"Miss Laura, I have a request."

Looking up from the engine she was working on, Laura raised an eyebrow, unperturbed by the sudden floating humanoid. She had seen it before. "I am making your nerve network as fast as I can, Alex. Bit hard with Ren around."

"Oh, you can stop hiding that now. We, uh... Got found out."

"... I'm assuming this is related to your favour?"

"Not at all! Things went... Eerilly well. The rest of the crew doesn't know yet though, so maybe I'll keep the network discreet for now."

"Riiiight. Did you... Finish the compact neural map then?"

"Nice guess, but no. Still no andoid brains for a while, it seems. Well... Not human sized ones."

Giggling, Laura ducked down to fiddle with the engine some more, "Out with it, then."

"I need a specialised addon to the station."

"How special?"

"We could use the southern sector towards the giant, but there would be some... Heavy modifications. Specifically to that empty biosphere."

Laura cautiously looked up, "You want to refit the whale tank? Sure, we sold the whales long ago... Don't even know why we had them... But why?"

"Space derby dome."

Shooting up, Laura almost knocked over the engine as she grinned broadly, "You serious?! And you are offering to do the assembly?"

"Yup. Zero-grav assembly using my drones, highly efficient and worry free. I just need a whole ton of gravity generators... And air cannons."

"Done and done. Depending on how many you are talking exactly, I might even have them all ready for you tomorrow."

"Lovely. I shall get my drones started the moment we start receiving parts. Oh, and one more thing..."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Yes, Alex my sweet?"

"... Don't tell Hope. She would pester me every second I don't have this thing complete."

Hopping around gleefully, Laura nodded as she began imagining all the various events they could hold in the dome. "Hmm... That would be good... And if we cordon off a bit in the middle... Hmmm... Big enough for side by side...?"

"Ummm... Laura?"

"Yeah?"

"One more thing, while I'm here. It's about the network."

"Oh, sure. Making good use of it?"

"Not really. See, it performs great, where I have managed to test it... But..."

"Getting used to the new configuration?"

"Nope. Too many bottlenecks. My main processing core is still in the main station, in the doctor's lab."

"Oh. Right."

"So, in return for our little dome... I think it is time we work on the best core we can. Put it out in the abandoned wings, to preserve space."

"Sounds good, except the placement. Making it hard to get to makes maintenance hard... Checkups too. You know the rule."

"Good point. Where will we put me then?"

"... I have a few ideas. I'll get back to you." Beaming, Laura returned to her work with renewed vigour, opening a call to the active production team to give them the new order. Alex flickered off, the conversation done.

Mind wandering, Alex sighed inwardly, stretching their consiousness into the outer wings, trying to use the refined network once more. It was tantalisingly close, and would easilly tear through any equation thrown it's way using the processing nodes... But Alex needed more control, if they were to start getting creative.

Spotting a group of workers opening up a storeroom, Alex sent some drones over. Time to get to work, it seems.