"I don't need to explain myself to you," Skippy sniffed, "but you're going to keep bugging me about this, so I'll tell you. Joe is the only one of your under-developed species who treats me as a being, as a person, right from the start. The rest of you monkeys consider me to be a machine, and you're afraid of me. Joe gave me a name. I've only ever had a designation before. Now I have a name. Joe, you said I'm an asshole, and the reason you said that is because you're holding me to the standard of a fully sentient being. A machine can't be an asshole, only a person can. You treat me as a person, as an equal."

I was genuinely touched. "Thank you, Skippy, I didn't, uh, you never said anything about that before."

"I was hoping you'd figure it out by yourself. Alas, that was never going to happen with your slow brain."

"Aaaaaand, you're still an asshole, I see."

"Proving my point exactly." Skippy said smugly.

"Mister Skippy," the Chinese ambassador had a pained look on his face about calling a super intelligent AI 'Skippy'. Which I wondered about. 'Skippy' didn't mean anything in Chinese, so why did they care? Unless they were embarrassed for us. Whatever. "It is understandable that you are more comfortable with having a familiar person aboard the ship, but is he the best person to be in command? Making contact with the Collective is your priority, should you not have a commander who can best assure success of the mission?

"Sure, that makes sense." Skippy agreed. "Give me a list of candidates who have more experience than Joe in command of alien starships, and I'll look at it. Until then, you shut the hell up."

It was clear the Chinese ambassador was not going to follow Skippy's advice to keep his mouth shut, so I held up an index finger. "Mr. Ambassador, one moment, please?" I gestured for the other Americans to huddle in the corner of the room. "What if I command the ship, and Lt. Colonel Chang is in charge of the crew?"

Schmidt titled his head toward General Brenner. "That would allow the Chinese to save face. What do you think?"

"I think we don't need the Chinese on this mission, and if they don't want to play ball, they can stay home." Brenner growled, while shooting a look at his Chinese counterpart across the room.

"The President wants this to be a multinational mission, and it's our job to make it happen, successfully." Schmidt reminded gently. "We need to work together to rebuild this planet, and once we humans get up there in our own ships," he pointed toward the ceiling, "we need a unified human force. Can you live with this arrangement?"

"Americans under Chinese command?" Brenner scoffed.