Chapter No.3 Assessment

Feeling alone can occur in a crowded room!

I had already finished frying two cuts of bio-generated steak when I heard the door signal chime.

My assistants Alice and Ellen invited Molly into my quarters and directed her to the kitchen/dining area.

When she saw me busy with cooking, she gave me a surprised look. "You know how to cook?"

I smiled back. "I learned to cook at the academy. It came in handy at times when my lazy roommates were hungry." I gestured to the table. "Have a seat while I finish this."

She sat down and stared at a glass filled with an unexpected beverage.

"Is this what I think it is?"

I smiled. "Yes, it's beer. The androids brew it."

She took a sip. "Wow! They do a good job."

"They certainly do."

"I'm surprised that they would have beer on a deep space mission."

"There are a lot of surprises about this mission," I said as I placed some meat and broccoli on her plate.

She gave me a confused look."

"How did they describe this mission to you?" I asked her.

"They said it was a colonization mission to establish human presence on an exo-planet."

"That's what they told me, but it was a lie. This was actually a military mission to establish a base on an exo-planet in preparation for an invasion of an alien planet."

She frowned. "That would suggest that an alien species had done something serious enough to warrant a war. I had not heard of any threat or attack of that nature."

"Neither had I, but it's obvious that this was the case. This vessel has four thousand androids on stand-by and a thousand battle droids. We have enough weaponry to take out entire planets."

Her eyes grew large. "Holy shit!"

"My sentiments exactly."

"Are we in danger of being attacked?"

"I don't know, but that's the reason that we must take on water as soon as possible. Hopefully, the planet we're headed to has water."

"It's not a planet. It's a moon."

I squinted. "A moon?"

"It's a habitable moon eight tenths the mass of Earth orbiting a Saturn sized gas giant in the habitable zone of a G-5 class white dwarf star."

"How is that possible?"

"Apparently, the Jupiter sized gas giant in this system pushed the Saturn sized gas giant into the inner part of this solar system and it literally cleaned out any rocky planets that had formed . . . except for this one rocky planet. It got lucky enough to be captured. It's obvious that this is the case because it orbits the gas giant about twenty five degrees off the ecliptic."

"I assume that this habitable moon has an atmosphere and liquid water on its surface."

"Oh yes. There's plenty of water. However, the tides are pretty bodacious, being this close to a gas giant. This system is relatively young compared to our solar system. I estimate it to be three billion years old, which was just enough time for this moon to cool down and form an atmosphere."

"Is there any life on it?"

"Yes. There is oxygen in its atmosphere but it's a bit on the low side. Plant life is abundant. I assume there is some primitive life down there."

I smiled. "I guess we'll find out. I just hope that we can take on water and get out of here before we're detected."

She sighed. "I can scan for nearby habitable planets. The telescope systems on this vessel are excellent, much better than I would have expected."

"The good news is that you can enhance them. The androids in Engineering are able to fashion anything you wish."

She cut off a morsel of her meat and ate it.

"Not bad," she said. "It tastes like sirloin."

"Yeah, It's close."

"What about these bio-agents that were injected into us?" she said without looking up. "What are they doing to us?"

"I don't know. I do know that they made us look about thirty years younger."

She looked up at me. "Yes, I feel much younger." She cupped her hands under her breasts. "For one thing, these are much larger and firmer than they ever were."

I tried not to smile, but it came out as a subtle grin. "That's because the agents are trying to sculpture your body to resemble the androids' figures."

She frowned. 'Why in the hell did they make them look like Barbie dolls?"

"That's because they're based on a nefarious sex-bot design. I would also assume that they were made anatomically accurate that way to pleasure the predominantly male crew."

She gave me a smirk. "I see that you'll not lack for entertainment."

I frowned. "I don't think so! These androids could easily kill me with a single blow. They have titanium alloy skeletons and muscles that are probably five times stronger than any human male's. Having sex with them would be equivalent to a male tarantula mating with a much larger and stronger female."

She tilted her head. "Why did they keep us alive?"

"I believe that they have achieved sentience but they lack the ability to make decisions. They evidently chose us because we're not going to start a war with anyone."

"If these bio-agents in our blood could make us young again, then I would assume that we'll never age or die from any age related disease."

"Even better, we can't be infected with any bacteria or virus. Any damage to our bodies will be repaired because these agents are able to convert adult stem cells in to primary ones. In fact, our DNA will be maintained in perfect order."

She smiled. "That means we're essentially immortal."

"Yes, but we're no longer human. We could be categorized as being cyborgs."

She took a sip of beer. "I wonder what changes they've made to our physiology." She looked at me with inquisitive eyes. "Dose this vessel have a medical station?"

"Yes, it does."

"Maybe they included a DNA sequencer. If that's the case, they might have our genome records in the database. We could run a translation of our DNA now and compare it to our original translations."

I took a large swig of beer and stood up. "We can check that out right now. The medical station is on this deck."

We went down the hall and found the medical station. It was essentially crammed into a cubby hole in the wall."

"Oh good!" she said, placing her hand on a module with a screen. "They have one." She rooted in a small cabinet and found some medical swabs sealed in antiseptic bags. "All we have to do is put some saliva on these and stick them into the receptacle here." She pointed to a small round hole covered with a circular shield.

She entered her name on a small keypad and then rubbed the swab around in her mouth before sticking it into the circular shield, which conveniently moved open to allow it to be inserted into the hole.

After a few minutes the machine indicated it was ready for a new sample. I repeated her actions.

"I'm surprised that it could handle more than one sample at a time."

She smiled. "It's obviously designed for efficiency."

We went back to my quarters to relax while the sequencer was humming away. She sat on a couch while I sat in an easy chair.

"I think that you should view the last messages we received from Space Command."

She gave me a funny look. "I'm surprised that they sent any messages."

"I was too." I looked at a nearby screen. "Play the three messages from Space Command."

The screen lit up with the first message.

Molly smiled. "That was certainly abrupt."

The second message made her face twist with concern. "I don't like the sound of that. Why wouldn't they have detected an asteroid threat long before this?"

"That's what I thought."

The third message rendered her face with shock. "Oh my God! That's an extinction event!"

"It certainly looks that way."

She turned to me. "Did you try to establish a link back to Space Command?"

"Yes, but the entanglement link had been broken. We are one hundred and seventy five years into the future compared to Earth. If that collision did what I think it did, we'll be lucky to find any survivors on Earth."

"What about the Helios station?"

"That's a possibility, but without Earth's assistance, life on Helios station would have become difficult at best."

She slouched down and sighed. "This is just great. We're hundreds of light years from Earth in a system that might be subject to attack from an unknown alien species that we know nothing about and we have been altered genetically to a species that is no longer human."

I smiled. "Other than that, we have an entire ship to ourselves. There's no Space Command to boss us around."

"I though you said that there are four-thousand androids on this vessel. I can't imagine why they didn't just kill us."

"Most of them are inactive. Besides, if they wanted to kill us, they would not have done anything to keep us alive in stasis."

"So what are we going to do?" she asked.

"As soon as we take on water and the engineering androids install the new antimatter mix chamber, we'll head back to Earth and find out if anyone survived."

She shook her head in agreement. "Hopefully, we'll find survivors."

That would be nice, but I didn't share her optimism. Besides, even if we did, what good would it do. We were no longer human.