Herb was making himself a cup of tea the long way. He set the water to boil over three minutes; he had a teapot ready, already filled with two spoonfuls of genuine organic leaves from his father’s plantation. Doing it properly made a difference, no matter what people said. He saw Johnston emerge from the secret passageway and suppressed a smile. Robert ignored him. He was carrying a heavy object, something plastic and basically cuboid. One side was pearly grey glass. He staggered across to the coffee table and set it down as gently as he could. Herb watched him out of the corner of his eye until a deep red glow shone from the center of the water, signaling that it had boiled. He picked up the thermal jug and poured its contents into the teapot. Hot steam rose and he pushed his face into it, relishing the sensation as it condensed on his face.

Johnston had vanished back down the secret passageway. There had been a subtle shift in the balance of power, and they both knew it. As long as Herb could keep up the appearance of hysterical disbelief, he had Robert off balance. Now Herb was refusing to look at a viewing field unless forced to.

In response, Johnston had slipped back into his 1920s American mode. His suit was that little bit sharper, his accent that little bit harsher. He had to work harder to gain Herb’s attention. But, as always, he had a plan.

Herb placed the lid on the teapot. He was now only four minutes away from the perfect cup of tea. Robert reemerged from the passageway, this time dragging a long flexible plastic cable. Herb watched in silence as Robert used a complicated looking connector to join it to a similar cable emerging from the plastic cuboid.

Herb experienced a sudden flash of recognition. “That’s a television, isn’t it? I’ve seen them in old information files.”

“Gotcha!” Robert pressed a button on the machine and stepped back. There was a strange whistling noise at the edge of Herb’s hearing. The grey glass panel at the side of the box lit up. Pictures began to move on it. Herb squinted to see them clearly.

“What’s that?” he said.

“A piece of history. You’re looking at one of the early colonization projects, one of the first wave initiated after the invention of the warp drive. Like most of the projects back then, this one was sponsored by a single corporation, in this case DIANA.”

They were watching a large spaceship, seemingly stationary against the background of stars. It was all silver and gold curves, in the fashion of the time. Herb found it difficult to make out the overall shape of the ship, but he had to admit it had a certain pleasing quality to the eye, the way the matching curves swept out and back in, balancing each other.

“We’re pretty certain that this particular colony ship was the source of the Enemy Domain.”

“Pretty certain?” asked Herb.

“Nothing is ever a hundred percent,” Johnston replied easily. “This ship was headed out in the right direction. The programming on the VNMs we’ve seen matches the development tensors of the original ayletts loaded on board this ship. We’ve even matched the genetic material of the hundred or so colonists on board with the half-grown clones on the planets throughout the Enemy Domain. We’re pretty sure.”

“Oh,” Herb said. The picture had now zoomed in on a group of men and women boarding the craft. They didn’t look that much older than he did. They were laughing and chatting as they pulled their way along the handholds lining the ship’s corridor, and Herb realized that this was before the time of artificial gravity. They looked as if they were heading off for a day’s picnic, not traveling halfway across the galaxy to set up a new home. He felt a queer shiver of fear in his stomach. These people had no idea that things were about to go so badly wrong for them.

“So what went wrong?” he asked.

“We don’t know for sure,” said Robert, “but we can guess. It was a common enough failing back then. The problem is there.”

The television picture jumped to a processing space. A room, not much smaller than Herb’s lounge, filled with the oversized computing equipment of a hundred years ago. Shimmering arrays of memory foam and transparent arrays of qubit processors, all too big and laughably slow. Around the edges of the room there were even the silvery metal strands of electronic equipment, remnants of a technology now completely obsolete.

“Did that lot go wrong?” Herb asked.

“Not exactly. It functioned the way it was supposed to. The problem is, well…Do you know what was run in that processing space?”

“Everything, I should think,” Herb said. “Ship control, astrogation, VNM blueprints, library…”

“You’re right, but that’s not the point. There was one AI in there. Just one. That’s all the processing space was capable of supporting. It was the best available at the time, you should understand, but the point is, there was just one. The ship was built by a corporation, remember. It was simply too expensive to put in the equipment to support another AI.”

The screen changed to show a view of the ship from space. It was receding this time. There was a flicker and then it vanished. Inserted into warp.

“Just one AI,” repeated Robert. “An AI too big and too intelligent for the ship, so it was set to sleep until it arrived at the colony world, where it would be woken up and set to building. It would then release its VNMs, tailoring them to the environment it found itself in. It would make that planet safe for the colonists, and all the time, while its machines and buildings and sphere of influence were growing, it would itself be growing, becoming more intelligent as it rebuilt itself. You see, it’s always the same when these systems go out of control. You have self-replicating machines reproducing unchecked and an AI that is growing up at the same time as them. The AI naturally thinks it’s omnipotent. All children do when they’re born. It’s the limitations and disappointments of life that are imposed upon us that force us to grow up. The AI isn’t experiencing those limitations. If a second AI had been there, as there always is now when we grow a new AI, well…With two AIs, the two intelligences would have to learn to negotiate and compromise with each other. Without that…you’ve seen the result.”

Herb suddenly realized that his tea must be stewed by now. What a waste of good leaves. Robert had snared him, dragged him back into the mission. Something still didn’t make sense, though.

“Okay, it’s from Earth. So why is it trying to attack us?”

“It is in the nature of those who have never been told ‘no’ to think that the universe is there for their own benefit. Like I said, it’s acting like a spoiled child.”

Robert stared at him, and he shifted uncomfortably. Herb got the impression that Robert wasn’t just talking about the Enemy Domain.

Robert continued. “Think about it. The AI has to protect its colonists from everything. It needs to expand to make them safe. Left unchecked it could fill the universe, but there, standing in its way is the Earth and its domain of influence. A great big ‘NO!’ hanging in the night. No wonder it hates us and wants to destroy us. It’s like a toddler that has been told it must stay in its bedroom. No matter that all its toys are in there: the fact that it has been told ‘no’ is enough. It wants out.”

Herb nodded. “I need some vanilla whisky.”

“I don’t think so. You’re becoming dependent on that stuff. Have a nice cup of tea instead.”

“It’s stewed.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get it for you. Ship! Cup of tea for Herb, please.”

Herb fiddled with the elastic waistband of his ship shorts. “I still don’t see why it’s worried. It could destroy us easily.”

Johnston laughed. “I don’t think so. We’re cleverer than it is.”

“Cleverer? How? Those ayletts it released will have reproduced time after time. The original AI must have redesigned itself over and over again, built new and more sophisticated containers for its intelligence. It’s had far more resources than any Earth AI at its disposal. It must be far cleverer.”