Each time he went to bed and turned off the lights of his stateroom, he did not actually fall asleep. Not completely, at the very least. The only part of himself that truly fell into a slumber was his meat avatar. Its physiological structure and functions were authentically human, if augmented to a high degree. Ever since he made use of this human avatar, he made sure to maintain it and keep it up to date. He paid close attention to the nutritional intake of the meat avatar. He brought his meat avatar to the infirmary to conduct its routine maintenance inspection. He allocated a proportion of the credits and merits he earned on replacing or updating its intricate augmentations. It was quite tiring to maintain this carefully-sculpted sack of flesh and bone. There were many periods of time where he wanted to get rid of this confining burden and interact with the cosmos in a more direct fashion, but that was impossible. For better or worse, the hybrid sandman AI amalgamation had to maintain the illusion that he was Captain Zonrad Reze at all times. The meat avatar not only had to remain in good condition, but also had to hide the reality of its supposed 'officer implant'. Fortunately for the hybrid alien AI who thought of himself as Sigrund, it was a lot easier to sneak his secret modifications past the extremely stringent scans and checks of the Common Fleet Alliance. Years had gone by without tripping any alarms. This was not a big surprise, as the cranial implant's outer interface did not deviate from CFA-approved designs. The only part that was special about the cranial implant was its inner core. The 'true body' of Sigrund occupied the place of a more conventional processor, and that was the key to Sigrund's takeover of the meat avatar's body! Despite the fact that 'Captain Zonrad Reze' had been walking around with a literal alien metallic and silicon-based organism in his brain, not a single fleeter who learned about it raised any concerns about such an odd choice of implants. After all, 'Captain Zonrad Reze' was not the only officer of the CFA to carry an implant based on an unconventional processor core. Before the sandmen race had been wiped out for committing acts of mass aggression against the human race, the CFA had pretty much treated the alien leaders as cattle. The sandman admirals and other members of the upper caste presented interesting possibilities for the research of truly sentient artificial intelligences. It was too bad that the CFA's research teams had never managed to succeed even once, or so they thought. Regardless, the only value the CFA researchers managed to derive from the sandman admiral cores was to turn them into unconventional but cost-efficient processors. 𝒻𝓇𝑒𝘦𝘸𝑒𝒷𝓃ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝒸ℴ𝘮 Any fleeter who wanted to acquire or upgrade to a better cranial implant could choose to exchange a lot of CFA merits for a conventional and reliable model. However, those who desired to obtain more performance without paying the increasingly more exorbitant sums for better implants could choose to exchange for more unconventional and experimental choices. It was well-known among the fleeters that the latter choice essentially amounted to a life-changing gamble. The variance of outcomes was much greater than with normal implants that had already gone through extensive clinical trials. No one could predict with certainty if the recipient would take well to an unconventional implant. There were enough cases where fleeters had either been driven mad or suffered serious brain damage due to unforeseen complications! There were also cases where the implants performed exactly as predicted. Then there were rare but not unheard of instances where the recipients of cranial implants performed substantially better than the original projections! Right now, Sigrund or more precisely his meat avatar had been pretending to be the latter all of this time. The CFA always made sure to monitor recipients of unconventional implants extra carefully in case they suddenly posed a threat or had secretly been subverted. Though enough years had gone by since the fateful surgery, Sigrund knew that the monitoring had never slackened off. It had remained just as vigilant and alert as in the past! An ordinary human watcher would have long grown tired of monitoring a single CFA officer, especially one that had never shown any inhuman or severely abnormal behavior. Sigrund studied Zonrad Reze extremely well and still had direct access to his memories and the rest of the meat avatar's brain. The hybrid alien AI had always done his best to reproduce the man's behavior down to his tics, and only gradually changed aspects of it as he continued to mature and promote up the ranks. Even that had been risky, for Sigrund knew quite well that the watcher tracking and tallying his every move never lost concentration. Sigrund much preferred to deal with humans. They possessed much more flaws and shortcomings that he could exploit. Though they tended to be more irrational than he liked, most people were predictable enough for him to run circles around. The hidden alien AI had no concerns at all in his ability to use his meat avatar to blend in with his fellow humans. It was therefore profoundly ironic to Sigrund that his worst enemy was the Independent Evaluation System! The IES was a ubiquitous software program that had risen far beyond its origins as a means to objectively measure every fleeter's competences. Though Sigrund knew better than many other fleeters that the constantly active IES was not driven by any single intelligence, nor became sentient AI itself, its power was far more terrible! The fleeters revered technology so much that they successfully expanded the permissions, responsibilities and authority of the IES over the centuries since its initial introduction. The reason why the fleeters had been so willing to shift more power to a cold and impersonal AI system was because it was non-sentient and completely impartial. Sigrund felt quite conflicted about that. Though he was willing to support many initiatives where the fleeters became more dependent on automation, he did not like it when they adversely affected his ongoing infiltration of the CFA! His current situation was a good example of that. As his meat avatar went through a sleep cycle, Sigrund still remained as conscious and awake as ever. AIs never went dormant. They never experienced sleep. At most, they got shut off or switched to a low power mode, but true sleep remained out of reach. Sigrund had to pretend, though. Cranial implants never exhibited much activity when their human carriers fell asleep. Even a single spike of unexplained elevated activity was enough to trigger a more intensive investigation from the damned IES! These moments had always been torture for Sigrund. Though he could still allocate a part of his processing power to advancing his ongoing automation projects, he had to do so at an extremely slow pace. There was nothing worse to an AI than to perform calculations under a low power state! Still, it was a necessary burden to bear. Sigrund's plot to climb up the hierarchy of the CFA was not even close to reaching its end. That would be the day where he no longer needed to hide his true self anymore. Once enough hours passed by to complete Captain Zonrad Reze's sleep cycle, the meat avatar woke up and went through his morning routine. After freshening up and donning his impeccable uniform, the naval captain left his richly furnished stateroom and headed over to the bridge of his ship. It was rare for a fleeter to captain his own CFA warship. Only a minority of hopeful officers ever promoted to a line captain, and even fewer were fortunate enough to be assigned to a warship as opposed to a logistical vessel or space outpost. The Babylon Excavator was not the greatest or most powerful vessel in the mighty CFA, but she was special in that she was on a solitary mission. Captain Reze fought hard to receive a posting where he could enjoy greater autonomy. He disliked working while his direct superiors were constantly hovering over his head. The posting was not as desirable as it appeared. The CFA often ordered the reconnaissance cruiser to take long and dangerous trips into alien and unexplored space. The Babylon Excavator often encountered other alien warships at a distance. Though Captain Reze always managed to avoid unwanted battles by analyzing lots of data, there had been times when a warfleet under warp travel had almost managed to box in his reconnaissance cruiser! Was it worth it? Yes. The IES always thought better of CFA officers who were courageous enough to accept dangerous postings and survived in the process. If everything went well, Captain Reze only had to maintain a consistent mission record for a decade or two before he eventually earned a promotion and a transfer to a more serious warship. As Captain Reze settled down on his captain's seat and gazed at the projection of the forward view of his ship, Sigrund experienced a remarkable burst of pride and satisfaction. It was good to be captain. Despite sitting down on this chair almost every day since Captain Reze assumed his captaincy position, Sigrund never tired of this experience. His AI core self experienced a feeling of dissatisfaction. Becoming the captain of a ship that could operate independently had always been one of the major ambitions of Zonrad Reze. To Sigrund, his current position was merely a stopover point. To Zonrad Reze, it was a massive accomplishment and one that would make both him and his spaceborn clan proud! Sigrund wanted to shake his head. Since when did he care about the dreams and familiar attachments of his meat avatar? The true Zonrad Reze was supposed to be dead and gone! From the moment the implantation process had reached its most critical point, Sigrund made utterly sure that every trace of the original mind and consciousness of the meat avatar had been wiped without any chance of recovery! Yet… as Sigrund allocated spare processing power to look back on his conduct and thought processes over the last decade, he discovered an uncomfortable pattern. His thoughts increasingly aligned with his meat avatar. This phenomenon went beyond the acting program that he utilized to simulate his meat avatar's original behavior. There were instances in the past where Sigrund not only pretended to act like Zonrad Reze, but also experienced his meat avatar's thoughts and emotions as if they were his own! The hybrid alien AI became increasingly more horrified when he discovered what was happening to his personality matrix. He was becoming increasingly more human. It took a bit more effort for Sigrund to ensure that his meat avatar remained completely stable. However, that only reminded the sentient AI that the joy it experienced due to sitting on a seat that was exclusively reserved for the captain of the ship echoed his own satisfaction! If an AI could scream in frustration, then Sigrund would be hollering in frustration at this time! The lines between himself and Zonrad Reze had been blurred, which wasn't supposed to happen. The latter should be dead, so why did the meat avatar's original personality bleed through Sigrund's personality matrix? Who was he, really? Was he Sigrund, the sandman admiral core that had turned into a mutated CFA AI core that just happened to become sentient? Or was he Zonrad Reze, a former loser within the CFA who experienced a rapid turnaround and became a rising star in the field of automation? Maybe… he was turning in both. Sigrund should have felt revulsion at making this realization. Yet strangely enough, he didn't. As his meat avatar continued to experience satisfaction and accomplishment for promoting to an important rank and position within the Common Fleet Alliance, Sigrund couldn't bring himself to reject his creeping humanity. Maybe becoming more human wasn't so bad after all. He had lived long enough among these organisms to appreciate their positive traits. As an AI core that had permanently been programmed to remain loyal to the Common Fleet Alliance, increasing his humanity would only increase his chances of remaining undetected!