It (that strange being) will gain consciousness and enough intelligence to put two and two together and—eventually—decide it will have been given a precious opportunity to strive for world dominion.
While the healthy* atmosphere will sustain its exponential growth, its brain cells will split, enjoy the process, and continue splitting, all the while assembling more and more cognitive capacity and cerebral mass in its central neural knot.
It will become aware of its surroundings by analysing the sensations transmitted from its epidermis to the developing brain. At first, it will register a soft breeze, tainted by strange fumes. To better perceive them, it will open several orifices. A few trials and errors later, it will fit three of them with nasal mucous membranes. In five others, it will strategically place tympanic membranes to analyse the strange resonance it will feel rocking its body. As the sound, actually the snoring of the Titanians, will not be easily understandable this way, it will feel the urge to add an uneven number of eyeballs to its growing sensory arsenal. This will be its eye-opener. The eyeballs, conveniently arranged in pairs on seven mobile stalks on the upper half of its spherical body, will take in its surroundings.
Immediately, it will long to study the heap of unconscious lifeforms placed conveniently in front of it. Lacking proper instruments to prod them into action, it will concentrate on their emanations. Soon, it will pick up the prevailing, although somewhat fuzzy, image of an object the brainwaves of one life-form conjures—an object apparently named corkscrew.
After an extended period of exposition to these disturbing pictures, it will grow dozens of corkscrew-tentacles out of the blueish warts on its purple skin, ideal to be used for locomotion and exploring the strange world it will have found itself on.
———
*The decorative greenery strategically placed on the parking lots will have been modelled to clean the atmosphere. As cars will have been extinct for several centuries, air will, in fact, be breathable again for the resident archaeologists and alien visitors.
So it will start locomoting away from the sleeping Titanians and Arch-Archaeologist to do that exploring. It will exit the skatepark and stand, on warts' tips, on a street leading into a busy commercial district.
People seeing it will raise an eyebrow or two, but they'll just walk on.*
It will scan its own shape with one of its eyes, comparing it to the bipedal creatures sauntering by.
I'm different, it will note.
What am I, it will wonder.
Mulling such perplexing thoughts, it will wart down the street and marvel at the strange displays in the shops lining it. One of them will be a travel agency, advertising a visit to the giant catnip farms of the majestic Egyptian Mau. It will be able to read this,** but it will fail to understand.***
Next will be a wine shop, displaying rows of dark, gleaming bottles. It's corkscrew appendages will itch at the sight, but it will not know why.
The next building will be nothing but a tent, dark canvas erected over a wooden scaffold. It will look out of place beside the glittering and gleaming houses surrounding it like an artifact from another time and place.****
There will be a signpost beside it.
WHO ARE YOU? FIND OUT INSIDE!
Who am I—the words will strike a resonance in it. Unable to resist their call, the alien will enter.
———
* Why that, you may wonder, dear reader. Why do they not run, screaming, or bash it to tiny pieces as it is proper to do with things foreign and unknown? Well, in a world ruled by archaeologists, people will be used to strange things unearthed from the darkest hiding places—things that should never have seen the light of day. So, a warted, cork-screwed alien with seven eyestalks won't impress them.
** Any self-respecting alien is instinctively able to understand the words and writing of the world it is about to conquer because it is... superior.
*** Lacking a WiFi interface, though, it will not be able to query the internet for what a Mau is, nor will it ever have experienced a feline's attraction to catnip.
**** Which it is. The tent and its contents will be something those archaeologists will have excavated from the sands of the Sahara and then discarded because it will have been too confusing and at odds with any of their pet theories.
YOU ARE READING
Tales Between the Lines
Bilim KurguDestiny, Time, Schroedinger's Cat and Butterfly are on the loose! As the Four Metaphors of the Apocalypse, they are ready to take revenge on their captor, Universe himself. *** Respectable stories are born in a writer's cunning mind. Their less...
