Sentient Goo?

[Pher 0]

The mood in the transporter room was good. Pher thought it would be easy to go with it, to find herself a shower, to relax the too long tension of the last several days.

 

Still, things seemed to be coming together, and in a way she didn't like. She had heard legends of giant space amoeba, but not of middling sized land amoeba. Yet, the black goo had crawled out if its vat to get her people. The three rainmakers seemed infected by something that turned their blood black. They had wanted the Qob folk to take a swim in the goo, though Ethan had said it was a bad idea. Ethan was bleeding black too.

 

"Doctor Soora, please assume Ethan is infected and contagious. In particular, avoid contact with his blood. Kindly do what makes sense to keep it from spreading. He might not be absurdly contagious. It might take immersion to guarantee infection, if what was said below is right, but don't count on it."

 

She started to add things up. A planet where few if any large animal life forms were left. A biological agent that the Rainmakers were interested in. A set of drones left behind that might be programmed to destroy all animal life forms that might carry the infection.

 

Fickle Pher. Was she really on the side of the kill everything drones at this point?

 

Sentient goo?

 

Talking to Joe might have to come before the shower.

 

Probably just as well that she hadn't put an explosive round in the vat.

[rosetto 0]

Sal was completely unaware of the rainmaker card. That didn't stop him from being very curious about exactly who might be behind the reprogramming of the drones. He had studied their behavior and weighed it against the pieces of the puzzle that was the Zoalus culture. The drones emulated the Zoalus, at least, he thought, two of the archetypal characters seemed to dominate their pschycology. Originally, the primordial core, was based upon MOTHER. They were nurturing and caregiving. The outer shell of the modified ones was most definitely WARRIOR; seeking out and destroying all opposed. They were tactful and deceptive.

The battle that raged inside those automaton brains must have been tremendous. But obedience had been absolute which is indistinguishably robotic, programmatic... logic.... As many Vulcans have learned, logic is the beginning of wisdom... not its end.

So, who was behind the reprogramming and more importantly, why? What was the motive? Something boiled to the top of Sal's conscious that he had not considered before. 'What if it was the Zoalus? What if THEY had reprogrammed the drones? Survival? From what?'