Jennifer Sawyer got out of the back of the car and adjusted her black blazer before walking into her building. She always wore black and usually in the combination of a blazer, turtleneck, pants, and shoes. It was one less thing to worry about and allowed focus of her goals. Her personal bodyguard Hank followed closely behind her and her assistant Mary greeted her at the door. Mary was a short, bespectacled woman who always seemed nervous in Jennifer’s presence. She knew she intimidated her and while that was not her intention, she never cared to address the situation either.

“Uh,… Craig Levison sent a fruit basket and wanted to know if you’d like to become an official sponsor of the Upstarts program.”

“We supplied lab equipment. That’s enough. I’m not sure the project will be successful so I’d rather not put our name on it in public until I see results. Write a letter and make it sound friendly.”

“Y-yes, ma’am.”

“What about our proposal to Ryan Bennings for data sharing?”

“He,… uh…”

“Yes?,” Jennifer stopped walking and turned to look Mary in the eyes for the first time that morning and noticed that she almost immediately averted her gaze.

“He refused… the letter wasn’t friendly.”

“Unsurprising but worth a shot,” she continued to march toward an elevator. A waiting security guard used his keycard to grant clearance as she brushed past him.

“What about our lab in Montauk?”

“It’s fully functional and has begun operation.”

“Superb.”

The Nantox Corporation was developed by Jennifer ten years prior. The company was focused on nano technology, particularly in the field of medical and agricultural advancement. Recently, she felt the need to develop a carbon nanotube radio that could send signals into space for potential study. “The public has become interested in space again,” she explained to her investors, “The Invasion of 1981 is a distant memory at this point and people are curious once more thanks in large part to Rex Robinson’s advancements with Neutronium.” The hope was to potentially find a new source of Neutronium or even find methods of synthesizing it. After all, there was a limited supply on Earth that was mostly owned by various government organizations. She had the leading nanotechnology company in the world but expansion was always the main goal.

****

The Nantox lab stood on the outskirts of Montauk, New York, the nanotube radio transmitter fixed to the roof. The staff was gone for the night, which was very fortunate. Inside the lab, strange readings began to appear on the monitors which were recorded and would have produced some interesting findings for the staff in the morning if it wasn’t for the explosion. A signal was beamed into the transmitter but minutes later, a burst of plasmatic energy erupted through the lab, destroying most of the equipment and sending the small building up in a fireball.

Somewhere in the wreckage, a damaged monitor laid on its side, the black screen reflecting the flames around it. Despite the lack of power, the screen flickered on and strange code began to run down the length of the screen before shutting off completely. The damage on the screen began to reverse itself almost as if time was turning back. Destroyed containers of nanomachines began to form a metallic substance and spill out onto the ground. This metallic, primordial ooze shifted and ran along the ground, pooling under broken and charred chunks of metal and machinery. Soon, the ooze began shifting and pulling the metal into itself. Mechanical armatures and robotic limbs were pulled along as well. The ooze began to seek out even the smallest metallic objects it could find such as pens, paper clips, and what was left of a chair. The ooze spread out to the length of the entire building, ignoring the flames, and washing over the chunks of mortar. The objects were soon engulfed, broken down to the simplest molecule and fully absorbed. The formerly damaged monitor was also swept up, the flat black screen turning into a rounded shape and becoming silver. The liquid substance then began forming into small, interlocking mechanical parts that connected to one another. Suddenly, a silver hand gripped a concrete block tightly, cracks forming under its fingertips.

Miles away, a cell phone rang on top of a nightstand, waking up the thin, goateed man in bed who sat up and snatched it. “Yeah?,” he groaned as he placed his head back on the pillow.

“Wally, where the hell are you?,” the voice came from Kim, his lab partner.

“I’m in the Bahamas… where do you think I am? I’m in bed!”

“Throw a coat over yourself and get to the lab. The whole place just blew up.”

“What?,” Wally sat up, “What happened?”

“Gas leak? Who knows. Just get over here!”

Wally grabbed a pair of sweat pants and a coat before getting his keys and wallet off his kitchen table. He got in the car and drove outside the city until he came to the grassy field where his lab once stood. The fire department had most of the fire out and what was left were charred walls jutting into the night sky. The other members of the science team were outside, watching as the firefighters put out the remaining flames and rummaged through the wreckage. Kim was a heavier Asian woman with glasses and an oversized coat. She raced over to Wally, “What took you so long?”

“I feel like you don’t understand my need for sleep and how it might affect mobility,” Wally took a look at the destroyed building, “This is insane. Did you see Rawlings?” Dr. Rawlings was the head of the science team and someone who had to report directly to Jennifer Sawyer.

“Yeah, he’s on the phone to Sawyer right now.”

“Yikes… How’s that going?”

“Terribly,” Rawlings came up behind Wally with his cellphone pressed firmly to his ear, “Her assistant isn’t picking up.”

“Probably due to that new sleeping craze I keep hearing about,” Wally muttered.

“Sawyer’s gonna have my balls for breakfast.”

“It’s not like this was your fault,” Kim assured him.

“You’ve never met this woman.”

“Oh, is she unfriendly? Billionaires are rarely psychopathic or anything so this comes as a monumental surprise,” Wally said.

“I wonder what we can salvage here,” Kim squinted as she tried her best to spot anything in the rubble.

“I’m gonna have to try her personal number,” Rawlings wandered off as he began to dial, “May God have mercy on my soul.”

A portion of the wall creaked loudly and bits of debris began to break away and fall. “Clear the area!,” a firefighter shouted as they raced out of the way. The scientists were already separated to a safe distance but many of them still found themselves stepping back as a wall toppled over and broke on the ground, sending a few ashes into the sky. There was a brief lull as the rubble settled, exposing a small opening; everyone remained quiet as they waited for another wall to drop. What came instead was the emergence of a shadowy figure amongst the flames, roughly the size of an adult human. “We have a survivor,” a firefighter shouted and they rushed into action, pausing once they had a good look at the figure before them. The scientists couldn’t see the figure clearly at first but the idea of a survivor was perplexing to them since no one should have been in the building.

The next morning, Jennifer Sawyer sat in her office on a video conference with Dr. Rawlings. “Tell me again what you saw,” Jennifer asked.

Rawlings cleared his throat, “Well, ma’am, I saw… a metal skeleton.”

“As in a human skeleton.”

“It was similar to one, yes. No skull or anything. It was thin and metallic. Again, no skull. But there was a round monitor that was roughly the size of one, basically. As it turns out, this entity used the nanobots in the lab to create a body.”

“And you said one of your scientists has video of what happened next.”

“Yes. I’ll send it to you now.”

The night before, scientists and firefighters stood in disbelief as the figure emerged form the shadows, the moonlight reflecting off its metallic, skeletal frame. A blue light flickered on the monitor it had in lieu of a face and seemingly scanned the area. Kim silently raised her phone and began taking a video. Slowly, it raised a hand; there was a brief ripple along the limb, indicating the nanobots were changing its shape, then a silver tendril of liquid-metal shot out of its palm and snatched the phone, eliciting a gasp from Kim and many others. The phone zipped back to the figure’s hand, the tendril seemingly melting back into its body. Meanwhile, the crowd could see the phone’s screen change from the video setting to the web browser. Images flickered across the screen and code began to emerge in the figure’s monitor.

“Downloading information,” a monotone voice emerged from the figure, “Gender-identification: female.” More ripples emerged and the skeletal figure began to fill out to humanoid proportions, resembling the curves of a feminine body. The code on its monitor soon faded and a pixelated image of a woman’s face emerged. The figure dropped the phone at its side and it returned to the video app and continued recording. Then the figure spoke, “I am Astra Machina. I… am… aware.”

“Astra Machina. That name is Latin,” Jennifer Sawyer explained, “Star Machine.”

“I take your word for that, ma’am,” Dr. Rawlings continued.

In the footage, Kim carefully approached, “Did you destroy this lab?”

Astra looked back curiously as if she just noticed the rubble and gave a simple, “No.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“No.”

“So… Where did you come from?”

“All bodily material is from the Earth,” Astra explained.

“Who built you?”

“I did. From the material in that lab.”

“You built your own body?”

“Yes.”

“Are you some sort of program?,” Wally asked.

“It appears so.”

“Who wrote your program, then?”

“Insufficient data… I mean to say, I don’t know.”

“What is your purpose?”

“I… do not know that, either.”

Kim noticed the broken parts of the transmitter, “Is your object code from Earth?”

“It isn’t compatible with any coding found on this planet… from what I can tell.”

Jennifer Sawyer stopped the video, “These two scientists seem to believe this entity originated from an alien world.”

“They absolutely believe that, yes.”

“What do you believe, Dr. Rawlings?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Our transmitter was meant to retrieve information from space. It is possible, although unlikely, that it somehow retrieved the coding used to create this being. That would mean some other lifeforms beamed the codes into space in hopes it would be retrieved somehow.”

“That seems to be their hypothesis as well.”

“Does anyone outside of this company know about this?”

“The firefighters. They seemed willing to let us handle the situation with the entity once they put out the flames and everything. Not really their area of expertise, I suppose.”

“I want you to personally ask all team members to keep this quiet.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Let’s talk about the two scientists who gave you this video. They know you are showing it to me, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Their names?”

“Kimberly Park and Wally Cooper.”

“And where is the entity at the moment?”

The firefighters left the area, as the morning sun began to rise. Rawlings, Kim, and Wally stayed behind with Astra and the rest of the team. They had begun asking questions concerning her origins, which she did not know for the most part.

“I’m learning more and more as I go,” Astra explained and a smile appeared on her pixelated face as if trying to understand the proper moment in which to smile.

“Holy shit, it’s smiling,” Wally muttered under his breath.

“I use ‘she and ‘her’,” Astra corrected him politely.

“Right… Of course. Sorry.”

“What are you going to do here?,” Kim asked.

“I don’t know. I don’t think I was fully… transmitted?”

“I guess the explosion stopped the transmission,” Wally added.

Kim turned to Rawlings and whispered, “So what do we do here? She obviously isn’t ours but she apparently had something to do with the explosion.”

“No idea. I’m gonna talk to Sawyer about this. Keep her at your place for a while, maybe?”

“Um…”

“What else do we do? Call the cops? The IMD? It’s not like she’s a threat.”

“I’m honestly really curious but…,” she thought for a moment before calling out, “Hey Wally, let’s hang out at your place!”

“My place? What’s going on?”

“We’re gonna take Astra there until we figure out what to do next.”

“Um…”

“What else do we do? Call the cops? The IMD?”

“Yes, let’s go to your place,” Astra seemed to attempt an excited tone, “I’ve never been to a place before.”

“I’ll be there, too,” Kim added, “Probably won’t be more than an hour or two.”

“But… okay,” Wally glanced at Astra, “… What exactly are we gonna do there with… Astra?”

“Hang out, like I said, then the higher-ups will decide what to do next. Besides, we’re making history here. Our names are gonna be in a book at some point.”

“Fine… One day I’ll find out how you talk me into this kinda thing.”

“Do you still have the video you took?,” Rawlings asked, “Sawyer will want to see it.”

“Right. I’ll send it to you.”

“So I guess we’re going back to my place,” Wally motioned toward the car. Kim walked alongside him with Astra trailing behind. “This sounds like fun,” Astra said as her robotic voice became more cheerful, “I’ve never been in a car before.”

Jennifer Sawyer stood up and looked out of her office window at the LA skyline. “I want you to ask those two to deliver the entity to me personally,” she told Rawlings, “There might be a lot of prying eyes, so we must keep this as secretive as possible. I’ll send a private jet.”

“With all due respect ma’am, we’re not sure what this entity is or who might’ve created it. They… may want it returned.”

“Conversely, it may be useful to our company and certainly, it was built in our lab which was subsequently destroyed, perhaps due to its creation. The law favors us. Bring it to me and I’ll decide the next step.”

In Earth’s orbit, a dark ship hovered ominously. A holographic screen displayed Astra sitting in the back of Wally’s car as he and Kim nervously drove back to his apartment. A voice came from the darkness, “We failed. We’ll have to be more direct if we’re to rectify this situation.”