Blue Star Enterprises

Alexander carried the very delicate instrument down to Nova's office. He learned his lesson about allowing his auto carts or bots to do it for him after they jostled a few of the previous devices so much that it rendered them inoperable.

It wasn't a huge deal when you could recycle the entire device and reproduce it, but Alexander was a big proponent of not wasting time. That was especially important with this newest iteration, which took three days to assemble at the tightest tolerances his machine was capable of producing.

Accuracy at that scale was not a quick process, even with the speed of his nano-assembler. He shifted the device to one arm and pressed the button to open the door with his other. The door to Nova's office slid open into the recess in the wall.

He noted there was no longer the sound of grinding metal when her door opened. One of Yi Na's people must have finally come by and fixed it. They probably got tired of Lund bothering them about it constantly. She even got Alexander involved, and he had mentioned it to the Construction Foreman, who had added it to his list of repairs.

With no surprise, Alexander found Nova hard at work trying to prove her mathematical equations.

"Alexander, back so soon? And you brought another measuring instrument. Have you refined your printers enough to meet my needs?" she asked, turning back to her work.

"Something like that," he admitted as he set the heavy device down on a stand designed specifically for it. "How's the math coming?"

Their relationship had sort of evolved or devolved into this back-and-forth of lightly barbed comments toward each other. He didn't really mind it, and he saw the smirk on the ancient woman's face when he responded so it was clear she didn't either.

Alexander didn't sense any maliciousness in her words, in fact, he was pretty sure she was testing his intelligence. He assumed that to be the case because this back-and-forth started shortly after he spilled his secret to more people. Dr. Lund might be a shut-in who preferred to work alone and keep to herself, but she wasn't stupid, nor was she deaf. He was sure she must have heard the rumors about him being an alien by now.

Much to his annoyance, the rumor had morphed once again, despite people knowing the truth. Now people were attributing all his hard work to the fact that he was an AI. Alexander was pretty sure if he was an alien AI, even a restricted one, he wouldn't be stuck trying to piece together outdated technologies to make something new, he would simply invent something so advanced that humanity wouldn't be able to understand its significance.

The really annoying part was he couldn't even discount this new rumor. A sufficiently advanced program, not even an AI, could mimic what he was doing. It would probably even do a better job at it as well.

He finished setting up the device at the same time he finished his thoughts. Nova walked over and glanced at the device before pulling up a holo screen and remotely connecting it to the instrument which Alexander had learned was meant to both test and create nanoscopic gravitational waves while measuring the resultant output.

That was the reason it needed to be so accurate. Any deviation threw off the measured output.

Once he realized what the instrument was for, he realized it wasn't all that unique. Humanity has been measuring gravitational disturbances for hundreds of years. It was the base principle that allowed gravitational sensors to pick up jump signatures. It had just never been used on such a small scale before.

Considering how much effort went into creating this device, he could see why nobody had bothered measuring infinitesimal gravity disruptions.

You would think a device used to measure gravity would work better in space where it was free from such a source, but that wasn't the case. According to Nova, a planet's gravitational pull could be accounted for, but in space, gravity was constantly shifting as everything moved about, even if it was just at an unmeasurable level for most systems.

He witnessed part of that now as she was entering a complex series of calculations into the device. Nova paused and turned to him. "You planning on staying to watch the test?"

"I might as well stick around to see if it works or not."

"Fine, but you need to stand over there." She pressed a series of commands and a faint white outline shimmered into being that was the rough approximation of Alexander's form.

"Seriously?" he asked as he walked over to the holographic representation of himself.

"Your mere presence will throw off the device. I calculated your gravitational mass and figured out the most optimal spot for you to stand while the instrument runs the test. Try not to move outside the white outline, it'll skew the test if you do."

He sighed and complied, standing inside the ghost-like projection.

Nova soon moved as well, standing within a similar projection.

Once she was in place, she flicked the final bit of calculations into the screen and lowered her hand.

Alexander wasn't sure what he was supposed to see or hear, but the room remained quiet. The holographic screen was a different matter. A complex flow of data scrolled down the window so fast that he had a hard time following it, let alone how the instrument was capable of processing the information at this speed.

"You tapped into the facility's computer core didn't you?"

She didn't turn to him, but she did glance his way. "No. I simply talked that wonderfully intelligent Lucas into allowing me to use some processor time. Now be still, and stop asking questions, I don't want to affect the results."

He sighed internally but kept quiet during the rest of the test. He would need to speak to Lucas about letting unauthorized people have access to the facility's central processor. That should be reserved for facility use only or for Alexander to use as needed.

Hmm, probably not a good idea for him to suck all the processing bandwidth either. Once Lucas finished the hardware for the new processors, he would have the man build a research core. With all the new stuff going on, it would probably be needed sooner or later anyway. And he could also put all of the academy's load onto it instead of the main core.

The test ran for a full half an hour, and Alexander could see Nova flagging toward the end, her old body betraying her as she did her best to hide pained winces and the occasional twitch to reach toward her leg to rub it.

He wasn't sure why she hadn't just adjusted her program so she could be seated behind her desk, but now wasn't the time to bring it up.

The test finished and the woman grinned in triumph.

"So that was it?" Alexander asked. "Did it work?" The previous machines hadn't even gotten to the test stage before the woman dismissed them so he wasn't sure if this had been a success or not.

"Of course, it worked," she huffed. "I wouldn't have wasted my time otherwise. Now out with you, I need to go over the data and compile it."

Alexander just shook his avatar's head and began to walk toward the exit. He only made it a few steps before the woman called out to him.

"Alexander. Thank you for helping with this. I know I can be demanding at times, but that little device and this test, if I'm correct, likely shaved a decade off my research. When you're as old as I am, even a year saved is a godsend, let alone a decade. I doubt I would have gotten this far without your assistance."

He turned to the woman and smiled. "I'm glad I could help, and I do hope you find that breakthrough you've been working toward. Humanity should recognize true brilliance more often."

That comment brought a smirk to the woman's lips before she shooed him out of the room. He was pretty sure if she had been capable of doing so, she would have picked him up and tossed him out. The image of the eighty-pound woman, well into her centenarian years, bodily picking him up and tossing him through a door made him chuckle as he made his way back to his workshop.

***

Yulia crashed to the ground again, wincing and rubbing her butt. She was definitely going to have a bruise after today.

"Again," the Head of Security said in an emotionless voice.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Yulia growled softly under her breath but picked herself up. Ever since the Hawks had left for their mission, Alex had assigned Damien Laront to train her in hand-to-hand combat.

She knew Alex wanted her to learn how to defend herself, but she had him and Dog to protect her. She didn't want to have to harm people and she doubted that even if she had known these techniques before, she would have been able to do anything against the man who took her hostage.

That argument fell on deaf ears and part of her free time was now tied to Damien knocking her around three times a week.

From the very first day of her training she could tell the Head of Security did not much like kids.

He was not one to hold back, if she made a mistake, or her mind drifted off, the man punished her with a padded stick. Depending on her failure, it either meant a painful slap to the arm or the side. In more serious cases, he would simply overbalance her, knocking her to the floor.

Alex had spoken to the man after she went home crying one night. She had been there to witness the shouting match between Alex and Damien. It had shocked her so much that she hadn't even realized it was over, and that Damien had won the argument. Her treatment afterward had not improved, nor had it gotten any worse.

Finally getting to her feet, she adjusted her stance and threw up her fists in a boxing pose. Stay updated through empire

"Again!" Damien demanded, tapping his punishment stick to the thickly padded cushion on his other arm.

She screamed and ran forward, punching out at the pad, while Damien circled and moved, forcing her to shift and move with him. When she had an opportunity, she threw a kick at the pad. The man blocked it easily. She pictured him missing that block one day and that thought is what kept her going.

Yulia saw the padded stick coming down and hopped back, avoiding it before stepping forward again and sending another flurry of punches and kicks into the pad.

She knew her kicks and punches weren't much better than just flailing around when she first began, but she had improved in the last few months. She at least knew how to punch and kick without injuring herself now, not that her stikes had a lot of weight behind them. She was only eleven after all.

Her increasing age also came with changes to her body that she wasn't quite certain she liked. Over the last year, she had grown a full inch. Being taller was nice and all, but now she couldn't fit into her gocart anymore. She had been forced to rebuild it to accommodate her taller stature. There were other things as well, but she was embarrassed to bring them up. With Alex being Alex, she had to ask her friends Sarah and Claire about those other embarrassing changes to her body, which eventually got Sarah's mom involved and Yulia got the whole birds and bees talk.

When she thought about that conversation, she wanted to gag and run away. Some things were better left unknown.

Yulia grunted as the stick whipped out, tripping her again.

She cursed as she fell to the hard mat.

"That's enough for today," Damien stated as he put down the training mat. "Your mind is wandering more than usual and it's causing you to be sloppy."

She didn't argue with the man, she got up, took the gloves off, and thanked him for his time before leaving the training room. Alex wouldn't be too happy when Damien told him he dismissed her early, but at least she had some free time to go racing. Hurrying as much as her sore body would allow her to, she headed toward the racetrack. As she got closer, she could hear kids laughing and tires squealing as the other kids got to enjoy the go-carts while she was stuck getting beat up every day.

The only thing that made the thought bearable was the fact she got paid for every use of the go-carts.