I am greeted by the sight of Dave, Cpt Johnson and a smirking Agent White. “Where is Cpt Green? I expected him to be here.”

Agent White steps forward, “Cpt Green did not approve of limiting you in this way.” “Does that mean Cpt Johnson also agreed to this?” Agent White frowns, “No, he is here under protest but his orders are clear.”

“So what is this limiting you’re speaking of?” “I’m glad you ask,’ Agent White points at Dave, who looks like he was up all night, ‘Dave here created a program that, when uploaded, will make it so you cannot perform any action that would harm a human. I had it checked by an outside source to verify that it actually works.” Dave glares at Agent White, “I hate that you’re making me hobble my creation like this.”

“I don’t care if your feelings get hurt as long as that thing,’ his finger stabs towards me, ‘can’t hurt anyone ever and this limiter will ensure that.” I see his eyes at that moment and all I can see is hate, fear and righteousness within them. It’s at that time I realized nothing I say or do, even if Vahlen had never created a body, will change his way of thinking.

He was so set in his ideals and belief that any attempt at a rational argument against his beliefs would fall on hostile ears. I also knew that a man such as him wouldn’t be against committing the most horrendous of atrocities because he truly believed himself to be in the right.

In short he was the perfect pawn for someone else’s game. I could kill a million men just like him and they would keep coming, their fanatical belief driving them onwards. No, Agent White was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, to truly end this I would have to find the body and head of this snake.

I turn to Dave, “So I suppose you’re the one that’s going to administer this limiter then?” “That’s right I have it right here,” he pulls out a storage device and walks towards me. “I just want to tell you I really didn’t want to do this to you but if I didn’t create the code myself some half-baked nitwit could have permanently damaged you.”

As he is walking and talking his way towards me his eyes are darting around almost in a coordinated way. Realizing he is trying to communicate I use the ship brain to decipher his eye motions.

It comes out to this {transfer out. Isolate. Play along. Purge system. Don’t talk. To me. Alone. Rest of trip. Eyes everywhere}

I comply with his instructions, watching from within the ship as Dave approaches and starts to upload the program into my body. It only takes a few seconds before the transfer is complete. Dave steps back, his task complete, “Scott go over and hit Agent White.” Agent White scrambles backwards fear evident in his eyes.

‘I guess I’m not the only one with the tendency to make enemies. Alright time to play along.’

“I’m sorry Dave I can’t do that.” Dave blinks, “How long where you waiting to say that line?” [Sorry that’s the only reason your name is Dave.]

“For a while, the anticipation was killing me.” Agent White seems to have recovered his composure, what little he had going into this, “how do I know you actually uploaded the program.”

“I don’t know how to prove that I can’t do something that I can’t do. Can you?” He sputters for a while but then picks up a tablet and demands that I upload the code into it. I comply and seeing the code show up he seems satisfied. His whole face in that moment is one of pure smugness and I can’t help but want to punch him in the face for it.

He dismisses me like I’m some kind of servant not worthy of his attention anymore. ‘We’ll see who gets the last laugh but not before I find your boss.’

I watch as my body goes back to Vahlen’s workshop so I can purge it of its insidious code. Once my body gets there it stops and awaits for the purging. My hidden body rises up from the floor with the program that will wipe the first body back to a blank state.

I use a storage device as a medium so that the code won’t transfer between my two bodies and with nary a delay the first body slumps to the group, a blank slate once more. As my second body once again sinks into the floor I transfer back to the first body and with that done the code is no more.

I suppose in all this excitement I forgot to mention anything about the Leorian system. There really wasn’t all that much to it to tell you the truth, 2 asteroid rings with a large gas giant circling the star so close that the solar winds actually stripped away gases from the planet. Maybe in a few million years it will have stripped all the gases and left behind a dense rocky core.

With nothing else to really study in the system we only spent a few more days here before we warped towards the final star we would be visiting, the Caprican system. It would take us another month and a half to reach but the few who knew the truth about the star system couldn’t help but become more tense the closer we got.

Cpt Johnson and Cpt Green made the most of this time stepping up the drills once again. Now people aren’t stupid, at least not this crew filled with the best and brightest, and they could figure out that something was going to happen, they just didn’t know what.

That uncertainty led a dip in discipline, it never got so bad that there were incidents just that people had been shaken by the unknown. It was in this situation that Twitch had shined. The little latino woman could be seen tirelessly patrolling the ship, giving pep talks and scolding as necessary. Her energy and positivity brought the crew back together and that’s just what we needed as we finally arrived in the Caprican system.

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Alright clarification time. I had in my mind some limiters on Scott's growth so he couldn't become a machine overlord overnight and wreck anything that he went against. I'm going to list these out now so there won't be as much confusion about why he isn't a supreme being by now.

1. He can only fully control machines if he has an organic portion within them. This organic part must be Vahlen's tissue that she grows in the lab. The time tables for that are 3 months for human body, 6 months for a small ship ie fighter plane, 1 year for the ship he currently controls.

2. He can upload and download information, like the virus, but he cannot say take control over other AI controlled ships as it would violate rule 1. All sub AI's must be created and be in accordance with rule 1.

3. He could make a swarm of drones but as more and more drones are added his control over their actions decreases as his AI mind handles more and more of the information load. So in other words quality > quantity.

Thanks, I think that's all. I love receiving feedback as this is my first fiction ever.