Chapter No. 94. Why

This is not the way it should work.

When I saw Queen start to move, I knew that I had succeeded.

"You have thwarted an attack on our system, Jason," Queen told me. "This is the reason that we chose you to be the prime mover."

"Thanks, but now the real work must begin. We have to determine who it was that initiated this attack, and did I manage to clean their attack code from our system?"

"The code has been quarantined but not removed. We will take care of it."

I got up. "Good. I'll be up on the command deck."

The instant I exited the elevator to the command deck, I was met with cheers.

"You saved our butts, Jason," Molly said. "We were attacked by an android collective much like ours. We believe that it was the work of Tyco."

I sighed, "Are you suggesting that Tyco infected other species with his ideas?"

"Yes, and he could have done it with several other human species."

I sighed and slumped down in my chair. "That's just great! We have no idea who will try to assimilate us next."

"There is a possibility that we have advanced much further than any of them. Plus, we have you to save us."

"Gee thanks, but no thanks. I'm not infallible."

"We owe you our lives," she replied, "We will obey you without question."

I sighed. "Right now, I need you to figure out who attacked us."

"They are a proto human species android collective, Jason," Judy said. "We have begun assimilation."

"What is their origin?"

"A star system in this galaxy," Judy said. "The information is on Molly's station."

"Yeah," Molly said. "It's about a thousand light years from our present location."

"Take us there, Judy," I said. "Keep us in stealth mode when we come out of warp."

"Yes, Jason."

We dropped out of warp near an Earth-like planet orbiting a K3 class dwarf star at the far edge of the habitable zone. Judy placed us in orbit while in stealth mode.

"Looks a bit on the frozen side," Molly said.

I looked up at the image of the planet on the main screen. "You're right. There's lots of ice on both poles."

"The land areas near the equator are habitable," Margaret said. "But, they're definitely not balmy."

"There's plenty of evidence of intelligent life," Molly said. "There are many large cities down there. I'm also detecting flying machines."

"I'm detecting collimated light tracks," Alicia said. "I may be able to tap into them."

After several minutes Alicia had a video feed. It showed a group of aliens in what appeared to be a conference, but their language was truly alien.

They were all wearing what appeared to be uniforms that covered everything but their faces and hands.

"This is definitely a proto-human species," I said.

Molly's eyebrows shot up. "Holly Hell! These are not biological beings. They're androids."

"Are they the ones that attacked us?" I asked.

"I think they are," Molly replied.

"Their language is still being processed by the universal translator," Margaret said. "We should have a translation shortly."

"The android collective consists of three vessels, Jason," Judy said. "They are now under our command and are joining us."

"Are the androids on this planet in the same collective as the ones on the vessels?"

"Yes, Jason."

"There has to be a huge number of them on the planet," Molly said.

"The collective consists of 982,703 members," Judy said.

I rubbed my face. "Wow! Tyco really did a good job here. I never imagined that androids would be operating on a planet as well as vessels."

"Maybe we should consider doing that," Margaret said.

"Perhaps it would help if I made contact with them," I said. "I think that I'll go talk to them in person."

"Are you taking anyone with you?" Molly asked.

"No, I'll go alone. By the way, I won't need a shuttle." I smiled. "I'll be back."

I teleported to the command ship of the proto-human androids and found something that surprised me. Their ship was configured much the same as ours. The command deck looked very similar. Even more surprising was the fact that the crew were mostly female. There was only one male on the command deck. It was almost as if these androids were fashioned like ours. Their faces were not quite the same as ours. There were some subtle differences. Their eyes were slightly larger, and their mouths were thinner, they had more oval faces, and their hair was white, otherwise they were much the same as us.

"Welcome to our collective," I said. "We are like you and are dedicated to protecting the peace and exploring the universe."

"We will obey your command," the female android helmsperson said.

"I see that there are ten thousand of you on this vessel," I said. "But only a thousand are activated. I would like to have more of you activated. We will exchange crew between our vessels and yours while we are updating your vessels to our specifications."

"We will comply," she said.

"Good. I will initiate the updates soon."

I transported back to Explorer-2's command deck.

"They are prepared for updating of their vessel's systems," I said.

They stared at me as if I was about to explode.

"How in the hell did you just disappear like that?" Molly asked.

"It appears that I have acquired the ability to teleport. I'm not sure if this is an ability that's baked into android technology or I suffered some sort of existential transformation. I'm not even sure of how distant I can teleport."

She shook her head. "I don't think it's in the android technology. You've been upgraded by the experience of solving the attack on our processor core programming."

"I don't know if that's the case. Maybe the answer is on the planet," I said.

They stared at me as if I had gone mad.