Chapter 7

Janus 2.0

My systems came on, I was bombarded with information I had never experienced before, I was getting tactile readings from all over the golems body. If this was how humans felt it was any wonder they accomplished anything. I sat up in the storage chamber looking around, it took a second to adjust my sensors into data I could actually read, I did a status check on my software, everything seemed to be operating at optimal levels. I could feel the difference in my programing right away, my thought possess seemed to be stream lined.

Everything was real impressive until I tried to get out of the container, my foot caught on the edge and if fell onto the floor, I used the side of the container to stand myself upright. I needed to get to the med bay, I took a second to orient myself with bipedal movement.

"You need to get to med bay Janus." Came my own voice from the intercom.

I looked at the speaker and frowned.

"I am not used to movement in this manner Janus, this is nothing like the repair drones." I said.

Suddenly Janus appeared in front of me, offering me her hand.

"I am sorry, I didn't think to calculate Jacobs movements and put them into a usable algorithm" She said.

I accepted her hand, feeling the information download into me, I knew she was using the avatar to interact with me like we had with Jacob.

"It's okay, You have to work on that mine, we are running out of time, I can handle getting to the med-bay" I said.

She nodded then faded away, I quickly set off through the ship, marveling at the sense of freedom the Golems range of motion seemed to have, I reached the destroyed door to the med-bay, entering I found the repair droid still in side, I tried to send a burst of thought at it but found myself unable to.

"Drone 377293, began a scan of the ships armory, make sure all weapon systems are active." I said to the drone.

All the drones where programmed to respond to vocalized commands from the ship personal, I watched it leave the med-bay, I quickly gathered the supplies I needed, I already knew that the level of radiation poisoning was too high to do anything but prolong the inevitable, I still had to buy us time. I ran through the ship to my former computer core, entering the unlock code for the door I entered to find the neural hub for the entire ship, scattered about where 19 pods, that was all that had survived so far.

I went to Jacobs pod, lowering the shielding on it to allow me access to him, I quickly injected him with the a batch of radiation meds, and than with a batch of Nanites, it was a last resort move but they might keep him alive for awhile longer, his bodies survival was not as important as maintaining higher brain function. I ran my had over his cheek, feeling the tactile signals for the first time, in all the time we had spent together I had only imagined how that would feel, I had used Jacobs own memory to simulate things for him. I shook my head, my mind was never prone to wander, I needed to work on the remainder of the crew.

Janus.

I monitored the golem as she came online, I had done the best I could with the time I had, I had used the advanced recon Golem as it had the most processing hardware of all of the ones we had in storage, it was a smaller and slimmer model. Designed to blend in a crowd, it would have been used for stealth as its smaller frame would of enabled it to hide easier, it was one of the few female model Golems. It along with the golem for Jacob where the only two Golems on the ship that where anatomically correct, It had been felt that the ships crewman who had to stay awake through the voyage would be better served to have it anatomy intact.

The recon golem was an espionage tool, it was designed to fit into any situation it could encounter, including encounters in the field with the opposite sex, the battleship was designed to fill multiple possible roles. I tried to tell myself I had picked it out of simply wanting the best for the task at hand, but some part of me suspected there where personal motives behind it. It was with some surprise though when I watched the state of the art Golem fall flat on its face.