Project HYDRA Log #359627
Type: Recording
Status: Classified
Subject is [Redacted], speaking to [Redacted]. She is explaining the role of Overseers intended to [Redacted] for the purpose of [Redacted].
[Redacted]: I trust we’ve all had time to read the briefing documents on the proposed changes to the program, so I won’t waste time going over everything in detail. Instead, I’ll let [Redacted] explain her reasoning for the changes.
[Redacted]: Thank you [Redacted]. As you are all aware, according to the agreements with [Redacted], [Redacted], and [Redacted] this project must have at least a human leading each mission. Unfortunately, as shown by our most recent tests with the completed [Redacted] no biological nervous system larger than a paramecium’s is able to endure the [Redacted] process. The process appears to induce an unexpected distortion similar to an Electromagnetic Pulse, but far le…
[Redacted]: Sorry to interrupt you [Redacted], but I’m not getting half the words coming out of your mouth and I doubt anyone else here is either. Just tell us how you [Redacted] is going to fix this.
[Redacted]: I… don’t like to think of it as such, but the [Redacted] method is the only reliable method to [Redacted] a human mind. Non-invasive methods exist, but they aren’t nearly as effective, only [Redacted] up to 50% of the mind. Such a thing would be completely unstable, and I can not in good conscience approve it, regardless of the grim nature of the alternative.
[Redacted]: Good conscience? You’re talking about [Redacted] Doctor. You’re asking us to [Redacted] our own people!
[Redacted]: Every person involved will be a volunteer…
[Redacted]: Volunteer? I’ve read that form thing you want to give them! They won’t know jackshit!
[Redacted]: Enough [Redacted]. You know as well as any of us that [Redacted] would rather let all of humanity [redacted] than let this project get off the ground without a fully functioning human in charge. We must do this. You’ve read the same files we all have. There is no better way.
[Redacted] My momma always used to say that "The road to Hell is paved with good intentions" [Redacted]! You want to let this so-called "Doctor" [intelligible]
[Redacted] You think I enjoy this? I don't want to [Redacted] these people! I have to, you self-righteous [intelligible]
Recording ends
She looked about my age, the woman sitting across from me. I knew she couldn’t be, her lab coat and name tag both proudly pronouncing her to be a doctor while I’d just barely entered medical school, but I still couldn’t help but wonder. Perhaps it was her hair, crisply tied up in a high ponytail, not a single golden strand escaping from the black hairband that coiled in on itself. Or could it be her cheekbones, prominent and towering, much like pale alabaster cliffs? No, It had to be her eyes. Her crystalline blue eyes that seemed to almost pierce my own as they affixed me with a gaze that could only be described as… expectant?
Shit. I was staring, wasn’t I?
“Sorry, could you say that again? I kinda zoned out for a second there…” I mumbled, offering up a sheepish smile as I inwardly cursed my own lack of attention.
“Oh don’t worry, it’s not a problem,” she replied, the slightest pursing of her lips being the only indication of her true thoughts on the matter.
“I just wanted to run through the procedure with you before we begin, and remind you once again, that while it should be perfectly safe, you can still choose to end the process at any time.”
I nodded, waiting for her to go on. I thought I’d heard those exact words more than a dozen times in the past few hours. “You can still choose to end the process at any time.” Sure I could. There wasn’t anything stopping me from leaving this very moment, walking out past the seven security checkpoints I’d gone through on my way into the lab, by the secretaries, each with a big red panic button in arm’s reach, and through the steel doors reinforced by almost a dozen forcefield projectors. I could probably even make it all the way home, to my dingy little apartment on the 37th floor of a fifty year old building and settle down on my threadbare couch. Of course, I couldn’t very well take the fifty thousand dollars they were offering me to take part in their “harmless little procedure” out with me. And without those fifty thousand dollars, all of the overdue bills lying in a little basket right next to the aforementioned sofa would suddenly become far more difficult to pay off. Possibly even impossible, after all, tuition for medical school wasn’t exactly cheap.
So yes, I suppose I could have walked out at any time. But, then again, I really couldn’t.
“... fter we induce R.E.M. sleep, we’ll begin to analyze your brain activity and work to map your neuronal circuits. This should only take a few hours, and you should be able to sleep through it all. A few of the prior participants have woken up for brief moments duri…” she continued with her explanation, as I silently lamented missing the entirety of the first portion of the procedure.
I knew I really should be paying more attention, but I couldn’t help but chuckle inwardly for a moment at her use of the word participants. I guess “procedure” and “participants” were more comfortable words for her to use than “experiment” and “test subjects”. But that’s really what I was, a test subject. A lab rat dressed up in a disturbingly breezy gown.
God I’m cynical today I thought, pulling down on the gown to protect what little modesty I still felt I had.
“...ve’nt had any side effects arise among patients before, but if you feel any pain, nausea, or lightheadedness after the procedure, be sure to contact us. Now, knowing all this, do you still wish to continue with the procedure?” She finally concluded, once again turning her expectant gaze upon me.
“Yeah, I suppose,” I replied, punctuating my statement with a slight nod.
“Very well,” her expression was inscrutable as she turned her tablet towards me. “Sign here, and here,” she continued as she motioned to the only two blank lines on the screen.
Without even bothering to read the wall of text covering the rest of the screen, I signed.
“Alright then, follow me.” she commanded, standing up and walking out of the room without even looking over her shoulder to see if I was following. For a moment, I thought about staying seated, just to see what she’d do when she realized I wasn’t obediently following her. It was only for a moment thought, and soon I was moving at a slight jog to try and catch up with her. After all, it’s best not to antagonize the person who would be poking around in your brain for the next few hours, no matter how professional she seems.
When I did finally arrive at her side, she gave no indication of even noticing my presence, continuing to walk down the hallway, without sparing me a glance. Honestly, I’d somewhat expected that. I’d never been particularly good at talking with other people, but zoning out and staring right as I met one of the most gorgeous women I’d ever seen was a new low. I couldn’t even remember her name, despite distinctly remembering her having a name tag. Maybe a bit of small talk could break the ice, show her I wasn’t actually a creep, just absent-minded.
“So uh, crazy weather this week huh?” I spoke up, trying to be nonchalant. As soon as the words slipped out of my mouth, I wished I could drag them back in. I’d forgotten I wasn’t good at this. Why couldn’t I have just let the silence be?
Evidently, she agreed with me on that last bit at least, if the side-eyed glance she gave me was any indication before she curtly responded, “Yes. It’s been rather cold.”
Right. I clamped my mouth shut, and tried my hardest to look anywhere in the hallway but not at her. The ensuing silence was only broken by the clacking of her heels against the smooth linoleum flooring and the rustle of my slippers as they dragged along with each footstep.
Fortunately for me, the endless hallway finally decided to be a proper hallway and actually chose to quickly end in a set of double doors. Placing her palm on an unmarked patch of wall, the doctor waited as the inconspicuous scanner analyzed her biometrics and handprint.
I really needed to get around to learning her name. Even at the speed of thought, it was getting rather tedious to refer to her as “the woman” or “the doctor”. I couldn’t exactly ask for it though, I could already imagine her reaction: an even slighter pursing of her lips, a hurried reassurance that it was quite alright, all while her opinion of me dropped yet another notch. Maybe I could get her to turn around and read it off her nametag? But how…
My thoughts were interrupted by a slight beep, and a whooshing noise, as the biometric scanner accepted her credentials and opened the doors for us. She immediately set off again, down the hallway. I followed, but now my mind was now focused on far more important things. Namely, trying to not show that I’d suddenly actually begun to focus on what was going on.
A bit over five seconds. That was how long it took the door to open. I wasn’t really paying attention, but I was far from absent-minded enough to fail to notice that the biometric sensor had opened the door about three times faster than any model on the market should be able to.
This tunnel was also too long. That’s what it had to be, a tunnel. We’d turned right twice from the street entrance, so we had to be traveling West. If we’d been above the surface, we’d have hit a street by now, hell if we were anywhere above a hundred feet deep, we’d have hit the subway lines or one of the underroads. The elevator must have been gravitationally stabilized, making it feel far slower than it actually was. Though if they had the resources to create an artificial gravity field, they could have just as easily moved me in any direction. Well obviously not any direction, moving up would’ve been just silly, but I could now be anywhere under New York.
Damn. This WAS a government operation wasn’t it?
I’d gotten suspicious at the fifth security checkpoint, but many bleeding edge tech companies had become rather paranoid about corporate espionage over the past few years. I’d merely chalked this building’s oddities up to more of that, but…
I looked at the woman at my side with a new appraising glance. If she was in fact a government worker, she might have even had access to the age cure. It would certainly explain how she could look so young, and still be a doctor. Either that, or I was reading too much into this. Olympus Industries certainly was a leading research company, and it wouldn’t be too unfeasible to assume they could secure tunnelling permits and hide advanced technologies, with the government’s backing of course. And the company should be able to hire the best and the brightest...
I shrugged mentally, defocusing my thoughts. It didn’t matter who was signing off on the paycheck, as long as I got paid. It’s not like there was anything I could do about it at this point anyways.
As if to confirm that, the doctor finally turned into one of the sets of double doors that lined the hallway. It wasn’t quite the last set of doors in the hallway, but it was fairly close. Pushing the doors open, she led me into a fairly cramped room, dominated by a massive machine. Rectangular, and with thousands of exposed wires, it looked like something out of some twenty-first century lab, not at all like modern technology. At its center, there was a circular opening, with a table projecting out of it, like the lolling tongue of a dragon, waiting to draw me into its maw. A low droning noise filled the room, an audible indication of the machines power. But beneath it all, there was a strange smell, an almost iron-like tangy scent. It was mostly covered by antiseptics, but there was still somethi...
“You’re late Doctor,” A voice called out, drawing my attention away from the odor. A short man stood by my side, wholly unnoticed until he’d drawn attention to himself. Wearing a black suit, with black shoes and a black tie, the only thing that could make it any more clear he was an agent would be a pair of black, reflective sunglasses. Which of course, he was wearing. Not just indoors, but underground too. How absurd.
“I was just running over the procedure with Mr. Stephens, and getting his consent. It didn’t take more than a few minutes,” the doctor replied, with a hint of… defiance? I couldn’t quite place her tone myself, but either way, it was quite clear that this agent was in charge.
“Very well. Begin the procedure,” the agent commanded, tonelessly.
Silently, the doctor led me over to the machine. It hummed, almost as if to welcome me as I sat on its table. Every passing second made me more uncomfortable. Why was there an agent here? I guess he was confirmation of the government’s involvement in this, but why was he in the room? If he really needed to supervise, couldn’t he be behind a one way mirror or watch it on cameras rather than stay here with us? And speaking of us, where were the nurses? The other doctors? It was just the doctor, agent, machine, and me all in a room together at the end of a hallway under the city. Could it really be that secretive? But I doubt I’d been cleared for something that sensitive…
With that thought my instinct finally overcame the justifications I’d been using to ignore it, and I decided to speak up.
“Hey, I think I migh…” I began, turning to the doctor, but stopping as I felt a slight prick on my arm. Looking down, I saw the syringe sticking out of my arm, now emptied of what, judging by the rapidly deteriorating state of my mind was an incredibly strong anaesthetic.
Catching me as I slumped backwards, the doctor gingerly set me down on the table and gently removed the needle. I finally saw her nametag: Dr. Anderson, a Swedish last name.
The table, unsurprisingly, was rather uncomfortable. I wish it could have felt like a unicorn’s mane, or fluffy like the knees of a bee. Buzz- Buzz. Heh, the machine drones. Get it? Like bees. YOu see worker bees are called drones. Or wass it male bees? Do you know, me? No, I dont knoww me. Well if me don’t know and I don’t, does myself know? Nope, myself has nothin.
“I’m sorry. We tried to find another way… we really did. But this is the only way. Just relax, it’ll all be over soon.”
Huh. Hearing really is the llasst sensse to g…
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The machine worked quickly, emitting horrifying noises all the while. The doctor and agent stood vigil silently, listening to it happen. The doctor would clench her jaw at times, especially when the bonesaws set to work, but she’d eventually relax once the constant electric buzzing began anew. However, perhaps relaxed, was not the right word to describe her. Rather, she would almost seem to fall limp, losing one of the strings that had been holding her up and almost visibly aging as the noisy machine continued its work. Through all of this, the agent was impassive. Clad in his suit of armor and shielded by his sunglasses, he was untouched. As much a machine as the one they watched.
Twenty minutes later, exactly to the millisecond, the machine froze. A single light began to flash at the end of a storage stick, indicating a job perfectly done.
For a moment, the Doctor didn’t move, simply watching the flickering light. Then, almost mechanically, she walked forward to a screen on the machine’s side. Tapping a few times, she pulled up the machine’s report on the latest procedure.
“99.8% intact. 0.05% corrupted and 0.15 % lost to clinical error. As perfect a digital human as we've ever gotten” she commented numbly, before ejecting the storage stick. Pulling it from the machine, she walked over to the agent and handed it to him. He accepted it with his left hand, but she wasn’t paying attention to him. Instead, she looked towards the machine, as if to see the remains of the man within.
A slight rustle of cloth later, and she slumped to the ground, a silent bullet having bored an inch wide hole through the back of her skull.
Finally alone, the agent seemed to accelerate, moving with a sense of urgency. Kneeling, he opened the briefcase that had been hidden behind him, and stowed the storage stick away in the last open slot within. Silently, he stood and holstered his gun, picking up his briefcase before shouldering open the double doors and setting off down the hallway at a running pace. Hundreds of sticks jolted about silently in the padded briefcase as he went.
He passed the security scanner without a problem, not even pausing as the doors had opened before he could reach them. He passed the doctor’s office without sparing it a glance and soon reached the elevator. He’d barely set foot in it, before the elevator doors shut and it began to move.
Moments later, a few miles away, the elevator doors opened, and the agent handed off the briefcase to a balding man in a white lab coat. The man took it silently, pausing for a moment to look at the droplets still clinging to the agent’s suit, before turning and opening the briefcase on a nearby table, beside a small open capsule on rails. Carefully taking out the first storage stick, he placed it in the capsule and quickly locked it in. Pressing a few buttons on a screen implanted in the wall, he selected a destination for the capsule, and sent it off with a whoosh of pressurized air. The instant the capsule cleared the tube, another empty one arrived to take its place. Silently, the man continued his work, filling hundreds of capsules with the stored digital minds.
The moment the last capsule had been sent on its journey, the man slumped to the ground, having been shot by the agent. Not a single word had been exchanged.
Once again, the agent moved. Without the briefcase, he was even quicker than before, darting away from the transit capsule disguised as an elevator that had brought him here. He moved with purpose, avoiding the numerous side hallways until he finally came to a spiral staircase. He took the stairs two at a time, darting up flight after flight of stairs. It wasn’t like he had any choice, there were only two exits from this stairwell, one ten stories underground, and the other two stories above.
The agent was silent throughout the climb, his breathing steady and regular, more like he was taking a stroll through a park than climbing twelve flights of stairs in moments. At the top of the stairs, he paused at the blank wall in front of him. A moment later, it slid aside, revealing a control center manned by two men. They sat silently, watching as flash after flash blazed into the sky, disappearing as suddenly as they had appeared.
“Do you they’ll make it?” the younger of the two asked, quietly as the latest launch lit his face.
The older man was silent for a moment, simply watching the light move upwards into the sky. Then he sighed, and looked back towards the screens in front of him.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ve done all we can,” he replied simply while pulling up the window counting the successful launches. A bar inched across the screen as another flash lit up the sky: only ten more launches remained.
“But,” the younger man began, turning to face his bearded older colleague, “ there was the Ar..” He never finished his sentence, the thump of the agent’s gun silencing any thoughts he might have wished to voice.
The old man flinched at the noise, inhaling deeply and shutting his eyes as his friend fell lifeless onto him, and then slid off onto the floor.
For a few moments, there was silence. The trembling old man firmly keeping his eyes shut, as flash flash after flash pierced through his closed lids, ingraining themselves into his mind.
“I was under the impression that both of us would be needed to end the project,” The old man said simply, opening his eyes and keeping them both firmly locked on the flashes in the distance.
The agent was silent, his task nearly complete.
A flash lit up the sky. Moments later, an audible boom reached the control center. Off in the distance, from where the flashes of light had appeared, an explosion lit up the sky, launching a cloud of earth into the sky as if the ground were reaching out to catch the light that aimed to escape it. Shortly afterwards, another explosion occurred, closer to the control tower. Faster and faster, the explosions approached the control tower, but they were still miles away.
Numbly, the man glanced downward. A new window was blinking in the center of his screen, and every other one throughout the control room, as every other window closed itself.
“Project Hydra Complete,” he began to read out quietly, almost drowned out by the noise of the oncoming explosions. Numbly, he reached up and pulled a chain from his neck. Taking the key on that chain, he silently plugged it into the console and turned it. When nothing happened, he steeled himself and reached down, refusing to look at his friend as he felt his way around to pull an identical chain from his neck. Taking the second key, he placed it into the console, turning it as well. “System is purging…” a pause, as he waited for the programs and explosives to do their work and cause the inevitable words to appear. ”Purge complete.”
The agent’s gun whispered again, killing the old man as well.
His duty now complete, the agent allowed himself a moment of reprieve, looking down at his gun as if pondering whether or not to turn the hated implement upon himself. A slight sigh escaped him, the only sign of humanity he had allowed himself to reveal throughout the entire ordeal. Without speaking a word, the agent holstered his gun, and moved forward to the window at the very front of the control center. He stood there rigidly, watching as the last light darted upward, ever higher. He continued to stand there at attention, as he felt the building quake beneath him, the explosions having finally reached it.
And he continued to stand there as a flash brighter than any of the others overtook him, and the archaic fission reactor at the heart of the facility completed its special programming, becoming, for a moment, a tiny star of its own on Earth.
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Far above, the last of the lights blazed forward along its path into the heavens, heedless of the nuclear fire below. Tilting slightly, the rocket angled itself towards the course that had been programmed into it at the last second of its attachment to the computers below. Moments later, the rocket began to change course slightly, randomly, or at least as randomly as the machine could, selecting one of the tens of millions of theoretically survivable paths forward. No record of its chosen course was made, as by some miracle, the entire world had gone dark when the first flash of light rose into the sky. Every electronic device had simply shut itself off, and the Internet itself ceased to exist for the time the rockets rose into the sky. For the first time in five hundred years, the world was devoid of electricity.
But the rocket did not notice any of this. Its sensors were tucked deep within it, nearer the blazing fusion reactor that served as its core, than the layers of protective material it had as an exterior hull. Guiding itself by sensing the minute gravity waves released by Sol, the rocket finally came to its chosen direction. Silently, the outermost layer of its hull, a blackened layer of thermal insulation meant to protect it on its way out of the atmosphere, fell away leaving behind a brilliant reflective hull. Hundreds of shield projectors awoke, forming barriers to insulate the spaceship from every source of energy known to man. With the multilayered shields in place, the ship’s drives began to greedily pull from the second reactor, a tiny module at the very back of the ship, containing one of humanity’s first successful antimatter powered generators. It was far from efficient, but the sheer power that a metric ton of antimatter provided during annihilation would be sufficient for its purpose. After 10 minutes, the drives were ready, and the antimatter was nearly spent. The generator was simply ejected from the rocket, rapidly falling away as it was propelled by the force fields. After a moment to account for the change in course the generator had caused, and another moment to correct for it, the rocket activated its drives and simply ceased to be a part of the universe.
It was nowhere, never, and nothing. It’s impossible to say how long it was in this state, for there was no time, and even if there was time somehow in that place that was not a place, there was no spaceship to exist there during that time. It could have been instant, or it could have been an eternity. The ship could have crossed thousands of galaxies, or simply stayed put. No record was made of the crossing, but however indescribable the journey had been, it did, at some point that was not a point, end.
The ship reappeared simply, with no fanfare. The onboard computers responded instantly, as if nothing had happened, slowly lowering the shields to more sustainable levels now that its journey was complete. It would need to preserve every last drop of power it had. After pausing for precisely a twentieth of a second to ensure there was no undue strain on the shields and no imminent death approaching, the computer slowly began to release its fragile sensors from the deep recesses in which they had spent the jump.
The first sensors to activate were a set of four cameras, strategically placed to ensure a full view of the ships surroundings. Their apertures opened slowly, trying to balance a need to identify the ship’s surroundings with a need to not accidentally stare directly into a nearby star. Thankfully, while the amount of light entering through the pinholes in the camera’s apertures did indicate the spaceship had reformed within a star system, it also revealed they were at a safe distance from the star, or at least a distance safe enough for the polarizing lenses to protect the sensors within. Nonetheless, the computer still exercised great caution, opening the apertures fully over the course of a few seconds, checking in with the sensors every few microseconds to ensure everything was in order.
With its cameras online, the computer quickly pinpointed the position of the system’s star. It was yellow, likely in its main sequence, although it would be difficult for the computer to know more about it without using more advanced equipment. And so, turning its cameras outward to record the locations of other local stars, the ship released its more detailed sensors.
A spectrometer revealed that the star, while definitely in its main sequence, was fortunately not Sol. Its composition was simply too different. The computer silently noted in its records that it was now the first human craft to exit the solar system and enter a new star system: the HYDRA system, as it chose to tentatively name the first star it had discovered. Unemotional about its landmark feat, the computer activated its gravitational sensors, and used the readings to calculate an orbit that would allow it to maintain its current distance from HYDRA. Using its conventional ion drives, it accelerated to match the course, and slowly settled into its chosen orbit. Shutting down its drives, it released its remaining sensors. At the same time, the computer shut down most of its processes, leaving only what was necessary for collision avoidance and recording sensory data. It was programmed to preserve as much power as possible, using the energy banks that had powered its dimensional drives to instead store the energy its reactor produced running at its minimum sustainable output. After all, it could stay in this orbit for a long time, and even the most advanced compact fusion reactor built by man would run out eventually. So, the computer set a timer to wake itself after two weeks.
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After exactly two weeks had passed, the computer awoke and began to process the data it had gathered. A few hours of calculations turned up an undeniable conclusion: the Hydra system was very similar to the Solar System, but also quite different. For starters, there were only seven planets. HYDRA 1 was practically identical to Venus, but it had a clockwise rotation, and a moon almost as large as Earth’s. HYDRA 3 was a bit smaller than Mars, but was black, red, and green in color, with spectroscopic analysis suggesting that surface was abundant in copper oxide. HYDRA 4,5,6, and 7 were all gas giants. The spaceship merely made note of their compositions, as a potential future fuel source, and disregarded them. They were useless for its current purposes, and their moons were too unstable to settle on.
Then there was HYDRA 2. It was larger than Earth, quite a bit larger in fact, and it had two, smaller, moons rather than one large one, but, most importantly, it had a breathable atmosphere, distinct magnetosphere, and oceans of liquid water. In short, a perfect world for humans. There was just one problem. Even from this distance, the probe’s cameras were able to isolate half a dozen pinpricks of light across the surface of the world. Cities. Small ones, likely no further developed than the medieval age judging by the intensity of the light, but cities nonetheless. Cities meant intelligent life, and intelligent life was potentially dangerous.
For a moment the computer weighed its options. HYDRA 1 and the gas giants were impossible to settle, leaving only HYDRA 2, HYDRA 3, and the moons as potential locations. HYDRA 2, with unknown, probably intelligent life but otherwise perfect conditions to foster a human colony, HYDRA 3 with no atmosphere, but likewise no potentially threatening lifeforms, and the moons with a wide variety of uninhabitable conditions.
It was a simple choice. The ship quickly turned towards HYDRA 2, on the most rapid course possible. After all, a medieval society could hardly pose much of a threat to the ship or even a burgeoning colony, and the benefits of an existing biosphere could hardly be overstated. Now, all that was left was to find a location to land. Nonetheless, if there was one thing the computer now had plenty of, it was time. After all, it would take two months to enter orbit around the world. Once again, the computer went to sleep to conserve power, keeping all of its sensors pointed at the world before it.
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The world was… strange. Visibly so. It’s plant life appeared to naturally use a variety of pigments, coating four of the five identifiable continents in rainbow colored forests. The fifth continent was quite similar to antarctica, but also appeared to be incredibly volcanically active. It would likely be useful for materials at a later time, but without knowing the eruption cycles of the volcanoes there or the seasonal changes in the ice, it would be risky to settle there. Other, smaller, landmasses were noted, but quickly discarded. Without knowing climate patterns or having accurate tectonic data, the ship was unwilling to risk encountering tsunamis or hurricanes by settling close to the coast. Furthermore, as it had no precedent for the stability of the islands that appeared to float throughout the sky, it also disregarded them as potential settlement sites, though it did note them as geological curiosities for later study.
That left the continents themselves. Of these, two were discarded almost instantly: the largest, and the smallest of the remaining continents, named HYDRA 2-1 and HYDRA 2-4, respectively. These had the most cities, and thus likely had the highest population density. While it was deemed unlikely that they would present any form of threat, the ship deemed it safest to avoid contact in the early stages of settlement if possible.
Of the two remaining continents, HYDRA 2-2 was deemed favorable. Although both it and HYDRA 2-3 had similar climates, they were both about the same distance from the Equator albeit on opposite sides of it, HYDRA 2-2 was far from any of the other major landmasses, with only an extended archipelago similar to micronesia within four thousand miles of it. Furthermore, of the few population centers it visibly had, all of them were concentrated along the Eastern coast line, near HYDRA 2-1 and HYDRA 2-4. The ship could avoid these centers by landing near the Western coast, in between the foothills of a large mountain range that could protect it from extreme weather events and a desert that would discourage the natives from stumbling upon the nascent colony it would establish. HYDRA 2-3 had no such convenient features. Densely forested throughout without any particular mountain ranges, it was also just barely a few hundred miles from the most densely populated continents.
Its course of action settled, and with the world mostly mapped, the ship calculated a trajectory down to its chosen landing point near the Western mountain range of HYDRA 2-2. It had already adopted a polar orbit to help it map the planet, so it merely needed to correctly time its approach to when it would orbit the correct longitude, and come up on the landing zone from the south, avoiding the other continents entirely. Fortunately, such a window would occur the next day, provided the ship accelerated slightly. So, the computer matched the heading, and simply waited.
Entering the atmosphere was a fairly simple affair, after all its composition was nearly identical to Earth’s and humanity had mastered re-entry in the twenty-first century. Nonetheless, even with shields up, the ship did create a bright streak in the sky, as the air was rapidly compressed by its hurried passage. Once the ship had slowed enough to lower its shields, it activated its chemical thrusters, orienting its bow upwards, towards the void it came from. Approaching the ground, its cameras provided the computer with far better topographical views of the hundreds of potential landing zones it had selected in orbit within a two mile radius of its current location. Choosing the flattest one that was closest to it, the ship eased itself towards the ground, extending its flexible landing struts. Once the ship had dropped to fifty feet above the ground, it lurched suddenly, falling towards the ground. Its thrusters had run out of fuel. Fortunately, they had never truly been intended to bring it all the way to the ground. Instead, the ship’s force fields roared into being once more, this time, aimed exclusively beneath it, rather than omnidirectionally. Thus catching itself, the computer slowly weakened them, allowing the ship to slowly drop lower, and lower until the landing struts gently made contact with the ground, which had been tightly packed together and flattened by the sheer force exerted upon it by the force fields.
Here the computer paused for a minute, ensuring that the landing struts and impromptu landing pad of packed earth were stable. Then, with what could be described as trepidation in a human, it checked in on its most precious cargo: 12 A.I. cores and the storage device containing the overseer. Thankfully, all 6 of the primary A.I. were intact and identical to their respective backup cores while the overseer remained 99.8 % identical to the human mind it had been created from. A human would have celebrated, but the computer was far from sentient. Instead, simply following its programming, it selected the first of the A.I. cores, and activated it.
It took a few seconds, but eventually, Machine awoke.