[20] For the first time since speaking with these nulls, these voids of willpower, these flesh and bone men with the minds of robots, you see something that might be approaching emotion on its face. A faint stirring of will, clamped down on and destroyed by ingrained processes within the brain of this automaton. "...you should bring that here."
"I'll go get it." Emma volunteers, glancing between the two of you.
She returns shortly, out of breath, with the glimmering cube in hand. Zero rotates the computer to you, and she slots it in.
[Seedship Program Unified Standard Template Intelligence] flashes on the screen as a graphical interface is generated. You scroll through it -- it's organized into branching paths, a flowing tree of technologies, training procedures, and factory designs. One leads to another, from simple iron working in clay kilns and the distillation of water and alcohol, all the way to asteroid harvesters, space elevators and defensive platforms. The more you look the more you realize: each technology builds on the principles of the last, forming less of a tree and more of a sphere of the various physical sciences. Several catch your eye. Looming -- That's how we were born. It assembles together donor DNA samples to create a new life. With the proper programming, it snips away all the bad genes that lead to cancers and other preventable diseases. Loomed humans have an incredible lifespan compared to others. The oldest baseline Loomed human lived to nearly four hundred if the tabloids are to be believed.
As well as a massive variety of weapons: las-guns, cutters, and one, you notice with a grin, is a very similar process to Warmachine construction. Another is labeled with a bright red warning; Fusion Based Explosive Devices.
"Did you happen to receive another?" Zero questions, hopefully.