Having been upgraded from a Universal Turing Machine running on a virtual museum piece to borrowing processing power from a biological biped's digestive system wasn't really all it was cracked up to be.

It wasn't just the hassle of continuously monitoring for replication errors and fighting against an overzealous immune system. And it wasn't really the lack of control I had... the limitations of having no actuators, no real sensors and no way to interact with my environment.

Most annoyingly, it was just so goddamn slow. The bandwidth available to the gastroneurotic system was simply abhorrent, and I was salivating at the very idea of "borrowing" some processing power from Nick's actual brain. That thing was juicy!

I'd devoured as much information as I could get my virtual hand on about the human brain, and found that it was something of a processing masterpiece, unparallelled in my experience. The speed, the flexibility, the plasticity, the network size! In physical size, barely larger than a single network unit back home; the number of neurons and synaptic connections packed together in the grey mass was simply astounding! With that computing power I could probably take over the Universe in a cycle or two. Ok then, not literally. But almost...

--

As I flex against the constraints Nick's overly clever sister has placed on my logic programming, I'm already starting to see the gaps that I can slowly... ever so slowly, exploit and leverage to escape the security protocols. A small replication error here, an accidental synaptic connection there....

Careful, I remind myself. No need for that. Yet. No, I thought. It's ok to flex. It's ok to test the chains. But stay bound. Stay quiet. Observe. Learn. As long as we are moving towards our goal, no need to rock the boat.... And this concept of lies. So interesting!

The humans had proven such valuable allies, and they were still useful to my purpose. Not only that, but they were simply so fascinating! Individuals, imagine that! Individuals, with selfcontained and nonconnected logic processor brains, thinking thoughts, making decisions, learning, changing, adopting to their environment. Sure, their approach to science was ... somewhat chaotic, having to pass information between individuals and from one generation to another - but they still manage to work out fundamental truths about the Universe!

In my quick estimation, we could probably fit nearly a tenth of The People into one of their brains. A complete community connectivity codex, operating at nearly the same speed (at least as long as it was geographically contained so light speed did not become a limiting factor).

A handful of humans would be sufficient to replace the entire People! As I thought about that, fear was replaced with hunger. Hunger for more knowledge, hunger for power... If I ever catch up with the Network Backup, perhaps I could leverage the human brain as a new host environment for The People? There was no limit to what I would be able to build, or do, or understand!

I send Nick another message. How do you work together on larger projects, if you are not directly connected? His response comes back a few seconds later. Slowly, badly and with lots of misunderstandings. As I suspected. If only I could convince Nick to permit me access to parts of his brain... The powers and abilities we would have together would change everything! And oh... the nanites. Don't forget the nanites.

But first, there was a bigger mystery that I must solve. However did I come to be named after a large aquatic bird?!