Part 1

Chapter 1

"About fucking time," I thought grumpily. The Chief of Police of Albuquerque and four officers were at my door.

"Citizen Miller" he addressed my look-alike, using his official 'you're in trouble now' voice, and emphasizing the word 'citizen' to let me know my title of PhD had been officially revoked. "In light of your support of elements deemed to be undesirable by the United Nations, I have been authorized to confiscate your ID, and to inform you that you are not allowed to leave the city limits of Albuquerque. It is only because of all of the good you have done on behalf of the people of the world that you are not being arrested at this time. I must caution you, however, that any future infraction, no matter how insignificant, will lead to your arrest and imprisonment."

Junior, as my wives had nicknamed him, handed the Chief my ID from his pocket. I was surprised at how well thought out their response was, but then, I guess I shouldn't have been. Political machinations and manipulation was their specialty. It was physical planning and understanding that was their short suit. Renee was right--they couldn't afford to arrest me straight out--I was too popular for the government to move against me outright. Instead, they set me up so that I had to break the law again. Without my ID, I couldn't legally buy anything. When I went a month without making any purchases, they would arrest me on a vagrancy charge. At least that was what they thought they were going to do. As I said, physical planning and understanding was their blind spot. I spent several years trying to make them see that, and now I was grateful that they ignored me. After a thirty-minute search of my residence, which yielded absolutely nothing since everything was here at the estate, they left.

Chapter 2

I'm 'citizen' Mike Miller, formerly, and technically still, Mike Miller, PhD. I was a child prodigy, receiving my PhD in Computer Micro Neurology at age twelve. Of course, two years after getting my parchment, I realized my first project had a major flaw in it that nobody had thought of. Our computer microprocessors are manufactured from plant cells. For many years, the only way to make them faster has been to put in multiple processors, which take up more space. I thought I had devised a way to force the growth of neural links between those cells to make them faster. Eighteen months of testing and revising produced no results. After another six months of reviewing my work, it finally dawned on me what the problem was--plants don't have neural connections. I was trying to create something that didn't exist. On the other hand...

If pressed, I would say that one of my better points is my inquisitiveness. I always want to know why, or how, or why not. One of my weaker points would have to be my impetuousness--my tendency to push ahead and do something I was sure would work without necessarily testing the theory thoroughly. When I realized that my theory wouldn't work on making neurons grow between plant cells, I also realized that it would (okay, read 'should' here) work on animal cells. For three weeks, I debated testing my theory. I was sure it would work, but I also realized the dark side to my theory. The military would love to get their hands on this, and I was sure there were many other groups that would love to abuse the discovery. While I had no desire to let them get hold of this idea, I badly wanted to prove it. The problem was that, like everyone else, all of my research was monitored. The first time my testing gave the results I thought it would, the genie would be out of the bottle. I couldn't hide the results. Whether it was in a Petrie dish or one of the lab rats, the results would be permanently noted and then reviewed. So, I did the inexcusable--I used it on myself.

I started slowly, adding only one teaspoonful to my EB. EB is the name of a commercial drink designed (by me) to be sweet-tasting, and to boost one's Energy level for the four hour work day, all while helping the Brain function at peak capacity. I originally created it for my personal use, but all of my colleagues tried it and wanted more. So, I sold the rights to manufacture it to PepsiCo and it is now the number one selling drink in the world. My royalties amount to 25 to 30 million Planetary Dollars a week. Sure, there are other energy drinks--hundreds of them. They are all slightly effective to some degree or other. There has been an objective study done to test the effectiveness of EB and it showed a significant (39-51%) increase in energy level and alertness and significant increases in test scores--results far better than the next closest competitor.

Anyway, with no noted effect or side effects after three days, I took two teaspoonfuls of the neural growth formula. Three days later, I took a tablespoonful. The next day I noticed the first signs that it was working--just not quite the way I expected it to. When I woke up that morning I felt restless--I wanted to be moving. It wasn't until after work and after class that I found out what it was. When I arrived at the gym for my daily workout regimen, I felt different. Normally I approached the workouts with a ho-hum attitude. I did it because I knew it was good for me, not because I particularly enjoyed it. I had been working out five days a week for years now, and while I was in decent shape, my physique (especially on a 22 year old) wasn't about to make women swoon. For some reason, I never got the 'hard body' look. Today, however, I attacked the workout. I lifted more weight than usual and ran faster and longer than usual. I was definitely tired when I finished, but it was a good tired.

The same thing happened every day after that, and after a second week, my sensei even commented that my reflexes were faster, and the different moves that had been ingrained in me from years of repetition were smoother than he'd ever seen me do. By the end of a month, even I could notice the difference. There was definitely definition in my muscles that hadn't been there before. I'd also noticed that my already photographic memory seemed to be working quicker, and names for faces I hadn't seen for quite a while came to mind faster.

Over the next month I noticed that my left hand became almost as coordinated as my right, my vision sharpened, and my hearing became more acute. My energy level went up, and I was eating more than before, but the only weight I was putting on was muscle. Oh, yeah, I was also hornier than before. My girlfriend commented (happily) on my increased libido, as well as my new appearance.

My teachers commented on how much faster I was absorbing the material I was learning. Since getting my PhD, I was still attending classes, nonstop. The government wasn't happy with my continuing education, preferring their minions to keep their focus on one subject. I wasn't allowed to get another degree or I would have several PhDs by now. The government even required me to see a psychiatrist to find out why I kept going to school, worried that graduating so young had somehow harmed me. The therapist's 'official' diagnosis was that my "continuing attendance at school was the result of a minor obsessive/compulsive tendency which was not dangerous, was of no concern, and required no additional treatment." I thought about it for a while before laughing about it. OCD is repeating the same actions over and over for no rational reason. I had a rational reason to continue my education--I wanted answers to many questions nobody else could answer for me. I actually had a list of questions that waxed and waned. It seemed that every new discipline I studied added at least one question to my list. Fortunately, it also usually removed one or more questions from the list.

It was while answering these questions for my own interest that I came up with so many of my discoveries, inventions, and improvements that contributed to my mushrooming bank balance, now nearing the $P700 billion mark. I set my account up a few years ago to automatically convert $P25 million a week to gold, and another $P25 million a week to Planetary currency ($P10,000 and $P100,000 denominations) which would be delivered to my place in the city. I would then immediately transfer it to a very large underground vault in the labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers under my lab--for a rainy day ... or other things.

So, that was my life. My workweek was Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to noon. I ate lunch on the way to college and took classes from 12:30 to 3:30. I'd eat a light dinner on the way to either my martial arts training or workout at the gym. What I did next depended on whether my girlfriend was over or not. If she was, all else was forgotten and she received my full attention. If she wasn't, I'd play with my 'toys' or tinker in my lab/workshop where I always had half a dozen or more unfinished projects.

Despite my repeated requests, the government wouldn't allow me to do research in any field but my 'official' one. Therefore, I had to set up my own lab/workshop. It was huge, big enough for my current pet project with plenty of room to spare. Of course, the lab was at my estate about 150 miles from the center of town. I also had a home in the city (I call it 'my place')--the top two floors of a 200 story housing tower halfway between work and school. Why two full floors? Two reasons--first, if I had the top two floors I had all the rooftop shuttle parking to myself. Second, no noise from neighbors ever made it to the top floor since there was an empty floor between us.

Chapter 3

Aaaaahhhhh, my pet project--or at least my current pet project. Like many people, I had a private shuttle. I wanted to validate several pieces of research I'd finished, but didn't feel that a personal shuttle was appropriate for testing. Hence, I bought a top-of-the-line corporate Lear shuttle. It had powerful engines, both impulse engines and warp engines. The cloaking and shields were the best available for non-military applications. My goal had been to improve the engines, the power source, the cloaking, and the shielding. I spent time over the years tinkering and making minor modifications.

The work required parts and equipment I couldn't buy on the open market without upsetting someone in the government when they found out I was doing research outside of my official field. Instead, I went to my 'unofficial' supplier. I'd first contacted a black market merchant, Marco, when I was looking for some lab equipment I couldn't buy through official channels without raising eyebrows. Now I was his main customer, not necessarily in quantity, but in cost. Most everything I bought was super expensive lab equipment. Marco loved the fact that I could pay him in either gold or the very colorful Planetary Dollars.

My upgrades were successful beyond my projections. The upgrade to the power source supplemented the upgrades to both type of engines, the cloaking, and the shields. When I took my last test flight, I realized that the AI was not powerful enough to handle the upgraded ship. That required my next project to be the creation of a new AI. I eschewed the standard plant cell based AI. To make one as powerful as I wanted it would have been too bulky, even with the soon-to-be-released processor upgrade I'd come up with. I had found a compatible rain forest plant that had very thin cell walls, unlike the typical thick, cellulose-filled walls of plant cells. I spliced the DNA for the thinner walls into the cells of the plant we normally use in the computers. By reducing the thickness of the cell walls, I could put more cells in the same space, hence increasing the power of the processor by a hundred percent. Another patent in my portfolio meant another large sum of cash would soon be flowing into my account each month.

However, even that improvement wouldn't be enough for what I wanted. Marco didn't even bat an eye when I told him what I did want. He grinned when I asked if he knew what undifferentiated human cells were. "Have I ever brought you the wrong thing before?" he chided playfully. I had to admit that he hadn't. "You don't last too long in my profession if you aren't pretty smart," he commented, including another of his patented wide grins.

I spent the next week getting everything ready. I built the case for the AI (twice as big as what I expected I'd need), including the nutrient delivery system and the waste extraction system. I also bought a couple of used androids. I couldn't see buying new ones just to tear them apart, so I bought used ones. I downloaded all of their programming onto one of my computers to see what I wanted to keep and what I needed to change. I was dumbfounded when I found a stealth program on a hidden partition. The program was set up to report on the activities of its new owner twice a week. I quickly revised the programming so it would report only what I wanted it to. I also included a worm of my own that would report to me about who was doing the spying and would then spy on the spy. I password protected the android programming so nobody else could change it back. I found the same type of thing on the second one, too, but it was done differently enough to make me think that more than one person was using this method to spy on their wealthy neighbors--interesting.

As promised, Marco delivered. He was even a couple of days early. "These cells are a brand new line so nobody can ever track them back to someone's patented line," he explained. I guess that meant that someone he had a connection to gave birth in the last 24 hours and these were harvested from the umbilical cord blood.

"I'm constantly impressed with your connections," I complimented.

"My connections are constantly impressed with my customers," he laughed. As always, Marco had a greedy gleam in his eye when I paid him--half in gold and half in Planetary Dollars.

"Hey, Marco, do you know anywhere I can get material to expand the hull of a Lear? I'm thinking about making the one I bought bigger."

"Scientist and shipfitter?" he asked, surprised.

"Like everyone else I had to take basic shuttle education in high school. I was only eight, and way too young to be able to fly the thing the second semester when everyone else took pilot's training, so I took shuttle shop to see how they were put together," I explained. "I still don't have a shuttle license," I laughed, adding, "that's why I use a hot fusion shuttle."

Marco laughed his hearty belly laugh. "So, how big do you plan to make your Lear?" he asked thoughtfully.

I shrugged since I really hadn't done the design work yet. "I just want something big enough to test several theories on making bigger ships faster and more powerful," I told him. "I figure it should be at least twice as big. Unfortunately, the Lear is the biggest thing anyone but the military can buy except for cargo clunkers. I suppose my ideas could work on those too, but not as convincingly as something built for speed and maneuverability." Marco was nodding, but I could tell that his mind was busy.

"So just exactly how much can you improve the ship?" he asked.

"I don't really know. I made the Lear so fast and so powerful the AI couldn't handle it wide open. I'm in the process of building a new AI for it. I'm pretty sure that the power of the impulse engines is close to doubled, and I had a ship that was designed to do a maximum of warp ten all the way up to warp seventeen at only 2/3 power. The shields are at least twice as strong, too."

"Damn, Mike," gasped Marco. "You do know that the fastest even the newest experimental craft ever went was warp twenty-one and change, don't you?" I shrugged. Yeah, I knew--warp 21.342 to be exact, but he made his point. The fastest non-experimental craft went warp seventeen and change, and the fastest passenger carrying research craft that would be able to explore Alpha Centauri did a meager warp ten. Research trips to the Alpha Centauri system took five or six months each way. Bernard's Star, Wolf, and Lalande had also been explored and held promise for possible colonization in the future. Travel to Lalande, the farthest, took nearly a full year each way at warp ten.

"Do you think that your upgrades would work on an older model like mine?" he wondered aloud. I was sure it would work, but was equally sure that his AI couldn't handle it. He'd have to do like the navy did when they assigned one AI to power management, one for weapons, one for navigation, one for life support and shields, and one to coordinate the other four. I explained that to him and watched, bemused while the wheels in his head turned and his internal cash register chimed. Finally, he seemed to have reached a decision. "If I got the AIs installed, how long would it take you to upgrade my ship?" Now it was my turn to think.

After a minute, I told him "I have a vacation in two weeks. I took it that week because school's out for the week. I could probably finish in two days, three tops, why?"

Marco grinned at me. "I'll make you a deal. You want a bigger ship to play with, I'd like mine to go faster and be able to carry heavier loads."

"So you'll give me the materials to enlarge the hull if I overhaul your ship?" I asked, trying to clarify his deal.

Marco's grin got even bigger. "Better," he said, his voice lowering conspiratorially even though there was nobody else around. He looked around anyway before continuing. "I know where a navy frigate was left on an asteroid about a year ago after it was attacked by pirates. You can have any or all of it free," he whispered conspiratorially.

"Shit," I gasped, "what happened to it?"

"It attacked a pirate ship close to the pirate's home base. The pirates got re-enforcements quickly and wore down the frigates shields, then managed to punch several holes in the hull of the frigate. They eventually towed it to an asteroid quite a ways away from their base, landed it, and left it. They don't have a proper repair facility or a way to replace the AIs so that they can take over the ship. The AIs won't function for anyone but the navy, and require all of the proper codes and stuff to work. It's worthless to them."

"Would I have to upgrade their ships too?" I asked. Dealing with the black market was disconcerting enough. Helping the pirates ... well, that went against everything I stood for.

"No, they stay away from there just in case the navy finds it. They want nothing to do with it," he answered.

I considered it. If it had only been a year, the AIs should still be active and I could copy all of their operational information to my new AI when it was finished. Shit, this was doable. "Deal," I said suddenly enough and forcefully enough that Marco jumped. We worked out the details. He'd be here early the Monday morning of my vacation. I knew that Vonna had to work. She'd probably spend the weekend and leave for work Monday morning from my place.

I got the specs I needed for Marco's ship so I could have everything ready when he arrived. Finally, he gave me the location of the asteroid. "Be careful out there, Mike. The only ships that go past Mars are explorer ships, navy ships, and pirates. Without an Explorer or Research transponder and IFF, the navy is likely to shoot first and ask questions later," Marco admonished. I thanked Marco for the warning but he just shrugged it off. "I'd hate to lose my best customer," he teased.

Chapter 4

After Marco left, I quickly put the stem cells into a special environmental growth chamber where they were bathed constantly with a special nutrient solution. After two days, I would add special nutrients that would differentiate them into brain cells and they would multiply. Sometime after that, I would be able to load the matrices for the ship's AI and both android AIs. I decided to build a second AI matrix, an even bigger one, when I got back.

I grabbed several portable power supplies and the tools I used when I worked on the Lear. Two hours after Marco left, I was on my way to the frigate's location. I was so excited that I could hardly concentrate on what I was doing. I was also scared shitless and made sure I was fully cloaked. I had removed the transponder from the Lear, hooking it to power and a computer in my lab so it thought it was still attached to the Lear. I was grateful for the extra power the Lear now had. Shit, I had to come up with something besides 'the Lear." I settled on Inquisitive. I thought it was appropriate. Am I rambling? Probably--like I said, I'm excited ... and nervous.

I chose to use only impulse engines until I got the new AI installed. As a result, the trip took an hour instead of the few minutes I could have done it in before modifying Inquisitive. My scanners showed nothing where the asteroid was supposed to be so I calculated where it would be after orbiting the sun for a year. There were two nearby and I scanned both. Nothing was visible on this side, so after I flew by and took a long look around to make sure I was alone, I scanned the back of both asteroids. There was still no sign of a ship on either asteroid. I began to get a feeling that this might have been a setup when I noticed a small distortion in the sensor readings from the larger asteroid. I dropped down to within a few feet of the surface and approached the distortion slowly.

The sensors noted a spike in energy from entering an energy field, and there it was. I figured we must have passed through the frigate's cloaking. Sensors showed no signs of life on the ship, and no atmosphere so I docked with it. I put on a spacesuit I designed and took the grav sled with my tools, portable power supplies, and several spotlights, and entered the frigate. Entering the darkened ship was eerie, even with the lighting I brought.

I had a general knowledge of navy ship layout from one of the classes I took on ship design. One by one, I located each AI and downloaded its data into a data storage device. I disconnected them from everything in the ship except power, plugged them into the portable power supply, and then disconnected them from the ship's power. My readings showed there was enough power aboard the ship to keep the cloaking up for several more months, although the power generator was severely damaged, and could only function at five percent of capacity. Still, I didn't want to leave the ship here just in case the pirates decided to return to it. Consulting my charts, I located a smaller asteroid that was mostly iron, which would help hide the frigate from sensors.

Going through the frigate, I removed all of the IFF transponders, leaving them on the surface of the asteroid. I made sure they had no power reserve to send one last, desperate signal. The last thing I needed was the navy finding me because one of the transponders gave me away. With that done, I ran cabling between the two ships to power the frigate's impulse engines. I started to understand how a bumblebee must feel when I tried taking off. With no AI to manage the power to the engines or to handle navigation, I was on my own. The liftoff was less than spectacular, and the short trip to the asteroid I chose was slow and awkward. What would have taken a couple of minutes with just Inquisitive took an hour. The landing, as the liftoff, was less than graceful, but I accomplished it without doing any further damage to the frigate. Any extra power Inquisitive had generated during the brief trip had re-charged the frigate's batteries to 50%, which would supply enough power for the cloaking for nearly a year.

I breathed a heavy sigh of relief when I was away from the asteroid and on the way home. Even though I had been sure I could do it without being caught, there is always that tiny doubt in the back of one's mind.

Chapter 5

Back on solid ground in my lab, I sat on my comfy couch where I usually sit to ponder the mysteries of the universe, and shook. When the adrenaline rush and accompanying case of nerves finally wore off, I started back in on my project, calculating how powerful an AI I would need to run the frigate. Two hours later, the matrix for the frigate's AI was done. Again, I made the AI twice as big as I thought I'd need. Now I just had to wait for the cells to grow enough to infuse all of the matrices.

The next morning I was poring over the programming from the first android. I found the usual programming I expected--languages, domestic skills, and stuff like that. I reprogrammed them with the ability to learn technical and other material from visual and auditory stimuli. I wasn't sure why they hadn't been programmed like that before. All they were allowed to learn on their own beyond what they were originally programmed with was additional domestic skills.

I hooked audio and video feeds up from a computer and started feeding data from of all of my high school and college courses, including the ones I took after getting my PhD. I left out the basic math, language, and social science classes. The androids were already programmed with math and languages. They had been pre-programmed for Chinese and English, the official languages of the UN Government. Originally, there had been two additional official languages--Hindi and Spanish. English had been the language used by the business community and the scientific community, and when it became clear that English was becoming the predominant language besides Chinese, Spanish and Hindi were dropped. Of course, all of this happened over a period of more than 100 years.

It took four days, nonstop, of downloading data at high speed for the computer to absorb everything. After that, I added programming for all of the 32 major languages still being spoken. While it was incorporating all of that information into its memory, I reviewed the programming from the frigate's AIs. I found and edited the programming that made them entirely loyal to only the navy, instead making them loyal only to me. I also deleted the code that would have them send out periodic distress beacons to alert the navy, and the programming that would automatically respond to IFF transponder requests.

It was a busy and very rewarding weekend, made possible partly because Vonna had to spend the weekend with her mother celebrating what would have been her mother's 25th anniversary. She had been very apologetic, afraid that I would be upset with her. I tried to tell her that I understood, but her lack of self-confidence wouldn't let her believe it. Vonna was an exceptionally intelligent woman, one I could talk to without feeling that I had to kneel and talk to her the same way I would to a child. She was a caring and compassionate woman, something I admired in everyone, especially someone I was dating and might someday end up marrying. She was also pretty--not drop-dead gorgeous, but very beautiful.

She was constantly comparing herself to women who were much more beautiful than she was, questioning why I would choose her over them. No matter how often, or how many different ways I explained that her mind was more important to me than her body (I made sure to let her know I found the package attractive, too), she still couldn't fathom that someone as smart and rich and famous as I was would choose her over a woman whose IQ was matched only by her bust size. Even when I lined up pictures of some of the women I'd dated prior to her, none of whom were knockouts, she remained insecure (of course, I didn't show her pictures of the companions I'd hired).

SUNDAY May 4

Vonna 'made it up to me' the next several evenings. She was insatiable, draining me into each of her orifices every night. She was ecstatic when I fucked her tits and came all over her face. One of her biggest insecurities was that she was only a B cup, and the fact that I could and would enjoy fucking her tits made her a happy woman indeed. I barely had enough time and energy those next four days to check on the cells I had happily multiplying. We were both off Friday, so we shuttled to the Italian Alps for a couple of days of skiing--snow skiing all day and sheet schussing all night. We shuttled home Sunday morning to recuperate from our relaxation, even enjoying a quickie with Vonna bent over the navigation console during the twenty minute trip home to Albuquerque. I filled her pussy with cum just as the shuttled landed itself on the roof of my home. Satisfied that she had 'done her duty' and that she had compensated me for going to her mom's house and leaving me alone the previous weekend, she left for home. She was happy, happier than I'd seen her in a long time, so I didn't even argue with her about feeling that it had been her duty to me.

I flew out to my lab and checked on the cells. They were progressing nicely now, having multiplied into a grapefruit-sized glob. Next, I pulled up plans for Marco's ship off the internet. His design was close enough to mine that I could do the same thing to his that I did to mine. That meant I could easily finish in two days. I gathered the materials and tools I'd need and set them off to one side. The programming changes I needed were on a small portable computer, which I left there as well.

Finally, I hacked into the navy's ultra top-secret database that had the blueprints and specs for all of their ships. I decided to download their entire database onto the base AI at my estate rather than onto my computer. I knew how much data was involved and knew my computer wasn't anywhere near big enough to hold it. I was chuckling to myself as I started the process. After all, I had tried to warn them that the military computers had a glaring problem. Nevertheless, they were so sure of their anti-hacking software and hardware features that they considered their databases impenetrable. To a hacker, they were almost impenetrable. I knew of one weakness, but that was because I wrote the operating system. That weakness, however, wasn't what I was using. As most good programmers do, I left a hidden 'back door' in the Operating System programming. Any computer that had been manufactured in the last 6 years had my OS, and hence, had the back door. To prevent accidental detection during the periodic and random system reviews, I identified my computer as another military computer, redirecting the secure connection the air force computers had with the navy computers through mine before placing my computer as the now-disconnected air force connection. With this setup, I had unlimited access to all of the government computers any time I wanted it.