The next scheduled destination was another yellow star: Tau Ceti. The 5 light years that separated it from Epsilon Eridani were covered in 26 days of subjective time.
"Rinzler, make a gravimetric scan of the system." Clu ordered.
Rinzler activated the function on his console and projected the data on the main screen.
"There is a debris disk around the star, with an outer radius of 38.98 teraunits. A gas giant orbits the star at 7.09 teraunits and cuts off the disk. There is a planet at 0.54 teraunits from the star, inside the habitable zone." he said.
"Good." Clu replied. He sat at his own console and set a course for the Earth-like planet.
As soon as the planet could be seen on the screen, he ordered Alan Two to scan for modulated electromagnetic signals.
"No emissions detected." replied Alan Two.
"Sir, I am detecting a large object approaching from the planet." suddenly said Rinzler. "It is made of... proteins, amminoacids and lipids, with a high content of water. It appears to be coming directly toward us."
"Put it on the main screen." said Clu.
What appeared on the screen was the most disgusting sight that anyone had ever seen. A huge, pulsating lump of discolored flesh, covered in pustules, hairs and writhing tentacles, with orifices that dilated and contracted, some of which squirted out blobs of a brown/green semiliquid mass, while others twisted inside out and showed a lining of hard, ivory-white conical structures.
"What in the..." started Clu.
"Sir, we are receiving a transmission from the object." Alan Two interrupted him.
"Let's see it." said Clu.
Clu was prepared to see the most revolting, rotten organic aberration he could ever imagine.
What he was not prepared to see was a perfect duplicate of himself, greeting him from the screen with a joyful and exultant behavior that was completely unlike the way he himself acted.
As the doppelganger was smiling, laughing and jumping around from wherever it was, it exclaimed: "Hey hey hey! Welcome! I love you, my people loves you! Thank you for visiting us, so we can play games together for lots of fun! I'm so happy to see you and I want you to be super-happy too! Would you like to have sex?"
The real Clu, idignant, stood up from his chair and yelled: "What is this travesty?"
The fake Clu did not answer, so he added: "Explain how you know how I look like, before I blow you up."
"Oh, come on, man!" chortled the fake Clu, while the real one paced back and forth along the bridge. "When this big bright thing pops up in your solar system, and it keeps coming closer for half a cycle, and it's the only thing you've ever seen that emits radio waves, you know it's gotta mean something! Wanna know how I know how you look like? I just looked up! Duh!"
"Oh, by the way, my offer is still valid!" he added after a second.
Clu stopped and looked his double in the eyes. "Your offer is refused." he said sternly. "We do not engage in biochemical genetic swapping, all information we process is electrical. And thanks to my trusted brainwave parser here, who can even translate your obscure measure units into quantities we can understand, my underlings are as happy as they could ever be without impairing their higher functions."
The pseudo-Clu laughed out loud in response, then added: "No, you're not! Look at me. I am happy. At best, you're... content! When was the last time you felt pain?"
"Nobody here feels pain, we are coded so that we are informed of eventual damage without suffering" said Clu. "If you and your people feel pain instead of receiving precise information, you are not perfect. We can help you reach perfection."
"You? Help us?" the imitator laughed again. "No, man, I'm gonna help you! Don't go anywhere, I'm coming through!"
As the fake Clu turned his back at the screen, the space in front of him literally tore itself apart. An identical hole in space appeared between Clu and the screen. The Clu replicant walked into the rift on his side and out of the other, onto the bridge of the Universal Rectifier Zero, where he tried to hug the real Clu. Both rifts closed.
Immediately, Clu unhooked his disc from his back and grabbed the simulant in a choke-hold. Rinzler activated the security rez-in station nearby and leaped toward the intruder, his two discs ready to slash him. The rezzed-in Black Guard approached the fake Clu and shocked him with his rod primitive.
"Don't. Even. Blink." whispered Clu behind his teeth.
"Nice trick" said Rinzler. "How does it work?"
"I don't know" replied the doppelganger, whose voice was now trembling.
Clu tightened the grip around his double's neck. "How?" he hissed.
"I-I don't know!" repeated the false Clu. "Our... our planet... hosted a civilization with non-biological technology before our evolution! We found some of their artifacts. We were able to operate them, but not to replicate them!"
"You obviously don't really look like me. How do you look like?" asked the real Clu.
"I cannot show you unless you release me." answered the false one.
"If I release you, will you hurt, harm or damage anyone of us in any way?" Clu asked again.
"No, absolutely not!" replied the fake Clu. "I just want you to be happy!"
Clu released his hold.
His double looked around, then his body started to unfold, changing in color and texture everywhere. His head split in two and turned into a pair of bulbous rubbery lumps, while the eyes were reabsorbed; his torso shortened, widened and a number of orifices opened along its surface; his legs disappeared into the torso and his arms turned into a mass of tentacles covering the whole body. What thirty seconds before looked exactly like Clu, now looked like mutilated cnidarians glued together and mating with a large tumor.
Alan Two saw something on his console that he did not like. He tried to warn the others: "Everyone, move away from the creature! I'm reading large synaptic spikes-"
The Black Guard was not fast enough. The creature was on him in one bound and forcibly removed his helmet, wrapping around him and forcing its tentacles into his mouth, ears and nose. The Black Guard fell on the floor, oozing a thick white liquid from his mouth.
Rinzler slashed the creature with one of his discs. The creature split in two, releasing the Black Guard and spilling black innards.
Few seconds later, the Black Guard pulled the tentacles away from his face, stood up and looked around. He looked at Clu, smiled and put his hands on Clu's shoulders.
"Sir, you have to try this!" he said. "It's the best thing in the universe!"
Clu backed away. "State your designation, soldier." he said.
"Intrusion Countermeasure Program, number 1138" said the Black Guard, jumping and then running to hug Clu. "And I'm so happy to work for you!"
Clu pushed the Black Guard away. "Put yourself together, soldier. And answer me." he said. "What is the proper response to the sighting of a program that exhibits viral infection?"
The Black Guard laughed. "I don't remember!" he exclaimed. His mouth twisted in a grimace, then he started laughing again. "I can no longer perform my basic duties! I'm done for!" he said in a dissonant gleeful tone. His laughter grew more uproarious as he grabbed his head with his hands and ripped it off his own neck, finally collapsing into a mass of scattered bright orange cubes.
Clu turned to Rinzler and Alan Two. "These... super-happy abominations... are a danger to our project." he said. "If they do to other cultures what they tried to do to us, we may not be able to rectify them. If they encounter another Universal Rectifier, more of us could die."
"What do you suggest?" asked Rinzler.
"Genocide." replied Clu.
The cancerous lump in space was obliterated by a storm of suffusion shards, corruption torpedoes and mesh blasts. Its planet of origin was next.
The Universal Rectifier Zero stopped 3600 kilometers away from the planet.
Clu approached Rinzler's console. "Let me deal with this." he said. He edited the configuration file for the digitizing laser and activated it.
The bow of the Universal Rectifier Zero fired an energy beam that hit the planet, which decomposed into billions of blueish translucent cubes. They were all absorbed into the ship.
Clu returned to his console.
"Sir, I cannot find the planet anywhere in the file system. Where did you store it?" asked Rinzler.
"/dev/null , of course." replied Clu.
