Chapter 3

Thanks to sosseres for editing this chapter!

Ensign Rockwell was most definitely in the worst mood of his entire life. If he was alive. If he had moods.

In the last six hours he had been debriefed eight times, by six different admirals of various navies, and now he was confined to quarters. He hadn't even been given a reason for the confinement, or for not being allowed to contact the rest of the crew. What's worse was that nobody seemed to be able to tell him what he was. Or, if they were able to, they were withholding the information from him and were playing the role of being ignorant very convincingly.

Alex walked over to the holographic mirror for the fourteenth time that day. He had not bothered to put on a shirt, and therefore could still see the six deep gashes in his chest. Through tattered strips of flesh he could also make out a plate of metal. It was a strange experience to say the least. He could see the wounds, and yet he could not feel them. What was really bugging him was that he could remember feeling pain before. He could also remember his mother talking about a surgery to have his appendix removed when he was fourteen. How could an android have its appendix removed? How could an android have a mother?

Unless someone had gone through a lot of trouble to replace his chest with a tritanium plate, being an android was the only explanation that Alex could come up with. It would explain his fascination with computers and technology... but it also opened up a thousand questions. It was simply impossible. He could not possibly be an android if his memories were accurate. But were his memories accurate? He was so confused that he doubted his own name by this point.

He must have stood there before the mirror for over a half an hour, just staring at nothing, before the door alarm chirped. He quickly threw on a black shirt before he shouted for the person to come in.

As the door whistled open, an old man of average height walked in. He was completely nondescript exempting his long white sideburns.

"Who are you?" Alex asked snappishly. He wasn't exactly up to being a gracious host at the moment.

"A question you must have been asking yourself for the past few hours." The old man smiled lightly at Alex as he sat on the couch inside of the guest room. He kicked his feet onto the glass table in front of him. "Who I am is unimportant. What I am here to tell you is."

Alex took a seat across from the old man, his annoyance scarcely in check.

"Then what exactly are you here to tell me?"

"You are an android. You have probably already figured this much out." The old man frowned. "At least, if you're as smart as I think you are. So let's fill in a few details. You are three years old. Your life began when you perceived yourself to be eighteen years of age. You really have lived on Chal for a year, and been in Jade fleet for almost twice as long. Everything before that is programmed memory."

It suddenly became very difficult for Alex to speak. "S-so... my family... they never really existed?"

The old man shook his head. "No. Although you do have a family, in a sense, if that helps any."

"What do you mean?" His voice grew cold and hard without his intending it. This man had just taken away his conception of his life up to this point.

"Well, obviously, you have a daughter. That would be Jane. You did create her, and she is intelligent. So she is your offspring in every sense of the word. You also have a father; a single designer. Me, as it happens."

"Designer or not, you're still hardly telling me anything. Why did you design me? What is my purpose? How does this all tie together with me being on the Tesla? Is it too much to ask for real answers?"

The old man smiled again. "What is your purpose? You want to know your purpose? Well, you can figure out that one just like the rest of us. I for one believe we create our own purpose. I designed you because I could. That simple. I never had any great aspirations for you. Any aspirations for the direction of your life should be your own. You're in Jade fleet, and were on the Tesla, simply because you chose to be. I made the offer to you, and you accepted."

Alex shook his head. "There has to be more to it than that."

The old man sighed. "Will no amount of information satisfy you? Are you not content to figure out your own answers for yourself? Fine. I suppose I can answer a few more things for you. My name is Isaac Asimov. I am about four centuries old, and I originally pioneered the concept of the positronic brain... although it was a mere technological detail in a series of my books at the time. In the Earth year 1992, I 'died.' Heh. Actually, an anatomically mimetic android temporarily ceased his functions, which registered as heart and kidney failure. When he was buried, he simply climbed out of the casket and the dirt and returned to me. I had received the android from a time traveler who happened to be a fan of mine. He gave me a few different things, such as a telomerase based medicine, that allowed me to live healthily beyond my normal lifespan. I had to fake my death just to make sure no one caught onto all of this."

Alex couldn't help but laugh. "And here I was thinking you were sane... tell me, Mr. Asimov, if you are who you say you are, what is your religion? What is the name of your novel with an oxymoronic name, which was also turned into a movie in the Soviet Union?" Alex smirked at the crazy old codger. Almost no one else now read Asimov's works, and maybe one in a billion people in this century could answer the questions he just asked.

Asimov responded without hesitation. "Most people chose to call me a humanist, as well as myself, for a long time. I also went with the title of agnostic for a while as well. As anyone who has read my biography would know though, I consider myself an atheist. I believe the novel you refer to is the End of Eternity. And if you've read the book, it is not entirely oxymoronic, as the name accurately describes the final events of the story."

Alex frowned. Either this crazy old man was a good researcher, or he was the real deal. He also matched the pictures that Alex had seen of Asimov pretty well, but a simple surgery could accomplish that in under thirty minutes now-a-days.

"And you just expect me to believe all this?"

"Nope." Asimov smiled at Alex. "I expect you to figure out things for yourself. All I expect of you is to complete the conditions of your contract with my fleet. A new ship was recently completed in the Jade Corporation Sector Yard in orbit of this planet, Nephrite. We are planning on dubbing it the Tesla and deploying it with Captain Scott, you, and the rest of the crew onboard. It is quite a bit more advanced than the Intrepid line of vessels."

Alex became interested in spite of himself. "What kind of ship is it?"

"Why don't you see for yourself?"

Before Alex could even begin to object, Asimov's hand had raised and double tapped a pin on his sleeve. They both immediately dissolved into energy to reappear on a beach overlooking a vast blue ocean.

"Why are we here?" Alex asked.

Asimov laughed. "To see the ship, of course! It's just now completing its secondary flight trails. It should be visible shortly."

They did not have long to wait. Before a minute had passed, Alex began to feel a slight tremor building up beneath their feet. Its strength grew and grew until sand could be seen vibrating from the force of the minor earthquake.

Then the tremors stopped, being replaced by the sound of a massive wave of water crashing down back onto the ocean. A huge, elegant vessel had just soared from the water, its bird-like features glowing with the sheet of water that coated it.