Transcription of a conversation between Geth Platform 092934212 and Edward Torres. 02/27/2181

Geth Platform: [Stuttering]

Edward: Stop info dumping my information feed Two-Twelve. Wait, what am I looking at. In English.

Geth Platform: Intercepted transmission from Geth Separatist unit originating from Therum. The transmission contains a scan of unknown technology. Upon reviewing the footage of the device attached to the transmission. This Unit has concluded that it is possible to use the scan to reverse engineer the technology, modify it, and implement it into additional Geth platforms.

Edward: All nice and dandy, but what does this technology do?

Geth Platform: To put into "English," it would allow artificial manipulation of ambient dark energy, mimicking those labeled as biotics.

Edward: Air quotes, really...? I really wish I didn't upload a sarcasm program into you. But, artificial biotics? Did the Separatists get a hold of this transmission as well?

Geth Platform: At the time, we didn't know the implications of the transmission, and did not attempt to stop it. It took this unit 10.4 seconds to theoretically reverse engineer the schematics from the scan. Given the limited manufacturing power of the Geth Separatists, this unit expects them to put biotic Geth into combat within two weeks.

Edward: Send this data to Michael, and then prepare to send your findings into the main Geth servers, it shouldn't take long to form a consensus on what the next step should be.

Geth Platform: Data sent to human unit known as Michael, and Geth are already forming a consensus on the matter.

I took a deep breath as I tugged on the collar of my coat, and waited in the AMMO docking station for the shuttle that was supposed to arrive for me. I began wondering how I was supposed to catch up the the Normandy now. From what I've read, it was a joint project between the Turians government and the Human Alliance, also funded by AMMO under the condition that if successful, the stealth technology would be usable by AMMO's own ships in the near future. It was clear that Michael seemed to know which pots would have honey in them, and when the bear was coming home, but why would AMMO need the ability to create stealth ships when it's manufacturing was limited to small arms and medical supplies. In fact, AMMO was more of a manufacturing than a medical company in recent years, according to the publicly available fiscal reports on the company.

Before I could think any deeper on the subject though, the hanger opened, and in came a red shuttle, a kodiak class if I remember correctly. It truly is amazing how much you can learn about a time given a few weeks and unlimited access to the internet. I walk down the stairs to the landing floor. The shuttle opened and out came a quarian wearing a white environmental suit with blue highlights on the shoulders, hood, and linings. He was also what appeared to be some form of pteruges that was opened at the front, and ended in two points just at the top of his ankles. As I looked at his feet, I noticed something odd about them. Instead of the usual split two toed boots that Quarians like Tali wore, his boot was shaped more like a human's. I continued to examine him, when I noticed he had five fingers instead of three.

"Since when do Quarians have five fingers?" I ask him as I held my hand out, "Kyon Salgrens, pleasure to meet you."

He took my hand and shook it lightly, "Edward Torres-Ochoa," he responded, his voice having a the same interference that Tali had when she spoke, but he had a very evident spanish accent, particularly Castilian Spanish.

I close my eyes as I think, Torres-Ochoa sounded familiar to me, from reading up on the history of this time. I opened my eyes as I realized who this was, "Aren't you the ambassador to the Quarians from the systems Alliance?"

"I see you've read your history, Michael told me you were one of us, I'm surprised you'd even know that," he told me as he let go of my hand, and turned back to the shuttle and stepped in, "Come on, your flight can't stay hidden forever. By the way, my friends call me E.T."

I follow suit as I vaguely remember Tali and Michael mentioning someone named E.T. but couldn't remember what it was they were talking about at the time "How are going to catch up to the Normandy, last I checked, all AMMO ships were very limited in top speed."

I could feel the mass effect field activate as the shuttle door closed and sealed, and in a moment we were going into the air. Unlike Joker's and Grant's flying, it was very clunky, and jerked around a little. It forced me to grab onto one of the hand rails above my head, in order to keep from falling down. Deciding to see just who the pilot was, I walked over to the cockpit and looked in the pilot's seat. To my surprise there was no pilot in the cockpit, and it was flying itself. It must be a complex piloting VI, which explained why it was a bit clunky on the take off.

"I don't work with AMMO," E.T. answered as the shuttle started taking us out, and suddenly became a lot smoother of a ride, "I work mainly with the Quarians. That being said, neither will be the ones getting us to Noveria."

"Then who is?" I ask, wondering just how we were going to get from point A to point B.

"The Geth," he answered as the FTL drive spun up and shot out of the Citadel's control area.

Within seconds we were at far enough away that a ship wouldn't be in sensor range of the Citadel, and I turned to look back at the Ambassador, "What do you mean 'the Geth?' I thought we were technically at war with them?"

"The Geth have split into two factions," the center console answered me, "The Separatist faction follows Saren and Nazara, the machine god, while we of the Loyalist Faction, follow the plan set forth by Ochoa-Ambassador, Arias-Adviser, and the creators."

"The shuttle is talking to me."

I take a deep breath and sit down on one of the seats. There are split factions in the Geth, and from my understanding of them, they usually try to reach consensus if they were a completely logical machine race. Split factions might indicate something more than just artificial intelligence created through networking, if that was true, just how much have the Geth changed themselves in the time between their uprising and now. I feel the shuttle come down on a hard surface, and imagine that we must be inside of a ship.

E.T. hands me an oxygen mask, "Keep that on, the atmosphere is very thin, and isn't breathable to humans, to minimize the amount of mass on the ship. They don't have life support or gravity generators. Once the ME field on the shuttle dies you'll have to push off of things or use mag boots to get around."

Just as he finished, and I put the mask on my face, the generator turned off and I started floating. I feel just like a real astronaut now, and I grab onto the hand rail as the doors open. Just outside there is a white Geth trooper, the light in its head is off at first, but turns on as the console in the center of the cockpit turns off. It must have been piloting the shuttle.

I press a button on my Omni-tool and activate my newly acquired mag boots. As my feet are planted firmly on the ground, I can feel my hair float upwards without any gravity to hold it down. Next, I pressed the button on the side of my head, and a visor popped up, and connected to the oxygen mask, allowing for the rest of my exposed skin to breath. I felt the automatic sealing mechanisms in the light ceramic body armor activate, keeping all of the fresh air inside of it, and the soft hum of carbon scrubbers to recycle my oxygen supplies.

I looked at the hull of the shuttle, which reflected my image. The visor created by the Omni-fabricators on the sides of my head was glowing blue, and the light refracted through the clear oxygen mask, giving it a blue hue as well. I was wearing the green leather jacket I started the day with, but it was thicker than before; due to the fact that I had them put in a kinetic barrier harness into the jacket. On the back of the jacket, was a flexible metal plate, magnetized so I could put large weapons on my back. Under the jacket, I was wearing completely black ceramic body armor that covered me from neck to toes. It was made for maneuverability, so there were about 27 different movement servos to make sure I could turn my body in any direction that I needed.

"Welcome aboard Salgrens-Traveler," the Geth unit said as it turned its head from Edward, who it had been talking to while I admired my knew look, "The Geth would like to thank you for your inadvertent upgrade to our military capabilities."

"How did this happen?" I ask as I snap my head towards the Geth platform.

The Geth opens its own omni-tool, and shows me schematics to a device that looks eerily similar to the bio-reg I made back on the Normandy, except with what looked like a limiter to prevent an overload like with what happened on Therum. I examined the schematics and concluded that it was based on my design, with added Geth technology to probably make it better. I want to say that I'm proud of it, but the fact that someone else was able to replicate it so easily is a little disturbing.

"A Separatist Geth platform on Therum was able to scan the device, and transmit the scan back to the Separatist collective. The Geth were able to intercept the transmission, and but were unable to keep it from arriving. The Geth Collective came to the consensus that the Separatists would be able to reverse engineer the technology from the scan, and implement it into future variations of their military force."

I nodded as the platform in front of me explained the situation involving my design, and rubbed my chin with my hand, "How would this change the Geth stratagies?" I ask, mostly for clarification, as I can already see what they could do with it.

"A geth platform, with a miniature Element Zero core, would be able to manipulate dark energy in the same way that a biotic could, to a certain degree," E.T. answered as he looked over at a larger geth platform that was painted blue, "I call them Geth Dark Stars."

"Why do you call them that?"

"Because the Geth suck at naming things, it's all just one's and zero's for them," he sighed as he pulled out a data pad from out of nowhere, "212, show Kyon around while I take care of some business between the Alliance and Quarians."

"Affirmative, Ochoa-Ambassador," 212 replied just before E.T. walked away, "Slagrens-Traveler, please follow me."

212 lead me through the ship and explained where I could go and where I couldn't, as well as what each individual part of the ship did. I listened enough to get the gist of how the Geth built their ships. It was completely functional, nothing about the Geth's designs was artistic. There weren't any windows, barely any lights on, probably because the Geth have flashlights stuck to their head. According to 212, this ship was actually quite a bit larger than the usual Geth cruisers, due to the fact that except for the communications system, it was built to be completely cut off from the Geth networks. When I asked why that was, it explained that the ship was where all surveillance on organics was done, as well as experimental warfare projects and other experiments were conducted, such as the bio-reg project they got from me. On the last part of the tour, it took me down to the testing facilities. There I saw the first few biotic Geth, due to the technology I had created.

"It's odd that I was the one who created the basis for this technology," I tell 212 as I watch through a view screen.

Because the dark energy was being influenced by the Geth's alterations to my designs, it came out with a slightly grayish tint, quite fitting for the Geth actually. The Dark Star platforms were painted onyx, probably how E.T. came up with the name for them, and their chests, had the light blue tint of an element zero reactor core, similar to the one on the Normandy.

"This unit does not understand what is odd about it," 212 commented after about four seconds of silence, no doubt he was trying to figure out what I meant by odd.

"How come the Geth didn't try to do this previously?"

"We did try, but ultimately failed. We were lacking the ability to regulate the amount of dark energy being generated by the core. With Salgrens-Traveler's design, instead of completely limiting the ability, we were able to cycle it more efficiently, reducing heat production, and minimizing core overload probability. The design for the 'Dark Star' platform, is the largest infantry platform in production, weighing 30 mass units more than a Geth 'Juggernaut.'"

"You know something I noticed," I turn to look at 212, "Why don't the Geth have any windows on their ships?"

212 tilted its head and blinked the light in its head, "Windows are structural weak points."

I nodded as I saw the sense in that, then realized that because they rely solely on digital sensors, the Normandy was completely invisible to Geth ships. That would be useful to know in the future. I looked around the lab, and noticed cartridges that looked similar to the heat sinks in the guns, "What are these?" I pick one up and start scanning it with the Omni-tool. Now that I thought about it, whenever we fought the Geth previously, these littered the ground.

"A thermal clip, it allows for near continuous fire from our weaponry without the need to wait for our guns to cool down," 212 showed me one of the pulse rifles on the wall with a space in the side for a thermal clip, "After a thermal clip cools down, it is usable again, but because of the nature of them, it takes between three and four standard hours to cool."

"So you can't just have two of them and switch them out, can you use your guns without the thermal clip inside?" I took the pulse rifle and examined it, it wasn't ergonomically friendly, like most guns were made to be by gun manufacturers, so it was a bit awkward to hold. I managed to find a comfortable way of holding the gun, but I could tell that it was designed specifically for the Geth physiology, if you could call it that.

"No, that is a safety mechanize, in order to prevent the gun from melting itself."

"I see, if you don't mind, could you share the schematics for these weapons, I want to see if I could make this ergonomically friendly," I ask after I collapse the gun and put it down.

212 is actually silent for a good thirty seconds as his light is blinking on and off, evidently this question was causing a real debate in the Geth consensus, "We have concluded that giving Salgrens-Traveler the schematics is acceptable, under the agreement that you do not use the schematics to make a profit."

"I didn't plan on it," I answer honestly as I put the weapon back where 212 pulled it from, "As much as the inner businessman is screaming at me to do it, these weapons, if mass produced would cause havoc when criminals get them."

"This unit noticed that you didn't say 'if.'"

"Power ending up in the wrong hands is inevitable," I respond, "How long will it take for us to get to get to Noveria?"

"Approximately one week, four days, and seven hours. Five days earlier than the Normandy, going at its top recorded speed."

"Well, that means I have one week to redesign this pulse rifle."

My omni-tool beeped as the geth forwarded the design into my database. My first thought about it is that it could use a more angular design, to make it easier to hold for humans, then maybe I could work in a rotating barrel to decrease the accuracy drop from the barrels heating up. Next I would incorporate a dual heat sink design, so that it can use thermal clips and vent when needed. Automatic ejector based on a certain temperature. As I start redesigning it in my head, I realize that the type of 'rounds,' used in these guns are basically grains of sand. I wondered what would happen if I modified the gun to take slugs like an old style shotgun, then maybe I wouldn't need the rotating barrel. The size of the round, aerodynamically crafted, in cohesion with the speed that it's fired at, would punch through anything, even a ship haul, but first I would need to disable the kinetic barriers. Maybe coat the rounds in a material that generates an electromagnetic pulse in fraction of a second intervals. I started doing the calculations on the amount of recoil there would be in this weapon, and realized that it would shatter a normal human's arm. I think to myself that I'm pretty lucky to have a bionic arm now, but I'll need to reinforce it to keep it from shattering after multiple shots fired. I'd need some time to think about the design for this gun.

"So, where am I going to sleep while I'm aboard?" I ask as I turn to 212, who's been watching as I pull the design for the pulse rifle apart, and start adding new concepts onto the gun.

"The shuttle, it is the only thing capable of generating an atmosphere on this ship, there are three weeks worth of nutrient paste made for L-DNA based species," 212 answered, then walked over to the Geth standby stations and basically went to sleep. I made my way back to the shuttle, and laid down in the cockpit. This was going to be a long week and a half with basically two people to talk to.