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This article researched/written by Erica (erica@netcon.net.au)
BLAKE: Seven of us can run this ship properly. VILA: Six surely.BLAKE: You forgot Zen. AVON: You're not counting that machine as a member of the crew.BLAKE: Oh, what do you say to that Zen? ZEN: Please state course and speed.BLAKE: Very diplomatic. Set a course for Centero, speed standard by two. ZEN: Confirmed.
BLAKE: All right, we'll hide here for a while. The planet should give us some protection from the detectors. Zen, take us into orbit as close as possible to the planet's surface. As close as possible Zen, the orbit could decay in forty-eight hours. ZEN: Confirmed. The parameters were anticipated. BLAKE: [Laughs] I get the distinct feeling I offended Zen's professional pride then. AVON: It's just a machine, Blake.AVON: That's it, then, I've done everything I can. Every machine except life support is frozen. CALLY: Even Zen. AVON: Zen is a machine. VILA: Unless he just doesn't want to get involved.
ORAC: Space Command has long tried to perfect a course interceptor attuned to the circuitry of navigational computers and rational coordinators like Zen. The scientists of Auron, however, had the wit to aim for the weaker point. AVON: The human brain. ORAC: Correct.
CALLY: But you said it wasn't alive. AVON: Orac said that. VILA: And Orac was wrong? AVON: Orac is a computer, like Zen. They react to information, that is all.ZEN: Sopron is nonorganic, silicon-based, and registers high electronic activity. AVON: Its function? ZEN: Its function is that of a capacity-charged brain.
AVON: Sopron is a mirror. A distorting mirror. It reflects a slightly greater image of whatever it is that happens to be scanning it. Zen saw a capacity charged brain, because that is what Zen is.