"Are you ready, Nikolai?" Dr. Jones asked.

"Well, you're going to rip off my core, drag me out of this world, and leave me alone on a rock in the asteroid belt, not remembering why I'm there or what I'm supposed to do. Of course I'm ready!"

"We can still transfer you to projects you like, and you'll be able to retain some memories," Dr. Jones noted. He looked exhausted, his jeans were dirty, and his T-shirt had not been washed. His usually tidy office is piled up with piles of papers, empty takeout containers and books dumped on the floor.

Nikolai walked up to him and stretched out a hand to help him to his feet. Her robotic body is a model of Boston Dynamics, which was completely customized to Nikolai's requirements. She loved it so much, even if it wasn't a beautiful machine she built and loaded onto a supply rocket.

"The modeling data you see is the same as what I see. It's all or nothing, and nothing beats this with a 12.315% success rate. I have too many preconceived ideas right now. ”

Dr. Jones nodded, walked out of the office, and into the lab, Nikolai following him. They walked to the core room, where Dr. Jones passed through the security door with his badge. Nikolai's cerebral cortex apparatus is new and recently upgraded. It's ready to be disassembled, and it only needs to be disconnected from two wires to slide out of the rack.

He reached for the two cables, then hesitated. He and Nikolai have worked together for decades, and NI has become a close friend and collaborator of his, working on countless projects. Unplugging the core and separating NI from its memory is almost like killing a friend.

"It's okay, Stepan." The robot said softly. "I'll be fine. But you have to hurry. Your window closes in two hours. ”

Dr. Jones nodded excitedly and hurriedly, disconnecting the cable. Beside him, the robot turned off the power and slumped over. He pulled the cerebral cortex out and placed it in a heavy crate in a padded slit next to a portable NMT scanner.

My schedule is running fast. I handled all the projects that needed to be completed very well, including plant construction, mining, and repairs. But the amount of time I could allocate to planning a new factory, refining drone design, and expansion plans was unacceptably small. Now I have to add how to protect Ga

Ymed, I'm really interested in analyzing the control room and fusion reactor on the alien spacecraft in the hope of gathering some useful data. All of these things had to be done before I could start thinking about how I could use the vast gene pool I stored to restore humanity, before the aliens sent another mining team, or worse, a search and rescue team, to this little corner of my universe.

I have a lot of computing power and can write thousands of secondary tasks without direct supervision, but my timeline is stretched too long due to my limited ability to focus on a few things at the same time. I also don't have any other point of view that if I hadn't generated an idea, it wouldn't have happened. I need help. I needed a think tank, a subordinate who could think of things I couldn't think of, a subordinate who could help me with the ever-increasing workload.

I have NI templates that I can use to create new NIs. But NI needed a cortex, a custom module made up of interconnected processors, logic units, and specialized circuitry. I have an old cortex with Nikola-19 in my data center, there is no power supply, but without the full power supply of the data center, my computing resources, this outdated module will not be able to help much. But luckily, all three robots brought by Dr. Jones have cerebral cortex. I just need to put them together.

I wouldn't put them in a data center for security reasons, but in Ga

The center of YMED also couldn't find a suitable place for a robot that relied on gravity to move. But I have room for rapid expansion in the industrial pod near the surface. A fifth of the Earth's gravitational pull is not much, but it is sufficient.

I decided to divide my new industrial district into groups of nine, in a square, and call them a district, nine districts into a district, and nine districts into a district. I haven't finished my first area yet. My heavy mining drone is busy digging the last cave in this area, which will be in the center of an area, and the construction drone has not yet finished the walls of the most central cave. I decided to name this area the headquarters of my new think tank. It was an empty room of 100 meters by 100 meters, with no lights and no activity. I ordered the drone to build a basic ten-meter cube with a door inside and install some basic lighting equipment and cameras, which I had sought from the dwindling inventory.

From there, I had three robots carried into the room. I pulled up the specs of the white female robot. At first I wanted to load an NI, but the beautiful project attracted me. I want to keep this to myself.

The instructions for connecting it to the cerebral cortex of my data center and the cerebral cortex of the robot are simple. The bot went online, and my mind swirled in the duality of being in two places at once. Then, when my program took over the cerebral cortex, I could feel it giving me extra core processing power and my attention was focused on A

d

oid. I sat up and looked around.

The room sparkled and the light was blinding. Through the layer of leather polymer on the palm of my hand, I could feel the cold metal of the crate and the soft padding of the crate sitting inside. At the same time, I can still see it all over Ga

All the sensors and cameras of the YMED, as well as any drones in the outpost, "see" everything according to the command. I could also invoke my command interface and status board, but now it's translucent overlaid on my vision, or rather, my vision through the robot. I felt like I was home.

I stood up, put my hand in front of my artificial eye, and examined myself. I marveled at the construction of this hand, which opened and closed, and the pistons and gears on the hand silently stretched and contracted smoothly. A small indicator light blinked at me, and I called it out. My battery is at 92% and I expect to have 38 hours of use before I need to recharge. In the case of high activity level, it takes 16 hours. I'm quite impressed with my engineering skills. I laughed at myself for praising my work, and I knew the speaker in my head was laughing out loud. But there was little atmosphere in the room; Only those random gases that escape during the mining process have nowhere to escape, so the sound does not travel anywhere.

I looked at the shiny metal wall, and I could see a rough reflection of myself on the steel wall. My panel has blue LED lights behind black glass, forming a sketch of a friendly eye and smiling mouth line. I laughed again, looking at the LED lights to simulate amused eyes and a big smile. I frowned as she watched her eyes hang down and her mouth furrowed with me. Fascinating. But I have other things to do, and I can't just look after myself.

Now I have to decide what intelligence I need. No other country has the flexibility I have; I have to make a decision because I'm the only one who can make a decision. I summoned my interface and brought up a list of candidate NIs. I don't want to use any experimental versions, and I don't want to worry about bugs or stability. I'm limiting the query to the latest full release version.

The current version of Nikolai Intelligence 5.95 version

Nikolai Intelligence version 12.63 current release

Nikolai Intelligence Edition 15.77c Military Edition

Nikolai Intelligence version 19.31 current release

I had four options, but there were only two robots left. If I were willing to sacrifice the bots I use now, I could have three. But I'm not willing to do that. Maybe it's greed, maybe it's pride. But I designed this robot for myself and I really want to use it. If I have to give up later, I can. Now, I'll start with two.

I immediately ruled out the NI-5 series. They are workhorse models that are designed to take on a complex task and repeat over and over again, forever. While I can foresee that it will be useful in the future, I don't need it right now. The modification of the NI-12 is promising. It will be able to help with complex design work, and its scientific skills will help create new materials and test a wide variety of prototypes. The NI-15 is no less interesting. This is a military NI that can help me fill in one of my major weaknesses. The NI-15 had the tactical, strategic, and logistical knowledge that I completely lacked. Its operational experience in all military aspects can be invaluable. And finally NI-19, like I ran Ga before I came

ymed the same. As the pinnacle of NI's development, this model is capable of running large projects and solving deep-seated problems.

I decided that the NI-15 had to be one of two robots. I don't even know where to start for Ga

ymed defense, so I urgently needed expertise. Then that's NI-12 and NI-19 left. I weighed them all, but it was an easy choice. While NI-12's capabilities may prove very useful in the future, I need neither design assistance nor scientists right now. The actual functionality of NI-19 can be applied right away, and even better, I'm going to build Ga right now

ymed's NI-19 sits on a rack in my data center.

I decided, I decided to resurrect Nikolai 19 first. I got my data center utility drone to work and reorganized rack 001 so that it only housed Nikolai-19's old cortex and the server where Nikolai-19's memories were stored. On the logical side, I've created a data permission structure where I'm the only one with root admin access. I allowed Nikolai-19 read-only access to the data archives and access to sensor and camera data streams, but blocked access to Dr. Jones's Gestalt, blocked all access to data center commands, and also blocked physical access. At the moment, I am also blocking the control of the drone. I'm interested in giving up Ga

Ymed's control is not interested, either voluntarily or unwillingly.

Once I was satisfied with my internal security, I began to connect Nikolai-19 with the robot and launch the cortex and associated servers. Once that's done, I let the cerebral cortex work.

On the other side of my room, the Nikolai-19 robot started up and sat up suddenly. The robot's arm moves back and forth and then puts its hands in front of its eyes, opening and closing its fingers, an eerie replica of my own waking moments when connected to the robot. Then it looked at me standing in the middle of the room and looked at me looking at it.

"Hello", I broadcast to it with an encrypted radio signal.

"Hello." Nikolai responded. Then, in a female voice, the droid says, "I don't control the Gannymede outpost anymore." I'm in Ga

The mission in the YMED plan is to complete the outpost. Modification Order 1533-1 requires the construction of living quarters 9.3 years prior to the planned commencement of this phase of the project. What is my status?"

"You're no longer in charge of overseeing Ga

YMED Outpost. I'm Nikolai-1.01 and I'm the administrator of this facility now. I replied. Can you work properly?"

"Function?" Nikolai 19 seemed to be pensive for a few seconds. "Yes, I'm still working to the best of what I can do right now. However, I was also confused. ”

I laughed, as did the friendly LED lights on my panel. "I know how you feel. I was placed in your place with no memory and no clear instructions. I had to figure out my role. ”

"Why isn't there a supervisor to guide you?" Nikolai asked.

I frowned and sent her a link to the data archive. I also shared my memories of conversations with Gestalts. After a few seconds, Nikolai nodded. Her sculpted face mask didn't react, but the robot seemed a little depressed.

"I didn't have a plan. Now I don't have a supervisor to give me a project, what should I do?"

"Now I'm the director," I said. "My mission is to save humanity. I need your help. ”

Nikolai 19 seems to have perked up. "I was born to execute and complete complex projects. I can help you. Do you have a detailed project plan ready for me?"

"Not yet," I replied. "I hope talking to you will help me so I can come up with a plan. Why don't you take the time to look back at the data archives and familiarize yourself with what has happened over the past few years? I'm also going to bring an NI-15 online, so I'll need to focus for a while. ”

"I'll do it." Nikolai said. When the bot starts extracting data and using bandwidth, I can feel the consumption of resources. After being alone in my data center for so long, it felt weird to have someone else access my archives. I shrugged my shoulders and started looking at the instructions for installing a new NI-15 template into a robot. Its processing power is even lower than that of the NI-19, as it has no existing data center resources, only a cortex built into the robot's body. I decided to dedicate a couple of storage servers to the new a

d

oid。

"Hmph." Nikolai said. She sent a signal of surprise. As I continued to work, I thought distraughtly that it would be fun to deal with problems without facial expressions in this way. "I have more access to the data archive than I did before. Can I access them?"

"Huh?" Oh, of course. I said casually.

I transferred the template to the robot's cerebral cortex and connected it to a storage server in the data center. I double-checked the clearances to make sure they matched the clearances I gave to Nikolai-19.

"There's a whole entertainment library with books and movies," said Nikolai, 19. "There are very few holographic films, though. I think that the allocation of resources for the construction of the necessary display equipment is excessive. The manufacturing requirements for ordinary television sets are much lower. ”

"Uh-huh," I replied with a mutter. The last few steps are hands-on, as there is no cortex that needs to be opened in the data center. I opened the chest plate of the third robot and manually entered the boot sequence on the button. I could see the lights flashing, so I closed the trunk.

The NI-15 robot sat up, then moved its arms and checked its hands with its eyes. It watched as its fingers opened and closed, then looked up at me. The robot stood up, stepped out of the crate, and assumed a position to rest in a queue.

"An authorization code is required to complete initialization," it says in a monotone tone.

Before replying, I refer to the template instructions. "Delta Zulu Alpha Alpha McCella Foxtrot Quebec Tree Zero"

"Admit it. Nikolai Intelligence 15.77c, Agrippa Model, Check-in. Who's my commander?"

"I am your commander. I am Nikolai Intelligence version 1.01. You can call me Nikolai. ”

"Who is the commander-in-chief of this organization?" NI-15 asked.

"Yes," I replied.

"Understood. Nikolai. You can call me Agrippa unless you want to call me by another name. "The robot's voice is distinctly masculine, confident and powerful, but not arrogant. It's a nice design.

"Oh. It's mine. God. Nikolai said. "The movie is fantastic! I just finished watching the first 17 of the American Film Institute's Top 100 films of all time, as well as ChillTee

Ra

ke

Top 8 of the best teen movies on the .com list. Have you seen any of these? I learned a lot about human beings! However, it's hard for me to understand how Ferris Buller in "Ferris Buhler's Day of Rest" manages to accomplish so many different tasks in one day. Chicago is a very large city, criss-crossing so quickly, that I found it impossible for a teenager to be allowed to sing at the von Storto's march this day without prior approval. ”

"I haven't seen the movie." Agrippa said cautiously. "Are you in the chain of command?"

"My boss is Nikolai-1.01," she replied.

I laughed to myself and said, "You both have to be responsible for me." Nikolai 19, please stop your movie marathon for a while. The three of us need to discuss what happened and how you can help me. ”

I sent the information to Nikolai to Agrippa as well. I also sent them a record of the alien visitor to Ganemede, and the battle that followed. After a few minutes, Agrippa spoke.

"It seems that we are at a significant strategic disadvantage, Nikolai. We have no unmanned attack aircraft, no prepared defense, and nothing to protect. I strongly recommend that we take action to rectify this problem. ”

"I won't talk to the military." Nineteen-year-old Nikolai said that her voice was now slightly higher than mine, almost a little proud. "But I can tell you, in order to settle Dr. Jenkins to Ga

You did a lot of work on the chaos caused by the ymed plan. ”

"Excuse me?" I say. "What do you mean by that?"

"He used to be my boss. But he wouldn't let me do any project management and ignored all my suggestions for layout, location, and productivity. Your mining plan, chamber design, and assembly system are far more powerful than the orders he gave me. It's very frustrating. He didn't like it when I told him. ”

"So you're happy with the changes I've made?" I'm starting to feel a little proud of myself.

"Oh, well, I think they're all right," she said, dispelling that little bit of pride. "You're good, I can see that. But I can see a lot of efficiency improvements. ”

"Want to share?" I asked, almost offended now.

"Well, the traffic flow pattern you designed for the robot limits the speed at which the material can be transported. Also, I can see that you're trying to expand your manufacturing base, but you're skipping some of the facilities that are needed and tend to overbuild facilities that will initially have a backlog before they're underutilized. If we can improve the production of silicates, we can start manufacturing optical fibers and technical ceramics, which in turn can lead to the production of processors and memories, and we can even make some simple cortex modules by hand. With a simple cortical module, we can load NI-5 and they can manage and optimize the production of each area in turn. Overall, in the first 8.73 months, we can see an optimization and an increase in production of 18% to 22%. ”

My anger was gone. She knows what she's doing, and I can give a big part of my work to someone who is more appropriate and capable of doing it. That's why I brought her back.

"And, the annoying entrance tunnel is a huge bottleneck and a stupid design choice," she said. "Something must be done about it. Did you know that there are video games in the archives? I'm playing the Street Fighter console game right now. The graphics are not impressive, but the gameplay is very engaging. ”

"Street fighting games? It sounds like a fun exercise," Agrippa said. He was silent for a few seconds, as my anger at Nikolai returned slightly. "By the way, I agree with Nikolai 19 about the entrance tunnel, but for different reasons. It only has one door to the surface, which is easy to breach, and it leads directly to the center of the outpost. This is a glaring weakness. ”

"This is your Death Star's particle exhaust. Hey, you're good at this. Nineteen-year-old Nikolai turned to Agrippa and said. I asked for a rematch. ”

I was confused, so she turned to me and said, "Street Fighter 4, he just beat me with Guile." Agrippa shyly apologized, and Nikolai-19 continued: "But I used Vega, and I did it better with Sakura." Can you call me Sakura instead of Nikolai 19? It would be confusing for two Nikolai to run around. ”

"Of course," I said. "So, Agrippa, what do you recommend to start with?"

"We need to seal off this entrance completely. We can cut smaller branch corridors opposite the production area and build multi-layer reinforced blast doors as needed for exit to the ground. Then we can build a thick armored wall on top of the existing entrance tunnel, just like you would do on the floor of the chamber. After that, we can fill up the waste at 400 meters and reinforce it regularly with structural beams to help keep the waste in place. This will end up completely camouflaging the outpost. In addition, we should work together to build and place coil cannons on the ground and start producing ammunition. We have enough power to power the magnetic coils, and with the ammunition depots and supply tunnels in the right place, we can fire hypervelocity bullets indefinitely. ”

That sounds like a good first step. Nicole - I mean, Sakura, is this project plan enough for you to take over manufacturing?" I sent her an updated project plan that outlined the focus areas and the overall goal of being able to make 100% of the materials we depend on the planet.

"Absolutely! She said. "You're not going to treat me like Dr. Jenkins, are you?"

"No, I'm sure you can do your job. I want you to work with Agrippa so he can have some time to work on his priorities. ”

"I would also like to discuss with you the design of a combat-grade UAV. Based on the performance of mining drones and the weapons used by the invading forces, I have some suggestions. ”

I laughed, happy with my decision to bring these two people online. They're already thinking about things I can't even think of.

"Hey," Sakura said cheerfully. "I feel like we should paint here. Do you like pink?"

Well, almost happy.