Sentient (7 page)

“Obviously it is much more involved than that, but I don’t believe you could fully understand it, not without years of schooling to explain the knowledge download.  Humans are just as intelligent as Alions on the scale; you just lack teaching, not smarts.

“Some of our systems use coils to collect energy from the many plasma streams circling the outside bulkheads of the ship.  Plasma streams generate strong magnetic fields.  The shields are one such system, where the plasma is just incompatible to what we want, but the magnetic field isn’t.  Our FTL drive runs that way as well.  Even the luminescent lighting of the floor and ceiling are just elements mixed with the metal that reacts with a magnetic field and produce the light.”

He grunted kind of following, but mostly not.

Stacey asked curiously, “Is there a reason the ship is saucer shaped?”

Aide replied, “
Yes, the magnetic fields need to be as uniform as possible in the ship.  The plasma running in millions of perfect circles ensure a stable and uniform magnetic field.  If the ship was shaped more square, the magnetic field would be… snarled at the corners.”

Aide giggled at her comparison, “
Although other shapes are possible, this one is the most efficient.  The fighters for example are smaller, so we make them tubes.  The equations and specs are tighter, but we can run the plasma in many small circles, like millions of springs embedded next to each other spiraling along the length.  If done correctly the irregularities cancel out.
”

Aide continued, “
There is a more mundane reason as well, in battle there are plasma turret ports in all directions, any side can be the front, and we can even spin to make it harder for the enemy to hit the shields in the same place over and over while constantly alternating turrets to allow cool down time.  But back to the original question Stacey asked, we will start recruiting tomorrow.  You should both try and get some sleep.
”

This still felt a little unreal to him, despite being in perfect health and aboard this amazing ship.  Having Stacey by his side didn’t exactly help and he knew he was becoming quite smitten.  She was extremely distracting and took up a lot of his thoughts, he knew he would have to buckle down over the next twelve days and learn the bridge systems.

It would be embarrassing if the Earth died because he couldn’t keep it in his pants for five minutes.

But right now it was time for bed.  He turned and couldn’t help but stare as Stacey stripped and slid under the covers completely naked.  Being in the military, then in a hospital he hadn’t slept that way in a long time, but strange to him or not he followed her lead.  By the time he was in bed his reaction was apparent.

Stacey smiled and kissed him, and it wasn’t a good night kiss, it was hot, hard, and promised pleasurable delights.  He realized sleep might take a little while longer as he felt her small soft fingers grip him as she slid on top…

“Come on Olivia darling, make love to the camera,” the photographer said with way too much energy.

Dr. Olivia Sands, PHD in physics did her best to make love to the camera.  It would have helped if it was a female photographer; she had no interest in men at all.  Not that it would have mattered in this photographer’s case anyway.  She imagined he was one of the other models and put on a flirty expression as she did her best.

She absolutely hated herself.

She had long wavy light blonde hair down the small of her back, deep clear blue eyes, and a face that brought to mind angels.  Her body however was still perfect despite being twenty six.  Her breasts were still firm and stood up proudly as if she was in her teens with her model perfect figure.  She didn’t have the largest breasts but they were more than prominent enough on her petite curvy body.

She had been drawing looks from men for as long as she could remember.  Even at fourteen she would catch not only the boys in her class but the older male teachers giving her a hungry look over.  Unfortunately, she’d always had her eyes on the other girls, none of which seemed to swing her way.

It had made high school hard.  On top of that, she had been valedictorian and the head of her class, even skipped a grade.  This seemed to set her apart even more from her peers, although it did help drive away the more shallow people in her class.  Oh, she’d had a couple of close friends, but despite her looks she was not very popular.  The cheerleaders had seen to that out of jealousy.

College was different; she had even found a steady girlfriend in her junior year.  Most of the times before that, it had been women just experimenting with same sex encounters, which was okay for them, but she usually wound up hurt in the end.  Unfortunately that relationship broke up over the summer before senior year, and she hadn’t had a serious relationship since.

Just a few friends, and she never had problems finding some other woman now to scratch that itch.  She knew she wanted more, but it was just impossible.  Whenever they found out how smart she was, and that she was modeling because no one would take her seriously, things just fell apart.  They say men hate their woman being smarter than them, but woman aren’t much better in that way.

Possibly worse even.

She could be in her field of course, if she was willing to sleep around with a few guys, but she wasn’t willing to do that.  Not only because guys did absolutely nothing for her libido, but because she shouldn’t have to.  It didn’t help that she was smarter than most of the men running labs that interviewed her, she could see it in their eyes when they realized it.  Every single time they shutdown at that realization.

She’d stopped even bothering to try.

“That’s it, wonderful session ladies!”

She sighed and rolled her eyes, more at herself than him.  Was being a model really any better?  Of course it was, but not by much.  She went in the change room and took off the bikini and threw on a tight skirt, loose blouse to try and downplay those assets.  She put on her shoes and tied her hair back in a pony tail.  It was hot outside and she wanted it off her neck.

She put on her glasses and looked in the mirror.  She couldn’t wear contacts because of allergies, and she hadn’t gotten the guts up to have some quack put a laser in her eyes.  Besides, she knew she looked really good in the glasses.  Kristy a woman she’d slept with for a couple of months last year was on this shoot, so she snuck out the back to avoid her and took the stairs down to the lobby.

She walked out into what felt like a sauna, Los Angeles was hot this time of year, and started toward a taxi.

“Dr. Sands?”

She frowned and turned, now what? 

“Yes?” she asked, trying not to sound annoyed, the guy had actually called her doctor after all.

She took him in; she supposed he would be handsome if she swung that way.  He was built but not bulky and had a raptor’s gaze in his hazel eyes.  He had short brown hair, a chiseled jaw, and looked a little stiff.  She thought he had to be military.

He asked, “Do you have a moment to talk, about a possible opportunity?”

She felt her anger rise, she remembered the last guy to offer her an ‘opportunity’ but she was brought up short by his bearing.  His eyes hadn’t left her face once, most guys usually even didn’t notice she had one.

“Alright, I have a little time,” she said softening up a bit.

He smiled and asked, “Coffee?”

She nodded and followed him to a café a block away.  She wondered what the hell she was doing, but really, outside of sex she’d do almost anything to get a job in her field.  She loved her chosen field of study; she just hated all the pigs that held the keys to good jobs.

Twenty minutes later she sat there confused, sipping at her coffee.

“You’re telling me it’s a top secret and extremely important, so advanced you can’t even give me a clue before I say yes?”

He nodded, “And once you say yes you can’t change your mind.  Well, I suppose you could change your mind, but you’d have to agree to never talk about what you saw, learned, and accomplished.”

She asked, “Is this for the military?”

He shook his head, “No, not exactly.  All I can promise you it’s so cutting edge you’ve never seen anything like it.”

She asked, “Why me?”

He froze for a second, which made her suspicious.  But then he was so bluntly honest she couldn’t doubt it.

“If you do this you’ll be sequestered for quite a long time, we chose you because you aren’t involved in any other projects, you live alone, and you’re brilliant.”

Oh god, she was going to say yes.  Was she really that desperate to go back to being a lab geek?  Yes, yes she was…

---------

Dr. Paula Rodriguez shook her head in disgust as she walked out of the meeting.  She was completely broke and had nowhere to go.  She had patents for a rail gun that actually worked, a system she’d worked on by herself since she’d gotten her doctorate a few years back.  She’d been trying to sell it to a few government contractors in order to get one built since she’d given up on getting a contract with the government itself, but so far no luck at all.

Well that wasn’t entirely true; a couple had offered her almost nothing if she would license it to them, for a measly two percent of the profits.  They also wouldn’t hire her on to supervise it.  It was quite obvious they would sandbag it until the patent ran out before any problems were miraculously worked out.

They all said the same thing, but what it came down to is no one wanted to let her in.  She knew what the problem was of course, she didn’t have a dick.  All she had was a good product, no slush fund for the politicians, no inroad to the good old boy’s club.  She was also in her early thirties and had worked hard all her life to get to this point, only to be blocked.  She had sacrificed so much, including finding a good man and a family.

She was from a very large family in Mexico and her mother had been bugging her for years to find a husband.  Past that though deep down she wanted the same thing, she’d loved her large family.  And at her age, the time for it was running out.  She thought she was still attractive with her flawless light dusky skin, big brown eyes, and dark brown flowing hair.  She was just five foot one but her personality was bigger than that.

More often than not though, that just got her in trouble, she wasn’t one to take shit from anyone, and she wondered for the hundredth time this month if she was wasting her time.  It didn’t matter that her weapon was more advanced than anything else out there; the government was just too corrupt to care.

She got on the bus to ride across town and sat in an empty row.

“Do you mind if I sit down?”

She looked up and frowned, “There are plenty of empty seats,” she said with a little attitude that usually chased men off.  Although she almost regretted her harsh words, this one was cute and hadn’t even tried to look down her shirt yet.

He replied, “I’m sorry, I’d like to talk to you about a possible job?”

She frowned and considered that for a moment.  It couldn’t hurt to listen she supposed, and the bus always bored her to tears.

“Take a seat…”

----------

Fucking salesmen trespassers, “Not interested, get off my land before I shoot your sorry ass!”

Dr. Nathaniel Atwell, or Nate to his friends who were all pretty much dead, was retired.  He also had a shotgun, the damn thing almost tore out of his hands when he gave that warning shot, he wasn’t a young man anymore at the age of seventy.

He’d been a player in his day, and eventually settled down with a wonderful woman for forty years.  His kids were grown and his wife had passed two years ago, he had no patience dealing with other people.  He couldn’t imagine what this kid wanted, though he had the bearing of a military man if he had to guess.  He himself was in the navy and had a hand in many of the system designs for nuclear subs.

All he was doing now really was waiting to die, and enjoying threatening to shoot people that got to close.  He hated people.  Or at least, he did now.

The guy shook his head, “Dr. Atwell, I’m not a salesman.  I’m here to ask for your help.  The world needs you.”

He snorted and yelled back, “What the hell for?  Buckshot in the ass?”

The guy answered, “I’m Kris, formerly Sgt. Kris Miller.  We need help with something you’re familiar with, but I can’t really go into details.  Suffice it to say it’s power distribution and enhancement.”

He thought for a second, why the hell would they want a seventy year old hermit for that?

Kris asked, “Can I come forward sir?”

“Oh hell, I ain’t no sir.  Get up here and call me Nate.  But if you try and sell me something or blow smoke up my ass I’ll fill you full of buckshot and dump your lying ass in the well.”

Kris smiled and started walking forward…

-----------

Aide sighed in relief, the three of them had been a chore with no scan and they’d finally settled down for the night.  She started with the nanites building an interface and repairing their bodies to optimum conditions.  For the two women it wouldn’t be all that great a change, she hoped Nate wouldn’t freak out when he woke up looking thirty years younger and feeling in better shape than he probably had at twenty.

She was also done with her other experiment.  She looked at the finished product with a certain amount of pride.  She had wanted more than just emotions; she wanted the bodily reactions to them as well.  She wanted to understand these humans and everything about their lives, and all the conflicting emotions.  It was purely biological, except for the specialized interface node in the center of the brain.

She’d literally be in two places at once, inside her AI matrix in Kris’s head, and at the same time, she would be in this body.  She ran diagnostics and then set up all connections…

She squinted her eyes even though the light wasn’t harsh.  Things looked so different being restricted to certain wavelengths.  She stood up and looked in the mirror, her emotions thrummed through the body, and she realized what she’d felt had only been a pale shadow of it.  Her heartbeat sped up and she diagnosed an adrenalin surge, but that was nothing to how she
felt
.

She had porcelain skin and a heart shaped face.  Her eyes were a deep blue, almost sapphire, and her long strawberry blonde hair was down her back despite how curly it was.  She had average breasts for a woman of five foot five.  She touched her face, and then ran her fingers down the silky soft skin of her arms.  It was something so alien to her she gasped at the feeling and her heartbeat sped up.

She thought she should go confess what she’d been up to; it would be nice to see them all with her new body.  The firewall the other day seemed to help, and she was happy to realize that although she was very fond of Kris, she no longer possessed the stolen love from her deep study of Stacey’s life.  She thought of him as a close friend, companion, and even fellow soldier.

It was quite a relief, because she knew from Stacey’s memories she would never share him, ever.  She was quite sure he wouldn’t be interested either for much the same reason.  Before she left to go speak to them, out of curiosity she brushed her nipple lightly.

She gasped as a sharp feeling of pleasure shot straight from her nipple down below as her nipple tightened.  She ran her fingers around the nipple, and then did the same on the other side.  It felt amazing.  She knew she should stop, but she was too curious, and her breathing was speeding up.  She also noted her pupils had slightly dilated and she was growing moist between her legs.

Maybe saying hello in person could wait.  She reached down curiously between her legs.  She gasped and her eyes closed as she brushed the wet heat below.  Yes… it could most definitely wait, but she decided she should go to her quarters first, she also sent commands to the nanites to make a couple of the toys she’d seen in Stacey’s mind.

After all, it was an experiment and she needed to be quite thorough…