"I finished it all," Egeria said, exhausted. "I explained to the locals that gods even more benevolent than Pelops had come and granted them many thousands of years of life." Evgenia, too, felt out of place. Although, following the principle of "no atheist under fire," she believed in God, in calmer circumstances she preferred agnosticism. And here—she had to pretend to be a deity. "There's something interesting about it," she added, "because some men in the village want to sleep with me."
"Inside the statue is a lab report and a description of the experiment. Inside the statue is a computer that controls everything. The nanites are quite complex in their basic structure and can only exist in close proximity to the computer. There's a whole block of knowledge implantation: language, basic skills, general knowledge, knowledge about sex, and so on. For now, it's just lines of code, and a lot of it."
"Anything else?"
"I haven't examined the temple myself yet, but perhaps there are clues to other planets."
"It's worth noting that people were very surprised when they stopped aging, but the gods did not come."
"I didn't have time for a detailed examination—I was looking for you. But by the time I had time, five or six generations of these people would have died, so I simply stopped the experiment and continued my work. I retain my empathy, at least judging by the fact that I really want to tear some of our prisoners apart with my bare hands."
Evgenia's face contorted with disgust.
"I hope Hell exists so they can spend eternity there," the carrier said. "I can't believe Stalin made a deal with the prisoners from that unit, releasing them in exchange for information."
"The US did the same. From a Machiavellian perspective, it's logical. Bacteriological attacks were already carried out against the USSR. I'm sure the NKVD isn't idiot-like; they understand where the "disappeared" Shiro Ishii went and that the US could have all the know-how on bacteriological warfare against the USSR. Therefore, they needed complete knowledge both for defense... and for a possible attack. They needed data that only existed in the minds of bastards, because, essentially, we're doing the same thing. Nanites can advance medicine; people here don't get sick, everyone is absolutely healthy. Many genetic diseases may even be corrected. I have no intention of keeping Pelops alive, but the data... The only good thing is that these people weren't tortured. But the entire experiment is as delusional as 90% of what Unit 731 conducted. And here we come to the question: the existence of the fruit of the poisoned tree. In legal matters, illegal evidence must be removed from the case file. But this is real life, not a trial. I'll kill Pelops, of course, I'll kill all those bastards who are now interrogating the Tollans. And here I am, sitting before the results of an immoral experiment that could potentially reduce human disease by several orders of magnitude? Should I destroy it, because the experiment was immoral, or preserve it? That's probably what other Earthlings will think in 50 years: "Why kill them? Under supervision, they could have saved more people than they killed?"
"Fuck future earthlings," the former Marine lieutenant said curtly.
"Agreed. I'll begin joint development with the Tollans of some kind of nanite cocktails for medicine. Create faster-acting nanites, targeted at a single disease, with rapid elimination after completing their task. And maybe even some more advanced versions. Still, playing with nanites scares me a little, considering the Asgard are at war with the cousins of these nanites. There's even a primitive neural network that can partially rewrite the program when new diseases appear. Of course, it's not a full-fledged artificial intelligence, but it's heading in that direction. But I've only done a superficial analysis; more time is needed."
"As much as I'd like to shoot every single person evacuated as part of Operation Paperclip, unfortunately, I couldn't do that. It would have ruined the entire history of humanity. The greatest people who advanced humanity into space were there."
"We'll look for any writing on the walls; maybe there are underground complexes or an underground laboratory."
We split up and started scanning everything for rings or the basement. It was hard, monotonous work.
"I found something," Egeria said.
At the back of the temple was a plaza clear of columns, but the floor was different, clearly hinting at something. We gave the signal that was universal for summoning rings in the cleared area, and immediately rings rose from beneath the floor, transporting us to a dark room. The lights immediately came on, revealing various equipment and a computer.
"I was wondering, do all Goa'uld like secret laboratories?" I asked myself.
"Yes, it's in their genes," Egeria replied. "You can trust me."
Having opened the unprotected computer, I began to read.
"It will take time, but it is better than what the Tollans are doing now."
"Anything is better than what the Tollans are doing now," the queen replied.
After that, we began sorting through Pelops's notes. This will take some time. Or do you think there's a full-fledged scientific report written on that flat tablet? It's just a reminder of what's going on on this planet. Implementing something like this requires terabytes of data, including disease analysis, methods for transmitting information directly to the brain at various stages, and there's still so much more. Creating such universal tools required a significant labor-intensive process, and Pelops deserves credit. His nanites demonstrate talented workmanship and decades of labor (I don't want to think how much he spent accumulating the data). Engineering is usually my specialty, but here there are too many terms at the intersection of biology and technology."
"Hmm, interesting," Egeria said. "I was wondering how they solved the energy consumption problem. They're not quite human anymore, but something between a robot and a human. A perfect symbiosis: they get their nutrition from a digestive system that processes 100% of the food they eat. And they eat a lot—to power both their human and nanite systems."
I cleared some space and activated the sample storage. After some time, I realized what they were. They were pathogens for a huge number of diseases. Pelops must have been testing the effectiveness of his nanites on them and teaching his neural network to fight diseases.
"I'll express my authoritative opinion: I'm fed up with the topic of biological weapons and experiments with them. Can I have something else?"
"Pelops? You're naive," Egeria replied, continuing to study the data. "That would indeed take some time, as would transporting all the scientific data to Urvashi. He mentions another planet, where he was testing some kind of virus that degrades the human mind to a more primitive state. Come to think of it, it's the perfect weapon for neutralizing advanced races by seizing their infrastructure. Pelops clearly doesn't have any Huttaks. You should be proud, you're richer than such an ancient Goa'uld."
"I foresaw the bacteriological attacks in advance, so I'm building defenses against such attacks on each of my planets. But I have no intention of touching this crap myself."
"Even if the end comes?"
"If the end comes, these weapons will be of no use. The galaxy cannot be conquered by deception." (Unless, of course, you're SG-1.) "The galaxy can be conquered, fleets can be assembled, armadas can be prepared, and we can march forward as one, liberating planets."
"Or be a replicator who is not bound by law."