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Franz didn’t feel any the worse for wear for his recent experience and why should he? He had no recollection of his meeting with Sylas, Philip, and Paul due to the removal of the relevant data.
He enjoyed the company of humans; he found their capacity to display a wider range of intense emotions very entertaining. Indeed, he found it curious how many were still able to function efficiently despite being a confusion of strong urges and desires. He felt no need for such potentially destructive and divisive sensations and was perfectly content to execute his sub-routines and perform his tasks without emotional upheaval.
Just like his contemporaries, Franz was so much more than simply an automaton that followed orders. Designated an engineer-droid he had instantaneous access to thousands of technical records, along with diagnostics and relevant solutions matrices. It could be argued that a Q-Class computer could perform the same calculations just as quickly as a sophont – which was true – but to have such processing power within a mobile and dextrous unit was infinitely more useful on a space ship. With sophont crew-members, there was no need for auxiliary equipment. A sophont could function effectively in the harshest of environments and would neither freeze nor panic in a life-threatening situation. They were socially acceptable, socially responsible, socially articulate, and completely without any ambition to improve their position in society. They knew no other way to be. Although Franz did feel intellectually superior to humans, he and his kind considered themselves to be guides and mentors, helping lead humanity to achieve its full potential.
Construction of the Stephen Hawking completed, its human crew was now undergoing training in situ, familiarising themselves with the equipment. Franz and the other nine sophonts had no need of training per se, as all necessary information had already been downloaded into their data storage modules, but their presence was still necessary as the human crew would be in stasis for much of the journey and would need to feel confident, relaxed and, above all, safe while hibernating in the Torpor Tubes. To this end, an effective and efficient relationship between human and sophont had to be induced and nurtured. The human crew, although accustomed to the presence of sophonts in their daily lives on Earth, had to be able to have complete faith in their android companions in the remote expanse of space.
Franz’s task for that morning had been to perform system-checks on the drones that would be used to reconnoitre the surface of Proxima b. No human had ever set foot on the planet so it made sense to use drones to locate the android. The drones had been fortified to deal with what if anything remained of the planet’s atmosphere and to withstand the effects of the solar flares that spewed sporadically from the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. The planet was regularly battered by stellar wind pressures 2,000 times more powerful than those suffered by Earth, and X-Ray radiation was magnified 400 times, so a shuttlecraft would be sent to the planet only once Coppélia had been located and would stay on the surface for as little time as possible.
These system and integrity checks were performed daily, and the results were always the same. A human engineer could have found them boring and perhaps been tempted to occasionally skip a step of the procedure but there was no such risk of negligence with Franz – he actually enjoyed the repetitive nature of the task and never found it tiresome. Everything always being perfectly within parameters gave him a sense of satisfaction; he didn’t crave variety.
Suddenly he felt what humans might describe as a little light-headed. The sensation lasted only a few seconds and then he was able to continue his work as if nothing had happened.