The slim unclothed bipedal humanoid appearing figure walked quietly along passage of the mile and a half long star ship Le Errant. The being’s skin colour was light, almost white, and the long, straight waist length hair was the most golden blond, almost as if it were made of real gold. That combined with nearly luminous blue eyes gave it an astonishing beauty. Its pace was unhurried but purposeful and in another 20 minutes it arrived at the door to the control room. The press of a single button opened a sliding door and it walked in. Shortly, the young teen emerged from the dual door air lock and walked through several short passages and into the control room. It had spent its entire life alone, and had no concept of gender, nor did it seem to exhibit any secondary sexual traits though it had learned through the study modules that it was Homospatia an evolved version of Homosapiens, or so the makers hoped.

Long gone, almost forgotten, not even the makers remembered that 900,000 Earth years ago, the target planet Earth supported a very advanced civilization that had begun to send out colony ships. After a few hundred years, the Earth was so poisoned that wars developed and humans on that planet became extinct. It took less than 100 years.
The being was about to make a discovery that would shake it clear to the core of it’s being. It was brought to consciousness 15 Earth years ago for the purpose of inspecting certain maintenance and repairs that the main program had predicted. The craft had cruised through space for many thousand years with essentially no occupancy but the time for a sentient presence had come. When it was ‘born’ there were a half dozen years in an automated nursery learning and developing body coordination.
It stopped at a restroom at the back of the control room and used the facilities. Afterward, washing its hands, and face, mild surprise played across its face as it viewed the reflection in the full mirror. Its eyes were large and round, abnormally so for a humanoid. The nose was relatively tiny, and the small mouth sported fat lips. The face was pretty, comely even, but had an alien look so mysterious that it would frighten strangers. One of the evolved features was the presence of third eye organs located in the sinus cavities of the face that imaged from the infrared to the ultraviolet range, so the being needed no light except in very cold conditions.

The Mirror revealed undeveloped breasts and down lower there was nothing at all that would reveal gender. Save for a small urinary orifice and a passage for solid matter, there was nothing. The blankness between the thighs would be surprising to almost anyone on Earth. It sighed briefly in disappointment and turned to move into the command bridge. Something had been troubling it lately; some stirring within, some longing that was never felt before. As it moved around checking various instruments and gauges the readings seemed satisfying. An almost unnoticed push of a single button and large screens revealing what lay outside the huge craft suddenly came on.

There were several different views at various levels of magnification. The area in the centre of viewing wall showed a greatly magnified view directly ahead. To the right and left of this view were unmagnified views to the right and left sides of the craft respectively. Dozens of other, smaller screens showed various views down the sides of the huge ship and various critical areas on board both outside and inside.

The teen, named Asma had been on the ship alone for as long as it could remember. As a toddler, it inherently knew how to look after the ship and had done so, alone, for at least 14 years. In all that time, it had never spoken a word or cared to do so. Its hearing was absolutely acute, and it loved music of all kinds. As it finished in the command centre, it started a long series of classical music to begin with “Spem In Alium” by Thomas Tallis, some would say. While others would say that his work was a copy of earlier German work. Asma smiled momentarily, doubting that anyone, if there were any alive cared who originated the music.

In a huge dark, sealed compartment just aft of the control centre laid an Artificial Intelligence module whose performance was increasingly out of tolerance. By design, the whole space vessel, including the vaguely human appearing mobile occupant had rigidly controlled mission parameters. The purpose of this mission was to destroy all sentient life and prepare the possibly regenerated Earth for colonization by the humanoids of the home world, Makkah.

War was completely unknown on Makkah because they searched increasingly large areas around Makkah and stealthily destroyed any sentient life they encountered, thus preventing any war before it could happen. So far, their efforts had worked out for them, but not without dissent on the part of some on the Makkan home planet. Any disagreement was resolved quietly and ruthlessly with none but certain of the effete knowing. However, in their ruthless efficiency they had wounded and offended one of their own.

Young Kanye was a very good student of Philosophy, who had suddenly found an interest in the technology surrounding Artificial Intelligence and space travel. He’d never spoken of it to anyone, but the brother of the parents of his best friend had been purged in a disagreement about the regulation of personal freedoms in the general population. Two boys, Kanye and Ruu, had long been aware of the monitoring of everyone’s activities and long ago, it had become a challenge to them to find ways to communicate without anyone knowing. They were very aware that certain activities were not acceptable, and they knew which ones, so they had become extremely careful to conceal their stealthy industry. It had taken years to understand the depth of the craftiness of their watchers, and they had even been caught or allowed themselves to be caught enough times to perfect their clandestine strategies.

So, when news of the murder of Nuu’s uncle came to them the ruthlessness of their rulers became too much. The boys became young adults and finally men. In their times alone they tried to build a plan to either take down the government or attain more justice for the citizens of Makkah. Everything they thought of seemed doomed to failure no matter what they did. Finally the middle aged friends gave up, or at least stopped speaking of it. Nuu however did not give up at all and continued plotting in secret for years more. Meantime, Kanye became more and more involved in his AI work, even finding a way to make them last far longer than previously.

As the two became old men, closer to the end of their lives, no one suspected that they had developed a plan and worked on it for over 20 years. Part of the plan included the ultra-miniaturization of memory modules, and secretly they installed several times more than most thought necessary in the actual structure of the control room and AI centre of the new space vessel. Meanwhile, Kanye had worked on a way to directly link AI Modules to the Makkan brain.

Weeks before a new exploration vessel was due to launch Nuu passed away. It was not entirely unexpected, though most thought that he would last years longer. So it was that Kanye tearfully bid farewell to this newest exploration vessel. The departure would be tomorrow, and he was suddenly called away to attend to personal business hundreds of miles away and would not see the actual installation of the AI complex. “Too bad”, his work associates said.

The exploration vessel Sophont would take more than 53 years to reach Earth as it turned out. 31 Makkan months into the mission, out of tolerance things began to happen in the AI. The mobile AI, which appeared humanoid, began to experience malfunction that caused it to deviate from prescribed procedure in that it began to build a laboratory and suspension tanks that were not part of mission directives. The program that was to cause the manufacturer of a disease and genetic mutation that would wipe out life on the target planet was altered. Eventually, the mobile AI was altered so that even if a major deviation from the planned mission occurred, it would not be able nor wish to send out an alarm. On at least 5 different levels, the programming was changed so much that any communication with Makkah was now impossible.

After 30 years of service the Mobile AI ceased to function due to critical conflicts in its prime directive programming. Asma was by now fully functioning, save for its diminutive size. The consciousness of Nuu was fully online now and while it was never documented, certain critical material and memory modules that contained Kanye were functioning in Asma. Certain hormone levels had been changing in Asma for the last year, and on Asma’s 15th birthday, Asma began to think of itself as she. Though Kanye had never confided to Nuu deep inside he was she. Though they never spoke of it, there had existed that tacit understanding.

One of Asma’s tasks was to search for and destroy the secret guard module on board the ship that would detect major long-term departure from the mission plan and cause the ship to self-destruct upon detection of deviation from mission parameters.

Asma stood in front of her new, clandestinely manufactured mirror. It was wide and tall so she could see her entire form in it. Slowly over the last several time periods (months in earth thought) Asma’s height increased. She had been receiving signals from the target planet Earth for some time now, and it was in her mind to learn from and adapt to the information she received. Upon her arrival there, Asma had her own agenda that was completely different from that of the planet Makkah. She intended to help the newly developed sentients become aware of the threat from Makkah and to send a mission out to eradicate it once and for all.