The Girl in the Gym

Emergency conceiving

25 years ago...

The navigation panel lay silent, having been used rarely for one thousand years. The other controls were humming, in constant activity. A huge, curved screen was split into two, one was linked to their headquarters back on their home planet and the other was flashing news articles and photographs. They were, at the moment, orbiting the earth to pick up satellite feeds. This would take twenty minutes, after which they would go back to their permanent spot, about one light-year away. The space station was gigantic, with the diameter of almost one light-year and a storage capacity of one zillion gigabytes. It's disc-shaped made for a smooth movement. There were seven people permanently stationed there, with a new crew being brought in every ten years. Their job was simply to monitor the feeds and communicate with their ground personnel. And they did it efficiently, and without fuss — just like they had been doing for the last thousand years or so.

Today was no different, once a month they were scheduled to orbit the earth, gather information and feed it into their database. It was the longest-running science experiment by the Zerowians and the subjects were not even aware of it. They had been studying the earth for all this time, crafting plans and waiting for their orders which had not yet been issued. In particular, they were specifically interested in one region in the Asian continent – India. That was the place where their astronauts had landed for the first time. They had assimilated themselves into society in the western reaches of the country. They had married, procreated, and presently, the tenth generation of Zerowians was handling their ground station on Mount Girnar in Udaigarh. The astronauts had been provided with beacons to communicate with the ship, but due to some extreme circumstances, only two had survived. And one of them was due for an upgrade in a few years, otherwise, it would become unresponsive. These descendants kept the ground control running smoothly. And in addition to learning all about Zerowian technology and science, they were also required to obtain knowledge about the earth, of its scientific advancements, culture and society. They were unique in that aspect. They had to pass down that knowledge to their offspring who would inherit the beacon. Due to security precautions, none of them was able to go to school or college, but since their knowledge far surpassed anything taught at institutions, it never made any difference. They were merely recording keepers, for now.

It was December by earth's calendar and the year had been quite eventful.

"Did Hemnath send a status report? I can't detect his signal right now," said the captain.

"Yes, Captain. He is getting married today, to a girl named Chitra. She is descended from one of ours, on the mother's side," replied his deputy.

"Good, good. She must have the beacon too?"

"Yes, Hemnath confirmed it yesterday, Sir. I wanted to inform you, we will need to upgrade his model in a few years until its battery lasts."

"Right. The new models are better. Back to your station deputy," the captain ordered, as he walked back to his chair to review the reports from this past year.

1993 had not been a kind year to the people on earth. There had been a civil war in Sri Lanka, riots in Bombay followed by a deadly bomb explosion in March, hurricane in Mexico, a tsunami in Japan, earthquake in Maharashtra, a wildfire in California, floods in Asia and USA...the list was long and depressing. But the captain merely glanced through it before setting it back with the rest of the reports. The Zerowians were patient people, incredible in their intellect as they were in tenacity. They continuously worked toward enriching their lives, the lives of society and their planet.

The teams allotted to earth were the same, slowly and gradually gathering millions of gigabytes of data while waiting for the headquarters to make a decision based on that information. They were a peaceful lot. As peaceful as any science-based society could be. Their moral compass was vastly different from the people of the earth simply because the two races were after different things.

Their weapons were advanced beyond anything imaginable, and with a single command, they could have reduced the earth to a small, molten rock. But that had never been the motive. Earth was still too primitive to be of any real use for them. They had to wait for their science and culture to evolve before making any moves.