Consensus of Parts

"According to the stories, the Consensus of Parts is made up of billions of interlinked machines, all operating strictly on logic. And when it's logical for them to kill people, they do. Without hesitation."

- Beka Valentine

Believed by some to be just a myth, the Consensus of Parts is a spacefaring society of sapient machines which operates in the space between star systems.

Culture and society
While the entire Consensus operates on a collective intelligence, its billions of small components can join together (i.e. "consensus") into android bodies which, to all practical effects, function as individual beings. These are always created to perform a specific task. Some are more long-lived than others, but in all cases, once this task is completed, they're expected to "deconsensus", i.e. terminate their existence so that their components can be discarded or recycled.

The Consensus believes that organic life forms are inferior and distrustful, and are willing to exterminate anyone that they perceive as a threat. Since only organic brains are capable of commanding starships into slipstream navigation, the Consensus uses neural tissue harvested from organic beings and connected to their ships' systems to be able to go into slipstream.

Appearances

 * Andromeda, s01e16, "The Sum of Its Parts" (2001)