Memoirs Of Kitty Siam Ch 38

I became still as a statue for several minutes, not moving, not speaking, and not thinking of anything other than the words that just passed through my ears. I knew that feline and Kamaloid DNA were part of my genetic make up. I had now found a third piece of the puzzle that I was looking for. I tried to think of all of the possibilities that could have led to royal Annunaki DNA being used in my construction. I am sure that if there had been living creatures in the room with me, they would all be thinking that I had suffered some sort of stroke or mental collapse that caused me to remain motionless while my mind struggled with the informational bomb that was just dropped on me from a data system that was constructed over 60,000 years ago.

A few hundred years ago the humans of Earth debated the competing theories of creationism and intelligent design verses evolution. The scientist in me told me that evolution was the correct answer in the debate but in the past ten minutes, I became a hesitant believer in intelligent design, as it was clear to me that some being had designed me and set me on the path that I was currently following.

Was there some grand plan that I was to be the mother of reborn Annunaki race, or was it just dumb luck that some unsuspecting tomb raider delivered 60,000-year-old royal DNA to the labs of Osaka Eugenics and that DNA found its way into me? Another possibility that I began to consider is that the medical facility on Galora added Princess Maew's DNA to my genetic make up while I was in the reanimation tank. A third possibility was that my base makeup was to be a reincarnation of the Princess and the other bits of DNA were added in to ensure my survival in a hostile environment.

The more scenarios that my mind conjured up, the more my determination grew to return to Earth and visit the offices of Osaka Eugenics to have a look at my medical records. This would not be an easy task since Earth was under strict quarantine. Given what we found in Earth's atmosphere, we did not know if the cities below the black plague clouds were still intact, at least no one knew when I was at Romanov station. I am sure that someone knows now and had detailed scans of the planet's surface, but here on Angkor, I had no access to this information.

One thing that disturbed me about the Galora scenario was that if they manipulated my DNA to become the mother of a new race of Annunaki, was my original design changed to permit me to become pregnant? That of course would be a requirement if I were to be the mother of the rebirth of an extinct race. I was assured many times at Osaka Eugenics that becoming pregnant and giving birth were both impossible functions for me, but if they can reprogram my DNA to make me three inches taller, anything is possible. This was not something that I wanted to dwell on at the moment as the last thing I wanted to do was become a mother. Well, I was the mother of mangoes but that does not count. As far as I was concerned, I had no motherly instinct, wanted nothing to do with children, and did not want to be stuck raising a bunch of crying, drooling, misbehaving royal brats.

I needed more information and I knew that I could return to the medical facility on Galora, but it would be difficult to determine what was added and what was removed from me without knowing what my original genetic makeup was and that required a trip to Earth.

The station's protocol bot standing before me and addressing me for the first time as, "Your Majesty", interrupted my musings. It took me a second or two to realize that the bot was talking to me directly. The bot politely asked me to follow along to my quarters, as they were now ready for me to occupy. Along the way I mentioned that my backpack and other items were in the Commander's quarters, and as soon as I made mention of this, I was assured that a bot was dispatched to collect my items and transport them to my quarters. I smiled to myself and in a complimentary voice I thought to myself, "Its good to be the Princess!"

I accompanied the bot to my quarters. I tried to follow the bot but I learned through non-verbals that a Princess does not follow a bot or a servant, but unfortunately the bot knew the way to my quarters while I did not. I had a whole lot of learning to do about this princess stuff. Since I was the only humanoid around at the moment, I figured that I had time to learn and time to practice and plenty of mechanical minions to practice on, as the bots would be my loyal subjects. Just my luck, I finally get promoted to Princess and my subjects are a bunch of ancient robots.

I arrived at my quarters just as a small army of maintenance bots was leaving. Just as I stepped through the door to my lavish quarters I felt a violent stinging sensation on the back of my neck followed by a jolt that radiated down my spine and coursed through every never fiber of my body. I stumbled momentarily and was just able to get to the wall to brace myself and keep from collapsing to the floor. Instantly I thought I had been hit with a disruptor on a low stun setting, but I quickly came to realize that the station had finally connected to my installed data port. This was not the gentle tingle that I had felt when a connection was made aboard Galora One or on Mars.

I quickly accessed my internal PDA and went through the connection logs and found out that it was my device that had initiated the connection. The data system and its wireless protocols were greatly out dated compared to what had been installed in me. It was my port that had adjusted its self down to be backward compatible with the systems here on Angkor. When the connection was made, there was a power spike as both systems went through their handshake process. As I looked over the stats for the connection that was made, I found that both systems were now in sync but my system had to slow down to meet the standard of the local system. I made a note in my PDA to explore the possibility of upgrading the station once everything was fully functional and the maintenance bots had some free time.

The protocol bot gave me a quick tour of my quarters, and I have to say that the quarters assigned to me were more like a mini palace than quarters that you would expect to find on a military installation. There were bedchambers for other royals, distinguished visitors and staff as well as a fully functional kitchen and dining hall right next to my own private sustenance replication alcove. I got the feeling that a member of the royal family was a permanent resident here and was involved in the daily operations of Central Command as there were three terminals mounted to the wall over a one person command center that had access to all the major departments of this station including the main command rotunda.

As we passed by my own personal command console, I knew that I would finally have uninterrupted access to everything I needed to conduct my research on the Annunaki, this station, the portal network, and the genetics of my family tree. But all that would have to wait as the events of the day had me worn out. When protocol bot left me to further explore my new quarters, the lights above the doorways changed from daylight white to nighttime red.

The first thing I did was to make use of the ornate shower and spent more time than I should have under the powerful jets of hot water. I lost track of the time and though I did not run out of hot water, the jets were so relaxing that I could have fallen asleep standing up if I had just let my eyes drift closed for a few minutes. I exited the shower and made use of the thick soft white towels that had been made available for me. I wrapped one around my hair and the other around my torso. I sat down on the bed and was just about to get comfy when the door chime activated and the voice of the protocol bot chimed through the comm. panel along side the main door.

The bot requested permission to enter and after permission was granted, the bot stated that there was one important point of order that we had failed to complete earlier in the day. When I met the bot in the great room by the main entrance, it greeted me once again with, "Your Majesty" then presented me a tablet. I read though the text on the pad and when I was done the bot briefed me on what I had just read. It was nothing more than a statement that I was formally taking command of the facility and to do so I had to affix my DNA signature to the change of command document on the pad by placing my hand in the designated rectangle. I did as expected and felt the all too familiar tingle as my DNA was scanned and confirmed.

This facility was all mine now, and with that thought in mind I dismissed the bot and headed off to bed. It took me a while to get to sleep as I ruminated on the events of the day, and once I got to sleep I was undisturbed by dreams or interruptions of any kind. After thirteen hours of sleep I awoke naturally and made my way to the sustenance replication alcove for a hot cup of Annu coffee and a couple of pastries similar to beignets. It was not a healthy breakfast but I felt that the sugar rush along with the coffee would be beneficial to getting my day started.

As I ate my breakfast I activated my tablet and had a look at the station restoration progress and found that after hitting 75% the previous day, this morning's reading was showing a disappointing 77%. A quick look at the figures for the jobs in progress showed that the delay was due to a lack of parts and pieces once again, except this time simple wiring and power cables were in short supply and had to be fabricated to the specifications of each job being performed. I looked in from time to time on the communications between the bots and noticed a request to begin melting down bits and pieces of the cannibalized ships and hulls in the hangar bay. I immediately jumped into the conversation and authorized the request with the stipulation that no parts or pieces belonging to the Tenshi would be scrapped. I added to my order that any parts that could work to revive the Tenshi be cataloged and placed in the bay next to the Tenshi. The bots immediately acknowledged my order and went about their business. Since the Angkor portal was unable to connect to the other portals in the galaxy, the Tenshi seemed to be the only way that might get me off this planet some day should the need arise and I was not about to let it be scrapped.

Now that I had my look at the restoration process, I decided to pull up a list of the non-critical sections of the station to see what was available. I found a list of facilities available to guests and residents of the station, and one of the items listed was a rather large library that included a dedicated librarian bot. I downloaded the directions to the library onto my PDA via my internal data port. After the download was completed I used my wardrobe device to change into an old worn pair of denim shorts and a black t-shirt along with my favorite hiking boots. I figured that if I was going on walk-about in the station that I should be comfy and I did not care if I did not look much like a princess. I doubted that the bots were going to complain about my choice of attire.

The trek to the library was quick and upon entering I was surprised to see that in addition to the banks of digitized reading material, there was also a large cache of bound books in real wooden shelves. I could see that most of the bound treasures had deteriorated over time, but I was pleased to see two librarian bots diligently scanning the remaining books to preserve the words as the pages were badly damaged by time. Some of the books were made of the same Kevlar-like pages as the journal I had come across upon arrival. Those would last longer than the paper and would be scanned by the bots at a later date.

I walked up to the counter and was quickly greeted formally by a third librarian bot. He greeted me as one should a Princess and I returned its greeting. I enquired about the scanning process and I was given a detailed explanation as to how the library had sat dormant until I had brought the station back to life. After listening to the bot detail how the books were being converted to digital I used my wardrobe device to deploy my backpack with a replica of the hand written journal I had found. I offered the journal to the bot and ask if it could be digitized for electronic reading and editing.

I was pleased to hear that the journal could be digitized, but being that it was written in long hand script, the scanning process could not properly recognize each individual character as the author's penmanship was pretty poor and the ink in some areas had left many characters undecipherable by digital means. I looked at several of the characters as the bot pointed them out and figured that I had a one in three shot of guessing the correct letter, so I resigned myself to the task of decoding his handwriting myself. I did however ask the bot to digitize the pages for me so that I could store the electronic copy in my PDA. This would relieve me of the cumbersome and boring task of flipping through the pages of the written book. I would be able to access them mentally with no physical exertion, which would make the task so much easier.

The librarian informed me that it would begin work on the journal straight way. I thanked it even though I knew it was not necessary to thank the bots, it just seemed right to me. Before I left the library I requested that the journal in written and in digital form be kept in a secure location and that only I was permitted to have read and edit access and requested that access identification be verified by DNA scan. The bot responded in the affirmative and I set off down the corridor back to my quarters.

It was still early in the day and I had not had my breakfast. I found myself passing by one of the now functioning sustenance replication alcoves so I stopped in there for bite to eat. I found a picture of something that looked like an omelet. It tasted pretty good but I do not think that the eggs came from a chicken. As usual the coffee was good and I ordered a large cup to go.

I was nearing my quarters when the public address system voice announced that the internal intruder defense system would be powering up in the next 20 minutes and that all personnel were ordered to report to their quarters or duty sections. I had noticed before but never paid attention, but now I was taking notice of the particle beam projectors spaced out along the corridors. I watched the lights on the outside of the devices flicker to life one by one as power was applied. My internal communication link told me that the weapons would not be fully activated until the flickering stopped and the light on the device remained solid. I suspect that the system was programmed to limit travel during a power up incase of a weapon malfunction caused by a short circuit or a glitch in the power up routine.

I made it to my quarters without incident and remained safely inside while the internal security system came back online. I stretched out on my bed and watched the power up sequence on my tablet, which was still running painfully slow I might add, and my internal data port was not much better. I made a note to assign a few bots to look into that when things settled down. As my tablet came to life I brought up the progress report and found that we had just reached 80% complete.

Being alone was never a problem for me as I was conditioned at the academy to endure long space flights without human company, but at least during my long flights I did have access to subspace radio and was able to talk to other pilots, and civilians along the way. I began finding myself trying to carry on conversations with the bots, and even though each of them had their own AI chip, they were not good conversationalists. As I pondered this situation more I thought that maybe this would be a good time to activate the Sheba AI, but then on second thought, I did not want to take away the necessary processor power from the recovery efforts. Sheba would have to wait.

I lost track of how many days that I have been here, but also I had lost track of how many weeks or months that it had been since I was out in the sunlight and fresh air. It was time for me to try to get to the outside once again. I made a wardrobe change and slipped into my gray cargo pants, kept the black t-shirt but added hiking boots and a jacket to match my pants. I also added my Bowie knife to my right thigh, but left the hand disruptor in my quarters along with my backpack and tablet. I knew that if I needed additional weapons, I still had plenty stored in my wardrobe device along with my well-traveled battle suit.

The trek to the exit was not as long this time as I was able to take several shortcuts as I followed the route that I had downloaded into my PDA. I found it quicker to take a few side tunnels instead of taking the lift that I had tried to take on my first attempt to exit the station. This time when I pressed my hand to the identification rectangle, my DNA was scanned and the over head stone door slid open allowing me to climb the stairs and exit into the center of a temple complex similar to the one on Galora. This one was made of weathered black granite and was badly in need of repair. The temple was covered with vines to the point that I had to cut my way through a web of vines that covered the opening over the sliding stone doors.

The columns supporting the roof were still intact as was the supports for the roof decking but the roof had collapsed onto the temple floor causing huge chunks of black granite to be strewn about the temple complex. The raised platform in the center of the temple was surrounded by a series of statues whose features were well worn to the point that their faces were unrecognizable. It was clear though that these statues did not share the same makeup of those on Galora. The thought of those statues sent a shiver through me, as well as made my neglected kitty a little moist. I had to giggle when I thought to myself what the Annunaki would say if they found out that their Princess was a little slut.

The presence of a temple led me to believe that there had once been a colony of workers here similar to the ones on Galora, Mars, and Earth. The temple had been over grown with vegetation but not 60,000 years worth so someone had been maintaining this temple long after the underground complex had been abandoned by the Annunaki. Upon a closer examination of the statues around the alter platform, I could make out the shape of the skull and forehead that indicated that the statues were not of the Annunaki who lived below. Perhaps these statues were made to honor the elders of people who were left behind by their masters.

While I climbed about the exterior of the temple looking for clues, I found that I was still in contact with the Central Core in the complex below, and it took only a few minutes to find twenty two idle bots assigned to the pavements, carpentry, masonry, hydroponics, and agronomy departments and task them with restoring the temple to a safe presentable condition. The scanning beams in the temple's alter pylon would have to wait until the bots assigned to electronics were finished with their duties below. I have to admit that this was a bit of a selfish request as I used to take pleasure in sitting on the raised alter steps and watching the sun set and the moons rise over the island of Rontara. I thought that after all I had gone through getting this place back up and running that a little luxury for myself was not an out of line request. After all, it is good to be the Princess.

The temple complex was built in the same design as the one on Rontara. There were several wide flights of black granite steps leading up to the temple plateau, which allowed the raised alter to have a commanding view of the jungle below. The temple complex and the facility below seemed to be located in a tropical zone. This was just a guess as I had no scientific data to back up my theory, but seeing palm, coconut, and banana trees in abundance around the temple seemed to confirm my initial assessment. The temple its self was not built on the hillside, it was cut out of the mountain that it was resting upon and was made of the same black granite as the mountain to the rear.