Binary Uplift

by Locutus


Episode 10

"Ascension and Decay" (Working Title)

(Episode 3 in the plotline "Shelby's Ark")

"Well, if we needed any proof that this crisis is serious, now we have it," West joked halfheartedly. He was referring to the fact that he had the privilege to be riding in an AD-M glider, for the second time within three days. And this time he was even piloting it, since Derring, who was riding with him, had no pilot license.

At the glider's side a second vehicle of identical design but with different institute insignia was dashing along. They were en route to the CASE outpost base in Los Angeles, and their active and interlinked autodrives mostly relieved the pilots of the need to operate the crafts. Derring still found it a little unnerving though that his pilot was sitting comfortably leaned back in his seat instead of having his hands on the controls.

Since West's last glider flight, his priorities had somewhat changed. Finding the cause for the plant decay had become secondary, he pondered, as the former skyline of Los Angeles came into view. Among the actual buildings several huge heaps of trash were stretching heavenwards, assembled and stacked by the ever-busy horde of WALL-E robots and waiting to be processed in the transducer plants. Their invention really had been a blessing for everyone, West thought. No more poisonous exhaust, but raw materials almost free of charge.

A warning chime sounded. As West and Derring looked out of their windows, they could see the reason even without checking the AD-M's computer screens. A considerable sandstorm was brewing up and quickly getting closer from the opposite direction.

"Oh great," West sighed. "As usual, those things come when we least need them." He operated a few controls and tapped a button on the headset he was wearing. "Glider A-1 to A-2, I suppose you also received the sandstorm warning? According to computer calculations the storm is not going to hit the CASE base, but it will cross our path to it. I suggest we increase our speed to get through before we get hit."

A few seconds later, the confirmation from Mendez and Landry in the other glider came in, and West gave his autodrive computer the necessary instructions. The two crafts accelerated swiftly but without any noticeable effect on their passengers, and the drive's display indicated an E.T.A. of 10 minutes to the CASE base.


The little insect was scuttling over the ground, following the strange machine from a distance. He did not understand why he was doing so, but his instinct told him that the machine was quite versed in finding things that were of considerable nutritious value to him.

As the machine stopped and scooped an amount of the various items that were lying all around into its belly, the insect knew that it was time. He sped up the pace of his six legs to catch up with it, and reached it just as it picked up the cube that had tumbled out of its belly. Unnoticed, he scrambled up the back of the noisy apparatus. Wondering why it was always spitting out the things again that it had eaten, he was waiting to be carried upwards onto the huge tower of filthy objects. On its top, the insect had found out, he had for some reason the best chances of finding something to eat.

A little while later the insect was devouring a sweet creamy substance he indeed had found. The machine was setting down the new cube and arranging it neatly among the ones that were already in place, as a strange bleeping noise emanated from it. Suddenly the machine became distinctly nervous. It looked around, wheeled back and forth, until it spotted the distant cloud of a sandstorm that seemingly was approaching. Realizing that it was not a good idea to be surprised by a sandstorm up here on this tower, and hoping that the machine knew what to do, the insect darted over to it and settled, once more unnoticed, down on its cube-shaped body.

As the robot turned towards the descent and started its hurried way down, the insect looked around and noticed that the sandstorm was quickly closing in. From that point on, it was a matter of mere seconds.

Although the storm did not hit them directly, it passed by close enough to cause two of the nearby trash towers to collapse. Since they merely consisted of loosely stacked trash cubes, their stability was nowhere up to par to withstand a storm. Cubes of garbage were sent flying all around, and several of them hit the tower that the machine was frantically trying to get down from.

The ground started shaking beneath them, and hearing the panicked bleeps and chatters from the apparatus, the insect instinctively tried to find a place to hide. He scrambled around the cube-shaped body and finally found the little gap where its arms were connected to the body. The insect slipped in, just in time as the ground gave way.

The tower partly collapsed, its cubes started sliding, from top downwards, into the adjacent streets. Squealing, the robot was caught in the sliding trash and was swept along with it. The little insect was tossed around violently inside the trash chamber, but thanks to his sturdy carapace he overcame the wild ride mostly unscathed.

Then the slide came to a halt, and with it the robot and its passenger. A little disoriented, the insect scuttled out of the machine's innards the same way he had gotten in, finding it half-buried under the garbage. Its arms and triangular legs were whirring madly, and it uttered trains of confused chattering.

After having waited for a while, the insect realized that the robot probably was unable to free itself from its trap, and having no idea what to do about it, he decided to move along and explore some other place for possible food sources.


A few hours later, just after nightfall, two figures were exiting a hovercar under cover of darkness. At first glance, given the glittering silvery suits they were wearing, they could well be taken for astronauts or for actors playing some strange alien visitors.

Their thermosuits were actually meant to keep a person's body temperature up in a cold environment. They were, among other uses, employed on polar expeditions, but the temperatures at the Shelbington Central Farm were not exactly arctic. The two persons of course had a different use for the thermosuits in mind, in this case to fool the security system at the perimeter fence.

Since a farm was not considered a primary target for incursions, security measures were rather marginal. They consisted of motion detector cameras that were posted along the fence - using visual light during daytime and infrared during nighttime. It would be easy for the two persons to circumvent detection with their heat-absorbing thermosuits, although their interiors of course quickly turned into a sauna.

"Gosh, I hate these suits during summer. Why must warm days and secret stories always coincide," Trevis mumbled.

"Well Harry, you know, no pain, no gain," Kim chuckled. "Come on, as soon as we're past the fence we can take the things off."

They shouldered their equipment backpacks and started applying the wire cutters that Kim had acquired to the fence. Luckily the lack of noteworthy security measures also extended to the fence's sturdiness, so it did not take them long to cut a hole into it through which they were able to crawl.

"Hey Kim, have you ever wondered what our 'fence hole-to-story' ratio might be?"

"I suppose I don't really wanna know, nor does my lawyer."

Behind the fence, they crossed an extended grassy area. The faint moonlight was barely enough to see their hands before their eyes, but they did not dare to turn on their searchlights yet, as not to trigger the perimeter motion sensors. As they reached a service road, they decided that they were definitely out of the cameras' vicinity, so they took off the thermosuits and stuffed them into their backpacks. Then they looked around.

They had entered the farm near the border of some large strawberry fields. A little distance away they could spot several utility sheds behind which an extended area of wheat fields started.

"Well, what do you think where we should start looking? Got any idea yet what might be the big secret here?" Trevis asked.

"I haven't the foggiest. I suppose we go exploring a bit for now. Those sheds over there look like a good start."

They started on their way to the sheds, walking a little off the road through the strawberry fields. From time to time they heard a little rustling sound out of the darkness on the ground. Probably some small animal, they figured, feeling a little spooked.


"So, Carl, what have you been working on recently?"

Outside the Los Angeles CASE outpost, McCrow and his colleague Carl Landry were taking a little stroll to cool off after the agitating conference that had just ended. Both of them were still a little edgy, yet cautiously optimistic when looking ahead to continuing their project whose importance had significantly increased during the last few hours.

They were both enjoying the fresh air of the night that imparted a certain sense of relief. "Oh, I've been mostly busy with the construction of this new model of robotic spaceship autopilot. Did you hear about it? Actually it was supposed to go into testing in like a year, but with the changed plans we just discussed, you can imagine that its schedule has been seriously bumped up as well. What about you? I mean, besides that vegetation probe that has to be your all-time favorite project."

McCrow smiled a little. "Most of the tech recently developed indeed went into that probe. For example the high-precision EM field projector our engineering guys created. It's used to bind the probe's limbs to her torso, without the need for actual physical connections. It's way more flexible in terms of appendage translation and rotation than any substantial joint could be."

"Wow, that sounds really nifty. Would like to see that for myself!"

Noticing the soft humming noise that came from the direction of the base entrance, McCrow chuckled a bit. "Well, seems you're getting lucky. Speaking of the devil, here she comes. Hey EVE, over here!" he exclaimed and motioned to the white probe that came hovering out of the base.

"Hell, you're right. Looks like her head and arms are just floating there. Really nifty!"

"Dave McCrow," the probe warbled, greeting the roboticist.

"EVE, this is Carl Landry, a colleague and friend of mine."

The probe turned towards the second roboticist and her eye display flickered momentarily, indicating that she was processing a new piece of information. "Carl Landry. Hello." she trilled.

Landry showed a wide grin. "Hi there, EVE probe." Stepping closer to her, he looked at McCrow and asked, "Can I try it?" Then he took one of the probe's fins into his hands. He tugged, pulled and twisted it, to check if it was living up to the flexibility McCrow had promised.

The probe's eyes took on a half-surprised, half-displeasing expression and she uttered a little nervous warble. Noticing her uneasiness, McCrow softly said to her, "Don't worry, little white dot. Carl is a good friend, he won't hurt you."

Absorbed in his examination of the fin's mobility, Landry had not noticed the probe's reaction. Instead he was checking how many times he could rotate the fin around its axis and whether the binding field would eventually fail like a mechanical joint might do.

"You can twist the fin as often as you like, EM fields are very patient," McCrow grinned.


Kimberly and Trevis were trudging through a barley field as Kim suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. She made a motion to Trevis and quickly crouched down, her colleague immediately following suit. "Watch out, service bot! Shh!" she warned as a hovering brown robot came into view. Luckily it was just a gardening machine assigned to water the plants, and it was not equipped with sensors that might detect intruders.

The robot hovered just a few meters above the ground and crossed the spot where the two makeshift housebreakers where hiding. It poured some water from its tank, soaking them, then it hovered away with a soft electrical humming. "Oh great.." Trevis grumbled in irritation and checked if his camera was still operative.

"We got lucky this time," Kim said as they stood up from the grain and continued their way. "It could have been a security patrol. Anyway I think the robot came from the shed we're headed to, so maybe we'll really find something interesting there."

As they reached their destination, they sneaked in through a little backdoor, and found themselves in a small and unlit deposit for inactive robots. The silent brownish machines, obviously of the same model they had just met in the field, were arranged on mechanical rails that had few empty places. Probably the spots where those robots that were currently working outside were usually housed.

"Do you see anything strange here?" Kim asked her partner while they were taking a good look around.

Trevis shook his head. "Nope, nothing besides a distinct creepy feeling when looking at those robots there."

"C'mon, they're just gardener models. Okay then, let's move on."

While approaching the next building they hoped to have better luck, since it looked rather like a residential house than a utility shed, and it some of its windows were even still lit.

"Careful now, don't cause any commotion they might hear," Kim whispered as they continued towards the house. She was glad for the pitch black clothes they were wearing. Frankie had told her that their fabric had certain light-absorbing properties that would make them even more suitable for their... undertaking.

The hovercar that was parked on the building's front side confirmed that it was inhabited. Kim and Trevis approached a side with unlit windows and sneaked along its wall, carefully crouching when they passed by the first floor windows. Peeking around the corner to the backside, they noticed a balcony on the second floor on which two persons, probably the farmers they were supposed to have had that interview with, were having a spirited conversation.

Kim motioned for her partner to lay low and activate his audio recorder. With a smirk she pondered that they were going to get their interview after all, even if it was going to be a little one-sided.


"Really remarkable," Landry said as he released the fin, letting it smoothly float back into its neutral position.

"Yeah, that's just one of the many amazing things she can do. For example, look at this! EVE, please show my friend how your scanner works, willya? Like, uhm, just check out if he is a plant."

The probe smirked and nodded, then she activated her scanning beam and let it sweep over Landry, who jumped a little in surprise.

"Whoa whoa! Hey, this beam tickles! What is it?"

"Don't worry, Carl, it's completely harmless, and surely won't tickle you more than you tickled EVE's arm. The beam is the visual portion of a laser reflection feedback system for biochemical analysis. It scans the optical properties of the material it hits on an atomic level, giving the analysis core of the probe's neural network a pattern which she can match against her internal flora database.

"With her extensive knowledge about terrestrial vegetation she'd be a really good botanist or gardener, probably be a better one than any of the guys at the Agricultural Survey could ever be, but for now we need her for another purpose." Looking warmly at the probe, he added, "Well, maybe some day though..."

EVE looked back at him, with a slightly puzzled expression. She possessed a basic understanding of her inner workings, but what McCrow had just said was mostly incomprehensible to her. "Plants?" she warbled.

"Yeah EVE," the roboticist chuckled, "I told my friend that you're good at finding plants."

"I'm sure she is. Oh hey, how did you manage to get her eye simulation display so expressive?"

"Well, the display, which by the way also houses her video capturing device, has a number of preset emotional figures, but EVE's network can also control each screen pixel individually in brightness. That way the internal emotional state of her A.I. is transcribed into visual eye patterns, most of which she has learned from observing people around her and noting what facial expressions go along with which feelings and moods. For example the squinting of her eyes when she tries to focus a distant object. That's definitely not a preset figure," McCrow grinned.

"Pree-sat fi-guh?" came another curious warbling from the white probe, prompting McCrow to reassure her that she had pretty eyes and was not to worry about their tech talk.

The probe nodded and decided to leave the conversation to look for something else to do. She hovered off, showing some playful maneuvers on her way.

"Whoa," Landry commented at the sight. "I see her aerial mobility quite lives up to what the gliders had me expect."

As they watched EVE fly around and then approach a number of stacked trash cubes nearby, a thought came to Landry. "Hm, now that you mentioned how her network controls the eye display, I noticed a slightly, well, bothered expression when I tested her fin? I suppose that was simulated reaction?"

"It sure was a reaction to your tugging at her fin, yeah, but not really simulated as such."

"What d'you mean?" Landry looked a little concerned. "I hope I didn't damage her or something?"

"Nono, don't worry. Her frame is very sturdy, but in the course of her training, she's learned more than just finding plants. Her network has a great capacity of picking up behaviors of people around her, and being handled by a stranger made her feel uncomfortable." Noticing Landry's look of slight confusion, he added, "Just like you don't go and twist the arm of a person you just met, even if you know it won't hurt them."


"...I suppose you're right," one of the farmers on the balcony said, "I've never seen the Agricultural Survey cause such an upheaval. Have you seen the leader of the guys that went into the cornfield? It was Thomas West, he's the head botanist in Derrings's team. No man, this can't be just a 'scheduled checkup' as they want us to believe."

"Yeah, and whatever it is, it seems we're not the only ones involved," answered the second farmer. "I've talked with Daniel from the other sector today. He said that the Survey visited him too, and he also heard other farmers report the same. Seems that there's something going on with the farms of the whole state. You know, I've been watching West and his group going in and out of the cornfield the whole day. I wonder what the hell they're up to...."

Kim was wondering as well. She could barely restrain her eagerness to go and unveil this secret.

"Where's Francis?", asked the first farmer, just as a humming noise set in from the direction of the house's front side. Kim and Trevis were momentarily startled as the other farmer replied, "He said he'd be right back. I think he went to park the car for the night."

"Uh-oh, that sounds bad," Trevis whispered. Kim looked up and saw what he meant. The garage in which the car was probably going to be parked was right on the backside of the house, about five meters from their hiding spot.

"Yeah, always the same with him, he'll never learn how to properly start a hovercar", laughed the first farmer, while the two intruders found themselves trapped. They could not go further around the house or the two farmers would have spotted them. They were also cut off from the way back; intensifying light from the car indicated that it was coming up right behind them. The humming of the vehicle's gravitic engine became louder and louder, while its headlights were quickly casting away the shadows Kim and Trevis were hiding in. There was only one way they could go.

"Into the cornfield, quick!", Kim hissed. They left their position and ran across an open grassy area, hoping to reach the corn plants' shelter in time. They disappeared between their leaves just a second before the car turned around the corner and bathed their former hiding spot in bright light.

One of the farmers on the balcony turned his head in the direction of the plants that quavered and rustled slightly from the journalists' intrusion. "Hey, did you hear that?" he asked, startled.

"What? The poor car suffering from Francis' inability to drive?", the other farmer said with a giggle.

"No, I think I heard something in the field... Oh well, it's probably just one of those damn rodents. Come on, let's get some more of those meatballs before Francis comes back and eats them all."


The little white probe was curiously examining a little stack of trash cubes that obviously had been produced by the trash compactor robots. Not that this was the first time that she had seen them, but this time something specific had caught her attention. She had noticed a motion among the garbage, something small was crawling under the load of scrap metal and remainders of domestic waste. As she picked up a little cube, she heard a rustling noise close by. Setting down the cube again, she followed the noise. When it stopped right beneath another heap of trash, she lightly nudged the lowest cube, causing the heap to trundle a bit. Suddenly a little creature that was swiftly moving on six tiny legs came scuttling out from under the garbage.

"Ooh!" the white robot warbled curiously and hovered after the little thing. It was way smaller than those robotic rats she had met in the abandoned warehouse, and it did not seem as if it could do her any harm. She on the other hand seemed to frighten the creature, as it was quickly scuttling away from her. So she stayed at a distance and waited until the animal stopped and turned around.

Very slowly as not to scare it off, she hovered closer. The creature stayed in place; seemingly it was equipped with a similar curiosity as the robot, and that curiosity had mostly won over its scare. As the robot was about to reach the animal, she very slowly extended her fin, split her fingers apart and settled them down on the ground in front of the little thing.

For a few seconds, there was no reaction. And the robot surely had not anticipated the reaction that then followed. The creature suddenly scrambled up onto the white plastic of the probe's fingers, quickly continued up her arm, and before she could do anything, it was scuttling around in her bowl-shaped neck cavity.


"Hell, that was close...", Kim commented as they huddled down in the relative safety of the cornfield.

They quickly looked back through the row of corn plants. Their leaves were thin enough here so they could see how the hovercar was taken into the garage. As its gravitic drive, together with its headlights, was shut off, the farm fell dark and completely silent again. Also the two farmers had disappeared from the balcony.

"Okay now... one of the farmers mentioned botanists having been up to something in a cornfield. Let's hope he was talking about this field here, otherwise it's even worse than the needle in the haystack. I think we should split up, so we can cover more ground."

Trevis looked further into the field. The moonlight was rather dim, and what little of it passed through the leaves cast various eerie shapes and patterns onto the surrounding vegetation and ground. A slight wind moved the tops of the stalks, causing brief rustling sounds that bounced off from every direction. Creepy scuttling of insects that were hurrying over the ground added to the ghostly ambience. Their sight was limited to about three rows of plants, behind which lay complete darkness.

"Uuhm, I kinda dislike the idea of going in there, especially alone", Trevis said, a glimpse of anxiety in his voice.

"Ah, come on, it's just a field of plants! If there's anything dangerous here, then it's your imagination. Anything else the service bots would sure have spotted, don't you think?"

"Okay okay, you're right. Still, why must secret stories also always conincide with darkness and spooky places?"

Kim chuckled a bit, took out her datapad and showed it to Trevis. "Alright. According to the aerial map we should be about here, at the perimeter between those two sectors. I'll search the right part of this field, and you'll do the left, ok? Let's follow the plant rows and use GPS positioning to keep track of where we are. It's sure easy to get lost in here," she added, looking around the rows of plants. "Let's try to cover as much of the field as we can, and signal me if you find anything unusual."

Trevis nodded, and they moved off in opposite directions.

Kim walked through the darkness with steady steps. Once her journalistic ambition had awakened, she did not even fear having to search a whole field of corn plants at night to shed a light on whatever plot might be behind all this. She looked left and right, concentrated as not to miss anything. Behind her, the corn leaves closed slowly, until she disappeared from Trevis' sight.

The camera operator felt a little queasy as he proceeded. Just a field of plants, he kept repeating in his mind as he continuously checked his position on the datapad map. The little light that reached over from the farmhouse was extinguished as the layer of leaves became thicker and thicker behind him.

He had covered a few hundred meters and found nothing so far when he heard footsteps coming from somewhere near him.

"Kim? Is that you?"

"Shh! Of course it's me!" came her hissed reply. "Don't be so chicken! Haven't you done any excursions into the wilderness at school?"

"Yes, I have, and hated them!"

"Well, here's your chance to start loving them, once we come home with a Pulitzer prize on tape!"


"Now wait, she's just a robot, isn't she? You tell me she has actual feelings?" Landry looked at McCrow, quite incredulously.

"Indeed, there's no other way for me to describe it. Her reactions are so elaborate, they go way past what one would expect from an A.I. that's just simulating emotions. For example, just a minute ago, when she left us, I didn't instruct her to do so, right? Nah, she just lost interest in our techtalk and went to look for something more interesting to do."

"You're kidding, right? She actively decided to leave us, to find something more interesting to do? Isn't she a robot with a preset purpose, even if a quite advanced one? I find it a little hard to believe that she..."

He was interrupted by a sudden outburst of giggling warbles coming from the direction where probe had hovered off to. The two roboticists turned to look at what had happened, and saw a probe robot that was frantically wriggling and shaking her fins. It was barely discernible from the distance, but it seemed that a small something was scuttling around inside her neck. A small something that was obviously tickling her like hell.

Landry looked at McCrow and found a wide grin on his face. "I rest my case," the roboticist said.


Kim was starting to feel a little disappointed. About half an hour after they had started their search she still had found nothing. That is, nothing besides ever-repeating corn stalks and leaves. It was becoming slightly irritating, and Kim pondered that, after this excursion was over, she would not be eating corn for quite a while.

Suddenly a little chime-like sound coming from somewhere nearby caught her attention.

She stopped and listened. Was that noise real, or was she starting to imagine hearing things? The journalist cautiously left the row she was walking on, trying to get closer to the alleged source of the sound. It was no easy task, since she had only heard the general direction, and inside this thick field of corn plants, without useful points of reference, she could easily have missed it.

She marked her current location on the map and started searching the surroundings. There, another chime could be heard, even closer than before, this time followed by a continuous whirring noise. At first she thought it was a service bot, but it appeared to be coming from the ground, and that would be an odd location for a farming robot. She stood still for a moment and moved her head left and right, trying to locate the origin of that low mechanical sound, and started walking slowly in its direction.

Then she saw it.


"Dave, this is just amazing! I don't even dare imagine how complex her network has become or where this might go in the future. I don't think any other robotics project has achieved something like this so far," Landry said after McCrow had added a few more explanations about how the probe's directive core had become more of an advisor and a list of guidelines for her A.I. than a strict set of rules or programming code. "You're very lucky to be working on this project... with her."

"Yeah, so they keep telling me. I sure tend to agree. I'm lucky, and thankful too. And I'm somewhat worried about the day when I'll have to let her go, when she goes on her missions."

"Well, that day will come, but she'll surely always return to you, even if it's just for more tickles."

McCrow chuckled a bit and nodded. He sure hoped that Landry was right. "Alright then, it's getting late. What about a midnight snack at the cafeteria? They got the fat-and-greasy kind and also the green-and-healthy, whatever you prefer."

"Well, I can tell what your white lady would prefer. I think I'll try that too," he replied as they turned around and headed for the base entrance.


Trevis' datapad was vibrating, signaling an incoming call. He confirmed the pad's query to set up an encrypted channel, and a few seconds later he was listening to Kim's trembling voice. "Kim, what's going on? Where are you?"

"Hell, you won't believe what I found. I'll activate my GPS locator. Track the signal and come over here, quickly!"

The connection was interrupted, and a flashing spot on the map that popped up was marking Kim's location. Whoa, she really must have found something huge, Trevis pondered. He could not even remember the last time when his partner had been so agitated.

Following the direction indicator on his device, Trevis crossed several rows of plants, bending their stalks aside as he went. As the spot on the map that indicated his position approached the one showing his destination, he could hear the whirring noise that had alerted Kim before. He looked around to determine the direction it was coming from. "Kim?" he hissed in a low voice.

"I'm over here!" came Kim's reply. Trevis advanced, crossing two more rows of corn stalks, then he found Kim standing on a little clearing, observing a scene that was simply unreal.

In the center of the clearing there were a few corn plants. Their leaves were lying around them on the ground, partially burned at the point where they had been attached to their stalks. The stalks themselves were no longer straight and green. They were deformed, twisted, and had reddish stripes running all over them that remotely resembled the pattern of human veins. Their cobs, the only thing left that was still attached to the stalks, were inflated and dripped a brownish viscous substance. The whole plant seemed to beg for mercy, to have that terrible treatment stopped.

Near the bases of the corn stalks there was a yellow case lying on the ground, decorated by a BnL logo and the insignia of the Agricultural Survey. That case was the origin of the whirring noises and beeping sounds. Inside it there was a display screen; besides the screen was a small transparent tank, half-filled with a reddish liquid, a symbol indicating biochemical hazard printed on it. A thin tube led from the case into the ground, and the red liquid was flowing through that tube.

Kim and Trevis slowly approached the case, the ground squishing beneath their steps. They looked at the display to read the status messages printed on it.

Experimental agent #14 being administered. Progress: 67%. Biochemical response: 0.00.

The two looked at each other in shock.

"Trevis, get out your camera and start rolling. Whatever it is the Survey is doing here, it can't be good. Someone will have to answer some definitely inconvenient questions."


The white probe was curiously regarding the little insect that was still crawling around on her, though now on her fin and no longer inside her neck cavity. It tickled much less this way, for which she was truly thankful.

Such a little creature, she pondered, and yet so active, so full of life.

A thought occurred to her. There was no part of her set of directives that told her to concern herself with little insects that crawled around on the ground, or in this case, over her shell. Was this a part of her training? Of her development? Was she supposed to learn about what it means to be dealing with living creatures? Yes, it might help her with her mission, valuing the meaning of life. Only if you valued life you could understand how important it was to preserve it. Or in this case to extend it, since she was needed in the humans' attempt to bring life to other worlds.

But what about herself? She was a robot, a machine, though from time to time she could feel a little notion stir deep inside of her that there might be more to herself than the sum of her neuronal interconnections and directive core code lines. She liked that feeling, and though she could not explain why, she was convinced that it was a good thing and should be furthered. And that not only because it would be beneficial for her mission.

The insect on her arm moved around nervously, emitting some tiny chirping noises. The probe supposed that it had seen everything there was to see about her fin and wanted to go explore something else. A little smile flickered over her eyes as she lowered her arm to the ground. She could quite relate to that urge to explore. She was looking forward very much to the day when she herself would be exploring the first foreign planet. A whole world of new things to see and new adventures to experience.

As the insect jumped off her arm and scuttled away, she followed it with her eyes until it disappeared under a heap of garbage. Wishing the little creature good luck, she turned around to follow McCrow and his friend into the base.


Author's Notes

Many thanks to Unreal.2K7 for contributing some chapters, for ideas, brainstorming and proofreading!

A note to the jury of eve94's fanfic contest: don't be surprised that the story ends right in the middle of a plotline. It's work-in-progress, and the whole story is projected for around 150.000 words. According to eve94 it is okay to enter what I have so far into the contest. I hope you liked it. :)