Documentary interview with Dr. Stepan Jones

"So what is your role in the Nikolai Foundation?" The interviewer asked. He is a lanky man in a suit who looks comfortable in front of the camera.

"I'm a neurologist who specializes in NIs. I work in the Neuro Refinement Department. Dr. Jones, wearing a white lab coat with a collared shirt and blue jeans, looked uncomfortable in front of the camera.

"Can you explain this to the people in the family?" What is 'NI'?"

"Ah, this is the 'Nikolai Intelligence Agency'. We created the first version under Project Nikolai, and all subsequent editions have followed this name. ”

"So much so that the Foundation renamed it once it changed its focus, right?"

"That's right. I am committed to improving the national intelligence agencies to better carry out the various tasks they need to accomplish. ”

"So, you're going to tinker with the brains of these NIs. Doesn't that cause problems? It's like the Zhengzhou incident?"

Dr. Jones looked even more uncomfortable. "Ah, yes, that was decades ago, well before my age. Rest assured, we fully understand what NI thinks. There is no need to worry. ”

My main fiber backbone is cut between two optical transceivers along the surface. This is very inconvenient because I have a very limited inventory that I ship from Earth that I can use to repair it. Most of my sensors on the ground rely on quantum relays to communicate, rather than running endless cables, using the quantum entanglement of particles to send signals, no matter how far away. However, they are tied to quantum routers, which are tied to fiber optic lines. Luckily, I was able to bypass these damages with secondary optical lines, but my bandwidth was severely limited. It's impossible for me to get any of the major routing hubs online, and certainly not for my spectrometers or radio telemetry scanners. But with some sensible packet routing, I was able to pull up some cameras in the affected area, at least enough to see what's going on.

A huge pit runs right across my fiber optic line. On its own, it appears to be harmless, appearing to be the result of a high-speed kinetic impact, possibly from a smaller asteroid. This is the most plausible explanation, apart from a few factors. First, I'm doing radar mapping, constantly simulating the asteroid fields around me. Nothing nearby should have the relative velocity of such a violent impact, nor should anything hit the lunar surface in the next 6.3 months. Of course, the alien spacecraft hovering above the crater, preparing to land, also suggests that the impact was not accidental.

The design of this ship is very similar to the strange tree-shaped ship that the Orion Arms Trading Company visited Earth. However, this one is much smaller. It is only thirty meters tall and does not have dozens of rotating branches with pods at the ends, only four branches. Each branch extends to the sides of the ship's main trunk, with pods of equal size on either side. They rotate rapidly to create centrifugal force; Artificial gravity is like the one I used in the new factory.

As I watched, the bulbous bottom of the ship stopped at the bottom of the crater. The exhaust gases of the engine burned off a large amount of debris, but eventually, the more volatile substances were burned off, leaving only the ferronickel surface. The long, thick legs slowly snapped off the base, and the branches began to turn more slowly. The engine began to stall and the ship stopped. It looked like a metal tree planted on its own in my home, teetering in that crater.

My first instinct was to wonder how they found me. I was buried in the middle of an asteroid and I didn't give any signal at all. Is this an educated guess? Have they examined old broadcast footage on Earth where this project might have been discussed? My second reaction was anger. These monsters destroyed everyone and everything I knew. They slaughtered countless people, and now they are swaggering around my asteroid as if they had it. This is unacceptable.

I continued to observe, not knowing what to do with the intruders. I was worried because I didn't even think I might be threatened. I don't have any real defenses to speak of. I found some plans to add ultra-high-speed coil guns as defense on colonial ships decades later. Nikolai-19 even marked a possible installation site on the ground and carried out preliminary drilling for the power pipeline. But this was a later addition to the plan and did not develop further.

I watched silently, reluctant to make any moves, lest I reveal my whereabouts or even indicate that I was here. They probably know I'm in Ga

ymed, but they probably don't know where I'm on this rock. With a diameter of about 30 kilometers, it is terrifying to hide in so many asteroids.

But as the minutes ticked by, nothing happened. If I were human, I would impatiently bang with my feet or pace up and down the floor. I remember doing both of these things, or fiddling with the pen and clicking on them non-stop. But I'm not human anymore, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. I try to keep my state board green, I keep my construction drones busy, I use my haul drones to move materials, I make my factories buzz, I watch.

Then a door above the bulbous engine bay opened, and six aliens in vacuum suits climbed down the ladder one by one and descended to the ground. It took them several hours to build a ramp with the material passed to them through the same airlock gate, until a solid platform stretched from the airlock to the rim of the crater. As time went on, I began to suspect that they didn't even know I was here. If they find it, why not look for me? After all, with their ship fixed to the surface of the sea, it is impossible to conduct any search. If they already know where I am, why are they so far from my main entrance well? That ship was almost two kilometers away. With only one-tenth of the Earth's gravity, such a hike would be extremely difficult, if not suicidal.

Once the ramp was built, construction crews began anchoring new brackets on the surface around the crater, further stabilizing the spacecraft, and further embedding the spacecraft. I realized that they were going to stay a little longer. But why here? Why now? Over the next few days, this became more and more apparent. I observed that the aliens began to set up basic shelters, unload equipment, and begin to explore the immediate area around them. Two of the aliens walked around with their devices, stopping every few meters to stare at their devices before moving on. They are exploring.

Of the countless asteroids in the asteroid belt, it seems like a fool's luck that they chose the one I'm using. However, if you look closely, it makes sense. The asteroid belt contains asteroids of all shapes and sizes. But a lot of them are too small. Other asteroids move irregularly, rotate on multiple axes or in eccentric orbits, and often collide with other asteroids. Larger satellites will be more difficult to scan or take more time to determine their composition. When you put it together, I can think of less than 12 asteroids of similar size, all of which are the right size, rotation, and composition to explore. What seems astronomical and unlikely to happen turns out to be a high-probability event, mixed with the element of bad luck.

This reminds me once again that while I have the power to handle thousands of drones, large construction projects, design projects, and countless small projects, I can't figure everything out. I completely ignored any form of defense or offense. As my basic manufacturing capabilities have improved, I've struggled to balance managing construction with designing new factories and drones. Now I have invaders and I would very much like to destroy, but there is no defense or plan in place.

But I'm not completely helpless. I do have many, many drones at my disposal. But not all methods work. Small practical drones are tools with very little power. Heavy mining drones can't even reach the surface unless a big hole is drilled in the asteroid I want to keep intact. Transport drones can get there, but there is nothing they can do unless they hit aliens. As a result, construction drones can only be equipped with arc welders, while older mining drones can only be equipped with plasma cutters. I gave up half of them for practical reasons. Those with spider legs design will take a long time to reach the surface, let alone travel through it to somehow face the aliens. Some of the oldest drones that use pulse drives are only a little faster than their legged counterparts, so it doesn't help either. But this left me with 24 fairly fast drones.

I took the time to make sure all the drones were fully charged. Then I parked them in my largest transporter, which could go through the entrance shaft and bring them to the surface. This way they don't have to use batteries for a distance of 15 km. I want every piece of power I can get.

As soon as I'm on the ground, I can see through the eyes of a drone. Their quantum relay is connected via a router and is not affected by fiber cuts, so I finally have something more important than a couple of cameras. Unfortunately, the drone itself has nothing but cameras and radios. Using an old surface radar map, I guided the drone to a crack 200 meters away from the alien camp.

In the last few days, I have observed that aliens work for 9.7 hours and then return to their spacecraft. I suspect this is the longest safe time they can work. Based on what I know about human spacesuits, I think this means that they are running out of air and need food and rest. Before returning, they will be away for 11.6 hours, so they work 21.3 hours a day. I calculated that the length of their hour was 0.8875 Earth hours, but quickly put this information aside because it was interesting but didn't help me with my current situation. If I send my drones to attack, the aliens will see them coming and flee to their ships. Once in the ship, they will be able to get out of the asteroid and away from me. They may sabotage their ship, but they may start throwing asteroids at me until Ganemet disintegrates and I am destroyed.

The rift where my drone was hiding escaped from the alien spacecraft, so I couldn't use it to hide. But thirty meters away there was another fissure, which approached the crater on the slope opposite the ship. If my drone stays in the second crevasse, it can take me within 50 meters before they appear on the crater rim if I can get in. I considered digging a tunnel with a mining drone, but the spalls from the borehole were likely blown out of the ground, exposing me long before digging the tunnel.

The asteroid rotates at a speed of 10 hours. Taking into account the axial inclination, as well as the location of the lunar surface, this meant complete darkness without the sun, which lasted about four hours. There is very little light from my drone, but on a dark night, it can be seen from an alien ship. It takes 43 seconds for my drone to fly over 30 meters to reach the next crack.

I decided to wait until the next dusk, when the aliens returned to their ship, assuming they were the least noticeable at that time. It was when they were hungry and tired and ready to go to bed. It's a gamble, but it seems to be the safest bet. I waited.

Following their established pattern, the aliens completed their job precisely in 9.7 hours, packed up their tools, and returned to their spaceship. It was noon on an asteroid, so I had to wait another five hours before I could act. On the darkest nights, I ordered my drone to move. I counted the seconds with them, and all my cameras were pointed at the alien spacecraft. As soon as they crossed the border, I had them move to the deepest part of the new rift and go into low-power mode.

I watched the alien ship to see if anything was changing to indicate that my drone was noticed at the bottom of the crevasse. Seconds become minutes, and minutes become hours. The pods dangled lazily around the ship's main trunk, the airlock doors still closed. I breathed a sigh of relief and ordered the drone to move to the crater rim.

Now is the critical decision. Do I wait until the aliens come out again to distract me, or do I attack the ship and hope to pass while they fall asleep? But I don't really know if they're asleep, and I don't know if my plasma cutter will be able to cut through the hull in time before they react and try to fight back against my attack. I decided to wait.

When the aliens come out on the ground for their next shift, I let them spread out and begin their day's mission. Four of them were working in a spot on the ground and were setting up something that looked like a borehole, and the other two were hiding in a makeshift structure they had set up and couldn't see them. For me, it doesn't get much better than that.

I sent six of the most powerful mining drones to attack that ship. Ideally, I want to cut the hull so that the air of the boat is pumped into a vacuum. I'll send 18 other people to attack the aliens on the surface.

The element of surprise worked in my favor because my drone was almost at its destination by the time it was noticed. The plasma cutter on my mining drone was slicing into the outer shell of the ship while the rest of the people started attacking. Six drones broke away from the main formation and rushed into the fence, while the remaining dozen or so sprang towards the four drillers.

I heard screams of encrypted communication over the radio. I didn't need to understand to know that I was discovered. The construction drone I sent to the quarantine set their arc welder on fire, and both aliens were venting gas from holes in their clothes. The aliens frantically pounce on the drone, but every time they try to dodge one drone, they are consumed by the flames of the other. First one, then the other collapsed. I watched them die, either from decompression and lack of oxygen, or from being badly burned by welders.

By this time, a dozen other drones had almost reached the side of the drillers. But they weren't completely caught off guard, they had time to point the drill at the drone. A laser beam came out from the end and entered the first drone. This laser drill is designed to cut through metal and rock. In comparison, my drone is relatively simple. The second, then the third, fell. When the fourth plane was attacked, one of my drones on board exploded.

I turned my attention back to the ship itself. The pods have stopped spinning, and the bottom one is aligned with the slope. A laser came out from the bottom and hit the battery of one of the drones. Shrapnel damaged the drone on the ramp, but it was still moving. The shrapnel also tore several holes in the hull, revealing an empty space with a second hull underneath. I ordered to put the damaged drone back and put one intact back and start drilling holes in the hull. I sent two to attack the lasers, and the last one did its best to protect the drilling drone.

At the same time, the attack on drilling aliens has begun. They have already wrecked 4 and 5 drones, but the remaining 7 are too close to them for them to aim with a laser drill. One of the aliens escaped because a drone sliced through the back of his spacesuit, destroying the electronic panel on the back of the suit. The other three stood in a circle, brandishing last-minute looted tools. The drone swooped down and killed them despite the blows of hand tools. The fourth alien fell, bounced off the surface of the asteroid a few times, and then stopped moving.

When my drone successfully passed through the hull, there was an atmospheric explosion on the ship. The laser is gone. In just a few minutes of fighting, I lost more than half of my offensive strength, and my opponent was largely unarmed and completely unexpected. Six enemies were killed and one enemy ship was disabled at the cost of six irreplaceable drones and one damaged. But despite the cost, I stopped my mining expedition and now I have an alien spaceship to explore. The aliens came back and discovered my asteroid, not because I was unlucky, but because they were unlucky.

I was just about to walk out of the house when my mom grabbed me. I had the worst luck.

"Hurry up, we're going to be late!" She said she had a purse under one arm and a large protest sign under the other. "Your dad is already waiting in the car."

"He's not my father," I muttered under my breath, but was reluctant to speak out loud so as not to reignite the endless battle of wills. It doesn't matter anymore.

It only took an hour to get to the protest site, and when we got there, most of the congregation was waiting for us, all holding their own signs. I walked to the edge of the crowd. I'm proud of the t-shirt I'm wearing; There's a stylized "a" on it, which is the latest sign that I'm an atheist. However, it went over the heads of the protesters. They all have signs that say things like "God hates gays" and "You're going to hell." If they can't spell "goi."

g", then my subtle rebellion will be beyond their comprehension.

Across the street was a counter-protest, with a dozen police officers separating the two sides. The counter-protests were much larger, littered with rainbow flags and posters that were smarter and more inclusive. A girl with rainbow-colored hair and an identical shirt caught my eye. She was holding a half-joking sign that read "Hell Must Be Great." The girl pointed to the sign on her chest and winked at me. I smiled so happily at her, wondering how a person could be so open about something so private. I blinked, too, and my heart beat wildly at my boldness.

"You're here," Mom said angrily behind me. "Here, I made this for you."

It is a sign that says "Love sinners, hate sins." It is eggshell blue, with a white cross painted on it, and it is beautiful despite the terrible message written on it. It obviously took her several hours to paint the picture, and when she tried to do it, she had a pretty good artistic temperament.

"I don't bring that," I said, and walked away. My mother followed me at the edge of the crowd and flapped her wings. I could feel her getting upset. After they got married, she worked very hard to get the pastor to replace my father, forcing my brother and I into the family pattern she wanted. But my brother moved out and ignored her demands, and I didn't become the kind of daughter she wanted. I'm starting to think there's more than one way.

"Listen, you need to start getting more involved in the church. You're now of marriage age, and your father has a nice young man that you need to meet. ”

"I'm not eighteen yet!" I'm not going to marry someone from the church," I replied angrily. In fact, I got a full scholarship to MIT and a ticket to get out of town on Saturday. But I didn't tell her or her new husband about those two things. My brother took a day off and asked me to take a ride to the bus station. My luggage is packed and hidden in the closet. "Again, that man isn't my father!"

Now my mom is angry. "Listen, you're going to have a date with this young man after Sunday service. If all goes well, we can hold your wedding before the fall. We can have a grand and beautiful wedding! You'll look beautiful in my wedding dress!"

"Oh, of course, you're going to get me pregnant barefoot before I can legally drink beer." I scoffed. "You are the model of the modern woman."

"There's nothing wrong with a woman knowing her place in this world," she screamed. I trampled on her dream of planning the perfect wedding for me, and she could find the best paranoid from the church. "The sooner you recognize your place, the better."

"Oh, I know where I am. You can go anywhere, but it's not here!" I left in a rage, away from the crowd of protesters, away from my family. I started texting my brother asking him to pick me up and let me stay in his apartment for a week. I have to leave this place.

The alien ship stood silently, without power and without any signs of life. I readjusted my drone, sent out transport drones, loaded multi-purpose drones to the ground. I salvaged the damaged and destroyed drones while digging a large hole in the ship for my drone to pass through.

The outer shell of the alien spacecraft appears to be a Whipple shield, used to protect the main shell from the impact of micrometeorites and orbital debris, just as humans have used for centuries in spaceflight. The thin outer layer is made of a lightweight aluminum shell, separated from the main hull by 20 cm. This will prevent most collisions from causing significant damage without adding much mass to the ship as a whole. The inner shell is seven centimeters thick. The first 5 centimeters appear to be polyethylene composites, possibly hydrogenated, as the spacecraft needs to be protected against cosmic radiation. The next two centimeters are tungsten. I was strangely disappointed; After all, these aliens are more advanced, and I've always hoped to find some kind of super-matter. But its basic design is rudimentary, like the basics I found instead of the luxurious premium models.

Inside, I found the trunk as a long corridor with ladders on either side. A long, thick vine reached from the engine compartment below to the branch, which contained the lasers that attacked my drone. The vine was cut off by a closed blast door. I'll send the drone up first. Four rows of branches protruded from the trunk. Each row has two branches, one on either side of the boat, and a pod at each end.

In the laser capsule, I found vines wrapped around a lever, like a hand with three fingers, like a giant plant controlling and protecting the ship. The carriage was almost empty, with aluminum storage shelves lining the walls, filling the space. The few shelves have some unrefined metal and regolith on the surface. Inside the branches between the pods and the trunk are arranged small compartments. There are electronic panels, pipes, and pipes with volatiles like oxygen and water, and all the common things that I would expect to find in a man-made spacecraft or space station. The ceiling section consists almost entirely of a large water tank, which will provide some additional radiation protection for anyone in the branch.

The branches in the second row are exactly the same as in the first row, so I moved to the third row. I found a place to stay there. The cabins on both sides are identical in layout. They were arranged in several small rooms, with the "floor" facing so that the boxes could be on them. Ladders lead to the room so they can climb out and "climb" the branches as they spin. The smallest room is a bunk bed. It was nothing more than a closet with three cramped beds in it. The cots were made of a natural fabric that I couldn't identify, and a sleeping bag was tied to each bed. They have a zipper-like plastic buckle that, in addition to being oddly sized and shaped, won't look out of place in a sporting goods store.

The next room is the kitchen, and the cupboards are stuffed with colorful packaging and the labels are printed with alien text to identify what's inside. I loaded from my archives with the Orion Arms Trading Company's language libraries, which were deciphered when humanity tried to negotiate with aliens. Unfortunately, linguists don't have time to study the nuances of exotic foods; I can recognize the letters, but there is no basis for comparing them to human food. There is also a deadline on the label, but I also don't have a date reference. The third room, the largest, is some kind of living room or studio. Chairs can be folded out of the wall, as can tables, bringing a different layout to the room. A wide display panel against the wall looks like an alien TV or entertainment device. There are pictures plastered on the walls showing aliens in different places. Some of the photographs appear to be in front of a lumpy piece of wood wrapped in vines with several soybean pods hanging from the vines. The three chests contain a variety of trinkets, clothes, and unidentified items that appear to be the personal belongings of each alien.

I walked to the fourth row, where there was nothing but supplies. Water tanks, food on shelves, neatly folded clothes, and extra spacesuits fill the space. In the center of each pod is a small open space with a padded "floor". Weights can be placed on shelves around the space, making it look like a fitness area or a small gym.

There was no central control area, no cockpit or bridge to control the ship. So I went back to the closed blast door that led to the bulbous engine compartment. My multi-purpose drone tried to maneuver the blast door, but it couldn't open. I pulled them out of the ship and sent out my smallest mining drone. It started with a plasma cutter and cut thick aluminum doors with ease. Every time it opened a hole, air spewed out violently from the hole.

Once the atmosphere was gone, it took only ten minutes for the drone to cut off the locking device and pull the door open. The rickety vines flung out of the door and smashed into the drone, desperately clutching the door. The drone was knocked into a dent, but it wasn't hurt, so I ordered it to cut the vine as quickly as possible while it was locked to the blast door. It is easy to cut through the aluminum door with a knife that does not burn through the vines at all. After a few minutes, the vine stopped swinging and fell back into the engine room weakly.

I sent a drone to chase the vines. I found a large room there. In the middle is a large sphere, which rests on a thick steel base. Power pipes and pipes go in and out of the sphere, wires winding up into the ship's backbone, and pipes lead to enclosed tanks evenly spaced around the room. Swaying vines stretched from the blast door to a large patch of dead wood. Other vines lead to various controls in the corners of the room, as well as a large control panel with a fixed seat in front. I found the ship's central control system and fusion reactor. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to pry some useful information out of it, as the rest of the ship doesn't seem to have any secrets for me.