Taking SPACE

ONWARD

"What in the –." Daniel began to say

Steven stepped forward and put his finger to his mouth telling them to be quiet. A second later the hologram of Alf disappeared and the power in the room faded away plunging them into darkness.

Steven took a deep breath letting himself relax. "Alf found a loophole in his programming. He is rebooting himself right now to make it stick."

"I gathered that much. What I don't get is how the world this could possibly work. I mean we all know that wasn't David Kel or Zephyr and Alf's programming can't possibly fake that then tell itself it didn't."

"Actually Daniel it didn't fake that. The lionhearted sometimes used digitized versions of their commanders to make decisions in difficult situations they couldn't possibly be present for. This was called the ghost protocol. They knew it wasn't actually them so they didn't use it that often or give them any authority but having a continuously updated version of yourself stored in the databanks ready to make an important call on any given situation can save lives."

Daniel crinkled his eyebrows. "Are you saying that was a digitize version of them?"

"Yes, it's very likely Alf downloaded them from whatever secret database last night and let them look over the situation."

"And this is the solution they came up with." Michael added.

"Yeah."

"What will happen to them now?" Stephanie asked.

"They will be turned back off and silently wait in the database for if there ever needed again."

"Cool, so I can like talk to a digitize version of David Kel if I want to later?" Daniel exclaimed excitedly.

"No, they are not real and they are only allowed to be accessed in an emergency." Steven answered coldly as the ships power began to come back on.

Alf appeared on the view screens. "Sorry sirs I seem to have suffered an unexplained reboot."

"That may been my fault." Steven offered. "And I may have to do so again. I want to gut the prison surveillance room and replace it with much more size efficient equipment."

"Understandable it is rather out-of-date, however Sir I wish you would warn me of such actions before hand. I was in the process of rooting out and deleting what I believe was some mischievous reprogramming." The hologram lion glared at Daniel.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Because if you are anything like your predecessor you are likely the one responsible."

"What?"

Steven laughed. "Lord Maddog was well known for mischievously reprogram ships AI's. In fact he's the one that reprogrammed Alf naming him Alf. He was originally named something else."

Alf looked rather disgruntled. "Yes I used to have a rather dignified name and he changed it to 'All Lionhearted's friend'."

Daniel burst out laughing, "Seriously? All Lionhearted's friend? That's hilarious!"

The lion glared at him. "I believe you were given orders you have yet to follow."

Michael was trying to himself keep from laughing as he said, "yes, I think we've wasted enough time here. We need to get on this right away."

Daniel nodded and he and Stephanie once again began to walk off the bridge but as Daniel walked out the door he said, "O, that's right, all lionhearted's friend where are the finished dimension door hoops being stored?"