I don't own Star Trek.


Computerised War-Games.

When he had found out the Enterprise was hosting the M-5 computer tests, Spock had been both fascinated and concerned at the same time; as a scientist, it was his job to test the unknown, and during his tenure in Starfleet against Sarek's explicit commands he had witnessed things most Vulcans at the Science Academy had never witnessed; the human half of his nature was inwardly delighted about that in a spiteful way, especially after the cruel comments thrown his way concerning his mother.

While he believed the M-5 would have provided the ship with greater efficiency, Spock was not as pleased by it as Dr McCoy had believed; he might have a proficiency with computers and he might enjoy challenging himself to chess games with them, but there was a huge difference between utilising them in that way, and giving them overall command and control of a starship. Spock had been a Starfleet officer on the Enterprise for two decades, and while he might find humans to be illogical and irrational, he had to admit despite all of the problems he had with them, Spock preferred the ship being run by organic beings. If Daystrom had plans of constructing a computer-driven starship without any kind of organic control, then Spock would find it fascinating to see it being put into practice, and he had heard rumours recently in scientific circles that were what was going to happen, although it would likely not happen now, not until there had been stringent safeguards put into place to prevent such a ship from killing people.

It was a pity as well; the M-5 Multitronic computer had been highly sophisticated since it essentially copied the Human neural network, but it was flawed as were its predecessors.

M-5 had been programmed to survive and its self-preservation instincts had surfaced when it had destroyed the Woden, a robot-ship in itself but infinitely inferior, and it had been a sign of things to come. Spock had needed to work with his friends in uncoupling the M-5, but it had resulted in the needless death of an innocent crewman, and it had cleverly rerouted the command functions through new data lines, and for a computer designed to function on logic, it cunningly sent false signals through the old lines to fool the Enterprise crew.

It was lucky the discovery Daystrom had used his own memory engrams as a template for the basis of the M-5 computer, otherwise, Jim would never have been able to talk the M-5 into destroying itself when the captain had told the computer what it had been doing, and it had destroyed itself.

But it was not over yet.

Under the M-5's control, the Enterprise had crippled two starships and killed several hundred fellow Starfleet officers; there was going to be an inquiry and it would bring a lot of things into the present, and it was unlikely Daystrom would be able to implement his dreams of mechanising the fleet.

As for himself, Spock was grateful for that because he preferred the fleet the way it was. Yes, it was illogical at times, but the fact was Spock knew he did not want to be governed by machines any more than the rest of the crew; to him, a computer was a valuable tool, and without them you could not control a starship, survey space and make discoveries and store information for your own disposal. You cannot be controlled by them.

When the M-5 had been programmed to perform those tests for the exploration surveys, Spock had found the choice for landing parties to be completely logical in a certain way; the M-5 was not being cruel to anyone, it was merely obeying its programming and making the best recommendations for the landing party for those best suited for the expedition.

During the war games, Spock had not been surprised the M-5 had taken control of the ship and used its weapons to their full capacity, and he knew logically Starfleet would be putting in safeguards to ensure something like this never happened again.