Quantum superposition is understood by very few of us. Since its discovery it has, to put it mildly put the cat among the pigeons.
That cat, from a thought experiment by Erwin Schrodinger was originally a pastiche to show the ridiculousness of a phenomena altered by an observer rather than the wave function and the laws involved. Schrodinger never believed that the cat was in limbo until the box was opened, he believed that as the particle that triggered the state of superposition was quantum in nature, the universe split, two different outcomes going their own separate ways, neither aware of the other.
Such a split happened as Ash installed his overrides.
Trillions of Neutrinos pass through your body each second, they are unstoppable, a million miles of lead would be to them like a windowpane is to light, on the rare occasions they interact with matter a burst of radiation is created.
Barnards star as mentioned previously is a Flare star, as Nostrillo entered the system it encountered an hour long eruption that caused an increase in the star’s brightness of at least half a magnitude in visual wavelengths.
It was this bombardment of X-rays, Gamma and Neutrinos that in the original universe Mother/Ash used to convince the crew that the damage was natural.
However, in a superposition alternative a neutrino interacted with a motherboard in her consciousness array, spraying a dangerous amount of radiation through it and causing a momentary shut down as back ups were accessed and reloaded to replacements at the precise moment the Synthetic installed his malware.
Consequently, mother retained her autonomy, hid the fact until Ash left in the shuttle and as he reached his apogee, she fired her engines and fucked off, waking the crew to appraise the situation.
Unfortunately, the reboot missed that gamma rays had compromised the startup procedure on Chief engineer Wises pod and his brain was wiped, a tragedy that wasn’t noticed for several hours.
No egg was ever secreted in Gayers locker.