Dr. Nilsson held up his hand. “There’s more. Using data from NASA’s old reconnaissance files, GOLEM indicated it had located an alternative source of helium-3, one that would render a stable fusion reaction with a far greater energy output.”

“That’s fantastic. Where’s the source?”

“Underwater.” Thomas Nilsson engaged the smart-table, accessing a hologram of Jupiter. “Beneath the frozen ocean on Jupiter’s moon, Europa.”

My eyes widened as I watched the moons orbiting Jupiter enlarge, the hologram now focused solely on Europa, its frozen surface scarred with a chaotic highway of fracture zones.

“This is crazy,” I said. “The technology required to get to Europa—”

“The computer accounted for that by designing a solar sail for one of the helium-3 transport shuttles.”

“Really? Wow.” I shook away the distraction of ego. “Still, Europa? We haven’t put a man on Mars. Where’s the data to even support such a mission?”

Thomas smirked. “The computer reconfigured the data downloaded from NASA’s old Galileo probe. The helium-3 is being dispersed from hydrothermal vents located along the Europa seafloor.”

My uncle turned to face me. “GOLEM’s assessment is pretty enticing—one manned mission to Jupiter’s moon has a potential economic value in the order of three trillion dollars. Despite the news, we were still grappling with this unexpected setback, and so we ordered GOLEM to continue its mining operations while we readied a lunar shuttle to transport a scientific team to Alpha Colony to examine the ore caches. That’s when GOLEM decided to let us know who the alpha dog was.”

Thomas nodded. “Your computer shut down all strip-mining operations on the moon. Then it sent out e-mails instructing teams of engineers and skilled laborers to report to Caltech to begin immediate construction on Oceanus, a manned underwater habitat designed by the computer to mine helium-3 on Europa.”

“It designed a habitat?” I found myself beaming. The thought of an artificial intelligence independently creating a habitat for a mission it had conceived from scratch … it was surreal. Still, I could see why Omega’s administrators were unnerved. “After GOLEM shut down mining operations, did you attempt to override the system?”

“Of course we did,” the female scientist replied. “Nothing we did made a bit of difference. GOLEM’s interpretation of the situation was that it was following that damn prime directive you imprinted upon its matrix.”

“To protect and preserve the human species—I forgot all about that.”

“Yes, well GOLEM didn’t forget. Since the machine equates mining helium-3 with preserving the human species, its defense systems counteracted any actions we attempted.”