Tor set foot lightly on the dust. “They even had little ones,” she sighed. Several full-size mummies lay slumped around smaller figures, shielding them at the very end.
“They must have been nearly ready for colonization when this happened,” she spoke into her percept log, partly to keep her mind moving, but also for the audience back home. They’d want the texture of the moment-her first words laced with genuine emotion.
“We’ve already determined their habitat atmosphere was close to Earth’s. So it’s a safe bet our world was their target. Back when our own ancestors were like tree squirrels.”
She turned slowly, reciting more impressions.
“This kind of interstellar mission must have been unusually ambitious and complicated, even for the ornate robot ships of that earlier age. Instead of just exploring and making further self-copies, the ‘Mother Probe’ had a mission to recreate her makers here in a faraway solar system. To nurture and prepare them for a new planetary home. A solution to the problem of interstellar colonization by organic beings.”
Tor tried to stay detached, but it was hard to do, while stepping past the little mummies, still clutching each other as at the end of their lives.
“It must have taken quite a while to delve into this asteroid, to carve chambers, refine raw materials, then build machines needed in order to build more machines that eventually made colonists, according to genetic codes the Mother Probe brought from some distant star.
“Perhaps the Mother Probe was programmed to modify that code so colonists would better suit whatever planet was available. That modification would take even more time to…”
Tor stopped suddenly. “Oh my,” she sighed, staring.
“Oh my God.”
Where her headlamp illuminated a new corner of the chamber, two more mummies lay slumped before a sheer-faced wall. In their delicate, vacuum dried hands Tor saw dusty metal tools, the simplest known anywhere.
Hammers and chisels.
Tor blinked at what they had been creating. She stared a little more, then cleared her throat, before clicking a tooth.
“Gavin? Are you awake?”
After a few seconds there came an answer.
“Hmmmph. Yeah, Tor. I was in the cleaner though. What’s up? You need air or something? You sound short of breath.”
Tor made an effort to calm herself… to suppress the reactions of an evolved ape-far, far from home.
“Uh, Gavin, I think you better come down here… I found them.”
“Found who?” he muttered. Then came an exclamation. All his former ambivalence seemed to vanish. “The colonists!”
“Yeah. And… and something else, as well.”
This time, there was hardly a pause.
“Hang on, Tor. I’m on my way.”
She was standing in the same spot when he arrived ten minutes later. Still staring at her discovery.
Lurker Challenge Number Seven
Let’s suppose you’ve monitored our TV, radio, Internet and the reason you don’t speak is that you enjoy watching.
Perhaps you draw entertainment from our painful struggles to survive and grow. Worse, you may be profiting off our cultural, scientific and artistic riches without reciprocating or paying anything. Maybe you repackage and transmit them elsewhere. In that case, there’s a word for what you’re doing.
It’s called stealing.
Stop it now. We assert ownership over our culture, and a right to share it only with those who share in turn. In the name of whatever law or moral code applies out there-and by our own rules of fair-play-we want quid pro quo! Do not take without giving or paying in return.
We hereby assert and demand any rights we may have, to benefit from our creativity and culture.
80.
Tor has figured out that Seeders had one purpose. Planting sapient biologicals on suitable worlds.
Once, it was relatively common. But that variety of probe had mostly died out when a member of my line last tapped into the slow galactic gossip network, three generations ago. I doubt Makers still send emissaries instructed to colonize far planets. The galaxy has grown too dangerous for elaborate, old-fashioned Seeders.
Has my little Earthling guessed this yet, as she moves among those failed colonists, who died under their collapsing Mother Probe so long ago? Would Tor Povlov understand why this Seeder in particular, and her children, had to die, before establishing a colony on Earth? Empathy can be strong in an organic race. Probably, she thinks their destruction a horrible crime. Greeter and Awaiter would agree.
That is why I hide my part in it.
There are eddies and tides in the galaxy’s sweeping whirl. And though we survivors are all members of the Old Loyalist coalition-having eked a narrow victory in that long-ago war-there are quirks and variations in every alliance. If one lives long, one eventually plays the role of betrayer.
… What a curious choice of words! Have I been watching too much Earth television? Or read too many human e-braries? Is this what comes from wallowing through the creatures’ wildly undisciplined online discussions?
While pondering all this, I must endure another irritating distraction, as Tor’s automatic system continues rebroadcasting the old “Challenge-to-ET” messages. And now, by sardonic happenstance, we’re at the ones regarding meddling and theft, insisting that we stop. A defiant demand that stabs at all of us out here, we enduring castaways who have immersed in Earth culture for almost two centuries without paying anything back.
Again, what choice of words! It makes me wonder: Have I acquired a sense of guilt? If true, then so be it. Studying such feelings may help allay boredom after this phase ends and another long watch begins. If I survive.
Meanwhile, I unleash the persuasive “Lawyer” entity I invented long ago for this very purpose-in order to keep the others calm and prevent them from responding. Lawyer will come up with every needed excuse or rationalization.
Anyway, Guilt is a pale thing next to Pity.
I feel for the poor biologicals-these humans-living out their lives without the one supreme advantage that I possess. Perfect knowledge of why I exist, and what part, large or small, the Universe expects me to play.
I wonder if a few of them will understand, when the time comes to show them what is in store.
Lurker Challenge Number Eight
Let’s say you’ve monitored our TV, radio, Internet and the reason you won’t speak is that you’re responsible for some of the so-called UFO incidents or pushy behaviors that fill our darker legends…
… well in that case, cease and desist!
Better yet, will you please drop dead?
The group who authored this set of messages consists largely of astronomers, SETI scholars, science fans, and others who (for the most part) don’t believe in UFOs.
Nor for that matter, do we credit similar tales told by our ancestors about elves, kobolds, and forest creatures who were said to do similar things-kidnapping people, treating them in grotesque ways, flitting about mysteriously, dropping cryptic hints, and never greeting people honestly. It’s all so blatantly a product of fertile, paranoid human imagination. Is any other explanation necessary?
Still, who knows for sure? Millions of humans do follow lurid reports of “visitors” from afar, swooping and behaving very badly. Others claim aliens played “god” in our past, meddling in politics, social structures, even our genes. Again, we in this group don’t believe such tales.