54. Stuff is Happening Hal
October, 2197
En Route to GL 54
I was eighteen months into my journey when I got a message from Bill. At my current tau, any kind of real-time interaction was out of the question. I couldn’t frame-jack nearly high enough to overcome the time dilation. So communications tended to wait until the end of a trip, or they came as emails, as in this case.
I grabbed the sheet and read it.
Hal;
Well, the fecal matter seems to have struck the atmospheric propulsor. A squad of Others vessels was detected leaving GL 877, heading for GL 54. To be fair, scouting by other Bobs indicates that other, closer systems have already been stripped, so this isn’t necessarily anything more than a normal scavenging mission. Just the same, Mario has decided to hit the road, along with every piece of equipment he has.
We’re going to leave a couple of drones behind for observation, and use one to try communicating with the Others. If they react by pointing one of the death asteroids at us, we’ll blow up the drone.
Just thought you should know. It looks like we’re heading for a formal First Contact. You may want to re-route.
Bill
Oh, fudge. May you live in interesting times. Mm, hmm.
55. Contact
Bill
October 2204
GL 54
Mario was now in mid-trip, fleeing GL 54 for Zeta Tucanae, so it was up to me to handle the introductions when the Others arrived. I couldn’t help but feel a certain level of nervousness. These were the beings that had blown up Bashful and Hal. There were a lot of ways this could go down, but I didn’t think friendly was in the expected range.
Before he left, Mario did a little preparatory construction. He had four stealth drones set up for observation, and a non-stealth drone for making contact. With SCUT communications, I could easily control them from here in Epsilon Eridani.
The contact drone made me chuckle. The hull was shiny, the reactor leaked neutrons like a sieve, and in the radio spectrum the drone was as noisy as an unshielded electric motor. I thought he might have overdone the hee-yuk, but it was certainly a masterpiece. It also had an antenna dish for tight-beaming radio telemetry to a non-existent mother-ship, which I thought was a great touch. We wanted the Others to underestimate us, right up to the moment we would deliver the knock-out punch.
The Others’ convoy was impressive. Ten death asteroids, a couple hundred small attendants, and twenty huge cylindrical hulks that I assumed would be cargo ships. These last units were upwards of ten kilometers in length and a kilometer in diameter. I tried to estimate the tonnage of metals that they could transport and my mind boggled at the results.
Interestingly, though, based on a rough calculation, the total cargo capacity was within an order of magnitude of what they’d need to strip this system. Either they had previously scouted the system, or they had some way to get a good estimate of available resources beforehand. Or maybe they just lucked out. They might make multiple trips if a system had enough resources to justify it.
Well, that was something for the future. I activated the communications drone, placed it right in the path of the incoming armada, and squirted a radio signal at them. For a first attempt, it was the most basic of communications: the first ten prime numbers, represented as a series of blips. Then I waited for a response. I had listed a number of possibilities while waiting for them to arrive. It might be the next ten primes, or it might be my message relayed back to me in reverse, or it might be another mathematical series. Or it might be a blast of cosmic rays.
I was not expecting an audio message, in Mandarin.
Fortunately I had a translation routine on file, such things having been fairly standard issue in the twenty-second century.
We see you, food. Your time is not yet. Move aside.
“Well, blow me down. Food, am I?” I was so flummoxed that it took me almost a half-second to come up with a response. It occurred to me during that time that I shouldn’t react too quickly. If they thought I was biological, so much the better.
“We are not attempting to block you. This unit is obviously too small for that. We are trying to communicate.”
To what purpose? To beg for mercy? An interesting idea, mercy. We learned it from the cybernetic unit that we captured. We have no such concept.
“Do you have a concept of exchange of information?”
If it benefits us.
Well, that was something, anyway. Based on Hal’s experience, I had a couple of minutes before they were close enough to zap the drone. Assuming they were going to do so, which I figured was a pretty safe bet.
“Why are you stripping systems?”
For resources and food. Is this not obvious?
“Yes, but why not just colonize the star systems?”
Another concept that we learned from the captured unit. Colonization requires splitting the hive. Splitting the hive means a new Prime. A new Prime and another hive means war. This does not benefit us. Better to simply collect resources so that the hive can grow.
Oooookaaaaaay. A picture was forming—something insect-like. Prime was probably some equivalent to a queen.
I noted that they were coming up past the position of one of the stealth drones. These units were equipped with the new four-light-hour ultra-low-power SUDDAR units. I hoped to get a scan without alerting them.
“Can Primes not cooperate?”
Sub-Primes can be controlled, but not over interstellar distances. We know you are using this dialog to probe for information. This amuses us. The scurrying of food as it evades the inevitable end is perhaps for us what you mean by “art.”
Okay, that was just sick.
“We seek information. Sometimes even if there is no benefit.”
That makes no sense.
“The beings at Zeta Tucanae. You obliterated them.”
They were food. And they would have tried to prevent the harvesting.
“Is there no way we can co-exist? The universe is a large place.”
That also makes no sense. You are food. It is not the purpose of food to co-exist.
We will, in time, make our way to your Sol and your Epsilon Eridani. We have seen your radio beacons. Food always thus announces itself.
Oh, wow. Fermi paradox, resolved.
I checked my system status and noted that my drone was probably thirty seconds away from getting zapped. I decided to try and time the SUDDAR scan to coincide with that, in hopes that the zap might either command all their attention, or blind their systems for a few moments.
“You are building what we would call a Dyson Sphere. Is this for your population?”
Yes. The construct will allow up to five hundred million times the livable area. We will not run out of space within the lifetime of the Prime.
“And afterwards?”
Irrelevant. That is the concern of the next Prime.
“Isn’t overpopulation a concern? Overcrowding?”