Waiting

The early evenings were always the worst. Every day Alison would return from patrol to her empty apartment expecting to hear news of her sister, Margaret, but nobody had heard a word from her for over three months. The mystery of her disappearance from the archival library, which had confounded the top military investigators, had left a lingering sense of disquiet throughout the sector.

Futility

Alison finally forced the enemy frigate to land in the sulphur fog, but the cost - twelve of her squadron ships destroyed or lost - was almost too much to bear. There had to be another way to end these devastating and futile hostilities once and for all.

Alienation

Sitting on a deserted beach in an alien universe, Augidarr could feel the ripples of space-time emanating forwards and backwards, setting up interference patterns with the two humanoid species occupying the local hyperspace continuum - but she had no way of communicating directly with either group.

The Gathering

Marooned in a parallel universe, the Beridae began to gather together to pool their experiences of Urth and develop strategies to access the local energy resources.

Back-Street Negotiations

Augidarr knew immediately that the sentient machines would make excellent allies.

 

The Search

The anomalous energy fluctuations were originating in the farmlands outside the city, but extensive searches failed to reveal their source.

Dawn Raid

Without warning, the defence shields were down and enemy fighter craft were converging on the power generator.

Phase Induction

With the sentient machines' assistance, Augidarr initiated the phase shift that was required before deep neural scanning could begin.

Quantum Biology

Before the humans granted autonomy to the sentient machines, they had developed a number of quantum biology systems together. Augidarr found the artificial leaves with the synthetic photosynthesis program to be the most interesting. Using light energy from the sun with carbon dioxide and water to produce carbon-based compounds while releasing oxygen as a by-product, the energy transfer achieved was very close to the 95% achieved in natural photosynthetic systems. This clearly indicated that the quantum coherence in the synthetic system was almost perfect. 

The human researchers seemed oblivious of the wider significance of their achievement. Having overcome the decohering effect of the environment on the quantum system in which the information was stored was a major step towards realizing large-scale quantum computing and quantum information processing in general. 

With her advanced knowledge of quantum coherence obtained in her parallel universe, Augidarr adapted and modified the synthetic photosynthesis program to massively increase the processing power of the sentient machines' quantum computers. The increased capacity of the devices allowed her to scan the neural networks of the human volunteers down to the atomic level. The completed scans were then uploaded to the carbon/silicon Opae prototypes. 

The initial results of the scanning and transfer processes, particularly with the female subjects, far exceeded Augidarr's expectations. She felt confident that with a few minor adjustments, Macali, the first fully-fledged quantum bio-organism, would soon be ready to boot up.