arguing with ART in Rapport too, which I’ll examine further down.)

So we get that flashback, and then return to the present where Tarik and Ratthi having a Relationship Discussion, and the point of contention is Matteo:

Ratthi and Tarik were talking about the Thing Going on Between Them, which, ugh. His voice low and worried, Tarik said, “I wasn’t leading you on.”

“Ah, weren’t you?” Ratthi said. He sounded like he wanted to sound unconcerned, but I thought he was actually pissed off. I did a quick voice tone comparison to archived recordings of Ratthi in various agitated discussions and arguments and oh yeah, he was pissed off. He continued, “I don’t break up relationships.”

Tarik said, “Matteo and I aren’t together that way.”

Tarik and Matteo weren’t listed as marital partners in ART’s crew records. […] I could share that information with Ratthi, but I don’t think he’d appreciate it right now.

So this raises a lot of questions, given that:

• Ratthi is canonically great with polyamory. In Network Effect, MB tells us that “he had a lot of relationships with all genders of humans and augmented humans and he and they all seemed very happy about it.” It’s very unlikely that he’d take offense to Tarik having other lovers/friends-with-benefits.

• What he’s mad about is the prospect of someone in a closed relationship cheating on their partner with him—that he’s being used to “break up” the relationship.

• Except Tarik doesn’t seem to have that kind of relationship with Matteo. He straight up says he doesn’t, and the fact that he got yelling-mad back at Ratthi during their fight suggests that he doesn’t think he did anything wrong there.

So how does this merit a shouting fight and then a Serious Relationship Discussion? How was this not resolved instantly, four days ago, by Tarik going “Matteo and I aren't together that way” and Ratthi going “Great, glad to have that cleared up”? Why is the current discussion about Matteo (who isn't here, and who Ratthi doesn't seem to have been pissed about earlier in the day) and not the reveal that Tarik's been lying-to-him-by-omission about the death squad thing (which happened just a few hours ago, and they haven't had time to talk about yet)?

And what even happened that gave Ratthi the impression that the Tarik/Matteo relationship was serious? He clearly didn’t get that idea from Tarik, so my guess would be that it had to have come from Matteo. Matteo getting territorial and telling Ratthi to step off? But if Ratthi and Tarik have been going around acting the way they do in SC, then how did Ratthi only find out about Matteo four days ago? The Perihelion isn’t that big; Matteo would have noticed that they’re spending their every waking moment having deep conversations and staring soulfully into each other’s eyes.

Also, Tarik and Ratthi both seem to be quite casual about sex, usually—Ratthi with his “people of many different genders” and Tarik with his apparently-not-that-serious thing with Matteo—so LOL, why are they being uhaul lesbians instead of casual friends-with-benefits? They’ve only known each other for 3~8 weeks, and both of them are cool with casual hookups, so how did The Thing Between Them get so serious, so fast, for both of them?

So many questions.

*

Not sure what to file the interview under, but they have some cute interactions there:

Tarik had clearly not wanted to talk about his past any more than I wanted to talk about my emotions, but he had done it anyway, because it might help. And Ratthi had been supportive and asked good questions no matter how pissed off he was with Tarik about the sex thing.

I assume that interview also doubled as Tarik coming clean to Ratthi about the secrets he’d been keeping. 😅

Ratthi said, “If they don’t like it, fuck them.”

Tarik snorted a crunchy thing and had to be pounded on the back by Iris. “I’m serious,” Ratthi said, doing an exasperated hand-wave thing. “If they can’t recognize the truth in an attempt to save their lives, I don’t know what else to do.”

(I’m guessing this is like hearing a carebear say the fuck word.)

Toward the end, during the escape from the underground colony, Tarik leaves Ratthi in the shuttle to go help MB & co fight their way out—but when Ratthi’s exit gets cut off, Tarik immediately turns back to go protect Ratthi instead:

In the input from Tarik’s helmet camera, he parted from the two colonists, who ran away down one corridor. He was now running down another corridor back toward the hangar. He was saying, Ratthi, can you get inside the installation? Peri—

[...]

Tarik, no time. I have an alternative, ART-drone said. Ratthi, strap in.

(Which is the rational decision—the others already have MB to protect them, while Ratthi is all alone—but you can also imagine that Tarik is extra alarmed at his boyfriend/crush being in danger.)

And when they are finally reunited with Ratthi, he has disguised the shuttle:

Then as we got closer, we saw it was our shuttle. We just hadn’t recognized it because of the bad light and because it looked like it was wearing a hat.

Sounding amused and also exhausted, Iris said, “Ratthi, what did you do?”

“It’s the survival tent.” [...] “I was looking for something to help hide us. I didn’t want to close the big construction hatch and then not be able to get it open again. Dust collects fast here and from the pathfinders’ view it looks like the bay is a sand drift.”

“That’s just a little brilliant,” Tarik admitted, setting us down in the mouth of the tunnel. [...] “I guess that’s why you’re a scientist.”

D’aww. Hard to tell whether they’re still on the outs at this point, or if they managed to work things out during their Discussion the night before. They seem to be back in step with each other again:

Ratthi used the tent’s feed interface to collapse it down and he and Tarik shoved it back into the cargo hatch.

[…]

Ratthi and Tarik piled in and bot pilot shut the hatch and lifted off while they were still strapping down in the cockpit.

I just think they're neat. 🥰

ART’s antagonism for Tarik

I said, “The name I call Perihelion is ART, which stands for Asshole Research Transport.”

[…] Tarik said, “You definitely know the real Peri.”

...Literally the first line Tarik has in canon. 😂

Which is funny in Network Effect, and could have been anyone on the crew saying it, but what emerges in System Collapse (and then especially in “Rapport”) is a pattern of ART needling Tarik specifically. It’s not clear how serious we’re supposed to take ART’s antagonism, but it is noteworthy.

From Iris’s POV in Rapport, when ART is being grouchier and more cryptic than usual, and the crew can tell that something’s off about it:

Tarik added, And you people say I’m cranky.

Matteo said [to ART], You’re jealous because you’ve never been able to compete in the crank-off.

Peri said, I have unfair advantages.

Iris controlled a sigh. She wasn’t going to try to unpack that one. It was equally possible that it was self-deprecating humor or an attempt to get Tarik to step into a verbal trap leading to some massive insult. But Peri had been in a strange mood since it had come back from its last solo cargo run, so there was no telling.

...So, baiting Tarik into saying something it can insult him for is evidently A Thing ART Does. Not to Matteo, the one who’d actually been addressing ART, to Tarik specifically.

ART also makes a point of reminding Tarik that he’s there on sufferance:

“Is that … weird, that Perihelion does this?” Ratthi asked. He had turned around in his seat to look at ART-drone.

“Everything about this job is weird,” Tarik told him from the cockpit.

Especially Perihelion’s high tolerance for certain members of its crew, ART-drone said.

And makes digs at Tarik for not being intellectual:

ART-drone said, We’ve talked about these assumptions before, Iris.

Assumptions? Ratthi asked.

Attributing human characteristics to machine intelligences, ART-drone said. [...]

Ah, but what do you consider human characteristics? Ratthi said.

Tarik said, Oh please, don’t start with it.

Why not? Ratthi’s voice in the feed was amused.

Tarik is confused by philosophical debate, ART-drone said.

Because it likes to win and it won’t shut up until it does, Tarik said.

Tarik has an issue with projecting his emotions onto others, ART-drone said.

People, stop. I’m sorry I asked, Iris said, and added a laughing sigil.

On two occasions we see ART deliberately misconstrue something Tarik said so it can ostentatiously take offense, forcing him into a frustrated backpedal. (And both times, derailing the conversation from a topic that ART wanted to get away from.) In this case, MB was temporarily paralyzed by a trauma-related flashback, and both Ratthi and ART are covering for its momentary lapse:

My drone on the shuttle heard Tarik say, “Are we going to get a report anytime soon?”

The drone watched as Ratthi’s face did a thing and his voice went a little tight. He said, “When there’s something to report.”

“Since when did you become a micromanager, Tarik,” Iris added, in what definitely wasn’t a question. She was smiling a little, and I’m pretty sure she was bantering at him, but it could also be a hint for him to leave me alone.

Tarik held up one hand. “I was just asking.”

ART-drone said, And I am asking if you are critiquing my administration of this mission?

Yes, because ART loves to be critiqued.

Tarik obviously knew that, too. “Hey, hey, I was just curious about what was happening, that’s all! I am absolutely not critiquing anybody!”

Yeah. Tarik getting dogpiled when he didn’t do anything wrong is… kind of a theme.

And then there’s the whole sequence in Rapport where ART shows them the schematics for (MB’s) intel drones; Tarik recognizes them as SecUnit drones, and is understandably concerned about where the hell ART saw those. He is, objectively, correct on every count, but ART dodges, obfuscates, plays dumb, and then pretends to Take Great Offense to distract the others from Tarik’s questions:

With a wince, Tarik ran a hand through his hair. “Sorry, but you don’t understand how dangerous those things are. If some corporate hired a security company to watch us, that’s what they’d use.”

Peri said, Do you think I’m unaware of the danger of that? Do you think I’m an idiot? Or are you calling me a liar?

Matteo flung their hands in the air. “Now you made it mad.”

“Of course not,” Tarik said to Peri, gesturing sharply. “I just want to know—”

Right, that’s it, Iris thought. She said, “Peri, Tarik, that’s enough. This is obviously not the conversation to have when we’re in enemy territory.”

Of course, Iris, Peri said. It sounded just like a perfectly obedient machine voice. Iris rolled her eyes. That was always a bad sign.

“I was not calling you an idiot or a liar,” Tarik added. “And—” He grimaced. “It cut my interface off.”

Iris set her jaw, and drew on her rapidly dwindling store of patience. “Great. What did I just say?” she asked him.

“I don’t even know what I said wrong,” Tarik protested.

“It was trying to be proactive and give us new tech and you jumped up its butt,” Matteo explained, not patiently.

“I just wanted to know where it saw those drones,” Tarik persisted. “If it was on a station with SecUnits— They’re the only MIs I know of who would have a chance in a fight with Peri.”

You are adding insult to injury, Peri said.

“I’m sorry!” Tarik waved in exasperation. “But—”

Iris had enough. “Matteo, can you take over? I need to go on private for a few minutes.”

“Sure, I’ve got it,” Matteo replied. As Iris got to her feet and walked a little distance across the chamber from where the team was working, they stage-whispered to Tarik, “Now look what you’ve done.”

Yikes™! 🫠

Honestly, hats off to Tarik for standing his ground, through the incredibly frustrating and infuriating experience of arguing with someone when they’re better at debating, but you’re RIGHT, goddamn it. 🤬 Tarik doesn’t have the verbal/rhetorical training to parry ART’s misdirections, and ART is not making this easy or pleasant. It undercuts Tarik to make him look like a belligerent asshole in front of his colleagues, even though he was right about everything, and right to be concerned. So I'm very impressed with him for not letting himself get bludgeoned into shutting up, even with nobody else taking him seriously or taking his side.

This conversation does make Matteo come off as a bit oblivious—they don’t give any consideration to Tarik’s (entirely valid) security concerns, and they entirely fall for ART’s bullshit about being the wronged party in this interaction (even when it’s functionally DARVO’ing Tarik). They just don’t seem to be very attentive. 😅

And then the most pointed example of ART's hostility comes in Rapport. ART is talking with Iris, and has just told her that it could make a knife-deflecting vest that could be worn unnoticed underneath clothes and wouldn’t turn up on weapons scanners:

Iris was convinced. “Can you make one for Tarik, too?”

No, I dislike Tarik and would prefer to use this opportunity to be rid of him.

“Oh, thanks,” Tarik said, appearing in the hatchway.

(Seriously. I know people don’t want to think badly of the Perihelion crew, but I’m like, Baby. You don’t have to live like this. You’re not on the death squad anymore. This is a hostile work environment, and you shouldn’t just have to put up with being treated this way. 😭)

Even if ART’s antagonism ~isn’t serious~, it’s still going out of its way at every opportunity to undermine and insult Tarik, and make sure he knows that it doesn’t like him, which frankly sounds unpleasant and exhausting.

(That said, if PSUMNT forced ART to allow Tarik onboard against its wishes, then that’s really fucked up! I can wholly understand why ART would resent that, and potentially take it out on Tarik.)

Mind you, Tarik does push back; if he’s intimidated by ART, he refuses to show it. He’s not as pointed about it, but even MB notices when he suggests something just because he knows it’s going to annoy ART:

“So we land on flat ground somewhere, the area looks stable,” Tarik said. He’s not stupid. I think he was trying to annoy ART-drone

In Rapport, when ART scares their guest escort by suggesting they blow up the space station, and then tries to sidestep responsibility, Tarik calls bullshit:

[Iris] said, Peri, you promised to be nice in front of the new people.

She asked. At least Peri used crew-private to reply.

[…] The diagram, now with a helpful animated image, was demonstrating how the proposed targeting solution would break the corporate station into pieces with a 47 percent estimated casualty rate.

On crew-private, Tarik said, You manipulated her into asking.

And yet there’s also this surprising bit where Tarik speaks up in ART’s defense when Matteo is pestering it about the secret it’s keeping:

Hey, it said it didn’t want to talk about it right now, Tarik said unexpectedly. Maybe not so unexpectedly. Tarik had a lot of things in his past he preferred not to talk about.

Tarik interacting with others on the Perihelion crew

Mostly we see him in mission-mode, where he’s focused on the task at hand. He has no problem deferring to Iris’s authority in the field, or to MB’s. For all that he’s from a hyper-violent military background, there is zero posturing or dick-measuring, he doesn’t have an issue with taking orders from a civilian (or a SecUnit).

But when it’s not the middle of a crisis, Tarik doesn’t seem to be entirely comfortable/acclimated/integrated into the team yet—like he’s just slightly out-of-step, getting the social cues just a little bit wrong. His attempts at camaraderie don't land with them; theirs don't land with him. (Like Iris's earlier joke about "when did you become a micromanager, Tarik?") Very understandable, given how different his cultural context is from this close-knit group of non-corporate academics where he's still kind of an outsider. He misjudges when he’s allowed to be emotive:

Standing on the other side of the conference room, Tarik rolled his eyes at the understatement. Iris caught his gaze and lifted a brow. He folded his arms, his attention back on the display, but she could tell he was a little embarrassed. That was the kind of back-and-forth that was fine when it was just crew, but it wasn’t for outsiders or students.

Iris does sometimes recognize that Tarik’s affect makes him come off as more belligerent than he meant to:

[ART:] I accessed the station’s security camera system.

I thought you couldn’t do that, Tarik said. Iris knew he didn’t intend to sound skeptical.

[ART:] I am capable of taking in new information.

And she can recognize when ART is deliberately misinterpreting Tarik in bad faith:

She sent, All right, Peri, what’s up?

I don’t understand what you mean, Iris.

She folded her arms. Oh, don’t pull that with me. You didn’t think Tarik was trying to insult you. You pretended to be upset to distract us.

...Goddamn it, Iris. 🤦

You couldn’t possibly have let Tarik know that you know he’s not the asshole ART’s trying to make him out to be? Because from Tarik’s point of view, he tried to raise a legitimate security concern, his asshole coworker turned it into a Whole Big Thing, and then his commanding officer very sharply rebuked him for it. Even though she knew it was ART misdirecting.

Matteo is the only crew member we see him initiate non-mission-related conversation with, which makes sense, since they’re at least fuckbuddies, if nothing else. In Rapport, during one of ART’s misdirections, it sarcastically says that it’s not a ~wizard~:

Wizard? Tarik asked Matteo, Is that from that game you like?

It’s not a game, it’s a multimedia—

Iris tuned them out and switched to her private connection with Perihelion. She thought it had used the word “wizard” specifically to tempt Tarik into teasing Matteo, distracting both of them.

And he’s shown being more casually physical with Matteo than he would probably feel emboldened to be with anyone else:

Tarik grabbed the back of Matteo’s jacket to steady them as they climbed in, then folded into the next seat.

Like Tarik with Ratthi, he and Matteo also seem to default to doing tasks together—but they don’t engage in the same kind of long, absorbed-in-each-other conversations, and they disagree/bicker more.

Tarik and Matteo were starting to unload the equipment. [Iris] hurried to help as the drone moved upward to hover above them, lighting the chamber and keeping watch.

“Glad we picked the right corridor. Mapping is such a problem,” Matteo said, setting out the more delicate sensors. “We could try to smuggle in more drones.”

“That just makes it easier to get caught,” Tarik pointed out reasonably.

When MB finds the group in Network Effect:

Iris said, “We’re fairly sure the alien hivemind thing is a group delusion.”

“It has to be a delusion,” Tarik said. He swayed a little and Seth steadied him.

“It doesn’t have to be a delusion—” Matteo began, and Kaede and Iris both started to object.

Seth said firmly, “I do not want to hear this argument again.”

And this interaction, though it’s unclear whether Tarik is being playful or critical:

Matteo leaned down the rightward corridor, shining their handlight down it. “How about this [corridor]?”

“And you’re basing that on?” Tarik walked across the wall, skipping across a low-gravity spot.

“Uh, it’s the first one I came to.”

Finally, rounding out the section on Tarik’s relationship with the Perihelion crew:

The thing about Tarik was that he was new and had only been with the crew for the previous three hundred and eighty-seven corporate standard day cycles. So everybody fucked with him constantly.

…fam, is it normal to still be “constantly fucking with the new guy” when he’s been on the crew for over a year? 😕

It’s not that I think anyone on the crew means him ill—just that no one here is paying enough attention to Tarik to notice the potential discomfort of his situation. (In their defense, I expect Tarik has been socialized to Show No Weakness, so he puts up a good front of being fine with all this.)

Tarik as mechanic/pilot

There isn’t a lot of attention drawn to it, but Tarik shows a consistent aptitude for knowing his way around machines and vehicles.

When they’re heading out to the polar settlement, ART’s bot pilot is flying the shuttle, but Tarik is its backup:

Tarik was in the pilot’s seat even though ART had a bot pilot active in the guidance system right now. Even under bot pilot control, there should always be a human or SecUnit at the controls. Preferably a human or SecUnit who actually knows how to use the controls.

In System Collapse when they’re trying to get into the polar colony, he’s the one responsible for getting the hatch open:

“You’d think if they were down there, they’d have heard us by now.” Tarik sat on the ground trying to get power into the controls. […] Something under the controls thunked and the small dusty interface lit up. Tarik sat back with a woof of breath and said, “Ready?”

And in Rapport, he’s on hatch-opening duty again:

They found the access right where they had expected, deep in a disused maintenance tunnel. […] Tarik got the hatch open and Iris flashed her light over the dark space inside.

(Or maybe that’s his job because he’s STRONK. 💪💪 😂)

Even in his first appearance in Network Effect he's part of a collaborative effort to get a hatch open. MB's drone view shows:

Four humans crouched beside the wall next to the pod access. They had pulled the panel off the control board and they were working on it with inadequate tools and a tiny pin light. They must have been trying to get one of the pod tube doors open so they could climb the shaft.

Those four humans are Seth, Matteo, Kaede, and Tarik; Iris (unarmed) is around the corner keeping watch/standing guard. It seems like that ought to be a job for Tarik, as the combat specialist, and while the Doylist reason is obviously that MB needed to talk to Iris first, alone, (and it's also possible that Martha Wells hadn't yet decided on Tarik's backstory) it works for Watsonian reasons too: that Tarik's internal injury is forcing him to sit this out, and also he's their hatch guy.

When they find the ground vehicle in the tunnel he’s the one who “gets it running” (...lol, a euphemism for hot-wiring?) and there’s no discussion about who’s going to drive:

Tarik got the vehicle running while Iris recorded a brief report [...] “The battery still has juice in it,” Tarik reported. He had climbed into the driver’s seat and was scrolling through the controls. “Either it’s a really good battery, or someone charged it within the past ten years or so.”

And he seems to be a careful driver, which is in line with him being conscientious about everything mission-related:

Tarik got the vehicle moving, slowly at first and then increasing the speed gradually as he got used to the controls and the traction. And we headed into the dark.

41.32 minutes later, I said, “Stop.”

Tarik hit the brake control on the steering device, not abruptly enough to throw us out.

And in their final daring escape, Tarik (grudgingly accepting Leonide’s help) is the one who gets the ancient, jury-rigged hopper going, and flies them out through a tiny narrow tunnel in the dark:

Can that thing up there fly?

Tarik thinks so, Iris said. It’s not as old as it looks. Tarik thinks they can fly it out of here.

[…]

Tarik and Leonide were in the pseudohopper and the engine was making cranky humming noises. [...]

Tarik and Leonide were in the copilot’s and pilot’s seats, arguing about who knew more about flying semi-derelict aircraft jury-rigged from parts left behind by terraformers, but they were both working over the controls in the piloting interface.

[…]

I couldn’t do a full recharge until we were clear. Not that I could do much to protect the humans now because the primary danger at the moment was one of them slamming the pseudohopper into a wall.

We were moving a lot faster than we had in the tunnel vehicle. (Yeah, I had thought the open compartment was unsafe but compared to this, not so much.) The pseudohopper didn’t have a bot pilot or anything like what we were used to with a modern aircraft, just a rudimentary self-navigator that helped keep it on course in the middle of the tunnel. Tarik and Leonide kept their hands on the controls, gazes locked on the interface.

Anyway, I like that as a character detail for him—that he’s got an aptitude for mechanical stuff in addition to being a combat badass—and supports my theory that Tarik is actually very smart, and that PSUMNT doesn’t invite one-note people to join their super special top secret ship AI program. After all, why hire dumb muscle when you could hire smart muscle?

Cynical, in a very CR sort of way

In contrast with a lot of the non-corporate characters in the series, Tarik is very familiar with the exploitative capitalist fuckery of the Corporation Rim. He’s seen it all before and has a certain jaded, world-weariness about the whole thing.

From Rapport:

The second guard spoke suddenly. “The station was liberated by Starkwether Shipping Alliance.”

On their feed, Tarik said, Liberated? You’d think they’d come up with a new word for it.

From System Collapse:

Ratthi glanced at Iris. You think B-E will make some sort of … employment pitch to this group? Ask them if they want to sign themselves over into slavery?

Tarik answered, They dress it up nicer than that, but yes, they could try. They have an isolated group here that might be vulnerable to manipulation.

*

Especially if the University makes the deal to put a research group in the drop box station, Ratthi said thoughtfully. They could come and go as they pleased, as long as everyone avoids the contamination.

[...] If the planet didn’t fail its alien contamination assessment, if the University won the legal case on the colonists’ behalf, if B-E didn’t just kidnap them all anyway. It was all up in the air still.

Tarik was not optimistic. That “if” is carrying a lot of responsibility there.

*

Is this a gesture of trust, do you think? Ratthi asked on the team feed.

Tarik said, They met the corporates in person, so maybe they just don’t have much of a sense of survival.

*

“You can’t do therapy on a whole colony,” Tarik said, “no matter how much they need it.”

*

Ratthi said, But they wouldn’t believe it. Even the most naive corporate would realize Barish-Estranza’s motive—

They aren’t corporates, Tarik said. He leaned back on the bed, like he was exhausted. Their parents and grandparents were corporates.

*

But basically the separatists had no reason to believe the main group’s opinion of us. “Or to even believe anybody we bring up here is actually a colonist,” Tarik had pointed out, “and not just one of us in a stolen environmental suit.”

Tarik has trust issues, ART-drone told me on our private connection. Yeah, I guess that was related to the whole ex-corporate-death-squad thing.

Tarik’s trust issues resurface in Rapport too. Regarding ART’s “joke” about wanting to get Tarik killed on the mission:

“You’re supposed to assume it’s kidding and be lulled into a false sense of security,” Matteo explained.

Tarik told them, “My sense of security is always false.”

“See, if I thought that was a joke—” Matteo began.

A joke, but also probably not. 🥲

Tarik apparently also has a reputation on the crew for being “cranky.” In Rapport, when ART is being uncharacteristically extra-bitchy:

“Is it possible the station is actually on fire?” Ladsen wondered.

Peri, mercifully only on the crew-private feed, said, Yes, but I didn’t think it relevant to mention.

“Perihelion says it’s not on fire,” Iris said, trying to smile confidently and fairly sure she just looked irritated. Peri, come on, relax a little.

Tarik added, And you people say I’m cranky.

Though, critically, he’s never shown tipping over into pessimism or apathy. He’s with PSUMNT, working toward their anti-corporate goals, and for all his jaded familiarity with the CR, he never insinuates that it’s futile to try to fight that system, or that there’s no point in what they do.

(A bit like MB, in that way.)

Tarik as a SecUnit Lite

Murderbot is notoriously judgy when it comes to human security personnel, but it can find almost nothing to complain about with Tarik. Tarik follows orders promptly, correctly, and without arguing or needing to be told why:

On the team feed, Tarik was whisper-swearing a lot. He said, I’m going to find the colonists, they must have weapons.

They probably had a bunch, considering how the rest of the humans on the planet had been using them on each other. Hold your position, I told him.

Tarik made a frustrated noise but stopped where he was. From his helmet cam view, it was a cubby where some machinery had been removed, next to a tube lift with the door welded shut. He was too close to us now, and I didn’t want HostileSecUnit2 to hear him.

*

I said, Kill the light.

Fortunately, Tarik was the one holding the hand-light. He clicked it off instantly, corporate death-squad training making him comply while any of the others would have needed a second or two to figure out if I was talking to them or which light. I said, We have to move. Hold hands, stay tight behind me.

Tarik grabbed Leonide’s good arm and stepped close to put a hand on my shoulder.

Which makes sense for a man trained to military discipline.

Admittedly, there’s also this part:

We’re going to this [platform], with the aircraft, I told [Iris and Tarik]. When we get there, start climbing. I’ll cover you.

With no drones and no cameras I had to look at them to make sure they were listening and just to see what they were doing. They didn’t move immediately, and it stretched .04 seconds past the point where even a human would have reacted by now. […]

Iris said, Right, let’s go. SecUnit, we’ll wait for you up top.

I know they will, which is why I’m willing to die to get them up there.

This is the one and only time that Tarik doesn’t immediately follow MB’s orders. It’s implied that they’re worried MB intends to sacrifice itself to cover their escape—except that I can’t imagine a corporate soldier would have balked at that (especially since it told them to), so there was probably some interplay between Tarik and Iris that MB didn’t see. (By its own admission, it doesn’t have eyes on them right now.) So I would assume Tarik started to move when MB gave the order, and then either Iris didn’t, blocking him, or she signaled for him to stop, and he prioritizes her orders over MB's.

Tarik frequently agrees with MB’s judgment calls, or voices opinions that MB agrees with, suggesting a similarity in how they’ve been trained/programmed to assess situations. He concurs with MB about not breaking the B-E SecUnits’ govmods:

Tarik was slumped back in the pilot’s seat with one knee hooked over the armrest (how can that be comfortable) and his expression was opaque, but I also got the feeling he wasn’t unhappy to hear my reasons for why I wouldn’t be doing the thing.

Tarik likewise doesn’t trust Leonide wanting to “chat”:

Tarik shook his head. I’m with SecUnit. It may not be a deliberate murder attempt, but they don’t want to get you out there to just chat. They’re going to try to get something out of you, that’s what they think negotiation is.

Tarik didn’t sound like an asshole, though I distrust new humans who agree with me too quickly, especially about security.

(...Not that MB, contrary as a cat, is grateful for Tarik chiming in with his support. 🤣)

MB doesn’t even complain when Tarik comes back to help them escape—which is very notable, since usually it considers humans more of a liability than an asset, that more humans just means more sheeps for it to herd. Not that MB would ever deign to say anything complimentary about human security...

(I would never admit I was glad Tarik had run in here; at least I had recent good intel and mapping from his current position.)

*

Tarik should meet us in the next seven minutes if he could stop talking to other humans and get moving. At least he would come in handy because Leonide was stumbling a little and if she collapsed she was too big for Iris to carry, and I needed my arms free.

*

How good was Ratthi at hiding? I had no idea, but the environmental suits weren’t designed for stealth. If Tarik could make it out to him, they might have a better chance together.

...but I think we can take the lack of bitching as the highest of praise. 🤣

Nor does Tarik waste time being surprised/dismayed/wrong-footed when unexpected problems arise, like the armed B-E shuttle showing up to block their escape:

We came out of the dust cloud and the pathfinder in the lead pinged me a warning right before its input went dead. I sat up and said, “Incoming.”

Leonide threw a startled look at me. Tarik flicked through interfaces, pulling up the exterior cameras. His voice tense and controlled, he said, “There it is.”

“Oh no,” Ratthi whispered.

And Tarik is a total badass. Y’know. For a human. 🙄

In late-breaking Tarik news, he had just jumped two Barish-Estranza employees who had been approaching his position, knocking one unconscious and choking the other out, and now he also had two tiny sidearms that wouldn’t take out a SecUnit plus the sidearm from our shuttle’s supplies that he had started out with. He obviously knew his new guns were pointless because he was snarling to himself in a language I didn’t have a good translation module for. It sounded sweary with religious overtones.

...Come on, MB, you won’t even be a LITTLE bit impressed? 😂 (More on Tarik’s swearing in the next section.)

Tarik’s mannerisms

Cranky, as we established above. 🤣

Tarik did a little annoyed sigh. “Why in the name of everything holy did those colonists think coming up here was a good idea? After they’d already had a contamination incident?”

But often incongruously emotive:

Ratthi shaking his fist at the sky and Tarik making hair-tearing-out gestures and Iris sitting there with her face set in a wince

*

Ratthi whispered, “I hate this part.” He and Tarik and Iris watched the display surface intently, frozen except for the way Tarik kept pinching his lip compulsively.

*

Ratthi was clearly not happy. Tarik’s face was set in a wince, anticipating disaster.

*

In the room, Ratthi mouthed the word shit. Tarik was squeezing the bridge of his nose like he was trying to will something to happen.

*

“But will they watch it in time?” Ratthi asked. He was rubbing his eyes; all three humans had been tired before but now they were beyond exhausted, hyped up on stimulants and every food item we had with simple carbohydrates in it.

“It’s new,” Tarik said, waving his arms. “How long has it been since they got something new to watch?”

*

Tarik studied the interface. “Iris, there’s another ship. It’s a big—” He let out his breath and made a hooting noise of relief. “We’re picking up a University ID beacon. It’s one of ours.”

Ratthi slumped in his seat. “Oh, finally. What a ride.”

And Tarik’s swearing is fun:

“How many human voices can you do?” [...]

ART-drone said, Functionally, not an infinite amount, but as many as could be realistically needed.

“Any voices?” Tarik persisted.

“Of course any voices,” ART-drone said, aloud, in Seth’s voice.

“Holy shitting deity,” Tarik said.

*

(ART-drone said, Ratthi, get in the fucking shuttle. Tarik, if you have to be stupid, don’t run toward the hostile SecUnit.

Running through the hatch back into the installation, Tarik sent back, Then give me the motherless map!)

*

As realization hit, Ratthi groaned. “There’s two Barish-Estranza shuttles! The armed one is new!”

Tarik said, That explains why there’s so many of these <untranslatable>.

*

Ratthi made an unhappy noise. Tarik said something religious and sweary again.

Which raises another question about his mysterious past: where is Tarik from, that MB doesn’t have a translation module for his (presumably native) language? Translation modules seem to be pretty trivial to produce, since Thiago worked one up in roughly a day, and B-E has by now made their own too. It suggests that the language is so obscure that no one ever thought a SecUnit would need to know it. (Which means the society/ethnic group that speaks it is probably very small, which has a lot of juicy character potential.) And while MB could be picking up the “sweary” part from tone and context, “with religious overtones” implies that it understands some of the words—like maybe it has the translation module for a related language, and is picking up some cognates. Oh, and worth noting that Tarik's religious swearing is monotheistic, "deity," singular.

Tarik as a generally smart guy

He shows himself to be good at analyzing situations and considering possibilities, even for things that aren’t in his areas of expertise. When they’re trying to figure out what kind of evidence they should be looking for to find the polar colony:

Tarik was frowning. “Digging equipment, because even if they had a tunnel network to start with, they must have had to modify it. And you can tell this place has been changed by intense weather patterns. A bad storm could have wiped out any aboveground equipment, roads, quarries, maybe even the whole colony site.”

His eyebrows were doing things that made him look angry, but from his tone and the read that threat assessment was getting off his body language, he was just concentrating. I knew from media that humans sometimes had the same problem with lack of control of their faces that I did. Like, obviously it wasn’t my unique problem or a unique problem for constructs in general, and possibly paranoia made me worry about it a lot more than necessary. But it was still weird to see it in action.

Tarik added, “Uh, why is there a drone in my face?”

#Tarik'sCanonRestingBitchface 🤣 Love that for him.

There was a lot of equipment here and Iris and Tarik were smart, there might be something they could use to get up to the hatch.

Careful, MB, that almost sounded like praise.

During their escape, when they’ve run into another B-E SecUnit, and MB is already injured from fighting the previous one:

Tarik and Leonide wanted me to lure the SecUnit toward the platform so they could push the aircraft off to land on it, what the hell, that won’t work.

(That would have worked—MB just misunderstood what they’d intended. They meant to fly it down there and squish the other SecUnit, not push it off the ledge, so that could have been a good plan, if MB had realized the aircraft was functional.)

Not sure where to put this one, but when MB/Iris/Leonide are trying to escape from B-E, and Tarik is trying to join them so he can help, he runs into a group of colonists and lingers to interact with them for a bit:

Tarik had just run into a confused and understandably upset group of colonists who had been watching the live feed, and he was talking to them […]

Iris said, Tarik, try to warn the colonists that Barish-Estranza is armed and has attacked us. Tell them not to intervene, we don’t want them hurt.

I already have, Tarik said. They said they were trying some kind of defensive measure, but it didn’t work. I didn’t get what it was, something about the power supply.

Iris was relieved and dubious. They’re listening to you?

Yeah, they said they recognized me from the video.

Iris made a combination laugh-groan noise.

[…]

Tarik hissed on the team feed, They’re ahead of me. Barish-Estranza, coming up on your position. Tarik’s helmet camera indicated that he was backed up against a wall, two anxious colonists still with him.

I think that brief interaction with the colonists says good things about him—that he’s not getting tunnel-vision with “gotta go kick Barish-Estranza ass!!” because no, their goal here is to keep B-E from hurting or capturing the colonists. So it’s good that instead of brushing past them, he pauses to let them know what’s going on, and tries to keep them out of the line of fire.

In Rapport, when they’re trying to get across the station without drawing attention, he does this clever bit of improv to help them blend in:

[Iris:] “Let’s— And we’ve lost Tarik.”

It was partly a joke, and she regretted it a second later as Ladsen looked around worriedly. Fortunately, Tarik ambled up before anything else happened, carrying a packet of steamed buns from one of the food kiosks.

He held the bag out to share, and Iris took a bun.

Lol because nothing says “dumb tourists” like one member of the group wandering off to get a snack. 😂 It’s cute, but also shows that he's paying attention to the needs of the situation and proactively working to help their cover.

Tarik interacting with Leonide

Oh boy, Leonide. Tarik has no patience for her bullshit, and is more openly combative with her than he is with anyone else, even ART. The first time they meet, he’s in mission-mode, all practicality:

As we reached the lock, Tarik asked Leonide if she needed help. Leonide gave him a wary look, but politely said no.

(Though I do wonder if there was a reason for Leonide’s “wary” look—if she recognized him from the documentary as the ex-death-squad-guy (who hates corporates more than any of them), or if he was being very obvious with his antipathy for her from the outset. Because if a large, heavily-armed man who clearly hated my guts asked if I needed help, I would probably also “politely say no.”)

He’s not inclined to let her weasel out of answering questions:

Iris said, How extensive is this rebellion in your task force? Is it just you they hate, or is it all the upper management? [...]

Leonide said, I don’t know.

There was a skeptical pause, then ART-drone said, How terribly imperceptive of you.

Leonide’s voice was clearly irritated. You can fuck off into the abyss.

Tarik tried, Is it a schism in the upper management? Come on, you owe us that much.

Basically, it seems like her very existence rubs him the wrong way, and he has no compunctions about letting his bitch flag fly:

Also sounding testy, Leonide said, “You said there’s an opening up there—”

“Your friends know where we are. By the time we get in the air, their shuttle will be out there and it’s faster than this jury-rigged bag of spare parts,” Tarik told her. “We’re taking the tunnel.”

“You’re out of your mind.” Leonide calmly brought up a terrain interface. It floated above the control board, parts of it blinking red. It was an old-fashioned layout and style that I’d only seen in retro dramas. “You people astound me.”

“Says the person whose fault this all is.” Tarik made some rapid adjustments and the engine humming got louder. “How do you think this thing has been getting in and out of here? Does it walk? Iris, strap in, we’re ready.”

And everybody’s favorite Tarik line:

[Leonide] burst out, “Is someone actually watching entertainment in the feed right now?”

Oops, I guess there was a little bleedover, probably from ART-drone’s end. Deadpan, Tarik said, “I always watch entertainment when I fly.”

Leonide let out her breath in an exasperated hiss. “Fuck you all.”

😊😊😊

THE END. ❤️ And if anyone wants more of my ideas about Tarik, I am also writing Bring Down Rain, which is 130k words (and counting) of Tarik doing spy stuff for PSUMNT.