As far as I was concerned, the android project was ready for heavy testing. I counted myself lucky that Levi was able to reverse engineer it. Today was the day that his prototype design for the new housing was going to get the full testing. I had jumped at the opportunity to be the first volunteer. Technically this would be making myself again.
I didn’t know if that broke my rule about not cloning myself, but if I was in the can, I could technically be in two places. I had been going back and forth about the whole idea, but I longed to get back to field work. The real on the ground type stuff. Space was great and all but right there was a small, probably habitable ball of dirt.
Somewhere the people were. Well maybe not the people, but perhaps the interesting species.
On the one hand, offloading myself into an android would change a lot, and free up a probe for a clone. That clone could then go explore another star and yeah it could get a little complicated. I could completely remove myself now with the firm backup welded into a convenient plate on the donut, and in my place Levi could slave my current probe to his system, making it follow him. He’d probably take it over and use it for a clone before too long.
I couldn’t imagine working out there alone. It would be very isolating. I’d had a lot of time on my hands when I deployed to Iraq as part of a Lioness team, interacting with the women of the villages. Though I went on a lot of missions, the local culture was such that I’d been isolated. The military culture and the unit I was attached to, although they appreciated me, tended to treat me with kid gloves.
I didn’t feel like that here. Since becoming an Officer and making a bit of rank, I was the one wearing the gloves. They felt a bit more like boxing clubs with Team Owl, but I wasn’t above a bit of sparring. If someone had a strong opinion and could articulate why- and oh these fuckers could articulate until the cows came home- I would take their advice and follow it. I was still the decision authority, though, which is why I felt like I needed some stress relief away from the team. So on the morning before our sync meeting I queued up the new danger room scenario that Levi had made for me.
It was going to be my sandbox android against three crypt spiders.
"Alright, this is test one. Let's see if you can get it to try to move."
“Doing it,” I said, “If Eric's spiders can keep up with this.”
I’d been working my way up to sparring against them, going one at a time. After a week I’d set it to two of them and worked out the kinks a bit on one of the spiders. Classic misdirection only went so far and I’d found out the hard way that fighting two was a fair bit more complex than fighting one.
“It’s on,” he said.
So this time, when I dropped into the sandbox, I immediately rushed to flank the spider on the right, trying to keep the others in a line behind it. As they tried to move left and right, I kept the first one in between us.
That lasted for about twenty seconds before the two I wasn’t immediately in front of split left and right.
The crypt spiders had the two welding arms that I knew to keep far away from.
Both of them, to my supreme annoyance, came at me, welders on full blast.
The two meter long arcs from the welding lit up the room.
“You’re going to have to do better than that to get me you lousy flaming spiders!” I said, juking left and down.
As I moved, they tracked me both trying to pounce at the same time.
I was counting on it, moving away from the two so that they could share a precious last moment together.
One sliced the other open, and then turned. A savage kick later and the last remaining spider had moved its still flaming friend towards me.
I cracked a grin, then grabbed the arm. The flaming bit and its fuel was the last two segments of the arm, and now I had fire. I snapped the leg off like a flaming club, because that was what it was now.
“You’ve made an old girl so happy,” I said to the spider.
If it could express fear, it probably would have.
It didn’t last long, as Levi stopped the spider when it was clear that I would just be damaging company property.
***
The whole team was together again by the donut for our sync meeting. We were all resting on my VR which was currently set to be a well-lit open air of the interior of the donut. It was a mockup of what we thought it would look like, but of course, we kept the jagged openings on both sides, and they were visible.
“Killmonger, do you want to start us off?” I said.
“After a careful review of the planet, there appears to be a small colony. Because of the satellite, it is safe to assume that this is or was a colonization target for a space-faring species. However, there are no spaceships anywhere. There is something else... some evidence of a battle. The atmosphere has slightly more CO2 than you would think, given the size of the planet. We’re not sure yet if that will affect much...”
A menu showing the composition of the planetary atmosphere showed one tiny human breathing normally. Of course, he had made it a cell-shaded flat person.
“This looks like it could support life, or has supported life at some point, however, the greenhouse gasses are not incompatible with life continuing. It’s either pristine because no one has been there, or pristine because someone left it in good working order.”
“I could only hope that when we expand to the stars we would leave Earth in good working order,” Levi said, “Not that I expect to return to a ball of flame but..”
I nodded to him.
“Great. How is our chariot, er I mean... dropship coming?” I turned to Levi.
“Ma’am, it appears that we will have a drop ship ready shortly. The turnaround time is roughly sixty days on that. After that, I thought I would make another batch of clones to send farther afield.” Levi seemed to stare off into the distance.
He was probably calculating how many items he would have to take off of his to-do list before the next thing was possible.
“We can talk about that when I have my flagship.” I smiled. “Anything else?”
“Finding this partially intact habitat is a gold mine. Almost literally so. I could probably spend years studying the intricacies of what I think are the bathrooms alone. Like the whole thing is…”
I made a throat-clearing sound. Levi was a bit prone to flights of if not fantasy, perhaps flights of mad science.
“Sorry, Chief, er…the android project beta testing is complete. I’ve created three of the smaller motherboards to put into the three androids that we’ve completed. The uh… can-sized ones.” I heard some snickering. “I’ve put a few spares in the queue so that we can changeover at some point in time for all of ours. The power draw is slightly better, not to mention the amount of active memory is quadrupled. That doesn’t mean that we can stick four of us into one of them, but you could host a lot easier. FERMI will also be noticeably improved by the active memory.”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
The display showed the beer car-sized motherboards. By warping the circuit around, Levi was able to save considerable space. I was pleasantly surprised that he was able to shrink it as far as he’d done. The acting and long-term memory portions were also housed on the interior, meaning that if the can was hit, the last thing to go would be the protected inner shell of memory. Levi had learned the hard way to over-engineer everything.
“This brings to the question... if I upload myself to the android, would that be cloning? Which of me would be the real me?” I mused.
I’d had a talk with Levi about what it meant to be a person and how he felt as a distinct entity from the original. I was the only remaining version of myself, as I’d had reason to believe that I’d died on the moon.
“Technically, you could decide to be whichever one you want, and we could leave the other with a blank VR so they would know that they are secondary. Someone has to be Stevie, otherwise, things get confusing. We can’t have two bosses.”
“My intent would be to transfer over and then transfer back. I’m not sure what I want right now. Options would be good. A physical transfer would be fine.”
“What I’m thinking you could do, Stevie,” Kiernan said. “Put your probe into standby mode or cold storage while you’re down there. But it is very useful to have four probes working out here, so for mine, I’m leaning towards making the android the real me, then later I’ll pilot the Falcon and have a new probe if or when I decide I want to leave the team.”
We all understood that at some point we would want to send envoys to other systems. It would make sense to reach out and make contact with other species. Maybe I was naive in thinking that everything was all going to be nice and easy and that they would help us get to a more advanced stage
We also understood that we generally wanted to keep the team integrity for now. Making another team however, would not be out of the question. If I didn’t make a clone, one of the others would have to lead the mission. Those poor guys would be missing out. As a jumped up group of Von Neumann probes we felt a bit of a need to produce our version of offspring. I’d never particularly wanted kids of my own, and now it just felt odd.
“I’ll be overwatch. I’m not going to be going down there with you. Kiernan has helped me with some signal work, and I’ll be making a communications box that I’ll be unloading with you. It will fit in the dropship with room to spare for the three of you.” Levi looked determined. “We could for now send off the three probes and I would queue up more probes for when you’re done working. We could also see if they want to stick around for a bit.”
“It is fun being an immortal spaceship,” Killmonger mused, “And the company is always good. More people for us to play with.”
“I could clone myself into the space you leave behind if you still don’t want to make an unlimited number of clones of yourself, Stevie,” Levi said. “No pressure.”
I made a decision. I could always take it back later.
“Levi, could you do a backup of me straight to a storage media?”
“That is possible.”
“Can you find a good hiding spot somewhere on the donut and drop a backup of me there?”
“That is doable, so you’ve made up your mind?”
“Yes. That backup will be there in case the worst happens.”
[Add Scene about Stevie being uploaded]
Levi intended to drop the backup into a sealed-up room on the donut so we could grab it later.
His intentions were good, but I had to worry a bit about his methods. The test androids had to get out of the 3d printer, then we had to create a tether for each of them. We were in zero-g and it would be a lot of work to go and catch some wayward androids.
Killmonger was operating the other android and as we waited by the dock, a large arm swung around. The extended arm was a part of the 3d printer, attached and built by Killmonger himself. Killmongers EXODUS was docked to the 3d printer, which was in turn welded by another tether to the inside of the habitat.
“Are you ready to go?”
“I’m ready.”
“Now remember, Chief, we don’t have jetpacks so just like we practiced.”
I sighed to myself. We had practiced this several times. Killmonger himself had been strip mining the donut and feeding the less useful bits into the 3d printer. It was how we had the bodies to begin with. Well, that and the arm.
In the androids right arm, I clutched my super secret backup.
As I jumped, I extended my left arm for stability and to catch on one of the overhangs.
Lights from the printer gave the place an eerie look and Killmonger touched down just before me.
“Are you ready to work with some power tools?”
I swear he made his android just so he could play with power tools.
“Let’s find a suitable spot around here.”
“I picked one out for you…?”
I tried to give him a contemplative look with the android, but seeing the dark reality meant that visual signals probably wouldn’t be coming across at all.
Killmonger nodded his ascent and I walked around, trying to reach the end of my considerable tether. I made it about three buildings before I got a little warning message.
“Warning: tether cannot extend farther.”
“Here is good.”
“You sure, boss?”
Killmonger stepped up and looked around. I pointed down to the floor.
“Yar. We can hide my booty here,” I said in my best pirate accent.
Eric’s android pulled the welding machine out of it’s pack and then got to work. The arcs from the deep space welding lit up the surrounding area, then it alternated with a big saw back and forth as it worked.
I watched as the precision android cut a square chunk out of the floor, then removed the resulting panel. Underneath it was a good space and I snuck the beer can down into it. I had some adhesive foam that I applied to keep it in place. We watched as it froze into place. The foam couldn’t even harm the engineering marvel which was my own backup.
“I really have to hand it to you and Levi,” I said, “I would be thoroughly lost trying to make that work.”
“It’s nothing really.”
“Nonsense! You deserve a pizza party at the least.”
“You know back when I worked at my first startup, pizza parties used to mean something. Now, it’s like why don’t you just pay me more, huh?”
“I’m not paying you at all right now. In fact this is a volunteer mission that you snuck me into, I’ll remind you.”
“Oh, yeah. Well then, double my pay.”
“Two times zero is still zero, Eric.”
“Rent’s due.”
I held the square panel in place moving around it as Killmonger took his sweet time welding it back in. Watching him work was calming and meditative, and the resulting panel was nearly unremarkable in how it was returned. I saw the artist meet the artisan there, but really I was just happy that it wouldn’t float away.
“Well, it’s done,” he said, putting his tools away except for the welder, “Did you want the grand tour?”
He turned to the wall, leaving a giant comic pirate X, then he put the welder back into his kit.
“I supposed. If we’re going to land, I’d like to have some good memories of my time on the donut. Go ahead and lead the way.”
Eric led me back to an area closer to the approximately one hundred meter tether.
“We’re back at the place we think is a library,” he said, “but could just as easily be an internet cafe.”
Inside the building, a series of wires ran into it from the tether above. It looked like it was the inside of a secret compartment with the amount of red, blue, and green wires coming around.
“Did we make any progress yet?”
“I can safely say no. I’ve burnt out a few circuits just trying to power things up. Whatever is going on in here, or did, it must have taken a lot of power. Alternatively, and this is the Levi explanation, the circuits were burnt out when whatever smashed into this thing did what it did.”
If it had been a Navy vessel, this would have had a series of failsafes. But the more time we spent in it, the more it felt like a civilian science vessel that had met a grisly end. I didn’t know who had caused the donut trauma, but I wanted to take a bite out of crime.
“Did we find a power station yet?”
“Unfortunately no. My working theory is that this was an intentional act of war and if there was a propulsion system and power system, it was destroyed in the attack. Whoever did this knew exactly what they were doing.”
I wanted to feel something about this atrocity but I had no information whatsoever. Had these people been the aggressors? Or were they just a target of convenience? The fact that the planet appeared to have a satellite with a possible settlement or two meant that we could at least approach some answers.
“The thing that bugs me really is why this is so far out in the sticks,” I said, “There’s just no good reason to have a habitat this far away from anything really. If I was building a habitat it would be like a yacht. Going from port to port to see the sights.”
“That makes sense in a way. Or at least park the Yacht near a good marina when it’s not in use.”
“Having a yacht in the middle of the ocean seems pointless to me. It would be stupidly expensive to resupply.”
“I’m sure that there’s a good reason for this.”
“I’ll have Levi add it to his list.”
“Someone has to.”