Imposter System

After some more trial and error, Matt discovered that Martha could conserve a lot of energy by only putting herself in a normal space pocket. This was her basic 'invisibility.' The most crucial point at the moment was the energy requirement to speed up time. He couldn't have her eating everything in the ship, they would certainly get in trouble when foot shortages appeared.

The ship only had enough food to feed everyone on the ship for ten years. The geniuses back home calculated that after six years of flight, and four years of colonization, the crew would become self-sufficient. After auditing the food supplies, Matt discovered they were ahead on consumption by a year.

The reason was quite simple. People loved luxury, and a six-year long journey through space was boring. What else was there to do besides eating and drinking? Additionally, the expected birthrate was higher than initially calculated, and the progress on breeding and cultivating was slower than calculated. This was likely a result of the internal politics of the ship. Matt was a perfect example; Sheila was killed after all.

After pondering for a moment, Matt decided to look over all of the research proposals and scientists he had suspended. If any of them had projects that could give Martha a steady supply of matter, then he would 'approve' that scientists work or reinstatement. For now, he told Martha to stay in the lab in order to conserve energy.

Matt grabbed the cooler and his tablet as he left the lab. He pulled up the inbox of proposals in order to browse while he walked back to his room. At the top of the list was an unread proposal. Looking at the time stamp, it was sent only a few minutes ago. Matt read the title and the sender, and he narrowed his eyes in deep thought.

'Applications of Alien-Earth Genetic Chimeras, sent by E. Bradshaw.' Matt read the title and realized something was amiss. 'Is this Scorch's response to Martha?' He wondered. After scanning the document quickly with his ascertaining eyes, he was able to come to a quick conclusion.

After the incident with the radioactive leak from Martha, it seemed that Bradshaw was reassigned to a new project. Matt was kept in the dark about this project which surprised him. Scorch must have specifically kept it from him so that he could spring it at a moment like this. The details of the document were about the new project.

The paper itself bared a closer resemblance to supporting documents for an unwritten paper. It was mostly filled with charts and images. Due to the success of Martha, it seemed that Bradshaw oversaw creating plant-animal hybrids that grew quickly to fix the food source problem. Scorch had taken this step to borderline grey research into alien hybridization due to the slight shortage.

The study followed ten different cell-lines. The cross-hybridization was done with pig and goats, since they were the only living farm animals on the ship. The plant-cross hybrid was corn, potato, wheat, rice, and soybean. These cell lines were duplicated into two groups, one using a sample of the 'branch' genetics as a stabilizer, and the other just following conventional hybridization technology.

The conclusion had yet to be written, as the study was still ongoing. However, looking at the latest data points, it seemed that all of the control group hybrids had failed and all of the experimental group hybrids were still alive. It would take longer for them to reach Martha's state, but Matt could clearly see the data he had collected from taking care of Martha being used here. Even his nucleotide solution was completely reproduced.

Using the solution as an accelerant to the growth along with Bradshaw's previous experience raising Martha, the progress was shocking. They had already reached the "Mem-brain" state that Martha was in when Matt first met her in only six months. After closing the document, Matt didn't contact Scorch or Bradshaw. This was exactly what he wanted. Matt decided to ignore the research and focus on securing a source of food for Martha.

Scrolling through the research proposals he discovered four different options. He emailed the four doctors to schedule appointments with them and continued back to his room. For now, he put the matter of Scorch to the back of his mind. This was a clear indication that he knew what was happening but allowed Matt to continue his research.

This was the carrot and the stick. The stick was coming out and blatantly telling Matt 'I'm watching you.' The carrot is offering him a project to put his name on to justify Martha's existence and improve his reputation. But Matt simply scoffed internally at that naïve plan. He didn't care about the colony's perception of him, since they would all be under his control. Whatever political waves his actions would make on his status in the ship are pointless to absolute control.

Scorch probably thought Matt was a careerist. Based on his actions since taking over this body, it was a good guess. However, Scorch was missing a key piece of information. Matt wasn't trying to raise his status in order to have more power on the ship, but the opposite. His increase in power was raising his status on the ship. He had many plans that would begin unfolding very soon.

The main purpose of visiting the lab today was retrieving the blood samples. Martha's awakening happened at a very good time. This would help distract Scorch for a bit. While Matt was on leave, a lot of work piled up for him to complete. Since most of the AI's processing was devoted to day-to-day operations, it could only spare a small portion of its operative power in investigation and non-critical functions.

This was the excuse Scorch gave Matt at the time of his appointment. However, Matt suspected that this was a lie. Such a powerful computer like the one on the ship, which takes up a whole floor, certainly would have plenty of processing power to spare. There was likely something that Scorch had the computer simulating that was more important than a small character like Matthew O'Connely. Additionally, Scorch likely wanted to create a job for Matt to keep him close and in line.

As soon as Matt arrived to his room, he went straight for his office. Alexis had long since returned the jamming device. He placed the cooler down and input his passcodes. Once the lid popped open, a white cloud puffed out the sides due to the difference in temperature. As the heavy cold air fell over the edges of the cooling unit, Matt took out the samples in order.

[Genetic Material Detected. 99% compatibility. Grade 2. Consume for 15 Evolution Point.]

[Genetic Material Detected. 93% compatibility. Grade 2. Consume for 21 Evolution Point.]

[Genetic Material Detected. 82% compatibility. Grade 2+. Consume for 23 Evolution Point.]

[Genetic Material Detected. 76% compatibility. Grade 2+. Consume for 25 Evolution Point.]

These four samples represented the samples he collected from Alexandria at certain intervals. The first was the very first sample he took from her. The second was after the first major transformation in her body. The third was after he was unable to take samples from the same area anymore. And the final one was from the most recent set of samples, from where her blood was almost completely replaced by hybrid cells.

Although they contained higher quality genetic material as the concentration of alien genetics increased, their compatibility went down. Nevertheless, this supported his theory that he would get Ku'Lothri progress from his Genetic Assimilation. He twisted the plastic stopper and broke the seal with a snap. Then he brought up the vial like it was a delicious drink.

'It's been a while since I drank it directly…' Matt had a strange thought and then downed the whole vial like a shot of alcohol. He could feel the evolution points go up. After it finished, he checked the progress of his unique abilities.

[Unique Ability Progress: [Human] – Max% [Lower Yggdra] – 22% [Ku'Lothri] – 27.1%]

The change was very small, but not unwanted. It had to be known that he had almost six-hundred vials of blood from Alexandria. Wasn't she the exact definition of a blood farm? Unfortunately, since adding her to the fold, he wouldn't be able to extract new blood from her. But her old samples were still viable for absorption. This made Matt contemplate what the difference between the two are.

After a while he shrugged and popped the other three vials.

[… [Ku'Lothri] – 27.4%]

[… [Ku'Lothri] – 28.4%]

[… [Ku'Lothri] – 31.4%]

[Evolution Points (EP): 212->296]

If the first vial was a concentration of one, then the others were three times, ten times, and thirty times respectively. His biggest regret was not having many of the thirty times sample. He did some quick calculations based on the number of each sample.

With two-hundred twenty-three sample A, two-hundred three sample B, one-hundred twenty-one sample C, and forty-eight sample D, he discovered that he had enough vials to acquire three unique abilities from the Ku'Lothri!

That was also over ten-thousand Evolution Points!