Home sweet home [Me + invited]

[Below Par]

Before speaking Machine reloads and downs another glassful.

" . . . "

On second thought he reloads again, downs that one too then says

"Long story short I wasn't just showing off when I assisted you during your docking. My ability to shift was gained from an accident that occurred during my time with a previous employer. In the same way people research bio-weaponry by going nomad hunting and dissecting what's left there was a project to ascertain the viability of nano-tech augmentation by doing the same thing with those ships that had artificial intelligence.

Not surprisingly something went wrong, there was an explosion and I woke up with the freaky powers and the little one who is currently downstairs on a time out. If I understand correctly I absorbed a big cloud of nano-tech stuff that integrated with the biological stuff that, up to that point, was me.

I'm skipping a lot, you understand, but here comes the important bit. When I shift myself or you or your ship I target what I want to move and where I want to move it in an image in my mind's eye. It's like a really dark room and only seeing a tiny moment of an afterglow. But in that moment I see everything. Energy fields, structural resonance, sub-atomic phase . . . everything. Spread out like a rainbow of theoretical physics. It's blurry though and very brief. If I could get my hands on some of the tech they were using at the time I might be able to boost the image for longer. A few seconds maybe. In addition I should be able to save the raw data from my short term memory so I can look over it in detail afterwards.

But . . . the vital hardware required isn't something I can pick up at the nearest Freeport. There are some facilities that have servers complex enough but, if breaking in isn't an option, we need the central secondary core of one of those A.I. vessels. Their equivalent of an escape pod. What they download their essence, their soul, onto before ejecting into the void . . ."

Taking another deep draw then letting the smoke slowly just curl from his barely parted lips he then spears the lazily drifting smoke with a sudden exhale.

" . . . which, rather neatly, brings me round to what we'll be imaging. That Odin docked here. We will quite obviously and deliberately set off all the security devices simultaneously. They'll all light up like a funeral pyre to me so I know what to fabricate from scratch. Or I'll screw up somewhere and lobotomise myself in a fraction of a nanosecond."

Mentioning that last point as if it were a minor irrelevance, Machine takes a quick draw in, puffs it out again then says

"In any case, do we storm the fort or go hunting?"

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