Chapter 56: Chapter 56 - Alpha One
One watched Mengko Virkell perform system checks through his visual interface, hopping through the various photo-eyes to keep his creator in sight at all times. He also used his corona to feel Virkell's physical presence. The two of them did not see each other much now that One had been installed in a shuttle. Just the occasional checkup that Virkell insisted be done by himself.
"Can you stay to chat today, Virkell?" One's voice rang out a bit buzzy in the cold confines of the shuttle, making him sound small and inconsequential.
The pale human glanced towards one of the photo-eyes, which One immediately switched his viewpoint to. "Perhaps for a few minutes, Alpha One. Now hush while I finish my health check."
Ironically, Virkell was a Siren, possessing the noetic and teleotic talents, while One was a kinetic. The two of them shared no talent in common. Of course, that was by design. The fleet needed kinetic heroes. Virkell needed a kinetic hero. So that is what they had made One become. It would have been better by far to be a paragon, but the odds of that happening were not good. Out of the general population, ninety percent only attuned a single precursor -- which manifested as a roughly even split of thirty percent kinetic, thirty percent noetic, and thirty percent teleotic. A further nine percent attuned two precursors, with about three percent per type. Only one percent became paragons.
Though those odds were for a population. The data suggested a correlation between a capacity for integrative complexity and triple attunement. Another factor seemed to be the skill level of the individual providing charges to the initiated. The so-called saviors of the fleet managed to awaken more paragons than would be statistically expected. Given One's mental characteristics and the presence of highly skilled paragons among the fleet, he thought his odds of attuning to all three precursors had been greater than the abysmal average.
But it had not been his choice to make. The fleet needed kinetics. Powerful kinetics. So One had worked hard and managed to generate his own precursor. Now he was useful, a true hero. The cost: he had hastened his inevitable decline and would lose his talent in ten years instead of the standard thirty. He didn't expect to live long after his usefulness to the fleet ended. It had never been a secret that generations of Synths had been disassembled when they proved themselves unable to meet the expectations placed on them.
The best One could hope for was a place in history as the first synth kinetic. To be remembered as a hero of the fleet, with a legacy that would be taught on a thousand worlds as the indestructible Angelship journeyed ever onward in its quest to spread the talents. One had done the hard part already by becoming the first of his kind to generate precursor. Now he only had to live out the rest of his time as a dependable soldier and his legend would immortalize him. Still, it was a shame he could not have been truly immortal as a paragon.
Virkell continued to move about the various apparatuses that constituted One. There were five separate neural array tanks, each housing a brain lobe and the mechanisms necessary to interface with it. The smallest tank held the visual and auditory sections of a human brain. The largest tank held the brain stem and the spinal nerves, both sensory and motor, which were splayed out and connected to magnetic sensors and inducers. Two tanks held the right and left side of a human neocortex, with an artificial corpus callosum networking those two systems together. The final tank held an additional frontal lobe, which had been altered to integrate directly with an analog computational system. Each mass of neural tissue communicated to its neighbors through software-mediated connections. Pumps and tubes and filters and gas exchanges wove through the whole, complex support equipment to keep One alive. The whole thing managed to be quite robust in spite of its frageile appearance, provided proper maintenance happened.
As always, contemplating his components made One uneasy. Not just because of the inherent vulnerabilities arising from his architecture and dependency upon his caretakers, but also due to the concern that the dance of artificiality that was him might not result in a consistent product. Perhaps a human was no different at heart. Their momentary desires skittered about at random, alternating between biological drives like food and procreation and more ideological goals like the advancement of knowledge or the purity of the fleet. That might not be so different from software artificially dampening his mood when he became too excitable.
Or, to use a more annoying example, an agent influencing his mind. On cue, Virkell made a sophisticated gesture with his fingers that elicited an unconscious reaction from One, a reflexive chirping noise. Virkell nodded before continuing on with his checks, unaware that the agent had utterly failed to erase One's awareness of the event. Somehow he had managed to develop an immunity to memory alteration. He suspected his electronic memory components were to blame, but sometimes it felt good to believe that he could perform the trick based on his superior intellect. Not that he could claim any real genius. Anyone with a built-in mathematics coprocessor could do startlingly well on an IQ test designed for a human.
Finally, Virkell replaced a nutrient canister and then moved to sit down. "All right, Alpha One, how have you been enjoying your shuttle runs?"
"Very much, Virkell. The crew seems to really like me, too. My copilot Alynne calls me her boyfriend."
"Boyfriend? Do I need to have a certain talk with you?" The crinkling of skin around Virkell's eyes revealed he was joking.
One made a laughing noise. "Maybe give a talk to Alynne instead. I do not think I can perform all of the boyfriend functions. Male gender does not necessarily mean I am a man."
"I've always thought it odd that every Synth chooses a gender. If it was me, I would want the freedom to define my own role."
"But how can you define a role before you have one of your own?"
"You have a good point. So tell me about Alynne. Do you like her?"
"I do," One said. "She gives me a lot of attention. We have inside jokes and she tells me about all the things that happen when she isn't with me. Did you know she used to date Tyler Marius, one of the saviors?"
"Is there a woman in the fleet who hasn't dated that man?"
One thought for a moment. "Was he a very handsome person? Or did women like him because he was famous?"
"I suspect it was mostly the fame," Virkell said.
"And am I famous?"
Virkell laughed. "You are. Though I don't think you should doubt any affection you receive from Alynne. She is a lonely woman."
"Why is she lonely? She is very nice and appears quite beautiful."
"Alynne is an old woman, Alpha One. Men always prefer youth in a partner. It's part of our wiring."
"That is a shame," One said. Perhaps it was better not to possess a body. At least he could see beauty past the superficial.
"Indeed it is. Now I must be getting back to the lab." Virkell made it to the door of the shuttle's control room before turning back. "Oh, Alpha One. You ought to tell Alynne that she is beautiful."
"I already have," One responded.
"Then you're a good boyfriend. See you later, Alpha One."
"See you later, Mengko Virkell."
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