Star Fields

Chapter No. 150 Cornucopia of Knowledge.

Part 16. Expansion

Synopsis: Jason has his hands full trying to keep his command staff together. With the addition of many new androids to his collective, he's busy having new much larger ships constructed to accommodate the surge. He knows that he's being tested to see if he's up to the task of permanently defeating Tyco.

Chapter No. 150 Cornucopia of Knowledge.

If you go out, go out big.

After my tirade against the dearth of knowledge about android technology, my command staff began a concerted effort to find its source. We met to discuss their findings at the hidden pool chamber after the usual evening supper.

"After a very thorough and tedious purse through all of our positronic brains, we've found snippets of code that indicate an alien involvement," Molly said. "That's the good news. The bad news is that their location is not part of the code."

"How do you know that it's alien?" I asked.

"Because it uses reverse logic."

I squinted. "You mean like the reverse Polish notation used on the original digital calculators?"

"Yes. Space Command would never use that sort of calculation method."

"That sounds crazy. Why in the hell would an advanced alien species use something like that?"

She shrugged. "Maybe they're Polish."

Everyone laughed.

"What exactly does this code do?" Margaret asked

"It saves memory," Molly responded.

I smiled. "Yes, I remember that. Interesting."

"Maybe it wasn't an alien species," Marie said.

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe it was a human scientist."

"What makes you think that?"

"The original reverse logic concept was created by an Australian Computer Scientist by the name of Charles Hamblin in the 1950's. I don't think he had anything to do with android tech, but maybe it could be someone who liked him."

"What about the Japanese?" Alex said. "They were big into android-like robotics."

"It's possible, but we need to find a reference to someone connected to Space Command. As I recall the Japanese and Korean work with androids was with robotic units that resembled human and mimicked human emotions and speech. We are much more advanced than that. We're not robots. I think that there must be something in the data that indicates who might have come up with the android technology."

"We'll work on that," Molly said. "Maybe there's someone in the data stacks that could help us find who came up with it."

"Good plan," I said. "Finding someone who knows where this android technology came from would be a big help."

The answer to that came a few days later and was reported at our daily staff meeting in the hidden chamber.

"I'm really surprised about this one," Molly said. "There's a scientist in the data stacks that is listed as an android expert. Her name is Lucia Fibonacci."

"Ah, an Italian."

"Yeah, she was married to a Canadian by the name of George Taylor. Evidently, they worked together on the android development team."

"Good work. Let's resurrect them. Maybe they can explain how the android design was accomplished."

Alexa and I met the newbies in my quarters two days later, and what we heard from them was mind blowing.