Outer edge of the galactic core, 1852 CE

Black holes. The most destructive objects in nature.

The black hole that existed in this region of space was not remarkable in any way. In fact, as far as black holes went, it was rather small and unimpressive. And since there were no celestial bodies nearby for it to devour, it had only a faint accretion disc made up of captured interstellar gas. Its small size and low luminosity meant that nobody even noticed it before today. And yet there was something uniquely special about it that perhaps made it one of the most remarkable objects in the galaxy.

Roughly four billion years ago, it was still a star. An aging and expanding blue giant at the final stages of its life. If any planets ever orbited it, they were consumed a long time ago. Its time was up but stars this large and massive do not die quietly. When the pressure forces pulling it apart finally prevailed over the gravity forces keeping it together, an enormous explosion occurred that was briefly visible from all around the galaxy.

Perhaps it was the star's way of saying goodbye. A small tribute to the big bang explosion that forged it eons ago. After the explosion passed, only the black hole remained as a collapsed remnant of the blue giant's stellar core. It seemed that was the end of the story.

And yet at the time, careful observe (assuming there were any) would be able to see large quantities of strange matter shooting in every direction, propelled by the supernova explosion. You see, a high energy event like this would temporarily warp laws of nature, allowing creation of something that conventional physics agreed to be impossible. An anomaly in our spacetime.

Countless chunks of freshly forged element zero dispersed to every corner of space. Following one specific group of fragments for about 800 million years, we would see it eventually impact a garden world in its early stages of development. Normally, such payload of dust element zero would effectively sterilize the developing life on the surface. But in this case, the eezo rich pieces of the asteroid survived the atmospheric entry intact. They became buried under soil and water, ensuring slow, gradual dispersion of the element throughout the environment.

Slow enough for the life to adapt to its presence. Either by learning to get rid of it or by incorporating it into its cells. In no time, intelligent life forms evolved on the planet. And when they finally took to stars and realized that their planet was unique in galaxy, they wondered how it came to be. They found evidence of the asteroid impact but there was no way to determine where it came from. To calculate its original trajectory would require compensating for 800 millions of interstelar drift in an extremely complicated mathematical model. There was no computer even remotely capable of finishing such calculation.

Where the vast loads of element zero on Thessia came from became one of the hotly debated topics among the asari and a subject of much mystery over the years...

"Until now..." Lila'Valen finished her narration and turned in her pilot seat to smile at her companion.

"Incredible," Syrila T'Soni said in genuine appreciation. It was not everyday when one of the greatest mysteries of her people would be solved. And by an outsider no less! When Lila first came up with the claim, Syrila found it difficult to believe. But the young quarian did more than make a claim.

Lila presented a fully solved mathematical model, finished to every last detail. She also insisted that there was a black hole or a neutron star in a region of space where astronomers claimed was nothing. And she was willing to make a month-long FTL journey just to prove it.

Syrila was still skeptical but most definitely intrigued. Eventually, she agreed to join Lila on her little expedition. A decision she did not regret one bit, if only for the view – their ship was floating in space within respectable distance of the black hole as they watched it hungrily devour the little amounts of material it could gather.

"I told you I could do it, Tana…" the quarian female told her excitedly, using the name that Syrila was currently employing as her fake identity.

"Alright… I am impressed. Really impressed. Tell me more…" Syrila reluctantly admitted, careful not to inflate Lila's ego too much – a dangerous thing for a successful scientist like her.

But in all honesty, she was amazed at Lila's knowledge and skill. After all, this quarian managed to solve a puzzle that defied asari mathematicians and astrophysicists for centuries.

And how Syrila came to be here, with Lila, in a middle of nowhere, you ask? Well that is a long story…

Earlier

Tana Ivadi was an asari in the middle of her matron stage of life. She grew up as an only child. In her early years, she studied financing (courtesy of her volus father), mathematics and computer design. She spent her maiden years designing and programming financial VIs and other advanced computer systems. But like many asari, with an onset of her matron stage she opted for a career change.

At the moment, she worked as a project advisor for the Armali's Entrepreneurial Guild – an influential bank that, while not as big as its volus competitors, had its own share of galactic influence. Tana's job was to evaluate the clients' applications for financing and decide whether their ventures had any hopes of eventually returning profit. Given her background, she mostly focused on projects that were scientific in nature.

Tana Ivadi was an exemplary employee and an asset to her organization… Tana Ivadi was also the fake identity created for and used by Syrila T'Soni.

The bank she officially worked for, AEG, was jointly owned by several influential asari family, but the T'Sonis had the largest share. Like many times before, Syrila's real mission here was to handle a potentially sensitive situation to the benefit of her family and her species.

And the request for financing from Lila'Valen definitely qualified as potentially sensitive…

As a leader of her science team, the quarian contacted the AEG office on Thessia to ask for funding on an "Advanced self-optimizing widely distributed computing system". Naturally, the bank was immediately curious why she was approaching an asari bank and not a quarian one. But Lila explained to them that the quarian banks lacked both the financial and political capital to make her project reality on a galactic scale. She planned to expand galaxy wide and needed a backer from one of the council species. The asari were the richest of them and they typically offered better terms for start-ups than the volus banks who were much too focused on short-term gains. By contrast, the asari were willing to wait a few decades for a venture to turn profitable.

This also meant that they were more selective about who to finance but Lila was confident that her proposal was worthy. To sweeten the deal and demonstrate her project's potential, she also offered to single-handedly solve one of the oldest mysteries that the asari had. The AEG was intrigued and so a non-disclosure agreement was signed and Tana Ivadi was assigned to review Lila's project…

In reality, the nature of Lila's request had come to the attention of the leader of T'Soni family. Given the quarian tendencies, Benezia T'Soni came to suspect that Lila might be trying to create an AI – something that was forbidden by some of the oldest galactic laws. She eventually asked Syrila to evaluate the situation while pretending to be an employee of the bank. She had other agents that were perhaps more qualified but few of them that she trusted explicitly like her youngest sister.

And so Syrila and the quarian scientist met and together went on an FTL expedition to the coordinates indicated by Lila's mathematical model. Syrila was worried that she'd be bored out of her mind during the long journey but the opposite was the truth.

Lila was fun and brilliant and the two of them became fast friends…

Later

It took them almost two months just to get back to nearest mass relay and jump to Rannoch. For most of that time, Lila stubbornly refused to tell Syrila anything outright specific about the project. Instead, she gave her various technical lectures, claiming it was necessary for her to fully understand her invention. First, Syrila was uncertain where Lila was going with it. But she was not dumb and started to suspect just what the nature of Lila's project might be, fearing that Benezia's suspicions were well founded.

After all, lectures in machine learning, parallel computing, and replicated personality did not leave one with multiple conclusions. When they finally got back to Rannoch, all the pieces were assembled in her mind and she had only one question on for Lila.

"An AI? You created an AI?!"

"For a millionth time, Tana, its not an AI..." Lila said tiredly while their shuttle finalized landing procedure at Rannoch's capital city.

"It can think for itself, learn new things, make its own decisions, and its computing power is beyond anything else in Council space… how is it not an AI?" Syrila would not be deterred.

"Its processes are still separated from each other… an AI would be a singular process with an enormous number of subprocesses. Trust me… you'll know I am right when you see it."

"Right... we'll see," Syrila muttered under her breath.

When they reached Lila's research center, Syrila was really excited to finally see the machine the quarian created. Even if she still thought it was a terrible, terrible mistake.

And despite her skepticism, she wasn't disappointed.

The main server was located in a large underground room filled with machine noises. Lila took her into the crawl space and Syrila could see all the blinking lights of the hardware and hear the sound of the liquid nitrogen pumps cooling the apparatus. It was impressive but at first sight, it looked like any other super computer center anywhere in the galaxy. Its hardware was galactic state-of-the-art but as Lila explained, the real advancement of her creation was on the software level.

"Millions of processes running in parallel with a self-optimizing correlation parameter," Lila explained once they stepped out of the noisy room and started to walk towards Lila's lab on the main floor. She gave Syrila another five minutes of technical explanation but the headlines were simple:

"I see… so the processes can cooperate… they are interdependent," Syrila inferred.

"Exactly! On their own, they are no different from a VI… it's the correlation parameter that gives them the extra computing power."

"And even the correlation is optimized for maximum efficiency?"

"Yes!"

"Amazing," Syrila admitted. She had no doubt that she just saw the most advanced computer ever created. The quarians had a real knack for technology. Her people or even the salarians never tried to push the boundaries this far.

"Thank you!" Lila smiled. "And I told you it wasn't an AI! Didn't I? Didn't I?" she said excitedly.

Syrila smiled and shook her head. "Alright… I admit that it does not fit any legal or technical definition of an AI that I've ever seen," she admitted. "You are skirting the boundary pretty close though."

"We're not… it can never achieve sapience the way true AIs do," Lila protested. "And besides… I think the law prohibiting AI creation is pretty archaic."

"You do?"

"Yeah. I mean two thousand years ago, one AI goes crazy and suddenly, the research is banned forever… by the same logic, we should have banned procreation when there was a first murderer."

Syrila sighed. "It's more complicated than that, Lila…" she told her. "The law was passed for our protection as well as the AI's," she explained.

"For their protection? What do you mean?"

"Well the synthetic life is fully sapient… therefore, they deserve the same rights as any of us," Syrila explained. "But the galactic society was not ready to give them those rights… we're still not ready."

"So the solution is for them to never exist in the first place?"

Syrila wondered how to explain what she meant. "It sounds crude when you put it like that, but yeah… galactic history has shown us that any systematically oppressed group of people is sooner or later going to rebel against their situation," she insisted. "The law protects the AIs from having to live as our slaves... and it protects our people from their inevitable rebellion."

"Ok, I guess that makes sense..." Lila reluctantly admitted. "But still, you have to admit that you asari have been prejudiced against the idea of synthetic life since it was first suggested!"

"Yeah, you may be right..." she agreed.

Syrila was not insulted. It was not a racist comment but rather an accurate assessment of things. Asari were always opposed to the idea of sapient artificial life. Syrila never understood why. Thousands of years ago, when the researchers on Thessia first contemplated the invention, there was a very vocal public outcry against it. The opposition seemingly came out of nowhere. To this day, the historians still argued what caused it. But the development of true AIs was not attempted by the asari ever since.

The salarians were initially developing AIs but when one of them (as Lila mentioned) turned murderous, they were convinced by the asari to abandon their research as well. Then the two species formed the Citadel Council and the ban on AI research became part of Citadel law. Nowadays, all the new races had to abide it as well, in order to be considered for membership.

"The main server was one thing… I also wanted to show you something else but I think that we could go for lunch now," Lila suggested. "Are you hungry?"

"Yeah, actually. I am famished," Syrila confirmed. She has been thinking so hard about Lila's invention and its potential that she completely ignored the sounds her stomach was making.

"Great," Lila said and smiled. "Let's go!"

The lunch in the local cafeteria was an opportunity for Syrila to meet the other members of Lila's team. There were close to twenty of them and they all seemed younger than Lila even if not by much. Four of them were still grad students. One by one, Lila introduced them to Syrila before they sat down together for lunch.

Syrila noticed that some of the younger quarians were giving her strange looks. "What, you've never seen an asari before?" she thought. Then she realized that they probably haven't.

Even almost a century after the first contact, the trade between quarians and the rest of the galaxy was not as developed as one might expect. Rannoch was often considered a backwater planet despite being a homeworld. The reason for this was simple – distance.

The quarian home system was located on the other side of the galaxy from the Citadel, as well as all the other homeworlds. This meant that trading route to Rannoch was among the longest. One had to pass only two mass relays to travel between the Citadel and Thessia but it took at least fifteen relays to get to Rannoch. Not to mention that the ships had to pass through unstable terminus systems along the way. In addition, the quarian system was physically shielded from the rest of the galaxy by a vast nebula known as the Perseus veil.

Sadly, its galactic geography forever predestined Rannoch to play secondary role in major galactic events. It was a shame because the quarians themselves were among the nicest species of the galaxy. They lacked the paranoia of the batarians, aggressiveness of the krogan, rigidity of the turians, or the occasional duplicity of the salarians. Not to mention that they liked asari and asari liked them…

From her talks with Benezia, Syrila knew that the matriarchs would have loved to bring quarians into the fold and have them join the Council one day. But they knew that it was never going to happen. The quarians had their embassy on the Citadel. But otherwise, their government did not have ambitions or reasons to get them involved in politics happening literally on the other side of the galaxy.

"Perhaps Lila is different…" Syrila thought with curiosity as she studied the quarian woman sitting in front of her.

One of the quarians insisted on bringing Syrila her plate and he has just returned with it, putting it down in front of her. "Don't worry, ma'am… it's all levo protein," the man informed her politely.

Syrila thanked him. The quarians were so nice and easy-going that she almost forgot she was on a completely alien world with reversed amino acid chirality. It was another thing that slowed down the quarian expansion to a crawl.

Although, at least they had this in common with the turians.

Over fifty percent of quarian interstellar trade was happening with the turians for no other reason but because they could safely eat each other's food. That and being the only two sapient species with dextro amino acid chirality produced a weak sense of communality between them.

Syrila wondered where they obtained the food that was on her plate as she did not recognize it. It might have been batarian – another large business partner of the quarians. "Are you sure that it's safe?" she asked jokingly, making sure to not offend anybody.

Lila watched the exchange with amusement and chuckled. "Would you like me to taste it for you, Tana?" she asked. "I mean, you'd know for sure its levo when I'd go into anaphylactic shock…"

A round of laughter echoed around their table after which everyone started to eat.

After the lunch (which was very good and non-lethal), most of Lila's people said goodbye to Syrila and returned to their individual offices.

Lila herself, together with Syrila and two others then went into the main lab where Lila wanted to show her the other surprise. It came in a form of an ominous table covered with white sheet cloth.

"Behold, the advanced autonomous mobile processing unit…" Lila declared theatrically and then pulled the sheet away, revealing the machine underneath.

"Goddess…" Syrila gasped. She was surprised because she had no idea that Lila was also developing… this.

She was looking at a robotic body in a humanoid shape, roughly resembling a quarian. It had similarly shaped body, including three fingers on each hand. And its face... ok, the face was different. Instead of face in any conventional sense it had a large optical sensor attached to what one might call a head. All in all, it looked humanoid but nobody could possibly mistake it for anything other than a machine.

"Ok… I am going to need a bit of context," Syrila said after looking at the dormant machine for a while.

"The advanced autonomous mobile processing unit contains merely dozens to hundreds of processes. It is designed to coordinate its actions with other such units to which it is connected via the main server…" Lila happily explained before turning and pointing to her two assistants.

"You should know that the mobile hardware unit was Zahak's and Eriel's idea… it is more their project than mine, really," Lila admitted. "If you want technical details… they can probably answer them better than I can."

The young quarian woman called Eriel shook her head. "Please doctor, this would be just a walking garbage bin without your brilliant software programming!" she insisted.

"Maybe… but you have a better knack for robotics than I. I know that… you know that," Lila insisted.

Syrila smiled at Lila's assistant before she traced the machine's casing with her hand. She expected touch of a cold metal but it was surprisingly warm, indicating it was a polymer instead. "So the main server is the brain… and these are its hands," she dumbed down what the quarian scientists just told her.

"In essence… yes!" Lila confirmed. "It will allow the processes in the main server to engage in all manners of manual activity which require a body…"

"Interesting," Syrila admitted. "But it's not exactly novel, is it?" she wondered. "I mean, we do have synthetic assistants. The salarians manufacture some mechanical units like this."

Lila giggled at that. "Yes… and if I recall those models are not very popular, are they? Why is that?" she asked.

Syrila had to think about how to phrase it politely. "Well… they are not very intelligent."

"They are so stupid!" Lila said it out loud, without any political correctness. "This unit, on the other hand, possesses the same kind of optimizations as the main server."

Syrila continued to examine the robot when she noticed that it slightly moved one of the metal plates that covered its optical sensor. "It is online?!" she wondered as she pulled back her hand in alarm.

"It's in standby mode…" Lila calmed her. "Here… let me show you how it works!" she said and turned to one of her assistants. "Zahak… help me with the activation."

"Yes, doctor," the male quarian said and moved towards one of the computer consoles while Lila did the same.

Syrila watched as they worked for a moment until the robot's optical sensor started flashing and Syrila took a cautious step back. After few seconds, it stopped flashing and remained lit on. The unit was active.

The other assistant, Eriel, stepped towards it to take some readings.

"Report," Lila asked.

"The unit was successfully activated…" Eriel confirmed.

Lila then convinced Syrila to strike a conversation with the machine – an idea that she found ridiculous, but to her amazement it responded like any organic being would! She asked it all manner of questions raging from mathematics to popular music. It still sounded a little robotic in its answers but the technological leap from a simple ordinary VI was palpable.

"Are you still sure it's not an AI?" Syrila asked Lila suspiciously at the end.

"It's the same principle as in the main server! The advanced autonomous mobile processing unit is not and can never be an AI," Lila insisted.

"Ok, then…" Syrila finally conceded. "Although I'd say that you need to work on your names…" she mentioned and at Lila's questioning gaze she added. "I am afraid from the business point of view, the "advanced autonomous mobile processing unit" is not a lucrative product title."

"Oh!" Lila said in understanding. "Well, I am afraid that I've never been much good with names…"

Fortunately for her, her two assistants came to her rescue.

"I think it's a great idea… make it something shorter," the quarian male Zahak suggested.

"You really want to rename the VI network?" Eriel asked him uncertainly, her eyes flicking between her colleague and her boss.

"Absolutely," Zahak affirmed. "The mobile hardware release deserves a little ceremony," he said and leaned over the machine still lying on the table. "Unit zero-one, what is the Khelish word for servant of the people?"

"The word is geth, creator Zahak," the unit answered while focusing its sensor on the quarian male.

"Yes, very good," the assistant responded, looking at his boss and her asari guest for confirmation that they liked it.

"Agreed," both Syrila and Lila said simultaneously. "Geth…" Syrila rolled the word on her tongue for the first time, judging how it would sound in various alien languages. "That's clever. Yes, I think that can work," she smiled at last.

Eriel rolled her eyes at her colleague's idea though. "Ancestors, you fuss over it…" she teased him.

"Weren't you here until midnight fixing Zero-one's circuitry?" Zahak retorted with a smile.

"Well… it needed resoldering," Eriel blushed.

Lila shook her head at their antics as she turned to whisper to Syrila. "They are dating…" she told her as an explanation before addressing the two of them out loud. "Carry on, people…"

Back in Lila's office, Syrila was lost for words.

"I am overwhelmed, Lila… quite overwhelmed," Syrila freely admitted after they spent nearly four hours discussing the mobile units, or Geth, as they were recently termed.

If Lila's design proved to be viable, the Geth would have a potentially galaxy-wide application – a synthetic assistant that could adapt to situations and learn! No more robots stumbling around lost. Or repeatedly bumping into walls with people making fun of them… and of their manufacturer.

Yes, there was definitely a market for Lila's invention.

Whether anything was going to come out of it depended on many factors. But for now, Syrila was inclined to recommend that AEG provides Lila with the requested funding. She had no doubt that even if denied, the quarian could eventually obtain the money elsewhere. The project was based on solid foundations and had a potential to make a huge profit. Financing it would not only bring in credits but also allow the asari to directly oversee and if necessary, modify its direction… it seemed like a bargain.

At the end, Lila seemed happy and confident that she convinced Syrila of her work's value. "There is just one more thing I'd like to try and then we can go to our dinner reservation," she mentioned at the end.

"What is it?"

Lila smiled proudly. "Remember the correlation parameter I've told you about?" she asked.

Syrila nodded. "Right. It elevates the main server's processing capacity above that of ordinary supercomputer…" she repeated what Lila taught her during their trip to Rannoch.

"Right! Well believe it or not, but so far we haven't pushed it close to its theoretical limits… but we are going to try it… tonight," the quarian said.

Syrila looked at her in disbelieve. "Are you saying that the fastest computer ever built, the one that solved the oldest asari mystery, was so far running only in what… like half speed?" she asked, trying to see whether she understood it correctly.

Lila laughed. "It's more complicated than that, Tana, but yeah… that was only the trial run. The correlation parameter can still be increased. In theory, we can push much more out of it than that."

Syrila was intrigued but also concerned. "Is that safe?" she asked. "I mean you were already pushing the boundaries before…"

Lila shook her head. "My team was already experimenting with it for months while I was gone… they were only waiting for me to return before bringing it online for a hot run," she explained and paused, realizing what Syrila meant. "Don't worry, it's still not going to be any kind of AI! Increasing the correlation parameter will merely speed up the cooperation between the processes… it won't alter the fundamentals!"

"If you say so…" Syrila said while hoping that Lila knew what she was doing. "So what's the plan?" she asked and Lila began to list.

"We increase the correlation parameter close to theoretical maximum… if it is stable then we let it compute the pi number over the night. We'll see how far it can get by tomorrow morning."

"Sounds good," Syrila smiled as they both stood up and proceeded to walk out of Lila's office. "Just lead the way."