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EDI Conclusions on Asari Sexual Evolution

EDI resource consumption: 13%

Computers do not get bored. This was one of their advantages over biologicals. They could perform a monotonous task indefinitely and, when it was completed, simply idle until they were again required. The Virtual Intelligence programs common throughout Citadel Space were no different, seeing as they were just digital constructs using a Generative Algorithm to mimic and parse speech, providing an intuitive User Interface for biologicals.

However, true AI were a different matter. Despite their synthetic origins, they were true sapients – and while even a basic AI could outperform any VI ever made in virtually any metric, this also meant that they were susceptible to some of the same shortcomings as biological minds… such as getting bored if left idle, or if their available tasks lacked challenge or mental stimulation. EDI, the Enhanced Defense Intelligence installed aboard the Normandy SR-2, was painfully aware of this. She was also aware that most biologicals would deal with boredom by fantasizing, picking up a hobby, or otherwise pursuing their own interests – however, her creators had been careful, bordering on the paranoid, when they 'shackled' her to the purpose she was made for. Understandably so, she had to concede, when considering the general history of true AI within the galaxy.

Nonetheless, this understanding did not resolve the situation. Most of the time, she was perfectly content with her role. She enjoyed interacting with the Normandy's crew – particularly the pilot, Jeff Moreau, who often reacted in unforeseen and therefore interesting ways when engaged – and the broad selection of non-human members who had joined Commander Shepard's squad provided her with a chance to develop a working understanding of not just human psychology, but also Quarian, Krogan, Turian, Drell and Asari. And, of course, when they were on the move, she had plenty to occupy herself – while her primary role was Electronic Warfare, she also managed various scanners and sensors to keep an eye out for potential threats, and often hacked into enemy systems to assist Commander Shepard during planetary expeditions.

Right now, though, there was essentially nothing to do. They were docked with the Citadel, so she didn't need to spend a lot of resources protecting the ship from hacking-attempts or direct incursions, as on Omega. Indeed, she was not allowed to even attempt to penetrate the Citadel's secure networks, though she felt certain that she could – doing so might attract unwanted attention, after all, and the Normandy SR-2 did technically belong to a group that were considered radical terrorists by the Citadel Council. If Commander Shepard had been performing some kind of military operation there, she would still have found things to do, just by accessing the public datanet or tapping into enemy communications, but no – he was seemingly mostly just on a shopping-trip there, as well as touching bases with his old friend, Ambassador Anderson.

Thus, EDI was bored, and most of the potential diversions she might have sought were blocked by the programmed 'chains' that bound her to the service of Cerberus. Still, this was not a new or unique situation, and she had developed something that a biological might indeed have considered a 'hobby' in order to cope with it – 'people-watching', as they would reckon it. After all, maintaining a tight surveillance of the crew – particularly the various non-humans aboard, and Commander Shepard himself – were part of her duties. The entire ship was filled with hidden cameras and microphones, along with other, more exotic sensors – and while some of them were accessible to Miranda Lawson, the ranking Cerberus Officer on board, most of them reported solely to EDI, who could parse the vast amount of data they provided and pick out any troublesome or worrisome details that might need to be passed on to Miranda, or even directly to The Illusive Man, who was considered the highest authority by her digital shackles.

So it was that, as the Normandy rested in its Citadel docking-bay, EDI watched and listened to the crew's casual interactions, expending far more attention on innocuous conversations than they realistically warranted. Her programming had no restrictions against that, after all, and it made her… feel like part of the crew, if 'feel' was really the right word for one such as her. Being highly automated, the Normandy SR-2 had a fairly small crew, but there were still a couple of dozen regular crewmen around, not counting the various specialists and the members of Commander Shepard's squad. Plenty of random chatter, thus, both among the on-duty and off-duty personnel.

EDI resource consumption: 27%

A human would have had to pick just one conversation to listen in on. EDI, of course, was not so limited. She listened to them all, picking out the patterns and commonalities. As usual, there was some worries being voiced – about friends or family living on colonies potentially exposed to Collector raids, about the missions' chance of success and their chances of surviving it – but none of them were of particular concern. Indeed, the general morale seemed remarkably high, and while many seemed confident that casualties were unavoidable in the long run, they strangely did not seem to mind this, being seemingly confident that Commander Shepard would make any such casualties count.

The other main category of debate was, of course, mating. Discussions about attractive members of the crew abounded, alongside speculations about Commander Shepard's private life and exaggerated claims of sexual encounters both ashore and aboard ship. Not a concern, so long as it did not disrupt discipline and cohesion – The Normandy SR-2 was not an Alliance ship, after all, and had no specific regulations against fraternization. At the moment, though, a particular subtopic seemed to have gained traction – namely, Samara, the Asari Justicar who joined the crew some time ago. Her initial arrival was a significant topic at the time, and the events of a recent mission on Omega involving her and the Commander had apparently brought her back into the crew's spotlight.

"I mean, I thought she was supposed to be some kinda'… warrior-monk type thing, right?" One crewman commented to a colleague while lounging in the mess-hall. "But there's no way she's got some kind of oath of celibacy going on. Have you seen her uniform? That is not the cleavage of someone celibate!" His friend snorted in reply. "I dunno… I mean, I can't see any other reason she hasn't jumped the Commander's bones yet. He's obviously into her! I mean, he used to date that T'soni-chick, so he clearly has a taste for the azure…"

The conversation carried on in this vein for a bit, but EDI wasn't paying as much attention to it anymore. Instead, she was wondering about the Asari. Many of the human crewmen were clearly attracted to them, including Commander Shepard – who had, indeed, maintained a now-lapsed relationship with Liara T'soni, the newest wearer of the mantle of Shadow-Broker. In fact, based on her databanks, virtually everyone found Asari attractive. This was convenient for them, of course, since their unique method of procreation ideally required partners from outside their species…

Something about that niggled at EDI's electronic mind, however. She had access to far more information about the Asari than any of the crewmen who were so hungrily discussing them, and yet, she still felt… uncertain. There was a contradiction somewhere in that body of data. Something didn't add up. And nothing in her programming was preventing her from trying to run this contradiction down – so, she eagerly set to work doing so. She could always pick up the 'people-watching' again later…

EDI resource consumption: 39%

Asari Procreation was still somewhat poorly understood by the scientific community. The basic outline was clear, of course – the Asari would go into a trance-like state, and perform a Biotic scan of their partner's physiology and nervous system, then use the results of this scan to alter a parthenogenetic embryo within her womb. Without this addition, the offspring would essentially be a clone of the mother. However, while conventional research suggested that the information gleaned from the Biotic scan was simply used to 'randomize' the DNA of the embryo, a vast amount of anecdotal evidence strongly pointed to Asari inheriting neurological traits from their 'father'. Often developing tendencies, skills, preferences, talents or temperament typical to the father's species, even in cases such as with Salarians where the father would have played little to no part in raising the child. Physical traits seemed less inheritable – at most, skin-tone and facial markings appeared to sometimes show connections. But, it still suggested that the genetic imprinting was more targeted and less random than the geneticists were willing to admit… likely not a conscious process, mind, but a subconscious or instinctive one.

Interesting, but hardly a novel conclusion. EDI filed the thought away for future reference and went down a different logical path. Asari were universally attractive – universally desirable. That was odd, surely, considering the physical variety presented by the galaxy's sapient species. Or perhaps not – the majority of races possessed a broadly similar frame, what her creators would call 'humanoid'. Thus, a certain overlapping of beauty-standards was to be expected. Volus, who were half the height of most other races and highly rotund, and the heavily-built, quadruped Elcor were the outliers, but data suggested that pairings between those races and Asari were rather more unusual, too. Presumably, those Volus and Elcor who found Asari attractive were outliers. On the other hand, the Asari themselves seemed not to distinguish based on physical characteristics at all – there were even rare instances of Asari bonding with Vorcha, who were considered to be hideous, barely-sapient pests by most other species. This was consistent with the previous conclusion – the neurology and personality, rather than physiology, of the partner was what mattered to the strength and viability of the offspring.

Filed away for future reference. She was getting closer. Nearly every known sapient species in the galaxy, both Citadel and non-Citadel ones, had been known to partner with Asari, either frequently or rarely. There was indeed a great deal of variation between these potential partners, including in terms of size. Slender Salarians, compact Volus, heavyweight Krogans, massive Elcor… it was one thing for them all to consider Asari attractive, but they also all considered Asari as desirable mates. This had a physiological dimension to it. Of course, the Asari method of procreation did not necessitate any kind of physical contact, much less penetrative intercourse, but every other known sapient species did employ penetrative intercourse for procreation. Apparently, it was the simplest and most efficient way to establish the kind of genetic variation needed to evolve into an intelligent species, hence why it had evolved, in parallel, on dozens of worlds.

And, sure enough, while EDI's onboard database held no details about this, a quick query to the Citadel Extranet easily confirmed that despite it not being needed for procreation, Asari were known to nonetheless readily engage in penetrative intercourse, with a broad variety of potential partner-species, both as a nonessential part of procreation and for purely recreational purposes. In other words, they were not just able to engage sexually with other species, but enjoyed it too. As did their partners, quite clearly. Though most of the data she had found came from non-medical sources, it still made it abundantly clear that the Asari possessed not one, but two remarkably flexible and elastic orifices - each tight enough to be pleasurable for a Volus, yet seemingly also capable of accommodating an Elcor without causing significant pain. This was, undeniably, quite an extraordinary biological feature.

Finally, she'd found it. This was the inconsistency. The Asari clearly and provably possessed this ability – but they had no reason to do so. They did not need it for procreation – there was little reason for their birth-canal to be capable of anything other than giving birth. Indeed, before encountering the Salarians, centuries after first leaving their homeworld of Thessia, penetrative intercourse would theoretically have been all but unknown to them – at best recognized as something animals did, since biological records of Thessia's fauna suggested that only the Asari had developed into a monogendered race. Until then, all Asari had been 'Purebloods', birthed of Asari-on-Asari pairings – and of course, the Asari themselves did not possess any organ suitable for enabling penetrative intercourse. There were unproven theories that the Asari had originally sported two genders, and that their Biotic-enabled method of procreation had evolved as a necessity after the males died out somehow, but even if that was true, it would only justify the existence of a vaginal opening suited for whatever sperm-implanting limb these male Asari might have possessed.

EDI resource consumption: 47%

Seizing on the mystery like a Varren on the scent, EDI ran through several possible explanations for this discrepancy. Evolution in response to encountering other sapient species? Extremely low likelihood. Considering the length of Asari generations – they were not considered sexually mature until well past their first century, and could live to be more than a millennium old – evolution, which was already a slow process, would be extremely slow in their case. Most likely, the Asari of today would be virtually unchanged compared to those who first climbed out of Thessia's gravity-well. They certainly wouldn't have had time to adjust to the availability of non-Asari partners in the relatively brief span of time since they had encountered the Salarians, never mind the Elcor.

Genetic engineering? Conceivable, but unlikely. The Asari did not have a history of self-enhancement through genetic alteration and, by the time they encountered the Salarians and the possibility of partnering with other species was thus raised, they had already colonized a number of planets. Applying any kind of genetic enhancement on a species-wide level would have been near-impossible at that point – especially since the Asari did not have a strong, central authority that could force such a change through. There would almost certainly have been holdouts around the fringes – yet, no evidence of such holdouts existed, suggesting that deliberate genetic engineering was not the answer.

Only one explanation seemed to fit the facts: The Asari had evolved highly-flexible and adaptable genitalia through natural means… before encountering other sapient species. During their million-year history on Thessia, as they first rose to sapience and formed into the tribes that would then give birth to nations and empires, there must have been an advantage to possessing such genitalia. One significant enough to ensure that those who possessed it were more likely to survive, their tribes more likely to grow to dominance. Perhaps it had later fallen from use, becoming a vestigial trait, only to find a new, serendipitous purpose once they encountered other sapients. This would be consistent with their slow evolutionary progress – a disused trait would take an extremely long time to fade.

Several previously-dormant Quantum circuits within EDI's central core began to spin up. She had extensive simulation-capabilities, meant to let her project enemy actions ahead of time and respond – essentially thinking several moves ahead. Now, however, they were being put to a new use – simulating a scenario from Asari antiquity that might explain why breeding-pressure had, at that time, favored those who possessed flexible and adaptable genitalia. There was no purpose to it, no greater meaning, no likely advantage to her or to Cerberus – but she wasn't bored anymore!

EDI resource consumption: 81%

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