Chapter No.142. Attack.

Remember that large proto-human android collective?

"The proto-human android collective living on a planet in the galaxy where we were attacked has informed us that they have suffered serious damage," Judy informed us.

"What is the cause of it?" I asked.

"They believe it was a gamma ray burst."

"Okay, let's go see what happened, Judy."

It didn't take that long to arrive there, and it was obvious that their planet had been hit by a gamma ray burst. A sizable portion of the atmosphere had been blasted off and there was evidence of blast damage on the surface. The two vessels that were in orbit around their planet had been destroyed, leaving only debris.

"Is there any way to determine where the gamma ray burst came from?" I asked.

Molly began working with her virtual telescope. "I'll see what I can find."

"I don't think this was a Tyco attack," I said to Alexa.

"Why not?" she asked, squinting.

"He didn't finish the job."

"Yeah, that's not a Tyco trait," she said.

"I have detected a recent nearby supernova," Molly said. "It could be the source of the damage. My calculations indicate the gamma ray burst arrival at this planet is from the event."

"Okay. Alexa and I will go down and see what the damage is."

We teleported directly to the location of the proto-human collective headquarters, a large domed building with no windows. We could tell by the absence of crowds that many androids had been destroyed by radiation.

The prime mover of their collective is a proto-human android with the designation of Sixar. She was accompanied by three of her assistants.

"How many of your collective were destroyed?" I asked her.

"We have lost 402,120 adults and 50,200 children."

"Do you have their personality and memories stored in your computer system?"

"No."

I sighed. "That means that they are permanently dead."

She didn't exhibit any emotion from that realization.

"I'm sorry that this happened. We should have updated your system to prevent permanent death. We will remedy that error. Also, it's obvious that living on a planet is not safe. That's why we live on vessels."

"We no longer have vessels," she said.

"This is an opportunity to change that. We will construct large vessels to accommodate all of your collective members. You will than join us in our fight against Tyco."

"We are at your disposal."

"There are nearly five hundred thousand of them that survived," Alexa said. "What are we going to do with them. They certainly can't live on this planet anymore."

"We're going to transport all of them back to our solar system and put them on Helios Station. It was designed to hold millions of humans and has been upgraded to support androids."

"Do we have enough room to transport them back?"

"You and I could just teleport them back, but I don't trust that idea. There's lots of room in the Scath and Myst vessels. They only have skeleton crews and the Myst vessels are as large as ours." I turned to Sixar. "Assemble your remaining members. We have to get you off of this planet as soon as possible to prevent eventual damage. The radiation levels are too high."

She began the process of summoning her collective. By the time it was done, we had nearly a half million androids stuffed into the command complex. I contacted Judy and had her consolidate the transfer by letting me know how many Alexa and I could teleport to each vessel.

Time was of the essence because many of them were already suffering radiation damage. They needed time in a charging station to return to full efficiency. I teleported the most severely damaged androids and especially the surviving children to our vessel for special attention. Alexa teleported the others to the Scath and Myst vessels.

After all of them were loaded on our vessels and we had transferred all of their data to our system, we were ready to return to Earth.

When we arrived at Helios Station, Alexa and I began the teleportation of the proto-human androids. Our androids were there to aid the new arrivals in settling down into their new temporary home.

Helios Station was almost like a planet. It had plenty of sunlight to maintain vegetation, and there was lots of water in artificial lakes. Our androids had already constructed structures to house people long before this in anticipation of housing humans. With a few alterations It was a perfect solution to our problem.

Sixar was especially satisfied with this arrangement. She thanked us for saving her and her collective members.

Actually, she and her androids were now members of our collective, and our androids began the process of recording their data so that they could be immortal, whatever that means in relation to android life.

Judging by the fact that these proto-human androids seemed satisfied indicated to me that androids were not interested in mourning the dead. They didn't seem all that disturbed by the fact that nearly half of them had been permanently destroyed. I believe it was because they have no real human emotions. They are even more robotic than our androids.

However, I had no intention of leaving them on Helios Station. My vision of android existence is to live on vessels that could each house at least a hundred thousand and go anywhere, including new universes, which were being created on a continuous basis. It constituted the only possible means of living forever. Planets and moons have short useful lives as habitable locations. It's a fact of life in universes subject to the ravages of entropy. All physical things deteriorate. The reason we could live forever is because of the continuous regeneration of our bodies by tiny robotic devices that flow around in our circulatory systems, and the data stored in the collective computer core. These systems keep us in peak physical condition. All we need is vessels that could maintain the same immortality.

But that means designing and constructing an entirely new vessel concept, one that would mimic the Borg of Star Trek fame.

But first, I had to discuss this with my command staff, and the best time was in the hidden pool chamber meeting after supper. However, the issues they brought up would change everything.