Chapter 48: Chapter 48 Hivemind
"Now that you have a place for the Gooblens to be, what do you intend to do next?" asked Olivia, following him back to the bridge with Granny and Kitteral in tow.
Old Motha had left to join up with the other Gooblens, and to organize them in starting a town where Dustin had dropped them off. He had promised to fetch them some ship remains to start playing with, at some point in the next week.
"I need to fix the hivemind. Every Uz'En has nanobots inside of them, and those bots need the hivemind to connect them all. The AI was able to hack it far too easy, so I need to fix that before I program a new one."
Reaching the bridge, he paused and looked around. It was really cramped with so many people in it. There were only two seats, which meant the other two would have to stand or sit on the equipment.
"Computer, how long will it take to remake the bridge to incorporate two more seats?" he asked, sliding into his seat and looking over the schematics the computer flashed for him.
"With the new power source for the nanobots, they can do more per nanobot, much quicker than before," said the ship computer.
"Good. Then start that once we arrive at the hivemind. I should be able to get most of what I need done, by the time it's complete."
"Understood."
The ship left the atmosphere if the Gooblen home world and headed over to the hivemind, on the other side of the sun. Dustin was already typing away furiously when they arrived. He had pulled up the basic programs for the hivemind, and was busy reprogramming it to notice all outside programs as hostile. It would also update itself to prevent any other programs from being able to out think itself. Never again would it be hacked like it had.
All around him, nanobots under the ships control, were disassembling the ships bridge and rebuilding it to allow for two more seats with monitors. Standing up, he moved past all of the construction, and the three people who stood in the doorway watching in amazement, heading towards the airlock.
"What are you doing?" asked Olivia, grabbing his arm as he moved past her.
"I'm checking on some things in the hivemind. There may be a way to prevent the complete deletion of its budding awareness, so as to prevent it from having to learn everything from scratch all over again. Plus, I need to make absolutely sure that AI doesn't have any lingering programs hiding in it, before I go to upload the new programming."
She nodded, letting go of him. He shook his head, trying to get back onto the train of thought he had before getting interrupted.
Pausing at the airlock, he began his transformation before slapping the open button, then swam over to the hivemind and diving into it.
The biggest problem he saw was that it was still open to attack from all sides. There was no physical barrier from infiltration. Being made up almost entirely of nanobots, anything could cause damage to the internal workings very easily. And no matter how many failsafe's he programmed into it, the hivemind would always have to worry about signals from outside attacking it. As he struggled with a solution, his mind wandered to when Olivia had shown up outside his father's ship, right after his father had saved him. The coincidence was just too much. Hadn't the ship made a comment about minerals in the asteroid belt preventing signals from being sent?
Dustin wondered if there were some way to utilize that, without preventing the hivemind from communicating with the nanobots.
Floating among the stillness of the dead hivemind, thinking, Dustin became aware of activity hidden deep below all of the programs. Diving down to investigate, he wondered if it were the AI or some remains of the hivemind itself. It was a repair program, from the hivemind, trying to fix itself. He floated there, watching in amazement as this tiny program tweaked a little here and a little there, until moving on to the next thing. At the rate of its progress, the hivemind would take several years to repair itself. But it was still there!
Not wasting any more time, Dustin began to search each program, using the processing power of his own brain, coupled with the processing power of the hivemind itself, to ensure that all traces of the AI were gone. The few strands he found were no longer functioning, and were wiped easily.
Pulling out of the hivemind, he flew back to the ship. There wasn't a moment to waste. He had to get those minerals before the hivemind became too much more aware. No one bothered him as he flew to his seat, barely bothering to change back into his normal form and instructed the ship to jump back to the asteroid belts.
The bridge was just finishing up when they appeared next to the floating asteroids.
"What are we doing back here for?" asked Granny.
"Minerals," said Dustin, before sending the nanobots out to start harvesting the signal blocking minerals.
Kitteral grinned as he realized what was going on. "That hivemind of yours getting fixed?"
"Soon!" beamed Dustin, watching the cargo hold fill up carefully. The new energy the ship used to jump with could only handle so much, so as soon as the hold was filled as full as he dared to let it, he pulled back all of the nanobots and jumped back.
Despite the obvious lack of activity in the hivemind, Dustin dumped the minerals into space around it, before flying back to it. He wanted to oversee and speed up its repair, while making sure it didn't glitch anywhere. The AI had done some pretty severe damage to some of the programs, and he wasn't about to let a missed period here or there, cause a hiccup. The future of his people depended on him.
Several hours later, the hivemind was busy with nanobots zooming all over the place, repairing bits and pieces and utilizing the minerals he had dumped, to form a carapace around the central mind, protecting it from all outside signals that might hack it again.
"Thank you, Dustin," said the hivemind, knowing he was there, despite him not programming a way for it to register him. Already it was progressing further than the AI had.
Some of the programs that had made up the AI were being utilized to upgrade his hivemind, and Dustin didn't mind at all.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
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Sdrawkcab Nothing like feeling like a fifth wheel. I wonder what the others thought when they saw Dustin bringing the hivemind back single-handedly. I see pride, satisfaction, acknowledgment and a little bit of uselessness.
Chapter 49: Chapter 49 Water Water Everywhere
"This doesn't make any sense," said Dustin, looking over the reports of the planetary scans from the ship's computer.
"What's wrong?" asked Olivia.
"The scans aren't finding any Uz'En anywhere."
"Could the AI have gotten them?" asked Granny.
"No, the last few places the AI had been, it had wiped out the entire population of everything living on the planets. There's a thriving civilization down there, just no Uz'En showing up," said Dustin shaking his head.
"Then let's go down and investigate," said his father, thoughtfully.
"We can't send out the nanobots to look for them?" asked Olivia.
"No, they have a strange field that knocks them out. I had to come personally to check out the field, because I was wanting to investigate it. I'm wondering if the initial reports of there being Uz'En may have been wrong."
"Only one way to find out," said Granny cheerfully.
Dustin nodded, and guided the ship into the atmosphere of the planet. Below them, sparse land, thickly covered in plant life, dotted what appeared to be a mostly water covered world. The few cities they saw seemed to be built into cliff facings, probably to survive the wild storms that occurred.
"Those weird readings are popping up all over the place," he said, trying to figure out what they were.
"What weird readings?" asked Kitteral.
Everyone could see the same things on their monitors that Dustin could see, but none of them could make heads or tails of what he was looking at. It just looked like lines of letters and numbers, all jumbled together.
"I'm getting readings of Uz'En in the water, but unless…they must have gone aquatic!"
"Aquatic?" said Olivia, startled.
"It's odd, but I could see it," said Kitteral.
"Are you still going to grab them?" asked Granny.
"Of course! I have oceans on my planet."
Dustin avoided all of the cities and landed the ship on a deserted beach.
"I'm going to go check them out. Olivia can come with me, since she can change, and you two can keep an eye on the ship, in case the locals decide they don't like us, assuming they can find the ship while cloaked."
"Alright," said his father, leaning back in his chair, as if he was going to take a nap. Granny gave him a look of annoyed disgust, before waving at them to go ahead.
Stepping outside, they glanced at each other, then darted for the beckoning waves. Dustin changed himself the moment he hit the waves, giving up his legs for a strong muscled tail, with fins on either side. Olivia's legs flattened out, but remained two separate appendages, growing long flippers on either foot. A long spine protruded along her back, waving in the gentle pull of water.
Keeping to the floor, they made their way out, listening to anything that might give away the Uz'En Dustin was sure was out there. It didn't take them long, before they found themselves on the edge of a large underwater city. It spread out over a vast underwater plain. Plants swayed in the currents, and if he didn't know any better, he would have thought he was looking down on a city above the waves, rather than one below them.
Buildings climbed from the ground up three or four stories, with entrances instead of windows. There were roadways between the buildings, with patches of 'gardens' where they grew plants. There were also large groups who moved large schools of fish like creatures, much like a shepherd would move sheep along a mountain pass. It was all very surreal.
"Are we sure we want to try and relocate these people? It looks like they have a very good setup already," said Olivia in short bursts of noise.
Dustin hated the idea of leaving any Uz'En off his home planet, but he had to agree with her. These people looked to be the masters of this ocean, and were thriving.
"Maybe some would be interested in relocating?" he wondered, moving towards the nearest group of them, who had seen them and were approaching in interest.
"Hail, strangers. You are not known by us, but we welcome you," said the nearest, in a certain method of sonar and sound manipulation, that Dustin found particularly interesting, as he could understand it perfectly well.
"We come with an opportunity for your people, if you are interested," said Dustin, quickly modifying his vocals to be able to replicate the sounds they had made.
"We would listen, but it must be spoken before the king," he said, turning and leading them all to the center of the city.
Dustin was curious that they had a king. Could it be someone distantly related to him? Had another royal bloodline survived? There were definitely some of the people who took after the warrior class here, who were acting as guards as they approached the king.
His hopes were dashed the moment he saw the king, who was merely another of the warrior class who had risen to fill a role that was vacant.
"Welcome to our city, stranger. We have never seen you here before," said the king as he floated in a space decorated in bright coral and lively small crustaceans.
"I come from another world, with interesting news and an opportunity for your people," said Dustin, glancing around at the numbers that had gathered around them to listen in. Had some kind of signal gone out to have so many show up so quickly? If so, he had missed it.
"I am interested in hearing what you have to say."
"I am not sure what you call your people, but we all come from a race known among the stars as the Uz'En. I have been on a quest finding all of our people, who have been scattered among the many stars, to bring them all together to one planet, that is safe for them. You are one of our people, yet you call the waters your home, whereas the rest of our people do not. While I am not sure how that came to be, I would still offer all of you a home on our planet, if you are interested. We have great waters, that you would be allowed to claim, if you wish to remain in the waters, though I must admit, I have not explored them fully, to ascertain their safety."
"This is very interesting information you have brought us," said the king, thoughtfully. "Our story tellers tell of a time when we did not call the waters our home, so there may be truth to your words. As for belonging to your people, how are you so certain that we belong among those you claim as yours?"
"Do any of your people have the ability to change themselves?" asked Dustin, looking around. "Perhaps, changing their looks, or colors, or completely changing their entire bodies?"
There was a lot of murmuring among the people, and they all seemed to be disturbed by the question.
"That is a very serious accusation you have made," said the king, flaring his gills in agitation and thrashing his tail against the sand on the ocean floor.
Dustin could only wonder what he meant. How could being able to change be a bad thing? This didn't bode well at all.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS
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Try to find all his people: Check.
Destroy aliens trying to stop him: Check.
Try to acquire all his people: Halted.
Destroy killer AI: Check.
Finish acquiring people: In Process...
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