Interview with Rome I - Part 13 of 17

As Steve Fisch and I get the scripts ready to sell Rome's Revolution as a streaming series, he asked me for a lot of background information that I did not have. So I took some time out to interview Rome and Rei. Rome was very talkative so I had to break up the interview into two parts. Rei was a bit more concise. So here is the first Rome interview, part 13 of 17.
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But he had no way to get there. So by kidnapping Lupe and leaving a breadcrumb trail, he was able to get Aason to discover Molokai and Molokai was able to navigate what became Starship OMCOM all the way to Heaven. It worked. OMCOM got what he wanted. When Aason found out, he was so mad, but he had to rescue Lupe. She was in pretty bad shape.
Perry: But she’s OK now?
Rome: Oh yes, she recovered fully. Well, I don’t know if I can say that. When she came back, she was a little different. Not in a bad way. She was a little more mature? But we still loved her and she loves us and everything is OK. Aason never fully forgave OMCOM. To this day, Aason says if he ever saw OMCOM, he’d punch him in the nose. Not that OMCOM has a nose. (Rome laughs) I must tell you how proud I am of my son as well. He is the best of both Rei and me. He is a hero is his own right. When he and Lupe got back, they were the ones that started the First Contact Academy and that led to what we call the Union today. So on balance, I think OMCOM did more good than bad.
Perry: I suppose as a computer; he never felt any remorse over the bad?
Rome: He said he did but he didn’t. Like you said, he is, or he was, a computer. They aren’t human. That doesn’t mean they can’t feel. Look at my brilliant MINIMCOM. He is a loving member of our family. His son and daughter are my niece and nephew. But there was also MASAL. We always considered him evil. A computer is as a computer does. Their motives are always good from their perspective. They just don’t always correspond to what we think is good. OMCOM did create the PNA-based 25th chromosome. That was distributed on three planets and stopped the spread of the Onsiras forever. That was a good thing.
Perry: We have an entire section dedicated to the AIs and their actions. There’s no need to go into all of that now. But maybe someday you can come back and fill in any of the gaps.
Rome: Of course.
(Perry looks down at his tablet again)
Perry: Tell me about the Overmind here, on Deucado. It was an integral part of, I’m sorry to keep saying this, Rome’s Revolution.
(Rome nods)
Rome: It took us a full year to get here from Tabit. When we finally arrived, we were so relieved. We expected to enlist the aid of the Vuduri and mandasurte to help us rescue Rei’s crew. Never did we dream that we would be attacked as soon as we got here. That was the Overmind’s directive. The old, corrupted form of the Overmind. The Onsiras had arrived when it was very young and malleable and convinced it that its main concern would be the capture and suppression of the mandasurte. In fact, as you know, the mandasurte on this planet refer to themselves, even to this day, as the Ibbrassati, the Oppressed.
Perry: And it never occurred to the Overmind that this was wrong?
Rome: The Overmind is made up of the collective consciousness of the Vuduri. And most of them let the Overmind do the thinking for them. It’s a positive feedback loop. Once set, it needs an outside jolt to unset it.

Tomorrow, part 13