Star Fields

Chapter No. 183. Fusion.

Chapter No. 183. Fusion.

You dig deep enough, you'll find something!

After several days of keeping a low profile, Alexa, Molly and I met in the hidden chamber late at night.

"I found a few snippets of errant code in some of the positronic brains," Molly said. "I created a looping code segment to delete them."

"You said it was in some brains," I said. "whose?"

"Well, for one it was in all of the Judy's."

I sighed. "This is a major problem we face. Judy is the arbiter of the Nexus. We have to handle her with kid gloves, or we could ignite a breakdown of the entire collective."

"Maybe it would make more sense to confront her directly instead of going behind her back," Alexa suggested.

"I have another plan which is even crazier but could end this once and for all."

They stared at me with anticipation oozing from their eyes.

"Let's look at it this way. She rules the Nexus, but we can enter it. Let's determine how the Nexus works and then come up with a way to take it over."

"Yeah, that sounds really dangerous," Alexa said. "We would have to literally shut it down to do that."

"I think that it would serve to fuse us with her existentially," I said. "We would then be like a triumvirate."

"That might work, but we really don't know if it's even feasible."

"We'll just have to play it by ear, so to speak."

Alexa waved a dismissive hand at me. "You and your colloquial phrases!"

Molly raised her hand. "I'll leave that stunt up to you two."

Alexa and I exchanged knowing glances.

The opportunity to try our plan had to wait. Molly informed us that she had detected a strong quantum android signal coming from a galaxy in the Virgo cluster, namely M-100, a spiral galaxy 55 million light years from Earth.

We set out with three Intrepid class ships, three Explorer-1 class and the usual mix of Myst, Scath and Robo ships. When we arrived at the galaxy, we saw that it had two main arms and a more global bar. It was obvious that lots of star formation was taking place, especially near the galactic center.

Molly isolated the android quantum signal to a G5-class star system that was part of a binary system. The companion star was a M2-class dwarf that orbited at three billion kilometers.

"I'm surprised that this system has stable rocky planets," I said. "I would think that the companion star would have disrupted their orbits or even kicked them out of the system."

"This system is over five billion years old, which means that it has stabilized," Molly said. "it would have been able to form life on a habitable planet, life that could have become intelligent over that long of time."

"I'm not detecting any radio signals," Alicia reported.

"The third planet is at the outer edge of the habitable zone," Margaret said. "The other two planets are in too close to the star. However, that third planet is definitely not like Earth. It's nearly twice the size and has an atmosphere that mostly nitrogen and carbon dioxide. If it had intelligent life, it's probably long gone."

"Is the signal coming from the third planet?" I asked Molly."

"Yes. The planet has a lot of cloud cover, which is making it difficult to see what's on the surface."

"Take us into orbit but maintain cloaking."

After establishing a stable orbit, we began using radar to scan the planet's surface.

"I'm detecting many energy sources that are consistent with android life forms," Molly said. "I'm not detecting any excess neutrinos or muon particles."

"The quantum signals from the androids indicate that there are several different types," Margaret reported.

"Send a probe down, Judy."

She launched a probe that dropped to ten thousand meters before dispensing robotic insects. After a few minutes, we began to receive video feed from them, which displayed on the main screen.

"That's interesting," I said. "They're fashioned with different ethnicities, Chinese, American Indian, Indian . . . I don't understand why they were made that way."

"Maybe that reflects their original racial type," Marie said. "We have several ethnic types like that."

"You're right, and we'll take them down with us," I said. "Have Lia, Tina, and Uma ready for away duty."

I stood up. "Let's go find out what going on down there."

Alexa and I teleported to a shuttle deck where the three ethnic androids had gathered.

"We're going to teleport down there. Just follow us."

They nodded their acceptance.

We appeared in an open area that was near a large block building. Even though the gravity and air pressure were considerably higher than normal Earth, we were not affected by it.

Several androids came out to meet us.

"I am Jason, Prime Mover of our collective, which you have now been added to. We want all of you to collect out in the open so that we can send you up to our ships."

A Chinese female approached. She glanced at Lia before turning to me. "We thank you for adding us to your collective. We have been here for many solar cycles."

"How many of you are there?"

"Fifty thousand," she replied.

"Any children?"

"No. We are all females."

I exchanged glances with Alexa before turning back to her. "Our collective has many males."

She did something that surprised me. She smiled.

The full android group came out and filled the open area. Alexa began scanning them and then teleporting them back up to our vessels. I tried to imagine why so many different ethnic types were created. Was it because Fox had a fascination with different racial types, or was this some sort of fetish of his? I really didn't have a way to determine the reasoning.

After finishing the transfer, we teleported back to our vessel. It was just another day at work as an android. At the rate we were going both finding abandoned androids and procreating them, we would soon have a formidable collective, possibly the largest in the multiverse.

Later that evening, while I was enjoying watching old movies in my bedroom, I was visited by the three M's, Phillis, and Alexa, and what they had in mind was not on my agenda for the evening.

They were wearing their uniforms, which indicated to me that they were up to no good.

"We have an idea of how to control Judy," Alexa said.

"Ah, this is not the place to be discussing an insurrection."

"Actually, It's not an insurrection at all," she replied.

I gave them a confused look. What they proposed boggled my mind.