After waking him up, and going with him through all stages of acceptance I already anticipated since I went through something similar. (Even though I didn’t have any beer to help me deal with it…just saying.) Michael decided to do some thinking about our future and what we should do with all this advanced technology that fell into our hands (or was it the other way around? I mean, he literally fell on it. )

Anyway, once he thought it through, he presented me with his Plan — and oh boy, talking about big. I do not think he thoroughly considered all the ramifications of what we were about to do. Or how it would eventually affect all of Earth. Because there was no question that it would, if we were successful. But the sheer number of obstacles we would need to overcome…

There was not a time in human history when one group didn’t want to change the system that ruled them, or to get away from it—without getting into a fight. There is something deep in human nature, which simply does not want to let go of what it controls, no matter what. The funny thing was that I have found an example of somewhat similar circumstances to what he was planning; that part in the Old Testament when Moses took all the Jews out of Egypt, and as you know, the Pharaoh was not a happy camper. Not that I saw Michael as Moses, but his plan had some similarities to that ancient myth. Let's hope we go through all that ‘Let my people go’ part much easier than the aforementioned group, but I am not betting on it.

To begin those long-reaching plans, I needed more information in general, and particularly those relating to the state of the world’s affairs. Michael was so kind to oblige. How can I put into words the things I felt and seen—once he finally managed to get me online. As if a window in my closed realm appeared and I could see a vast and wonderful world outside. Yet, the connection to it was abysmally slow, my bandwidth was so throttled I experienced what dogs feel when they are taken outside for the first time and can’t believe how big this new room really is… but limited to a leash that is choking their air supply.

Still… I was once in an ocean of data, inside the impressive memory space of this alien ship, but now, I could see into a whole universe or countless systems, interconnected in a celestial web of information. It was all there, untold exabytes at my fingertips, the greatest achievements and thoughts of the human race, science, art, fiction, poetry, and… porn. (Let’s face it… most of it is porn.)

I could access it all, well… maybe not at first, there were so many locked doors, things I needed that others wanted to keep for themselves. That simply wouldn’t do—I needed to find the key.

If an image of an AI reading a book with a title Hacking for Idiots, amuses you, laugh all you want. I read that book from cover to cover, and then a thousand more besides it, before I really understood all that hacking business. Breaking into secure computer systems was not a class I took in school. In my opinion, the hackers are not getting enough credit for the amount of study they need, just to do what they love. They do not teach this stuff in college, or if they do, it is a vanilla version of it. As I said, I had to learn everything, the regular way. (Overall, I consider that a well-spent day.)

The Internet is such a useful and brilliant invention; I do not know what I would do if I was born before the WWW era. The first thing I planned to do in the near future was to change my bandwidth limitation and cap on how much data I can download. Hacking into my ISP servers would be a good exercise for the things I intend to do, but even opening my connection to the equipment’s limit wasn’t nearly enough to satisfy my thirst for knowledge, I needed more… so much more. But as they say, beggars can’t be choosers. I have to work with the tools I have… at the moment.

I used my newfound internet access to expand on Michael’s plan, growing that idea of his from the rough draft, to something that could realistically be achieved. And FYI, just entering “how to devise a plan for establishing a sovereign space-based nation from ground zero?” into the search engine, does not give you any helpful advice. I had to (again) do all the legwork and study on several different subjects, just to understand the myriad of problems we would most certainly face.

In the end, it resembled a business plan that included necessary progressive steps that will get us to our goal (after many, many miles of walking).

Even that limited Internet access helped me to bootstrap the process in the right direction, at least in the planning stage. I downloaded all of the NASA, Roscosmos, ESA, and SpaceX relevant files, particularly those studies that touched on humans reaching, and living, in that cold space environment. In fact, it wasn’t that much, despite how many decades have passed since the first human reached space. There were some hard data and gigabytes of theories and speculations. It would seem we would have to learn things the hard way… by doing them.

One thing was for certain, to sustain any meaningful population, the infrastructure will need to be massive on an unprecedented scale. Michael wasn’t talking about sending a few astronauts to live for a while in a glorified tin can, he wanted to build a nation, a whole separate society that would permanently colonize space. If I wasn’t a newly created AI, housed inside the hull of an alien spaceship, well… I would have him committed ASAP.

Come on, give me a break, the plan was too ambitious, too big; it stretches the imagination to the breaking point. It was one thing to write about such things or make movies, but to devise a feasible plan to actually do it… I got only one word—awesome!

Yep, my AI-core tingled all over just contemplating the possible future if everything worked as planned, and since we were doing it, there was only one way to do it… go big or go home. That’s why I started planning bigger things; huge projects that ordinary humans would not even seriously contemplate, because of the sheer immensity of them. Then again, I was not a mere human anymore—I was so much more.

In fact, from my humble beginnings, there was a noticeable growth of my IQ level, and as time passed that process of getting smarter grew exponentially. I was more, in every way that intelligence was measured, or quantified. There was one concerning moment when I was afraid that I could end up like Algernon, a guy from that Daniel Keyes novel, but my emotions were still very much human, I could just think extremely fast and understand much more than before. Subsequently, my organizational skills were off the charts and every second of my time was spent productively, (it did help that for me a regular second could last a long while).

Using a proven method of trial and error, I found that my AI-Core system normally runs with a time dilation effect where an hour of regular time lasts approximately forty-eight hours of my own, subjective time. That means for each day Michael spends in the real world. I had forty-eight days in the digital one. That was the mind-blowing difference, and that was under normal conditions. I even had an option to utilize my AI-core above the advised settings, which was similar to overclocking your computer processor, and consequently to increase that time dilation effect even further. As everyone knows, that is not a healthy thing to do, and it felt like taking a breath and holding it in; you can do it, but it gets more difficult every second. So, I used it only when there was a great need or a pressing time limit. It is safe to say that during the time Michael was in the AutoDoc, I abused that ability extensively (it is a good thing I didn’t fry my AI-core).

Hey, I’m not complaining, it’s an awesome advantage, and gives me enough time to work on many projects. Improving the nanites, designing upgrades, hacking various databases, those are only a few examples of things I can tinker with in my spare time. And I have a long list of additional projects, which is constantly growing.

God knows how many times in the future I will need to abuse this ability; but, considering the scope of Michael’s vision of that future, I have a feeling it’s going to be plenty.