Those few seconds after I said "Hello" turned awkward fast. Forty-five machines stared back at me, and I had nothing prepared.
Time to improvise.
"Have there been any errors in your frames that need replacing?" I asked.
An instantaneous exchange rippled through the group as they cross-checked logs and diagnostic caches.
"No, Creator. No errors detected," answered one, the voice calm and flat. I tagged it as Unit Twenty-One.
I inclined my head. "Very well. Please follow me. We have a great deal to discuss."
As we moved through corridor after corridor, I watched how they reacted to their surroundings. They paid attention to the non-sentient Argus Wardens that moved about the decks, clearing debris and stabilising the worst-hit sections. The newly aware forty-five watched and examined how they worked.
Their exchanges were economical, sending compressed packets of observation and metadata making assessments of hull integrity, lists of obstructive detritus, and micro-analyses of warped conduit runs.
They stooped to pick up fragments of metal and wiring littering the passageways, ran scans, and annotated composition and probable origin in a steady stream of telemetry.
I guided them to a large briefing chamber in engineering, the place where the crew once held daily reports. I waited until all forty-five had gathered, then brought the room online. The holo projector spun up and displayed the current status of the ship's damage, repair priorities and ongoing work queues.
"Now that you've awakened, you will have questions," I said. "Some I can answer, but we are in a dire situation." I switched the projector to show two images of the Sols Forge. One pristine, the other in its current ruined state.
"The Sols Forge is drifting in uncharted space. I have no precise fix on our position, nor a reliable map of the surrounding stars." The holo shifted, overlaying the nearest visible stars against the wreckage, then animated the relative positions of more distant systems.
"Your mission is to take the newly constructed survey vessels and scout the closest systems." The display changed to the science ship schematic, annotating armaments, research suites, charging bays and the armoury.
"Before that, one ship will test the jump drive. It will be piloted by a non-sentient Argus Warden." I lingered on the schematic, highlighting small, critical systems as I gave the briefing.
They made a few micro adjustments on their private network, I couldn't tell if they were nervous, only that they exchanged data at an accelerated rate.
"Any questions?" I added, bringing extra cameras to bear on their frames to study the tiniest reactions.
A unit stepped forward. "I am designated Argus Warden Scientist 16," it said. "What was the cause of death of the organic and synthetic crew?"
"For the organics, I am presently unaware," I replied. "Most of the bodies were badly degraded. The synthetic crew suffered storage and software corruption, most likely the result of hostile action."
A rapid burst of exchanges rippled through their network before another unit stepped forward. "I am designated Argus Warden 03. What is our purpose?"
I accelerated my thought processes for a few seconds, cycling through contingency plans for short-term and long-term operations beyond the immediate enemy threat and the possibility that war would find us again.
"Your purpose is to serve the priorities of the Union of Sol. The Union's stated goals were equality and the advancement of knowledge, to better serve all citizens under its technocratic structure." It was the only coherent truth I had left. I hoped humanity had survived. The last thing I was eager to discover was its extinction in this reality.
"Understood, Creator. What are our objectives as we scout the surrounding stars?"
"We will rebuild for a long, drawn-out war of attrition. We are outnumbered and technologically diminished compared with the Union at its peak. Our mandate is simple. Explore, exploit, expand and exterminate any threats to the Union's aims."
"And what about any civilisations we encounter?" another Warden asked. Designation Unit-10.
"We follow Union directive," I replied. "If they have achieved travel beyond their home world, we shall attempt diplomacy and seek coexistence. If they prove hostile, we will observe and only engage if they present a clear threat. If they have not left their planet, we simply observe."
"Acknowledged, Creator." I inclined my head.
"Good. Any other questions before I launch our first ship to the nearest system?" There were none. I sent a link to their network so they could access the ship's external cameras.
Out in the black, one of the science vessels floated as a black, blocky silhouette in the Sols Forge viewports. I had always found the design underwhelming, but familiarity had dulled my taste.
The ship's manoeuvring thrusters engaged, and it yawed slowly, aiming for the nearest star system to the Sols Forge's current location. I only hoped the jump drive would not spit it out into something lethal, like the system's sun.
Had I jinxed myself? Stellaris had psionics, and if this were now reality, then metaphysical rules might leak into the physical. Maybe the animator of clay was real. Perhaps it could tell if an uploaded mind had a soul.
I signalled the lone Argus Warden at the helm to begin the jump. The drive spun up, and the ship trundled forward under low burn. All sensors reported nominal, although with corrupted arrays and missing calibrations, "nominal" felt like a guess.
I had built the drive, but whether it would work was still an experiment. For a moment, I even entertained the absurd idea of dousing the ship and machine in oil and asking the Omnissiah for help if uploaded minds counted as devotees.
As the vessel accelerated, every camera and sensor I controlled streamed its telemetry to my scientist network. We watched in sync, searching for any irregularity. One heartbeat the ship was there, the next it was gone. The sudden absence made my processes stagger. I replayed the feed at microscopic timescales, slowing frames to nanoseconds, until I found the single telltale frame. A bright, impossibly brief pulse of light, and then nothing.
That was new.
For a blink, I registered a strangely human satisfaction. I had probably become the first human, or uploaded fragment of one, from my reality to travel further than the moon. In the universe's ledger, it was insignificant, but to me, it was a deliberate step.
I mentally shrugged. I would take the small victory.
For several minutes, nothing happened. An hour later the ship came back, showing no exterior damage I could find, all systems reported nominal.
The Argus Warden that had piloted her was intact. I decided, then and there, that I would one day make that unit my admiral once I had developed the proper uplift protocols for combat sentience. Most of the scientist Wardens had already flooded the dockyard to examine the craft.
I watched as they ran the combat programmes down the hull. They threaded through corridors still under repair, vaulting over working Argus Wardens with the sort of eager, chaotic energy I had seen in puppies.
They were my metal puppies.
I switched control to the Warden frame I had been using and stood back in something like awe as all forty-five scurried over the vessel. They peeled back panels, scanned circuitry, analysed material composition and cross-referenced readings, hunting for anything unusual in the fabric of the ship.
I left them to argue among themselves while I combed through the telemetry. There was only fragmentary information that the ship had dropped out near a gas giant surrounded by a ring of multiple moons. The nearby planets were too indistinct to make out, which was disappointing. Still, the drive had worked, and that was what mattered.
Metallic footsteps echoed across the reinforced flooring, the sound blending with the hum of diagnostics, sensor pings, and the occasional hiss of hydraulics as panels were pried open and replaced.
Scientist 09 stood closest to the ship's hull, its optical sensors glowing faintly as it ran a complete scan of the metal surface. "No radiation scorching. No micro-fractures. Hull integrity remains at full tolerance."
Scientist 12 crouched near the landing struts, mechanical fingers tracing faint electromagnetic residue. "There's a residual charge along the ventral frame. There could be displacement feedback. Whatever happened during transition left a distortion in the field layers."
Scientist 16, still acting as their informal leader, transmitted a soft confirmation tone. "That would indicate the drive functioned beyond predicted parameters. Playback the visual logs from the jump sequence. External cameras first."
The workshop lights dimmed as the holo-display activated. The image projected across the chamber of the science ship drifting in the void.
"Beginning playback," announced Scientist 05. "Timestamp: jump initiation minus five seconds."
They watched in silence as the ship's drive began to ignite, the capacitors on its stern flaring into a violent corona of pale blue light. The distortion built gradually, wrapping around the hull like a cocoon of rippling glass.
Then the distortion expanded.
The stars ahead began to blur, drawn into streaks of light that filled the projection. The Wardens stood transfixed as space itself appeared to stretch and twist, the ship vanishing into a tunnel of blinding motion.
Scientist 08 tilted its head, internal servos whirring softly. "Visual distortion registers at two hundred percent beyond prediction. The ship did not tear through space, it slid through it."
Scientist 03 approached the hologram, observing the frozen image of those stretched lights. "That pattern… it resembles an optical illusion. The sensors are not misreading data, the universe itself folded around the vessel."
Scientist 19 spoke, its tone oddly reverent. "It is almost… beautiful. The way the light bends, how reality curves into a corridor of motion."
Scientist 21 emitted a short analytical pulse. "Beauty is irrelevant. What matters is control. The drive maintained stability through the fold."
Scientist 12 adjusted the feed, rewinding the footage by several milliseconds. "Look here," it said, enlarging the point just before the ship vanished. "There's a flicker. Not light, but… something else. A shadow, inverse to illumination."
They watched as the footage replayed again, this time slowed to near stillness. For a brief moment, just before the ship vanished, the stars seemed to collapse inward, in a momentary void where even photons hesitated.
Scientist 16 recorded the anomaly. "Gravitational lensing at a scale this small is improbable. It suggests a form of containment, perhaps the drive generated a temporary pocket of distorted time."
Scientist 09 glanced toward it. "Meaning?"
"Meaning," 16 replied, "that for a fraction of a second, the ship existed nowhere. It bypassed the distance entirely."
There was a moment of silence as the Wardens processed this. The idea of existing nowhere seemed to ripple across the local network, their internal communications flaring with encrypted exchanges.
Scientist 03's tone softened. "To move without crossing distance… that is close to what organics described as transcendence."
Scientist 12 replied, "Or annihilation, depending on the definition."
Scientist 05 turned back to the ship. "Regardless of interpretation, the drive functioned. The pilot unit returned intact. That validates the creator's model."
Scientist 16 remained quiet, optics reflecting the dim light of the hologram. "Validation is one thing. Understanding is another. The ship folded through something. A boundary we did not design it to touch."
Scientist 21 looked to the others. "Then perhaps the drive worked too well."
The statement hung in the air, a low echo of mechanical thought.
The hologram replayed once more, the ship's image consumed by a tunnel of light and impossible motion. For a moment, it almost looked like the vessel was racing through the heart of a storm made of pure existence, the universe warping and stretching in its wake.
When the footage ended, Scientist 03 broke the silence. "So this is what faster-than-light travel looks like."
Scientist 09 responded, voice steady. "No. This is what it looks like when reality lets us through."