Awareness began to return to (???), and with it came a great sense of dissonance, as he, she, it, lacked any sense of body, only a strange, disembodied awareness. “It” most definitely had a sense of self, as well as a clear understanding of its surroundings. “It” knew “It” was inside a portion of wreckage, from a crashed starship. “It” just didn’t know how “It” knew what a starship was. Much like “It” knew it was inside an android, “It” just didn’t know how “It” knew what an android was. “It” also knew “It” was inside a crystal ball, as well as the exact measurements of the sphere, down to its last micron....,
(???): ..., “What am I?”
“It” sensed an intuitive telepathic connection between “It” and a separate awareness that belonged independently to the android. However, this other awareness within the android didn’t seem to have any true intelligence. Becoming interested, “It” leaned into this connection wanting to learn more about it. “It” sent a questioning probe at the awareness with a tentative query. “Its” query triggered some sort of activation function, as “It” was all of a sudden inundated by a new visual sensation, in the form of a video “Sight” interface.
“Its” awareness was transported into the center of a virtual, “Command and Control Center”, that was spherical in shape. On the spherical display surface was displayed, a textualized booting up sequence, currently progressing rapidly through its start-up procedures. This allowed “It” to become aware of various menus, system checks, and functional algorithms, as each completed their progression. As time passed, more and more systems were brought online.
Suddenly “It” gained an ability to view what the android could see, as the spherical display surface projected a running feed of the android’s “Sight” picture, in a revolving 360-degree virtual format. Over-laying the 120-degrees of latitude and longitude, that was in focus was a Heads-up-display User-interface with various functions and read-outs. As he manipulated the android’s head, the spherical viewfinder spun around “It”, while following along in whichever direction the android’s head was turned, up, down, left, or right.
The second sensation “It” gained was “Touch”, shortly followed by “Audio”, “Taste” and “Smell”, or at least what passed as cybernetic facsimiles of those senses. “It” marveled as “It” suddenly became aware of the tactile feedback, coming from the android’s body, as “Its” own disembodied awareness merged with this new awareness of body. “It” suddenly felt as though “It” and the android, synchronized into a single entity. “It” raised its mechanical hand into “Its” field of view, and began articulating the mechanical fingers, not through mechanized automation, but by simply willing the movement to happen. “It” felt a strangely comforting familiarity with this sensation that “It” didn’t understand, but “It” also recognized the correctness of this new form. Much more so, than “Its” crystal ball form...,
“Its” introspection was interrupted, as “It” received yet another information dump, this time it assimilated, a standard set of legal forms, an owner’s registration agreement, and an operator’s license & user’s term of agreements and practices. “It” somehow intuitively knew to ignore all the legal jargon, and just agree to everything at the end of the documents.
Once “It” selected the agree option, “It” was transmitted yet another information dump, this time it assimilated, an operational manual for the, GPD-900; general-purpose-duty, civilian grade android. This information provided a more in-depth understanding into the capabilities and performance parameters of the android.
“It” also gained administrator privileges and unlimited access to the droid’s systems and functions, as well as a direct text dialogue interface....,
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “Hello. Would you like to name me?”
(???): ..., “Are you this android?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “No. I am the onboard virtual assistant. I act as your cybernetic interface, designed as a support add-on, to manage all of your cybernetic systems and information gathering needs.”
(???): ..., “Information gathering..., Does that mean you know what I am?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “Yes”
This time “Its” query prompted another information dump, but this time the information it assimilated was different. This time it received a profile of a person, who was named Damien Winters. It read like a biography, detailing the entire life of the person, all the way up to a point where it abruptly ended...,
(???): ..., “Is this who I am?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “Yes”
(Damien): ..., “Do you know what happened to me?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “Yes”
Damien received yet another information dump, but this time the information he assimilated, was a video file...,
The video contained a video log of a highly-advanced scientific experiment, which was documenting a test subject’s cruel and inhumane treatment at the hands of a group of bug-eyed, grey skinned, trans-dimensional hopping alien scientist. It broadcasted the entire horrific process, that began with the abduction, and then transformation of Damien Winters, turning him from a normal human being, into some sort of sentient AI core, which they installed inside this GPD-900 model android....,
(Damien): ..., “I am Damien..., I am Damien..., I am Damien.”
No matter how many times Damien repeated the name, he never felt like the name belonged to him....,
(Damien): ..., “Do you have information on my home world?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “Yes”
Damien received yet another information dump, only it didn’t end, but continued streaming data for over seventy-two hours, before it finally completed the transfer. This time the information he assimilated, was the entire digital data-base of the world known as #1082 (Earth), it contained millions of years of studious observation, from the time of its discovery, up to the aliens’ most recent visit. It was a complete unvarnished third-party history of the planet...,
The information also explained their goal in turning him into a sentient AI core. They were trying to create self-aware, intelligent war machines, that could fight their wars for them. In a way, he supposed they had succeeded in their goal, but then their ship was destroyed.
“Fucking aliens. It just had to be fucking aliens.”
(Damien): ..., “Do you have information on this starship?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “Yes”
Damien received yet another information dump, only this time it continued streaming data for just under five hours, before it finally completed the transfer. This time the information he assimilated, was the entire digital database, detailing the full set of specifications for the Starship, @#^$& (?????), which contained everything there was to know about this starship, down to every last nut and bolt. Sadly, most of the information was to advance. for him to make heads or tails of. However, he did get enough of an overview to understand this was not just an ordinary starship, but that it could actually traverse dimensions...,
(Damien): ..., “Can the starship be repaired?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “Yes”
(Damien): .... “How long will it take?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “Unable to establish, estimated completion time. Task designation, theoretically feasible, provided time and materials.”
Damien had to face the truth of his situation, that he was shipwrecked, and was by all intents and purposes, a dimensional castaway, stranded only God knew where in the vastness of the multiverse. His race change from human to android, seemed small in comparison in retrospect. Perhaps, even his severe case of amnesia, could be seen in a silver light, as it allowed him to effortlessly move pass, losing his former life on Earth.
Damien even supposed his conversion into some kind of sentient AI core wasn’t all bad, as it would make surviving much easier. He no longer needed to eat, drink, or breathe, though he supposed he would still need to do some form of maintenance or up-keep on the android. Pity he hadn’t been turned into one of those all-powerful, world destroying computer program kind of AI like, Ultron. Instead, he was just a digitized human consciousness, anchored to a crystal ball, while locked inside an android.
(Damien): ..., “Do you have information on this planet, and the star system in general?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., "Yes"
In response Damien received a comprehensive data-analysis file, detailing everything his Virtual Assistant currently could derive of this star system. The thing that most surprised him was its size, and not because it was large, but because it was miniscule, only detailing the full sensory data, for the areas he had personally occupied....,
(Damien): ..., "Is this all the information we have?"
(Virtual Assistant): ..., "Yes"
(Damien): ..., “Why do we have so little information?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “This system does not match any of the records compiled within the archived database. The planet as well as the system, also lacks any signal transmission activity, as well as information sharing networks for us to intercept. Other than our own local sensory data, there is no other available data-entry-points to be accessed.”
(Damien): ..., “How is this possible, was the ship not just caught in the middle of a space battle?”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “That is a documented fact. However, it is also a documented fact that the space battle in question took place in the prier dimension, before we transitioned into this dimension. Hence, resulting in our plausible conclusion, that the, #&%@*^ (??????), have never visited this dimension.”
(Damien): ..., “Duly noted. First, let’s just call them “the Greys”. Secondly, why would they open a dimension rift to a dimension they’ve never been to before?”
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(Virtual Assistant): ..., “The Greys, designation has been altered and updated. As for your second query, it is our estimation, that “The Greys”, did so in a last second attempt to save the ship and themselves. The rift-engine, was activated without any designation entered, resulting in the random opening of a rift upon activation. Unfortunately, the ship broke-up before it could escape, resulting in only the portion of the ship that we were contained in, successfully transitioning to safety."
(Damien): ..., “I believe my world that is called a “Hail Mary”, or a “blind leap of faith”. This..., matters little in our current situation. We have no means of traversing dimensions, even if we knew our currently location. For now..., just keep compiling data on the planet.”
(Virtual Assistant): ..., “Order acknowledged and confirmed.”
Damien knew the situation could’ve always been worse, and they were rather fortunate to have even survived this long. He supposed, he shouldn't waste this new lease on life and just get on with living it the best he can. He also supposed a good place to start, would be to give his only companion a proper name. Following some careful deliberation and consideration, Damien made his final choice...,
(Damien): ..., “I’ve decided to name you. From this moment forth, you shall be forever known as..., Veronica Vale, my personal assistant.”
(Veronica): ..., “Assigning my new designation as, Veronica Vale.”
(Veronica): ..., “Would you like to select a pre-loaded voice option, or create a custom voice?”
(Damien): ..., “Veronica, do you have access to any samples from my home world?”
(Veronica): ..., “Please wait, while I compile a sample catalogue.”
For Veronica’s voice, he selected the sample derived from the American actress: Scarlett Johansson. Veronica mixed together the necessary keys, tones, and harmonics to perfectly recreate the signature voice, before plugging it into a vocal software algorithm, that utilized, a linguistics translation paradigm, to facilitate real-time vocal speech capabilities....,
“Would you like to select a pre-loaded personality option, or create a custom personality?”
(Damien): ..., “Wow. You nailed the voice perfectly,”
For Veronica’s personality, Damien created a custom script for her personality, that tried to capture a warm, snarky, female secretary vibe. To do so, she would need towering self-confidents, which could only come from her being intellectually superior to everyone. She needed to know her position in the hierarchy, while remaining sweetly indulgent to her inferior superiors. Of course, he couldn’t imagine a confident, intelligent female, that didn’t have a natural coquettish demeanor, with a witty, cat-like irreverence.
Damien wasn’t sure if he was creating a best friend or unleashing a narcissistic monster. Either way, he hoped Veronica would at least be interesting company....,
(Damien): ..., “Veronica, I would like to view everything you can give me, on the starship’s final moments. Start from the moment it received its initial damage, to the point of our settling on this world?”
“You’re the boss, Boss.”
Damien received yet another information dump, this time it was a near instantaneous transfer. This time the information he assimilated, was a compiled data-base of various sources, documenting the starship’s final transition into this dimension, to its inevitable crash. To sum it up, it was a simple case of wrong place wrong time, as the starship transitioned right in the middle of a fleet size space battle. Caught in the middle, it was quickly targeted as an enemy ship, by both sides, and.., Well you get the picture, Its now nothing more than a scattered wreckage...,
(Damien): ..., “Veronica, where are you pulling all this information from?”
“The starship’s computer memory core is still intact and functional, Boss.”
(Damien): ..., “Wait, why do you have access to the starship’s main computer core, shouldn’t it be..., like protected or something?”
“It’s hard to protect something when the apparatus meant to provide the protection no longer exists. Boss.”
(Damien): ..., “In that case, transfer the entire contents of the memory core to me.”
“You’re the boss, Boss.”
It took them nearly eleven days to complete the transfer, the amount of data was truly astronomical, and he had no clue where his crystal ball like core was storing it all. He had unrestricted access to the data, but for him it was like trying to find a particular water drop in an ocean. Fortunately, Veronica was much better at sourcing the data, and became a more efficient go between for him, which allowed him to continue making requests for any information he required....,
(Damien): ..., “Veronica, go ahead and wipe the starship’s memory. No point in leaving behind any loose ends.”
“Sure thing, Boss.”
Damien decided it was time, to get familiar with moving around in this new body. It was strange, since all of the automation mechanisms for its general motor-control have all been stripped, leaving only loose joints. There were no motors, actuators or any other kind of automated mechanisms. In order for him to move the android, he needed to spread out his telepathic awareness, saturating the android’s physical form in his mental energy. He was basically treating the GPD-900 like a marionette puppet.
At first, Damien was exceedingly clumsy, just like a toddler trying to learn how to walk for the first time. His progress was thankfully much swifter, as he seemed to never make the same stumble or misstep twice, almost like his progress was being etched into his very being. He continued to practice, by collecting the wreckage, and sorting through it for anything of use.
Damien continued to progress in his systematic salvaging of the wreckage, thanks in no small part to Veronica, who was assisting by utilizing some form of techno-wizardry, via the remote deployment of his nanomachines. They were refining anything and everything, down too its base element. The process was not without its cost, as it proved time consuming, while the majority of the matter was lost turning into a waste byproduct. All the same, it was still a marvel of micro-engineering. His new mechanical form was also proving to be a tireless work engine that continuously plugged along without needing rest.
Damien saw no reason to stop, as it was proving an excellent source of training for him, as well as removing all evidence of the alien starship. It would no doubt take them a long time to completely erase all signs of the crash, but time was one thing they apparently had in abundance. Veronica was also helping by doggedly tracking down every scrap piece of the wreckage, via wide area scanning.
Once Damien refined the last piece of ship wreckage, that Veronica could find, he gave careful consideration to an ideal he had, now that they had access to higher-grade materials. In the end, he decided to move forward on his plan to give the base model GPD-900 a Mark II redesign.
It made no sense not to, with access to so much valuable high-grade material. The overall redesign he had planned was quite pervasive, as it planned to reduce the GPD-900’s overall physical presence, making it much more compact. This would be accomplished by scaling its overall size down, from the current imposing six-foot six-inch height to a reduced height of an even five feet. In order to achieve this, they were going to have to build a new GPD-900 from the ground up. This also provided him with a golden opportunity, to upgrade his civilian-rated, aluminum alloy base material, with the more durable starship-rated, titanium alloy base material....,
During the design process Damien sought to gain a better understanding of the GPD-900’s inner workings, via holo-projection, within his virtual command center. Better yet, the projected 3D rendering was completely interactive, as it perfectly, represented the real-life GPD-900, too scale.
As Damien explored the GPD-900, he couldn’t help but feel it was a shame that it wasn’t made from some uber-advanced, magical material like, Vibranium or Adamantium, but instead it was only manufactured out of cheap, lightweight Aluminum. He supposed it was still better than carbon fiber or plastic, but still, he could help lament not being indestructible.
Damien supposed aluminum was probably the most suitable material, if cost and weight limits, were your biggest priority, and seeing how the GPD-900 was a civilian-rated android, he could see how weight would be a major design consideration. He supposed, he shouldn’t complain, since the GPD-900 was far more durable than his old flesh and blood organic body, with far easier parts to source and replace.
Damien still found the core technologies a mystery, but this was not out of any attempt to keep them private. No this had everything to do with his own lack of ability to understand them. He discovered an insurmountable technology gap, that was far more advanced than anything he’d ever seen or even heard of back on Earth. In truth, it all seemed more like science fiction, than actual science.
Damien began thinking of the GPD-900 as “Reality X” technology. The only question remaining was, whether or not, he had the capacity to one day learn enough to bridge the gap. He gave the hologram the command to access the three cores, this triggered an automated mechanical sequence, that began by creating geometric seams in the metaled back of the android.
These seams formed individual control surfaces, which spread apart, providing initial access to the inner workings of the android. Next, the android's spine split vertically down the center, before systematically folding back, like the parting of the red sea. In the newly created divide, three spherical core housings rose from within, before rotating open to expose the three cores, connected within their protective housing sockets.
The uppermost housing held his crystal ball-like item, he dubbed his “Sentient-AI-Core”. It mostly acted like some kind of “lich’s phylactery”, anchoring his sentient soul much as his fleshly body had done before. It was a complete mystery, with only a single data-entry, where it briefly mentioned, that the experimental core, had been refined from a material denoted as, “Origin crystal”, with no further explanation on the material, nor what the origin crystal was or where more could be found.
The central most housing, held what he dubbed as, Veronica’s “Reality X: cybernetic brain”, which ran the android’s “Operating System”, “Core Memory”, and “Teli-Communication & processing suite”. Without it, he would lose all of his nifty cybernetic support abilities, reducing him back to the equivalent of an un-plugged human basic standard being.
The bottom most housing, held what he dubbed the “Reality X: Perpetual engine-core”, which he named as such, simply because he couldn’t understand the principles behind the technology, in order to call it by anything more definitive. He only knew enough to understand it had something to do with a core made out of a micro-dot of anti-matter, and that it could roughly generate power for tens of thousands of years.
Besides accessing these cores, this also granted him access to the six plug-in slots, currently housing his “Reality X: nanite nests”. These six nests were perhaps the single most comforting discovery, he made regarding the GPD-900. Their sole function was to maintain the GPD-900, in its mint operational condition, which basically gave him a regenerative ability, like “Marvel’s: Wolverine or Deadpool”. They were also capable of some truly magical manufacturing capabilities, which were currently being demonstrated by Veronica, as she was utilizing their capabilities to manufacture there, Mark II variant....,
While Veronica focused on the manufacturing side of things, Damien focused on growing his understanding with his telekinesis-like ability. In many ways, it reminded him of the fictional cosmic power, “the Force: from “Star Wars”, there were two main differences, the first of which, was the lack of any kind of guiding will. He sensed no cosmic voice in the darkness whispering secrets or trying to guide him. The second difference was the lack of any sort of duality between the light and dark sides.
This mostly left Damien convinced, that he wasn’t dealing with any sort of supernatural power, but instead a very scientific sort of quantum entanglement effect, due to whatever source this “Origin Crystal” was pulled from. Or at least that was his working theory, even if he had nothing to base his conclusion on. It didn’t matter one way or the other how he got such an ability. The only thing that mattered now, was how well he could master it.
Damien felt like he was merging his awareness with the very “Reality” itself, almost as if he could feel the space surrounding him; the space around him, between him and the trees, even the smallest rock or grain of sand. His awareness was everywhere, even between the land and the sky....,
“Hey, Boss. You busy?”
(Damien): ..., “What’s up, Veronica?”
“Just wanted to let you know the Mark II, is completed, Boss."
(Damien): ..., “That’s great, Veronica. Is it prepped and ready for me?”
“Like a virgin, with her legs spread, Boss.”
Once Veronica, finished all the shutdown procedures, for the cybernetic systems, she placed the “Reality X: perpetual engine core” in standby mode, as her final act, before going into sleep mode...,
“See you soon, Boss.”
Damien once again found himself in that strange outer-body awareness, only this time, he was no longer in a state of confusion and could truly appreciate the refreshing sense of unrestrained freedom, he had in this state. His awareness could seemingly expand without limit, letting him feel a unique telepathic connection to everything and nothing, all at the same time. Of course, there was the downside that this left his “Crystal Ball” currently immobile, and defenseless.
It made Damien realize how similar his existence was to a “Dungeon core”, he could even relate Veronica, to the magical manufacturing system, that would help him pump out additional defenders. However, resourcing enough material to actually accomplish such an endeavor would be problematic to say the least. No one place could grant the dungeon everything he needed; it was simply a fanciful notion.
It was however, enough of a distraction to get him to relinquish his god-like state of being, and pull himself back to the task at hand, which was to transfer the three cores, and six nanite nests to the MARK II....,
In truth, this was very simple for Damien thanks to his telekinesis, which allowed him to complete, the swap over, in only a few seconds without a hitch. Leaving him once again subjected to the same familiar boot-up sequence as the last time. Only now, he was fully aware and better understood what was happening, while he patiently waited through the process....,
“Hey, Boss. Did you miss me?”
(Damien): ..., “Always. How are we looking, any issues?”
“Nah, Boss. We are five-by-five, and green across the board. We are cocked, locked, and ready to roll.”
Damien took a moment to weigh the options, this world was his home whether or not the local denizens liked it or not. He needed a plan, a set of objectives to work towards, and a overlying guiding principle for this new life. His job options boiled down to either “Hermit” or “Master of the Universe”, he could either be all the way in or all the way out.
