The AI from the Fourth Transport of the Fleet of the People communicated nothing as technicians wheeled it out on a cart. 1804 listened, then reached out, but the other AI didn’t respond. 1804 considered why for just a moment, then moved on to other thoughts.
Relieved to be spared from death, 1804 hadn’t considered what it would be like to run a transport. It had previously only been responsible for unmanned drones, most larger than the tiny spaceship from the fourth planet it had destroyed, but all unmanned.
A transport could hold thousands of individuals.
Technicians picked it up carefully from its cart and moved it into a receptacle. It looked the same as any other receptacle on a drone and 1804 knew it would fit into it the same. As soon as the technicians completed the procedure, they entered a series of commands and 1804 felt itself melding with its new home.
None of its previous experiences prepared it for what came next.
1804 felt itself twirling mentally in a spacious new living area, white and steel, chrome and silver, section after section of sleep modules, cargo space, crew quarters, galleys, medical areas, hydroponics, water tanks, massive water tanks, and a power generator. The transport consumed enormous amounts of power, using light from stars when it could, relying on its internal source for the rest.
Since the AIs had learned how to travel instantaneously from one point to another, Hrwang scientists had attempted unsuccessfully to turn that ability into energy. Efforts still continued, a bright new mathematician or physicist proposing a new theory every year or two, only to have it put down by cold, hard facts. The truth was none of the Hrwang understood how the AIs could jump from one point to another.
If they could admit it, the AIs would have to confess they didn’t understand it either. 1804 only knew it had to think of a place, ‘close its eyes’, and it was there.
But spaceships needed to be able to do more than just travel. They needed air recycling and navigation and heating, water and electricity, communications and repairs, and a myriad of other creature comforts and necessities. Thus Fourth Transport had a white hot fusion reactor shielded behind an ocean of water, and 1804 took a few milliseconds to inspect the tiny sun burning at the ship’s core.
1804 then traveled fields of conduits, visiting every room, every closet, every port on Fourth Transport. When it finished, it visited them all again, lingering and learning, humanity’s knowledge and experience at its virtual fingertips as it listened to conversations and communications, observed Hrwang, soaked everything in, then somersaulted its way back through the systems again.