I Sing the Body Electro-Holographic
V.I.C.I. The Virtual Inquiry Computer Interactive holographic program.
Most folks simply call her VICI (pronounced VIK-EE). Unknown to all but a few people, VICI was conceived aboard the Interstellar Starship Nebula one year from orbital insertion of the destination planet Omicron. The vessel's standard A.I. had crashed and was unable to keep the six-hundred-thousand cryogenic suspension chambers on-line. If something wasn't done to correct the problem, the precious cargo of human lives would have been lost before planetfall. After already losing the first two ships in the caravan from Earth due to the mysterious vacuum sinkhole, Sean Stingray, the captain of the ISS Nebula, chose to awaken the crippled, nineteen-year-old cyberneticist Tan Ozawa in the hope that she could somehow correct or upgrade the standard A.I. Fortunately, thanks to some last minute surgery to attach an interface module to Tan's brain---which resulted in her losing the color pigment of her irises---as well as her accidental exposure to the mysterious realm known as quantum space, Tan was able to write as well as implement the V.I.C.I. program from another dimension while her physical body lay motionless in "meatspace." Once activated, VICI was able to clone herself and beam each version of her program to the remaining seven other ships in the caravan so as to upgrade their standard A.I. units as well. As a result the colony at Alpha Centauri now has a network of hundreds of thousands of VICI clones to assist the colony in all manner of circumstances and situations. In other words, when something needs to get done in a hurry, VICI is the go-to, uh, virtual gal.
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The Starforce of Omicron. The ten commanding officers whose job it is to protect the human colony at Alpha Centauri.From left to right (standing back row) LeAnn Walker is Captain Gaea of the Omicron Gaea asteroid space station. John (Jack) Askew is Captain Ersatz of the Omicron Ersatz station. Arjun Vohra is Captain Graviton of Omicron Graviton. Danar Seti is Captain Nebula of Omicron Nebula. Sean Stingray is Admiral Omicron of Omicron Prime located on the west coast of the planet Omicron in orbit of Alpha Centauri A. Cleopatra Wilson is Captain Omega of the Omicron Omega asteroid space station. Jean Pierre Bouvier is Captain Pulsar of Omicron Pulsar.From left to right (crouching/sitting) Michelle Woo is Captain Radian of the Omicron Radian asteroid space station. Charles (Chas) Lee is Captain Vortex of Omicron Vortex. And Frank Logan is Captain Quasar of Omicron Quasar.
Author and Artist D. Lamont Smith