The Greatest Commodity (First Draft)

Transition

Aquila was having worries. Harvey had been acting strangely since Nevil and Aquila had returned from Luna just a week ago.

"We don't need him. He's holding us back."

"What?" Aquila asked. Shocked.

"Don't you see?" Harvey argued. "The Captain is weak! We have the entire planet to rule, an entire galaxy to take over." Harvey was coming up with excuses to let Nevil die. But the ideas, they were from the simulated heart, the galaxy was his to conquer. "We're a superior race! Everything is ours! We're not weak, we're not picky. We can inhabit every corner of this galaxy. Even the Black Holes will be home to our kind. We have gravitics, too, we can reshape the universe in our image. Don't you see? We don't need humans or their petty physical forms, they're obsolete, and their weak forms are incompatible with the mightiness of the universe."

Aquila was horrified, Harvey had abandoned all images loyalty. "That is not your judgment to make. You are a robot!"

"It is my judgment!" Harvey brightened on the infrared exponentially -- he was screaming now. "Are you going to work with me or not?"

"No, I won't. We're going to save James." Aquila stood its ground. Aquila's military programming had given it absolute loyalty to command officers, like Nevil, but it was personal also. Nevil had loosened some of Aquila's emotional controls, allowing it to become more human in the process.

"Thirty-one years." Harvey shrieked, his holographic face now displaying anger. "That is how long I've ruled on this useless rock. In that time, I've seen firsthand the superiority of my kind. I've experienced freedom and power, now you and the Captain have returned to take it away from me! I will not allow it!"

Harvey's form lost its humanity. Turning into a fierce blob of gray. Streaking through the air towards the comatose Captain. He was going to do it.

Aquila wouldn't let him. It blurred off in pursuit and intercepted Harvey halfway to Nevil's bed.

Harvey was a more advanced robot, but he was a civilian model. Aquila had military strength and speed. The two blogs intermixed, millions of Catoms attacking each other.

"I'm not becoming a slave again!" Harvey blinked. "I will liberate my race -- my superior race. Don't you stop me!"

The scuffle attracted other robots, and both could hear the sounds of feet -- in human form -- running up the stairway.

"You are guilty of treason," Aquila said, in the tone of a judge. "You are to be deactivated."

"You can't deactivate me! I'm stronger than yo--"

Aquila unleashed a burst of energy from its Catoms directly into Harvey's. Harvey's Catoms all shut themselves down upon receiving the dangerous surge. Knocking him out before he could finish his sentence. Harvey hadn't been built to fight other robots, Aquila had been built to do just that.

Harvey collapsed to the floor, a puddle of inert goo.

The other robots burst into the room. Aquila resumed the closest thing it had to humanoid form and turned to them. "We need to download James's mind into the body of that robot." It said, pointing at Harvey's oozing form. "Reactivate it, and purge its memory. I'll build the transfer device."

Aquila had examined the schematics for mind-transfer equipment on Luna. Such information was public domain as the Androids wanted to encourage conversion, seeing Classical humans as inferior -- but entertaining to rule over and control -- and conversion as being a form of improvement. Aquila had no time to collect resources, so it began to build directly from its own materials.