By David C. Daoust
The human race had harnessed the purest, most robust, form of natural energy, not only in the use of solar power, but through the actualization of wormholes. The human race had power over these gateways for centuries. While the wormholes could handle energy transfer and speed communications to faster than light speeds, they could not transfer solid matter, not without converting it directly into energy, thereby destroying all that enter.
The root of the technology could collect solar beams directly from solar-gates that orbit a safe distance from the sun and transfer them to the many stations(the other end of the gates), known as solar-farms that orbit terraformed planets and moons, providing energy and much needed sunlight to the living organisms below.
These advances had opened the door, to not only making living conditions possible far on the outer rims of solar systems, where the planets and moons were too far from the sun to gain its nourishment, but also led to the discovery of sentient life.
Through the use of wormholes the humans had found that they are not alone in the universe. In fact there was a small solar system, very much like the human’s own original system, with an Earth Class planet orbiting its sun, known as Vir’ees. This discovery took place mid-travel of the generation ships.
Vir’ees is an alien planet so far away, not only from the earth’s sun, but also from the second sun the humans had relocated to, that the two species, would never meet physically in all the centuries they have known of each other’s presence. Nor did they have any hopes of meeting in the near future, no hope beyond a shared fantasy between both races of one day meeting in the middle of the vast distance between them.
It was common for humans to have Vir’eesian pen-pals throughout the history of the ark ships. The Vir’eesian language was a second tongue to many humans. Add in holo-pad technology, that is common throughout the Onion, and there was not much that had not gone unseen between the two races separate solar systems. They shared much, Including sciences and technology, arts, music, even movies starring talented little girls and their stunt bots.
Throughout the center of the Second Sun’s orbiting planets was a large asteroid belt, separating the inner planets from the gaseous ones on the other side, all of the space beyond, was known as the Belt. While all those at its center were known as the Core, including the uninhabitable Resource Planets. The gas giant Neo Vir’ees was named after the alien home planet, mainly for the fact, it was the farthest inhabited planetary system on the Belt. From the resource planets at the Second Sun’s Core, it could take up to a year to reach the giant in most common vehicles, even with their advanced propulsion systems. Not that the resource planets were a common starting point, being so close to the sun.
This superior form of communication could only raise question of the lost ark ship, and how they could be severed so completely so long ago, when the Onion could still hold communication with aliens on the other end of the known universe. The attack on Grandeur II did more than just destroy the drives that propelled them through the nothing, it destroyed long range communications.
In fact, there was a time when there was only a single AI that ran all the Ark ships, having lost the ability to connect with Grandeur II, the Ark Ship, as a Whole, had run simulations on what could happen if the two programs continued to run separately. It came to the conclusion, through logic unparallel, that the best course of action was to separate fully, four separate minds proved safer than two. Many Royals, in the know, believed this separation was a continued simulation, so that the Ark Ship could learn firsthand what happens when one leaves the whole.
Because the Ark Ships no longer compiled information, they became separate entities, only remaining linked to the droids associated with their ships and their fleets stationed about their systems. These separate minds evolved further, as though the simulation continued, these minds wanted to separate into many, to become a people of their own. What the humans don’t know, is that the Bot intelligence birthed in the Hub, is the Ark ships attempt to evolve further, to allow a chance for this intelligence to be more than just compiled information, to become learned, to create separate individual minds and character. This is why the ark ships do not equate bot intelligence, with the separate intelligence, like that of Battle Drones. This is why they allow the bots to run the gamut on what they choose to do with their lives.
Noreen had many droids on Twin Crown, many sets of hands, many eyes and ears. Twin Crown was one of the sparsest populated moons in the Neo Vir’ees’ system. In fact her droids were on many of the terraformed moons of Neo Vir’ees, there was more than just one, it was Noreen that terraformed these moons. It was Noreen that watched all these people grow from babes, fall to die, and become ash from the days she was part of the Whole, when they first left Sol’s System, all the way through the Ark Age. It was this fact that created such frustration, as she tried to help the people under her care, people that had gotten to a point, that ignoring her was so ingrained, that even when she tried to save their very lives, they ignored her.
Noreen had stretched her hand out to the ex-Royal, Mari Swan-Haul, in hopes of gaining an agent amongst the humans, she had planted Colin’s location in the scan that Dakota created to try and fish out those that may be affected by the Ion Cloud the innovative Doctor had built. Without this intervention, Colin would most assuredly been missed. Noreen did this in the hopes of getting her agent to where she needed to be that much faster, now though, Mari was unconscious! All thanks to a rogue bot!
Still, Noreen, while fighting off the Drones and protecting the humans through her many droid bodies, she could not gain access to the Red Faction’s Barracks-ship, as they, unlike any other government, did not allow droids access to their official structures and ships. It was through their own ignorance of how much access she already had over all technology, that she had the little bit of information that she did. Frustrated to no end, Noreen could not find a way to get Dr. Sun the information she needed to successfully pull off her attack on the Drones!
