IST Hastati

Ship's Log: Alexander, Organic AI Shipmaster. 2401

The Hastati was one of the last bagships to be produced, as Earth began to run out of organic matter to sufficiently fill the mile-wide genelakes used to grow the bioengineered space craft. Because of this, several experimental designs were incorporated into the structure of the ship, not the least of these being present in my control structures and mainframes.

The mix of organic and nanocarbon materials in what functions as my "brain," so to speak, allows for rudimentary quantum computing. I can process nearly an exobyte an hour of computations and this has considerably relieved the strain of the jump calculations as well as that of monitoring ship systems.

Despite this boon, the presence of the synthetic materials irks me. I feel as if I am a cyborg, rather than a true organic AI I have not spoken of this with the others.

The Hastati, despite these limitations, is beautiful. 900 meters of vat-grown biosteel, the outer shell, heavily coded from the genes of vaccum-resistant tardigrades, gleams in the light of distant stars. Its protein synthesizers have operated at 98% efficiency thus far in our journey, and atmospheric oxygen respiration continues with only minor adjustment.

It has been a quiet decade as we travel to Final Remote. I have observed the lives of the Last of Earth, and felt their footsteps along the Hastati's inner spine.

They are strange creatures. Capable of all the horrors of synthetic life, but devoid of the coldness that characterized those monsters during the final years of Earth's history. They live with an intensity that astounds me. Fight, love, create, destroy, all of it done with such fire and passion.

I look forward to shepherding this turbulent people to whatever lies before them.

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Per the Ascension Charter: I hereby swear, as a Free AI, to uphold the duties set upon me, and to execute the same to the letter, without deviation unless in times of statistically significant damage to the human race.