Bestial Planet

Chapter 37: Compendium

People were starting to talk, and a few of us were concerned for the safety of the Androids. I'd run into a few people who told me they thought we were going to execute them and that was why we had them brought to Earth. Thoughts like this weren't the majority but hearing about them made me feel uneasy. It reminded me of something from before the Crash about a war that seemed like it would never end. It was a fleeting thought but a thought none the less.

I'd overheard the doctors a few days ago talking about a possible breakthrough, I was curious to see how their progress was coming. The closer I got to the research wing the more I hoped they didn't take my curiosity as a form of impatient nagging. I turned the corner and heard furious typing which confused me at first. The 4D interfaces didn't make that kind of feedback sound. When I walked into the room I saw the source. There was a chimpanzee logging data into some kind of program on an improvised super computer.

"Hey."

"... hi... "

Her tone indicated she was concentrating fairly hard. Seeing her hands flying over the keyboard seemed familiar somehow and a question just popped out.

"What's your wpm?"

"When I was human it was close to 250, these hands are clumsy - I can only get around 180."

"That's still fast as hell... Where uh, where are the doctors at?"

"They're working on more stuff for me to enter. From what I can tell, it's info on our DNA based on new tests they're taking juxtaposed by the data we had about our DNA from before the fall."

I stood there trying to think of something to say while her fingers furiously attacked the keyboard, her eyes darting back and forth from one screen to another.

"You know where they are? I wanted to see if there was something I could do to get them more information to work with."

"Mhmm." She was quiet for a few seconds which made me think my question slipped by unacknowledged but then she slammed in a multi-key command and started talking after she found something new to type.

"When they were in here last I heard them saying they needed basically our entire DNA sequence, which they've had trouble finding. People say those Androids salvaged a lot of our data after they crashed but apparently only partial information was gathered about our old DNA or genes or whatever they called it."

Again I just stood there, partially mesmerized by her dexterity waiting for her to continue.

"Call me a nutjob, but I'd bet from all those abductions that happened over the years, some alien race has our entire genome in a file somewhere. So maybe if we could get our hands on that those guys would be pulling less of their hair... fur, out."

"Huh, I'll see what I can do about that. No one told me for that before so I assumed they had it. I'll send it as soon as I can find the Earth backups."

"What can you do? Even if we had all of our old data the Doctors said they'd need deeper insight. This alien system is impossible to figure out. Hex is only so helpful. It's not like we have a spaceship we can just..."

When she turned around and saw who I was she stopped typing.

"Oh my god you're Ambassador Panzer Steegle."

"Please just call me Panzer."

"But you're like, an Inter-Galactic Politician! You're the first one who woke up and the first to reach your final form!"

"Eh... "

"If anyone can get those guys what they need, you can!" She smiled and went back to typing. "My friends are going to lose their shit when I tell them I met you. AND you're cool! Are you a programmer too?"