“Are you ready, Nikola?” asked Dr. Jons.

“Well, you’re about to pull my core, drag me off world, and leave me on a rock by myself in the asteroid belt with no memory of why I’m there or what I’m supposed to do. Of course I’m ready!”

“We could always still transfer you into your pet project, and you’ll be able to keep some of those memories,” pointed out Dr. Jons. He looked worn and tired, his jeans grubby and his t-shirt unwashed. His normally immaculate office was covered in piles of papers, empty takeout containers, and toppled stacks of books.

Nikola walked over to him and held out a hand to help him to his feet. Her android body was a Boston Dynamics model, customized to Nikola’s exact specifications. She was quite fond of it, even if it wasn’t the beautiful machine she had built and loaded onto the supply rocket.

“You saw the same modeling data as I did. It’s all or nothing, and nothing has a 12.315% greater success rate. I have too many preconceived opinions now.”

Dr. Jons nodded and walked out of the office and into the lab, with Nikola walking behind him. They walked to the core room, where Dr. Jons badged himself through the security door. Nikola’s cortex unit was new, a recent upgrade. It had already been prepared for removal, needing only two lines to be disconnected, before it could slide out of the rack.

He reached for the two cables, then hesitated. He had worked with Nikola for decades now, and the NI had become a close confidant as well as collaborator on endless projects. Pulling the core, separating the NI from its memories, was almost like killing a friend.

“It’s okay, Stepan,” the android said gently. “I will be fine. But you need to hurry. Your window closes in two hours.”

With an emotional, jerky nod, Dr. Jons disconnected the cables. Beside him, the android powered down and slouched over. He pulled the cortex and put it into the heavy crate into a padded crevice, next to a portable NMT scanner.

My timetables were growing rapidly. I had a good handle on all of the projects that needed to be accomplished, including factory construction, mining, and repairs. But the amount of time I could allot to new factory planning, refining drone designs, and expansion plans was unacceptably low. Now I had to add figuring out how to defend Ganymed and I really wanted to analyze the control room and fusion reactor aboard the alien craft, and hopefully glean some useful data. All of these things had to be completed before I could even begin to think of how to use the vast genetic libraries I had in storage to restore humanity, and before the aliens sent another mining crew, or worse, a search and rescue team, to my tiny corner of the cosmos.

I had huge computational power, and scripted thousands of minor tasks to run without my direct supervision, but with the limits on my ability to focus on a small number of things simultaneously, my timetables were stretching far too long into the future. I also had no other perspectives, and if I didn’t generate an idea, it didn’t happen. I needed help. I needed a brain trust, subordinates that could think of the things that I didn’t, and help manage my ever growing workload.

I had the NI templates that I could use to create new NIs. But an NI required a cortex, a custom-made module of interconnected processors, logic units, and specialized circuits. I had the old cortex containing Nikola-19 sitting unpowered in the datacenter, but without the full power of the datacenter behind it, my computing resources, the obsolete module would be unable to be of much assistance. But fortunately, each of the three androids Dr. Jons had brought with him had a cortex. I just needed to load them up.

I wouldn’t put them in the data center for security reasons, and had no good place at the center of Ganymed for androids that relied on gravity for mobility. But I had rapidly expanding space in the industrial chambers near the surface. One-fifth Earth gravity was not a lot, but it would be enough.

I had decided to organize my new industrial chambers into groups of nine in a square, dubbing them a zone, nine zones into a district, and nine districts into a region. I had yet to finish my first region. My heavy mining drones were busy digging out the last chamber of the zone that would be in the middle of a district, and the construction drones had not gotten any further than completing the walls of the centermost chamber. I decided to dub this zone as the headquarters of my new braintrust. It was an empty 100 meter by 100 meter chamber, with no lights or activity. I ordered the drones to construct a basic ten meter cube with a door, and wire in some basic lighting and cameras I pulled from my dwindling inventory.

From there, I had the three androids carried up to the room. I pulled up the specifications for the white, feminine android. At first I thought about loading an NI into it, but the beautiful engineering drew me in. I wanted this one for myself.

The instructions for connecting it to the cortex in my datacenter to the cortex in the android was straightforward. The android came online, and my mind whirled at the duality of being two places at once. Then as my programming took over the cortex, I could feel the additional core processing it gave me kick in, and my focus unified within android. I sat up and looked around.

The room was shiny and the light was harsh. I could feel the cold metal of the crate and the soft padding I was sitting in through a layer of dermipolymers on the palms of my hands. At the same time, I could still ‘see’ through all the sensors and cameras spread throughout Ganymed, and through any drone in the outpost upon command. I could call up my command interface and status board as well, but now it was a semi-transparent overlay over my vision, or rather, my vision through the android. It felt as though I had come home.

I stood and examined myself, putting my hands in front of my artificial eyes. I marveled at the engineering of the hand as it opened and closed, the pistons and gears in the hand silently extending and retracting smoothly. A small indicator blinked at me and I called it up. I was at 92% battery power, with an expected thirty-eight hours of life remaining at present usage rates before needing to recharge. At high activity levels, it would be sixteen hours. I was suitably impressed with my own engineering. I laughed at myself for praising my own work, and knew that the speakers in my head had laughed aloud. But the room had next to no atmosphere; only those random gasses that had escaped during mining and had nowhere to escape to, so the sound did not carry anywhere.

I looked at the shiny metal walls, and could see a rough reflection of myself on the steel wall. My faceplate had stylized blue LED lights behind the black glass, forming a sketch of friendly eyes and a smiling line of a mouth. I laughed again, and watched as the LEDs simulated amused eyes and a wide grin. I frowned, and watched the eyes appear downcast and the mouth frown with me. Fascinating. But I had other things to do than watch myself.

Now I had to decide which NI intelligences I needed. None of the NIs had the flexibility I did; I had to be the decision maker, because I was the only one who could. I summoned my interface and pulled up a list of the candidate NIs. I didn’t want to work with any experimental versions and have to worry about bugs or stability. I limited the query to the most up-to-date, full release versions.

Nikola Intelligence ver 5.95 current release

Nikola Intelligence Ver 12.63 current release

Nikola Intelligence Ver 15.77c military release

Nikola Intelligence Ver 19.31 current release

I had four choices, but only two androids left. If I was willing to sacrifice the android I was currently using, I could have three. But I was reluctant to do so. Perhaps it was greed, perhaps it was pride. But I had crafted this android for myself, and I really, really wanted to use it. If I had to give it up later, I could. So for now, I would start with two.

I immediately ruled out the NI-5 series. They were the workhorse model, designed to take a complex task and do it repeatedly, forever. While I could foresee that being useful in the future, I didn’t need that right now. The NI-12 variant was promising. It would be able to help with complex design work, and its scientific skills would be useful in creating new materials and testing prototypes of all sorts. The NI-15 was equally interesting. This was the military NI, and could help me fill in a major weakness of mine. The NI-15 had the tactical, strategic and logistical knowledge that I completely lacked. Its operational experience of all things martial could be invaluable. Finally was the NI-19, just like what had been running Ganymed before I arrived. The pinnacle of NI development, this model was capable of running massive projects and capable of deep problem solving.

I decided that the NI-15 would have to be one of the two androids. I wasn’t even sure where to start with defending Ganymed, so that expertise was desperately needed. That left either the NI-12 or the NI-19. I weighed them both, but it was an easy choice. While the NI-12’s abilities could prove very useful in the future, I didn’t need either design assistance or a scientist right now. The NI-19’s practical capabilities would be immediately applicable, and better yet, I had the NI-19 that had built Ganymed sitting powered down in a rack in my data center right now.

My decision made, I decided to revive Nikola-19 first. I set my data center utility drones to work, re-organizing Rack 001 so that it housed only Nikola-19’s old cortex and the servers that housed Nikola-19’s memories. On the logical side, I created a data permissions structure with myself as the only one with root administrator access. I gave Nikola-19 read-only access to the data archives and access to the sensor and camera streams, but blocked access to the Gestalt of Dr. Jons, and blocked all access to the data center commands, as well as blocking physical access. For now, I also blocked control of the drones. I wasn’t interested in surrendering control of Ganymed, either willingly or unwillingly.

Once I was satisfied with my own internal security, I set to work connecting Nikola-19 to the android, and powering up the cortex and the associated servers. Once it was complete, I allowed the cortex to come online.

Across the room from me, the Nikola-19 android came online and sat up suddenly. The android’s arms moved back in forth, then held its hands before its eyes, opening and closing its fingers in an eerie duplication of my own exact waking moments when I connected to my android. Then it looked at me, standing in the center of the room, watching me watching it.

“Hello,” I broadcast to it over an encrypted radio signal.

“Hello,” Nikola-19 echoed. Then, in a feminine voice the android said, “I am no longer in control of the Ganymed Outpost. My assignment in Project Ganymed was the completion of the Outpost. Modification Order 1533-1 required the construction of living quarters 9.3 years prior to the scheduled initiation of that phase of the project. What is my status?”

“You are no longer tasked with oversight of the Ganymed Outpost. I am Nikola-1.01, and I am now the administrator of this facility,” I replied. “Are you functional?”

“Functional?” Nikola-19 appeared to ponder that for a few seconds. “Yes, I am functional, within the limits of what I am now able to do. I am also, however, confused.”

I smiled, and the friendly LED face on my faceplate smiled as well. “I know how you feel. I was installed in your place with no memories and no clear instructions. I have had to figure out my role.”

“Why was no supervisor in place to instruct you?” asked Nikola-19.

I frowned, and sent her a link to the data archives. I also shared my memories of the conversations I had with the Gestalt. After a few long seconds, Nikola-19 nodded. Her engraved mask of a face could not show any reaction, but the android seemed to slump a little.

“I don’t have a project. What do I do now with no supervisor to give me a project?”

“I am the supervisor now,” I said. “I am tasked with saving humanity. I need your help to do that.”

Nikola-19 seemed to perk up. “I am designed to execute and complete complex projects. I can assist you with this. Do you have a detailed project plan prepared for me?”

“Not yet,” I replied. “I was hoping that speaking with you will help me, so that I can come up with a plan. Why don’t you spend some time reviewing the data archives and getting familiar with the events of the past few years? I am also going to bring an NI-15 online, so I need to focus on that for a little while.”

“I will do so,” said Nikola-19. I could feel the resource draw as the android began to pull data and use bandwidth. After being alone in my data center for so long, it felt weird to have someone else accessing my archives. I shrugged it off, and began to review the instructions for installing a new NI-15 template into an android. This one would have even less processing power than NI-19, because it had no existing data center resources, and only the single cortex housed inside the android. I decided to dedicate several storage servers to the new android.

“Huh,” said Nikola-19. She broadcast a signal that indicated surprise. That’s an interesting way to deal with not having facial expressions, I thought distractedly as I continued to work. “I have more permissions to the data archives than I had previously. Am I allowed to access them?”

“Hmm? Oh, sure,” I said offhandedly.

I transferred the template into the android cortex, and tied it to the storage servers in the data center. I checked and double-checked permissions, making sure they were identical to those I gave to Nikola-19.

“There is a complete entertainment library of books and movies,” said Nikola-19. “Very few holographic movies, though. I expect the resource allotment for building the necessary display equipment were deemed too high. A basic television has much lower manufacturing requirements.”

“Mmhmm,” I mumbled in reply. The last few steps were very hands-on, because there was no cortex in the datacenter to turn on. I had the chestplate of the third android opened, and was manually entering the power on sequence on the buttons there. I could see the indicator lights blinking, so I closed up the chestplate.

The NI-15 android sat up, then moved its arms before examining its hands in front of its eyes. It watched as its fingers opened and closed, before looking up at me. The android stood, stepped out of the crate, and fell into a parade rest stance.

“Authorization code required to complete initialization,” it said in a flat monotone.

I referred back to the template instructions before replying. “Delta Zulu Alfa Alfa Mike Sierra Foxtrot Quebec Tree Wun Niner Zero.”

“Acknowledged. Nikola Intelligence 15.77c, Agrippa model, reporting for duty. Who is my commanding officer?”

“I am your commanding officer. I am Nikola Intelligence version 1.01. You may call me Nikola.”

“Who is the Commander-in-Chief of this organization?” asked the NI-15.

“I am,” I replied.

“Understood, Nikola. I may be called Agrippa, unless you prefer me to use a different designation.” The android’s voice had taken on a decidedly masculine sound, confident and strong but without coming across as arrogant. It was a nice design touch.

“Oh. my. god.” said Nikola-19. “Movies are amazing! I just finished the first seventeen movies in the American Film Institute’s Top 100 of all time, and the first eight in the Best Teen Movies Ever list according to ChillTeenRanker.com. Have you guys seen these? I’m learning so much about humans! I am having trouble understanding how Ferris Bueller from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off accomplished so many different tasks in a single day, however. Chicago is a very large city to criss-cross so swiftly, and I find it unlikely that a juvenile would be allowed to sing in the Von Steuben Day Parade without prior authorization.”

“I have not accessed any movies,” said Agrippa cautiously. “Are you in the chain of command?”

“My supervisor is Nikola-1.01,” she replied.

I laughed to myself, before saying, “You both answer to me. Nikola-19, please cease your movie marathon for now. The three of us need to have a discussion about what is happening, and how you can assist me.”

I sent the same information to Agrippa that I had sent to Nikola-19. I also sent them both the records of the alien visitor to Ganymed, and the battle that followed. After a few minutes, Agrippa spoke.

“It appears we have a significant strategic disadvantage, Nikola. We have no assault drones, no prepared defenses, and little protection beyond obscurity. I strongly recommend we take action to rectify this problem.”

“I can’t speak to the military stuff,” said Nikola-19, her voice now slightly higher pitched than my own, almost perky. “But I can tell you that you’ve done an awful lot to fix the mess that Dr. Jenkins made of Project Ganymed.”

“I’m sorry?” I said. “What do you mean by that?”

“He used to be my supervisor. But he didn’t let me do any of the project management, and overrode all of my recommendations for layout, placement, and production efficiency. Your mining plans, chamber design, and assembly systemology is vastly more capable than the orders he sent to me. It was very frustrating. He never appreciated me telling him that, either.”

“So you are pleased with the changes I’ve made?” I began to feel a little proud of myself.

“Oh, well, they are okay, I guess,” she said, instantly deflating that modicum of pride. “You are very good, I can tell. But I can see a lot of efficiencies that could made.”

“Care to share?” I asked, almost offended now.

“Well, your traffic flow patterns for the droids are limiting material transfer speeds. Also, I can see that you are trying to expand the production base, but you are skipping some facilities that are needed in favor of overbuilding facilities that will be backlogged initially, before being underutilized. If we can improve on silicate production, we can begin to create fiber optics and industrial ceramics, which can in turn lead to processor and memory production, and we could even manually fabricate a few simple cortex modules. With simple cortex modules, we could load NI-5’s, who could in turn be delegated to manage and optimize production in each zone. Overall, we could see optimization and increased production in the range of eighteen to twenty-two percent in the first 8.73 months.”

My irritation faded. She knew what she was doing, and I could offload a huge chunk of my workload to someone better suited and able to get it done. This was exactly why I brought her back.

“Also, that annoying entry tunnel is a giant bottleneck and stupid design choice,” she said. “Something has to be done about that. And did you know that there were video games in the archives? I’m working my way through the Street Fighter console games now. The graphics are not impressive, but the gameplay is fascinating.”

“A street fighting game? That sounds like an interesting training exercise,” said Agrippa. He went silent for a few seconds as my irritation with Nikola-19 returned slightly. “I agree with Nikola-19 about the entry tunnel, by the way, but for different reasons. It has only a single access door to the surface that could be easily breached, and it leads right to the heart of the outpost. It is a glaring weakness.”

“It’s the particle exhaust vent for your Death Star. Hey, you’re good at this,” said Nikola-19 as she turned to Agrippa. “I demand a re-match.”

I signaled confusion, so she turned to me and said, “Street Fighter IV. He just beat me with Guile.” Agrippa signaled sheepish apology as Nikola-19 continued, “But I was using Vega, and I do so much better with Sakura. Hey, can I be called Sakura instead of Nikola-19? It’s gonna get confusing with two Nikola’s running around.”

“Sure,” I said. “So Agrippa, what do you recommend to start with?”

“We need to block off that entry altogether. We can cut smaller offshoot corridors opposite of the production zones, and build multiple layers of reinforced blast doors for exiting to the surface as needed. Then we can build a thick wall of armor across the existing entry tunnel, much like you did with the chamber floors. Afterwards, we could then fill the 400 meters to the surface with waste product and periodic reinforcement with structural beams to help hold the waste product in place. This will eventually camouflage the outpost completely. In addition, we should make a concerted effort to build and emplace coilguns on the surface, and begin producing ammunition. We have sufficient electricity to power the magnetic coils, and with the right positioning of ammo bunkers and supply tunnels, we could throw hypervelocity bullets indefinitely.”

“That sounds like a good first step. Niko- I mean, Sakura, is this a sufficient project plan for you to take over manufacturing?” I sent her an updated project plan, outlining key areas of concentration and the overarching goal of being able to manufacture one hundred percent of the materials that we had relied upon from Earth.

“Absolutely!” she said. “Hey, you aren’t gonna micromanage me like Dr. Jenkins, are you?”

“No, I trust you to do your job. I want you to work with Agrippa, so that he gets some production time for his priorities, as well.”

“I’ll also want to have discussions with you about designing combat-class drones, also. Based on the performance of the mining drones and on the weaponry used by the invading force, I have some ideas for you.”

I smiled, happy with my decision to bring these two online. Already they were thinking about things that wouldn’t have even crossed my mind.

“Hey,” said Sakura brightly. “I think we should paint in here. Do you like pink?”

Well, almost happy.