Shepard and his crew landed at Zhu's Hope, only to find Geth parts, a green, mossy sludge residue, and rubble.

"Looks like we missed the party." Nihilus commented, as he surveyed the destruction.

"Something like that." A woman stated, as she walked up to them.

"Hi, my names Lizbeth. Welcome to Feros. You must be that Alliance officer that was being dispatched."

"Something like that. What happened?" Shepard agreed.

"Well, the Geth were after an indigenous lifeform called the Thorian, who was using spores to control the colony to do it's bidding. That mech handled...well, everything but the cleanup."

"Mech?" Garrus asked.

"Yeah, I assume it was a new Alliance model. It had a very advanced VI, though."

Shepard's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"How advanced are we talking?"

"It used slang and profanity, some of it outdated. It was capable of receiving complex verbal commands, but was highly independent."

"Did it make jokes?" Shepard asked, putting things together.

"Actually, yeah. Wait, I actually recorded it! Let me show it to you."

Lizbeth played the 'showdown' between Medulla and Jeong.

They watched Medulla's and Miranda's exchange.

"...That wasn't receiving commands. That was banter." Ashley realized.

"Impossible. There is no way an AI could be that advanced. Not even the Geth can read social cues that well." Tali argued.

"Actually, I'm with Gunny. It said it couldn't remember. Not that it was deleted from memory. Hell, if it was deleted from memory, it wouldn't have been able to make the reference in the first place. Whatever's in that thing, it's way too damn human." Kaidan reasoned.

"...Okay, shelving the AI Mech for now, what the hell's a thorian?" Shepard asked.

"Estimated to be over fifty thousand years old, the Thorian is a plant based lifeform that uses spores to manipulate the minds and bodies of animals to do it's bidding. It was capable of controlling as much as Eighty-five percent of the Test group (Zhu's Hope colony) within thirty days." Liara recited.

"...How the hell did you know that?" Shepard asked, incredulous.

"Googol search." Liara said, displaying the Wikipedia 2 article on her omnitool, so the others could see it.

"HEY, MIRANDA. SOMETHING'S UP WITH MY EXTRANET."

"What is it?"

"GOOGLE'S SPELLED WRONG."

"G-o-o-g-o-l. No, it's spelled right."

"FOR THE MATHEMATICAL TERM, NOT THE SEARCH ENGINE."

"...What are you...OH! Right. I keep forgetting you were born in the Twentieth Century. You see, Around 2025, we...sort of turned the Internet into an AI."

"...THIS IS GOING TO END HORRIBLY, ISN'T IT." I say, having flashbacks to the Matrix and Terminator films.

"Probably not as bad as you're thinking. You see, it was designed to discover and create new information, effectively allowing it to keep itself up to date. It did this by prioritizing what had the most number of views, downloads, and that sort of thing. By the time it was all said and done, it fried it's servers with all of the viruses and pornography that it generated."

"WE...TURNED OUR GREATEST INFORMATION NETWORK INTO AN AI, THEN ACCIDENTALLY MURDERED IT THROUGH SHEER DEPRAVITY?"

"...Yes."

"...HUMANS ARE AWESOME."

"Fortunately, most of the data was backed up, the only exceptions being the victims of the Media Purge."

"I FEEL I'M GOING TO REGRET ASKING, BUT…"

"The Internet AI saw what forms of media were panned, and, thinking it was 'helping', it deleted them, and all information on them, from every computer with internet access. Considering that physical copies were disposed of in 2020, in favor of digital forms such as 'Netflix' and 'Steam', as they were apparently called, that was...all of them. Examples of media destroyed were things such as most licensed games, 'Mass Effect' and anything made by Uwe Boll."

"...MASS EFFECT? I KNOW I PLAYED THAT ONE, BUT I CAN'T REMEMBER MUCH IN THE WAY OF DETAILS. I DO REMEMBER THAT IT WAS UNIVERSALLY REGARDED AS AMAZING, THOUGH. WHY WOULD THE AI THINK WE HATED IT? I MEAN, THERE WAS THE 'MASS EFFECT 3 ENDING BACKLASH' BUT… NEVERMIND, ANSWERED MY OWN QUESTION. DAMN, I FEEL AS IF I SHOULD REMEMBER THIS."

"Relax, it's not like it's critical to the safety of the galaxy. And besides, from the report I received on your state… it's a miracle you are even capable of functioning, with all of the degradation. A little bit of memory loss is a small thing in comparison."

"...YEAH, YOU'RE RIGHT."

We sat in silence for about a minute.

"...SO, WHAT, AFTER THE INTERNET CRASHED, WE MADE A NEW ONE, BUT WE CHANGED GOOGLE TO GOOGOL?"

"The company folded, due to being internet-based. Googol was made to fill the void, and was named as an homage, but not enough of one to be a copyright violation."

"...MAKES SENSE."

We sat in silence for another minute.

"...HEY, MIRANDA…"

"I swear, if you are going to continue asking me about ancient history that I only know due to the fact I studied specifically to answer any questions you had, I'm going to tear my hair out. And before you ask, just because I studied it specifically for you to ask me does not make it any less irritating when you to actually ask me. At least in one sitting."

"NO, NOTHING LIKE THAT. I WAS JUST WONDERING, DO I QUALIFY TO HAVE ONE OF THOSE HANDICAP PARKING STICKERS, CONSIDERING I'VE HAD MY EVERYTHING AMPUTATED?"

Miranda groaned.

AN:Don't worry, I will explain Mass Effect and, well, Mass Effect being able to exist in the same timeline. It's going to be a while though. Like, ME3 later on.