A figure walked into the light from the glowing core with a feminine voice following her steps.

"I have the report on your situation(.) from the analysis ran by the storage chamber your integrity it is at 99.999999%(,) as was ensured by all the protection mechanisms your storage chamber was equipped with(.) your only current problem is energy insufficiency(,) since I allowed only the minimum necessary amount of energy to activate your "consciousness"(.) I don'.t know exactly how to address you and what information I should provide you with(,) also I don't understand what the inquiry 'rubbing hand at side' means could you please clarify what you require?"

'What, please use commas.'

"Pardon?"

"Perhaps the jumps did affect in some form your "consciousness"(,) maybe the problem during the last jump(?) how would we solve this(?) I spent so much energy to activate you already(.) I attempted(,) three times(,) to overrule the directive that demanded I activate you as soon as the fleet situation had been sorted out and made available in a full report to be passed onto you(.) Somehow you were more important than launching the collectors to orbit around the star we're on(.) now it will take three millennia to get all systems functional instead of the initially simulated century(.) and instead of a "leader" it's a defective and unskilled android(,) I could do Nothing but hope for "unlimited possibility assessment capabilities" but here we are."

'Ouch.'

Her speech was whole spoken in monotone, without stop and hard to understand, but "consciousness" and "leader" were said in a different tone as if trying to imply importance... or disdain I can't really tell. After finishing her tirade of a speech she leaned back on herself and stood in high posture, her eyes flickering with light. And then it hit me, I started to receive many snippets of information about the situation on the supercarrier, like how the jump fuel is exhausted how after the last jump all the stored energy stored in the main batteries was completely used up to avoid a mid-jump problem, leaving only the subsidiary batteries still able to power anything. Thankfully they were designed to power all the scanners once, 60% of all the present solar cells launch procedures and some frigates and drones for repairs, mining and surveillance as deemed necessary. Except my activation costs as much as the launching of the cells, teehee.

There was no damage to the carrier, aside from what is described as minor expected damage from jumping. Repairs are still necessary but the lack of energy means that deteriorating systems will stay that way. There are only working repairbots on the core room, and they will turn off after finishing the somewhat urgent repairs and wait for the energy from the few launched solar cells.

This system has 8 planets, two being gas giants but only one of them has gases that can be used without building an external processing facility. The others are all moon-like floating rocks, though they are much bigger there's not much to say other than nitty gritty mineral composition. One such planet looks quite promising as a mining site, but mining operations have been set to start on the crash between two of the moons of the more readily useful gas giant, three thousand years from now.

'Sad.'

The star we orbit is a white dwarf, though it is still a powerful nuclear reactor, it's not as useful as it once used to be. What does look promising though is the planet orbiting the closest to the star.

"A FANTASY WORLD WITH DUNGEONS AND EVERYTHING?!"

The gynoid’s eyes stopped glowing. By the way her "name" is Sa-02.

"Are you referring to 16e01... the planet with life?"

"Huh? Ah, yeah..."

Without waiting for me.

"Is there anything you have inferred from the data I have provided you that needs addressing?"

"Ah? No, I mean yeah, I mean... c-"

"Yes!?"

"C-c-can I go there?"

"..."

"After I deal with all the problems here of course... and also I want to come back..."

"What form of repairs or performance design can you perform or provide?"

"..." "..."

"Well, uh, to be honest..."

'nothing.'

Oh, crap not this again.

"What position or role will you "choose" to take in the fleet? I'm unable to allocate and make good use of your full capacities and inquire for your own "decision"."

"Ahahah, I well..."

'Is there anything I'm capable of doing IN a space supercarrier? What is even its name? I don't have any specific function for providing or equipment, didn't get much else other than WiFi connection and vision in all electromagnetic frequencies. Should I ask for skills download like in the matrix?.'

Why dId I need to feel around for the walls, and went the wrong way, if I have infra- and ultra- vision you may ask? Of course, itcourse, it is because my supercarrier is made super metal that doesn't lose energy! An absolute enemy of entropy and chaos! It's not like I was afraid of what the wavelength slider would do or anything. Yeah, what if I had shot laser beams inside here! Impostor syndrome hit me hard and had my metal skin itch, my eyes swaying from side to side and I'm sure i would be sweating by now.

'Come on i always wanted this, surely I can figure out what is the best course of action in this situation?'

Hah. Not better than the AI of the carrIer itself, no. I have everything an android would have but not much else, there seems to be a lot of functions that are yet inactive but I guess i can't ask for that.

'I guess... waIt I'm also an AI right? Right!? Can't i do mad calculations?'

Some more details about myself float up into my conscious mind, looks like my neural networks are hardcore. A lot more memory and easy recall, speech recognition no longer takes a toll on my mind(meaning I can listen to an entire crowds individual conversation), not just my vision but my hearing has been greatly increased. Such cheats. It says my body is made of one variant of living metal, harder than steel or soft like... whatever absorbs well the impact received. My skin has another variant, that feels like viscous mercury, now that I'm aware of it I can shape shift some of it but I am unable to fine control it. No face changing infiltration master, just a sandbag huh. Much wow.

But.

SInce I have free WiFi... it seems I can send orders to have the computers process my ideas and sort out possibilities and statistical data then deliver it back to me. Looks like my neural networks are really hardcore and I have a much greater capacity for abstraction, as in I can send complex physical data from what I see or idealize as server requests translated into easily processed machine language. But I have the mad math skillz of an engineering student that does the bare minimum to pass the tests. To the AI of a megastructure, i must be a waste of time.

'Oh, this is not impostor syndrome, am i not just a really expensive camera!?'

"I can... look around... ?"

I want to at least take-in this place. I always wanted this so bad, I tricked myself into believing being a small piece a thousand years before it's construction was good enough but this is the real thing. I day-dreamed of being a captain, director or whatever would be the highest position in such structure, also how it would be the daily life of researchers and engineers here. Though the engineering is all done by the industrial frames and core surprisingly there are research facilities here, the only problem is that I can't seem to be able to operate them even if they were powered.

Looking into it there turns out to be researcher androids built to manipulate the equipment and perform the experiments, what more could be discovered about the universe right now I have no idea. Cleaning was done by bots but maybe if this became a nation instead of a tool there would be jobs like maids. Space president or emperor. I didn't want to be neither since that was too much responsibility, but being head of culture would be really fun. I will search a position here if I can't find it, I will be a camera on the fantasy planet.

"Yes then"

A smile crept slowly on her face and awkwardly stopped just barely showing her teeth.

"I suppose we can plan your way to this system's terra(.) should you look into the console you will be granted all the info from the preliminary scans(,) giving a rough estimate of what you will find on the whole of the planet and it's regions."

My heart sank a little even though 'm the one who asked to go there.

"Oh... okay, hmm, when I get there can I call for s-sup... additional information from you?"

"What do you mean(?) that is exactly your mission(.) if the problem with your "consciousness" affected your memory storage(,) I will resend any information corresponding to the corrupted data at your request."

"SA-02, actually, I don't think there's anything wrong with my consciousness. I was just excited and... didn't really know what to do."

Her eyes flickered a little.

"... Good(,) then I will go back to watching the progress of the repairs and re-scheduling the powering of the others."

She disappears behind a hatch I thought was a wall. I didn't expect a goodbye, but i just feel so small right now. She didn't introduce herself so this is okay I guess.

'Others huh...'

There were many other androids from the info I got. Most of them self-conscious, requiring much energy to activate but still a lot less than me. Maybe it's the keeping of my previous memories that required such a delicate and wasteful activation, along with my personality that depends on them and all my previous decision.

Wow, I can infer things so much faster now that I pay attention to it. Thinking is so effortless and conclusions just jump in. I hope I can use it to figure something out other than being a camera that tells computers how to interpret images.

'I'm already feeling obsolete like I'm the legacy media telling people what to think.'

Walking the way I came from I get in the chambers, after going past the one I came from now I can see... my brothers and sisters? I will go with that. There are other individual chambers like my own, past them there's more of them in rows and rows here, folded, side by side like books on an endless book stand. That is if the book stands had no care for gravity and the books could walk on the ceiling. From where the chambers are into it only the floor goes on, the walls and ceiling expands and the android dormitory is like a cube, every four folded androids there's a platform that acts like the floor on both sides.

'I guess it doesn't just look like a mass dormitory. But is it just during deactivation or do they come here to recharge?'

It floats up to my mind that it is just for deactivation, they can recharge pretty much everywhere. What I call free WiFi acts as a constant energy transfer too, so they won't need to stop to recharge unless they go out to repair. Outside the Carrier it's just free WiFi.

Turning my attention back to the capsules and chambers close to my own, I question whether they are from other worlds like me. The names on the metals are just serial number stamps written in binary. Apparently they all have similar constructs to my own.

'Holy crap, these guys can become strike ships!'

After building required facilities, they could become pilots of mobile suits that merged seamlessly with them, in a way that they became the mobile suit. The only drawback was it was an armor that became their bodies, so they could only separate again in the another facility built for that. They could specialize into being able to infiltrate capital ship hangars or anti-fighter battle, and anywhere in between.

'Damn do these blueprints look cool.'

Among the seven of them two had a word I believe is equivalent to military commanders to describe them. I can't see any of their faces or body shape nor is there any info on that but from the brain functions they sound like badass under any situation.

'There's one researcher? I think that's what she is.'

He or she I don't know actually, but i really hope that's a redhead, time machine creating waifu. It's hard to think there's anything that needs researching, there's so much information and blueprints in my head right now. From ships and nuclear power sources to walls.

'I want her put in top priority for activation... but I can't see how to convinceconvince the ice queen.'

There were two designers of some sort, repair and construction as well as collecting the resources for that. I think they are assistants to the researcher while also working for improving logistics of having constructions and operating in other systems apparently. I envy those five, but the other two don't have anything that shows particular purpose or single-minded focus. It seems like they are like me with a broad range of activity and focus on having elastic neural networks and flexible in functions, the researcher is the same but, she's got this, I don't know how to describe it, deterministic mindset that's preprogrammed(?) into her.

Their communication capabilities have a wider range in both what they can convey and how, I can use the free WiFi and connect to Essay (the gynoid who doesn't know what commas are), but the other have that and connections to their specializations. Research machines have a different language than the battleships that allow for greater abstraction. It is as artificial as it sounds, the ships follow orders but the research appliances can infer from the researcher some nuances, high tech lab research seems to focus a lot on chaos and chance or something like that. The researcher and the two that are like me have this too, they can communicate with all of them though including with ideas, I wish I could do that. But it seems they can't... I'm not sure actually. I'm pretty sure they are higher versions of me that require slightly more energy or don't have a job right now since pretty much everything else is unpowered.

'Yep, that sounds about right.'

I have much room for improvements but, it's nowhere near as cool as these guys. Though I might be able to come up with something better if I try, I'm just looking at a list of improvement possibilities.

'I'm sure I can improve upon it. Hah.'

Next, the droid ranches.

Note:

Isn't an artist

Just a really expensive camera?

Framing reality and fantasy,

Taking pictures not for the eyes,

But for deep in the heart?

Recoloring great mysteries that inspire fear

As inspiring truths of understandable value?

Translating the mundane to interesting?

Sadly, there were none

who could tell or hope it was so

near the distraught kids.