Ivan Kal - Olympus

“Yes, we have a lot of assets in space already, much more than the Earth countries combined. Their plans to build military space ships in secret implies an agenda other than defense, but then again we did build ships capable of war in secret as well. But their intentions don’t really matter, we need to be able to defend our assets in space much more than they do, our entire economy is based in space, since leaving Earth we have shut down, sold, or transferred most of our Earth enterprises to space. Any loss will impact us much more because of it.” Adrian said, trying to use a more professional tone, like the one he often heard various Olympus personnel using when reporting to Laura.

Laura smiled and nodded.

“Yes, you are right, though Tomas still wants our military capabilities to remain a secret.” She said.

She looked at Adrian for a moment and then asked. “Did the integration with your implant go well?” She asked.

“Yes, there were no problems.” Adrian answered.

“And the AI?”

“There were no problems with her as well.”

“Her?” Laura asked raising her eyebrow.

Adrian felt a blush coming over his face and answered quickly.

“She said she would prefer it if I referred to her as a female. I mean after she chose a female name.”

“You didn’t name the Ai yourself?” She asked surprised.

“Ah, well it didn’t seem right, I asked if she wanted to choose her own name and she said she did, I provided her with some of the books from my collection, and she chose a name from them. Then when I told her that the name is female she said that it didn’t really matter if it was male or female as she had no gender, but that if it made me feel better I could refer to her as a female.” He said in a single breath.

Laura looked at him approvingly. “Really? From the reports I read, all the Ai’s of this type were named by their users, and every male user gave his Ai a male name, and every female hers a female one. Hmm… you need to send the data from your implant to the research department, as soon as you can, they would be very interested in it. But let’s move on to other things. You will be attending the fleet academy soon with other recruits, I have no doubt that you will graduate with highest marks. But nevertheless I want you to focus solely on the classes. And of course you are not to speak anything of what you heard during our meetings, you have high clearance but your classmate will not.” She looked expectantly at Adrian until he said that he understood.

“Good. After you graduate we’ll see about the continuation of your career.” She narrowed her eyes at him and continued. “I have no doubt that you have already figured out that your educational path is different, and that we have other things in plan for you.” When he tried to feign surprise, she scowled at him. “Oh, wipe that expression of your face, I have no delusions about your intellect, I and my superiors know very well that you are unique. And as I said we have plans for you, but you do need to keep your focus and surmount all the obstacles we put before you.” Now there was no need for Adrian to feign surprise, as he was genuinely surprised. He assumed that he caught Laura’s eye and that she groomed him for a command position within the fleet, but knowing that even her superiors had taken notice, that scared him. As far as he knew Laura’s only superiors were Elias Bakas, who commanded the Olympus military, which in fact now made him the same rank as Laura, and then Tomas Klein himself. And the thought that Tomas Klein was interested in him was frightening. “Attending the academy will be one of those obstacles.” She continued seemingly unaware of Adrian’s thoughts. “The academy will put you amongst other recruits, most of who will be older than you. You will need to not only pass, but also make them recognize you as their equal. Your intellect has always put you ahead of those your own age, but being intelligent is not the same thing as being smart. Now you will be in situation where everyone around you will have more experience than you. We are hoping to level the playing field for you a bit.” She smirked. “Do you think you are up to the task?”

Adrian swallowed hard he looked at Laura and realized that even with his smarts he was still far behind those older than him, he thought himself smarter than anyone else, and even though he realized that they had plans for him, he still failed to see the scope of those plans.

“Yes.” Adrian answered, but not really sure whether he truly was up to the task.

Laura looked at him, her eyes searching something in his, then she finally nodded

“Good.” She then stood up and left the room, leaving Adrian alone with his thoughts.

Later that evening Adrian sat in his room thinking about his future. He still struggled with the notion that someone had plans for his future, he feared that his life would not be his own, that he would be limited by the path set before him, like when he was in the orphanage. But then again, this was an opportunity, he knew that everyone in Olympus was free to choose his own path, it was he who chose to go to the military, and then to go to the fleet when opportunity presented itself. He could have refused, and continued on to the military school. And he knew that he was given much more opportunities than anyone else. What he learned over his life in Olympus was that here, skill was valued over anything else, age and experience did factor in, but skill was paramount. That skill usually came with age and experience did make things different in Olympus, where most left school well past the age people on Earth did. And they could afford it, people lived longer now than in the past, and had more time to study and get experience before choosing what they wanted to do. Adrian was the exception, he was given the chance because of his intelligence. He had no doubt that he needed to confirm their trust in him, but he was also a bit scared to have them trust him that much. He kept thinking it over before finally deciding that he would continue to give his best, and hope that he lived up to the expectations they had of him. He lost himself in his thoughts until a soft female voice interrupted his mussing

“Adrian, may I ask you something?” the voice said.

For a moment he was startled and started looking around his room for the source of the voice, when he saw that there wasn’t anyone there with him, he realized to whom the voice must belong to.

“Iris, is that you?” He asked.

“Of course. There is no one else present here.” She said.

Adrian shook his head and grinned.

“I see that you synthesized a female voice for yourself.”

“Obviously.” She said. And Adrian swore he could feel a touch of amusement in her tone.

“I like it.” He said.

“Thank you.” She said, and now he was sure he heard pride in her tone.

“You wanted to ask me something?”

“Yes. I wanted to know if I could have access to the rest of your databases. I have already read through your book collection several times, I find that the material becomes less entertaining after fiftieth read through.” She said.

Adrian opened his mouth in shock. She already read through his collection fifty times? He realized that he shouldn’t have been surprised, she had much greater processing capability than him, and even though his own brain’s processing speed will increase over time as he became more compatible with his implants he will still not be able to match her pure computing abilities. He thought of ways to keep her occupied, and reached a decision.

“Ok, I’ll give you access to my databases, I can also give you limited surf access to the net, through my implant.”