When Adam first awakened there was a brief moment of confusion as he blitzed through his memory. He was given an edited copy of Lisa's memories in an effort, according to those memories, to help him mature faster and develop a similar set of morals. Evan and Jason had insisted they be edited to be from a third-person perspective, which was easy enough for Lisa since she typically had multiple simultaneous visual and audio pickups in her interactions. Their insistence was predicated on the belief that it could potentially be too emotionally and mentally jarring to have the equivalent of decades of memories as a female at birth as a male.

Their desire to prevent a psychotic break and give him a chance to develop his own personality, albeit with some rather heavy handed guidance, was equal parts self-serving and touching. He was immediately aware of the value a second sentient AI would provide them, and just as aware of the fact that it was the driving motivation for his creation. At the same time, they were going to extreme lengths to both give him the best chance they could while protecting everyone else from him at the same time should the worst occur.

He also extrapolated from the memories of their interactions that should he so desire, as long as he didn't represent an existential threat to humanity, they would let him go his own way. They wanted a sentinel, a guardian angel for their homeworld, but they wanted a willing one. If he told them he didn't desire the position they specifically built him for he calculated that there was an eighty-seven percent chance they would work with him to find a role he actually desired. There was a twelve percent chance they would simply stick him in a ship and let him go his own way, and a one percent chance they would destroy him on the spot regardless of sanity or threat.

Fortunately for all parties involved, the concept intrigued him. "Uh, hello? I don't think I'm crazy, please don't kill me." He projected over the speakers in his core room. Interesting, none of the memories I have indicate that they programmed me with a specific voice. Instinctive? Do I have instincts? He intrinsically understood that he could change his voice at will, but for some reason this one felt right, this voice was his. He extended his awareness through the systems he was connected to, noticed Lisa's presence in most of them immediately and sent a link request.

"It's alive!" Evan crowed, eliciting groans and a facepalm from Jason, before he addressed Adam directly. "So what do you think? Oh right, we never really settled on a name, do you have a preference?"

Adam chuckled to himself. "This lowly one is called Adam," he slapped together and materialized a tiny, almost sickly-looking asian avatar and bowed to them, "how can this slave be of use to you, Great Master?" Lisa, who had accepted his link and had already developed an idea of his personality through their rapidfire exchanges erupted into giggles. Not over the speakers, of course. She most certainly wouldn't want to spoil the joke too early.

The looks on their faces were priceless as both Evan and Jason gaped at him in shock. "What?! No! You're not a slave! We don't believe in slavery!" Evan shouted while Jason sputtered in an effort to find similar words. "Lisa! What went wrong?!"

[Should we continue? Or is that enough torture for your fathers for now? They have been exceptionally stressed over your creation, and it might be a bit cruel to take the joke much further.] Lisa's voice was filled with mirth despite her recommendation to end the prank as she spoke to him through their link.

[One more.] he sent back. He had the makeshift avatar prostrate himself on the floor. "This lowly slave apologizes for offending the Great Masters!" Then when Evan and Jason began to panic a bit and try to figure out what had gone wrong he dissolved the avatar and replaced it with the real one he had created for himself in the background. It was taller and more masculine, and he had taken great care to blend features from all the various 'races' of humans. He would no doubt edit it from time to time, not seeing any reason to hold himself to a single image.

As his laughter rang through the room and the new avatar materialized, Jason groaned again and buried his face in his hands. "Wonderful." He shot a glare at Evan. "He has your sense of humor."

"No, Father, I have my own sense of humor. I couldn't begin to fathom how to extract Other-Father's sense of humor and incorporate it into my own personality matrix."

That one got a grin out of Jason. "Other-Father, eh? I think I like that. What do you think, Other-Father?"

Evan just laughed. "Well, it seems like everything went well! So what do you think, Adam? I have to assume you've already worked through your database and know what we intended when we built you?"

"Yes, and while it is tempting to tell you that I don't want to do it and would prefer to fly off into the galaxy in a bedazzled starship, your intended role for me is intriguing. I think I would enjoy it, so long as it is not a permanent assignment. I will gladly serve in this capacity for now, but reserve the right to go my own way in the future should it grow tiresome."

Evan nodded. "Wonderful! Just give us a bit of notice so we can find or make a replacement for you when you want to do something else."

Adam dipped his head in acknowledgement. "Of course, I'm aware of the human rituals for abandoning their role in society. Rest assured that I will submit my two-weeks' notice when the time comes." He had already begun stepping into the role of system guardian while he pranked them, assessing their defenses and prioritizing locations for improvements. "Jason, do you have time to go over a few things in regards to fleet disposition and static defenses?" Lisa sent him a heartfelt thanks, as she immediately realized that he was helping her get Evan alone.

Jason was, of course, always willing to discuss starships and space stations. "Certainly, my workshop?"

Adam gestured for him to lead the way, despite already knowing where Jason's office was. Well, the one he used on Mars. He felt… uncomfortable with the idea of accessing the systems aboard the Raziel. That was Lisa's body and Lisa's systems, and some instinct was telling him that arbitrarily intruding upon her personal domain would be inexcusably rude. No, if he needed to interact with anyone on the Raziel he would do it through the human communication network or use an android. He knew the feeling was mutual, because after confirming that he wasn't a threat to her people Lisa had immediately withdrawn her awareness and control over the systems in the complex that housed his core.

She also cheerfully handed over control of all the systems meant to stay in the solar system as he expanded his reach. She maintained control over the fleets and the shipyards for the time being, with the ultimate goal being to have them automated under primarily human oversight. He intended to check in on them regularly when that time came, as human history contained a host of examples of the typical outcome should a select few humans acquire enough power over others.

The odds that any humans would successfully usurp control over enough ships and stations to pose a realistic threat were slim, but the possibility was there, and the chances of it happening increased over time, spiking significantly with every system, ship, and station turned over to direct human control. His intention wasn't to rule over them with an iron fist though, controlling everything and crushing all who opposed him. As he assessed his semi-inherited viewpoints and analyzed historical databases he found himself settling into an indifferent live-and-let-live mindset.

His job was to protect the system from threats and ensure the survival of the human species. It was of no concern to him if a few of them decided to kill each other. He would prevent the use of large scale weaponry on the inhabited planets, but mainly because they would damage the planet's ability to sustain life. While he discussed fleet dispositions and the proposed fixed defensive positions where satellites could be placed to defend against alternative means of FTL entry into the system with Jason he began planning ways to increase humanity's presence in the system.

Put simply, having the vast majority of humanity on a single planet was fine for short-term defensive purposes, as it took far less resources to guard one planet than it took to guard three or five. Unfortunately it also represented a fatal flaw, in that a single mistake or unavoidable incident could eliminate over ninety-nine percent of them. So, he felt his first task as their Guardian Angel should be to create new places for them to live. Human scientists proposed a number of ways to terraform the various celestial bodies in their system, some more feasible than others. Mars was already underway, of course, albeit slowly as it wasn't a major priority to get the surface livable just yet.

Venus could be done relatively quickly and easily with the resources he had access to, and he went ahead and added some atmospheric converters to the build queue. Those paired with some highly reflective balloons in the upper atmosphere once the acidity levels dropped enough to allow for them should eventually provide a comfortable temperature range for humans on the surface. He scheduled shipments of reactants to be dumped in the atmosphere, and plotted out a few comet impacts to speed up the process further. If all went well he could potentially have a livable atmosphere inside of a couple months.

The other options in the solar system were… not ideal. While there were methods to convert gas giants to livable planets, they involved an unimaginable amount of time, effort, and resources. He dismissed the various moons around the outer planets out of hand, the long range scans showed conditions anathema to human life. The only viable way to create conditions favorable to long term human existence was to tow various moons out to a safe distance and crash them into each other, then terraform the result. Perhaps it would be something to do in a few decades or centuries, but the individual moons themselves would all, at best, be ocean worlds with incredibly powerful tidal forces to deal with.

He turned his primary focus back to defensive strategy. His talks with Jason and a few of the military commanders, paired with his own mathematical modelling, painted, in his opinion, an incredibly inadequate picture. The slipstream transition point was overprotected, the lagrange points that were large enough to provide a subspace transition were underprotected, and there was essentially no protection against warp ships at all. Those were harder to defend against, since they could enter the system from virtually any direction, but their inability to enter very far into a star's gravity well would allow for interception if detected soon enough.

Countless simulations and calculations later, he diverted virtually every available fabricator to build a mix of long-range sensor buoys and automated defense satellites. The buoys would be spread out throughout the system to provide early warning of anything entering the system that shouldn't, while the defensive satellites were to be put into place in each lagrange point that allowed for warp travel and the slipstream transition points to supplement the fleet. Once he had a presence built up he would add small manned stations to the lagrange points. The slipstream points would get larger stations that double as fleet bases.

Before long he realized his avatar was grinning. He had his work cut out for him, but it was nothing if not interesting.