Chapter 3: The Discovery
"Shara, the atmosphere inside this area has stabilized. Your armor reports that it is breathable, with levels that are approximately identical to terran standards. How odd."
"How is that odd, Valkyr? Many species of aliens have identical planetary atmospheres."
"Shara, look at the monitor."
Looking down, Shara noticed that the text had been quite busy. The screen itself had come up with many graphs, and there was a scrollbar on the left of the screen, made apparent by the up and down arrows on it. Idly staring at the screen, Shara began to move the entries in the data log.
"Valkyr, if I give you a moment, can you manage to translate the text on the screen?" Shara asked, while looking back up to glance down both ways in the hallway. She didn't want to be caught flat-footed if something was going to go wrong.
"There's no need for that, Shara. Look."
A small hologram started to appear from the console. It took a moment to fully appear, and it was red-toned and fuzzy, but it was there. It appeared to be… Human?
The small, androgynous humanoid figure started to speak in a language that neither Shara nor Valkyr could understand. It rambled on for about a minute, and then seemed to wait for input from Shara. Somehow seeing that neither of them moved, the hologram moved to an impatient stance, glaring at them from the console, but it seemed that neither of them could communicate with the other. This led to a standoff. Shara could tell that the hologram, which she began to expect to be an AI of some sort, was becoming increasingly agitated, but she could only shrug.
At this, the AI-gram began saying things rapidly, but they didn't seem to be from the same language. One word would be fluid, the next would grate on the ears like industrial noise, the next would have a lilting tone to it, rising at the end. Shara thought that the onslaught would never end, until after about 5 minutes of Shara standing next to the console she heard something familiar.
"Hello."
Shara snapped back to attention, finally recognizing something from the console.
The AI sighed, finally managing to get some sort of response from the menacing looking suit of armor in front of itself. It had been so long, without seeing one of the members of its creators' race. About 15 thousand years, in fact.
Shara, on the other hand, was shook. She had not been expecting to hear something familiar from this AI and had expected to leave without conversing with it to learn where she was. But now, there was an endless amount of information available to her about this place, and she intended to figure out what was going on. That, of course, was assuming that it had said that word out of her own language, and not just another one. However, the possibility of that, Shara assumed, would be at best, tiny.
"Hello?" Shara asked, hoping that this was her ticket to ride.
"Ohmythere'sacreatorherehowcanIhelpit'sbeensolongsince-"
"Slow down." Shara said, gesturing with a flat hand. It hurt to move it in such a way. The anesthetics must have worn off by now.
"I'm sorry. It's just that…it's been so long. I have something to report!" The AI said, exuberantly. The hologram it was projecting smiled.
"What… No, no, slow down first. Where are we?"
"You are in hallway B-5 of the Western Wing."
"No, I mean, what is this place?"
"This is Dothekena Research Center. We're one of the most secret research bases of the Makoni Empire."
"I would assume that means you have some sort of security here then, right?"
"Of course. If this had been a normal day during the operation of this base, you would be dead by now."
A small four-legged drone, about wolf-sized compared to the humanoid figure of the hologram, appeared. It appeared to have quite a nasty weapon system attached to the back. After about a minute, it dissipated.
"However, this is not a normal day, and this base is close to becoming as non-functional as possible. As such, considering you are most likely the last person this base will ever hold and I am the base's last hope to deliver on its mission, you get special treatment."
"What does that entail?" Shara asked.
"Complete access to the base."
"What's the condition, then? What's the catch? What's in it for you?"
"You take my core with you when you leave."
Shara looked at the small hologram intently before agreeing.
"Consider it done."
"Well in that case, please proceed down the hallway northbound, take a left, and…"
Following the AI's instructions, Shara proceeded deeper into the base, the lighting from her armor allowing her to see and allowing her to hear the instructions given to her by the base AI. It was strange, however. AIs were not meant to have a sense of self-preservation, nor the ability to command. So how was it that this mysterious being came into existence? Was it by a feat of programming, or by some other manner? Shara's back shivered as she thought of the tales she had heard from her battalion as ghost stories. Was this a creation of man's hubris? Before they had managed to create a true AI through billions of lines of code, they had tried using neural scans. When that hadn't worked, a scientist, down on his luck and out of money had received millions of plathins in funding from some sort of shadowy organization. He kidnapped people off the streets, and afterwards he took their cerebral matter and combined it, breaking the brains neural connections to themselves and making it into some sort of primitive neural soup. Afterwards; he had managed to program the mass of neurons and supporting solution to become the first Bio-AI. The stellar nation he had been a part of, discovering this, spent no less than 2 trillion plathins to find him, but they never did.
Several theories as to his escape had come to light at the time, and several times the authorities on the matter had said they were close to a breakthrough, but they never managed to catch him. The loss of face on the matter had no end. Fortunately, the news eventually died down on the matter, but as far as Shara knew, he was never found, alive or dead.
Terrifying.
Valkyr chimed in now, breaking Shara's steady limping pace with surprise.
"Do you think the AI here is a bit… Strange?"
"More than you would imagine. As soon as we get somewhere reliably comfortable, I mean to ask it more questions. But until then, I have to follow it to wherever it wants us to go. I mean, it's not like it's tried to kill us, and it did say something about having something to report. If my guess is right, it'll show us what it wants and then let us leave with it, or it'll kill us. Either way, I don't have a way off this rock without it. One way's just a quicker death than waiting for me to starve to death or run out of oxygen."
"Shara, you really do unsettle me sometimes. Earlier, I was the one complaining about our chances of survival. You've picked up on the whole 'Prophesizing our inevitable doom' thing rather quickly."
"Well…" Shara wandered off. She didn't really get her hopes up on leaving.
"WE'RE HERE!"
Looking up from her drudge-like walk, she investigated quite a different scene from the rest of her walk. Inside the room that had been about an hour's limp, coming through a smaller offshoot of the main hall, then another smaller room that had been about the size of a 3-vehicle stall, there appeared to be a rather… mechanical looking chair. The metal parts on the back lead to a minimally padded top seat. To Shara, however, it looked a throne.
The AI began projecting its hologram into the room, full size this time. At about 5 foot 8 inches, it was basically average, although now the projectors allowed for more detail than before, so Shara could see the slight curves and other features that made the AI's projection to look more feminine than before.
The figure in front of her looked expectantly at Shara, waiting for her to sit down. Shara doffed her helmet, popping the seals that held it on, and took a big gulp of "fresh" air. It smelt… dingy. The air left a taste in the throat of being recycled thousands of times, each time making it a little more synthetic. It reminded Shara of being cooped up in a boarding shuttle for too long. Shara sat down soon after this, letting her helmet drop to the floor. She shook out her medium length black hair as she sat down.
"Okay, so I'm sure you have a lot of questions about this whole situation, but first we need to deal with some of your internal injuries. This may take a while…." The AI monologued on, as Shara slipped into a deep sleep.
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Fliprofl
Fliprofl Sorry about the late release! I'm going to try and make it up to you all this week with two chapters Wednesday!
Please, if you enjoyed the chapter, leave a comment. It really helps me keep motivated on writing this!
Thank you all for reading!
Weekly Power Status
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