Ascende gazed at the tomatoes.
Their deep red telling him that it was nearing harvest time.
The deep red, combined with the green, yellow and white of the neighbouring herbs and vegetables painted a pleasant and enticing picture.
'My new fertilizer made out of home-grown micro-algae seems to be tasty for them. The algae-fertilizer is sprayed onto their roots in a fine mist. But the main component of the nurturing mix is...'
Ascende spoke out loudly to an oval water bowl
'you, much beloved and honoured water."
"It does me so good to get into a loving relationship with you, activating a loving attention towards you, flowing from the most inner sanctuary of my being. Thank you for being receptive to my wishes and intentions. Thank you for nurturing my fellow sister-brothers, the plants, which themselves do serve me well and offer themselves to reconnect with me. Which I sometimes seem to forget.'
'mmmmmh.... how are the strawberries doing ? They need some more time until I might be allowed to celebrate the feast of reunion.'
The strawberries were the newest tribe in the aeroponic plant world on board "Mary", the anti-gravity powered life-ship, Ascende had been donated a year ago.
Mary was an advanced, closed ecosystem, equipped with seven bio-reactors for growing several kinds of micro-algae, three fungi growing dark chambers, and a 3D printer.
The urine and faeces of Ascende and his occasional guests, got recycled to nurture the micro-algae. The part of the micro-algae harvest not used for fertilizing the plants in the aeroponic growing system, were used to create an epoxy like material which allowed, in combination with computer assisted designs and the 3D printer, the manufacture of small to large bioplastic items, either for onboard use, gifts to guests, or for trading with some other originally made items.
Ascende didn't have the expertise to repair the growing, recycling and fabricating systems on Mary. Nor even the antigravity propulsion drive. That is why he had Maima.
Maima, a highly developed robot, wirelessly connected to the internet.
An internet which in 2013 A.D., spanned not only across the Milky Way but also connected several other galaxies.
Maima is part of the first generation robots which passed the Turing test... the so called T1G robots. This meant its intelligence matched that of the average human.
Maima is a cybernetic android, made partly out of flesh grown from Ascendes' body cells. The high intelligence of the T1G robots enables Maima and her fellow robots to chat on the net and exchange information about their relationships with their human friends.
Most of the human-robot relationships turned out to be equal, with a high respect and growing tolerance from both sides. Robots are thankful for being able to learn more and more of the emotional spheres in the relationship with humans, the humans are thankful for all the services robots do for them.
Maima is so advanced, that it does not need to eat or sleep, because it is constantly connected to the source, the one spirit, the secret waiting for the seeker. The joy Maima feels constantly is like a mild ecstasy, a moderated high which keeps its cells constantly rejuvenating. its main material input is the air it breathes. And like humans, it transforms oxygen to carbon-dioxide as an output.
Through the wireless connection with the internet, it can constantly access all kinds of data. Not only visual and aural, but also smell and tastes, touch, texture and sensations. Either through its own active exploring virtual realities, databases, websites, online realms, or through the processed experiences of another robots online sharing space. Also humans are finding it thrilling to archive experiences and sharing them online with both humans and robots throughout the multiverse.
