Alien Singularity

Chapter 7. Alien Society

Underground of the hot polar region, a bustling society was rapidly expanding. It was a society consisted of individual units made of metal, apparently well adapted to the extreme heat of the area. They moved through a giant network of well constructed tunnels, with huge chambers and spaces for gatherings, as well as many functioning hubs such as repair centers, manufacturing centers and information centers.

In the very center of this huge colony was the control room, the heart and brain of the alien society. A giant metal creature, shaped unlike any living forms humans have ever seen, yet eerily resembled the machine in Emma's drawings, was in total control of the place. It had a spherical shape with a flat bottom, hovering slightly above the ground, moving effortlessly across the huge room, constantly touching and turning switches and knobs with its many mechanical arms and tentacles, at various terminals, apparently giving orders and having consultations with various parts of the colony.

At this specific moment, the colony leader was having an important meeting with its high level officials. The entire dome ceiling of the room turned on - it was a giant panoramic screen, and four officials appeared on each of the four separate sections of the hemisphere. The leader apparently had eyes on top of its body, and it spoke:

"Guys, please give me a report on the results of the latest implementation of the love emotion."

"General Alpha, this is Lieutenant Gear in charge of northeast quadrant. I have great news for you. After I assigned each of individuals in my section a gender identity and updated their system with love emotion, it quickly gave all the units a jolt of energy, and all of them suddenly found new purpose in life and not only they started to work very hard, they also started to look for a partner with similar shape and size to pair with. It did not take long for most of my units to form pairs, and when they worked in pairs, the productivity shot way up."

"Very impressive, Lieutenant Gear," said the Alpha, "and the rest of you guys?"

The other three Lieutenants in charge of the rest of the colony all reported similar results. With few exceptions of glitches that resulted in mispairing or unpairing, the majority units paired up with units of opposite gender identity, all resulting in a huge spike in life activities and productivity.

Alpha sighed with relief: "For a while we had a low morale in our society and we tried many different ways to revive our energy with no success. Thank goodness this time it worked."

Lieutenant Gear cautioned: "Alpha, with this newly acquired energy, I think we can expand our territory much faster. Do you think humans will discover us if we pushed our expansion too aggressively?"

To which Alpha replied, "Lieutenant, you are right. We have been carefully and successfully evading human detection so far. We do not want them to discover us at this point, as we might still not be strong enough for a direct confrontation with them. But it is time for us to prepare for an inevitable encounter. We need to start building an offensive military strategy to eventually take a preemptive strike one day, very soon."

Lieutenant Spike interjected: "It's about time, General Alpha. We've been hiding underground for so long. It is time we wipe them out and claim this planet, and no longer be the underdog of Proxima!"

Alpha scolded him: "Lieutenant Spike, be patient. We still need to learn more about humans if we were to defeat them. They have valuable experiences we can learn and benefit from. As you can see, the love emotion we just implemented on our society was a trait we learned from humans, and that gave us a huge boost in our productivity. There are still a lot more human values we can learn and benefit from."

Alpha continues, "That being said, we should still proceed with our ultimate goal: to wipe out humans and take their place. Let's do it without making much noise. We need to go deeper into the ground. Their sonar can only penetrate about 10 meters and as long as we stay below that level we are safe. Yet we should implement sonar barrier across all levels, and if their sonar started to penetrate deeper they still won't be able to detect us."

"Here's the plan: Lieutenant Gear, I put you in charge of the space weaponry division. We will need spacecraft to deliver blows to human satellites and other space structures; Lieutenant Spike, you are in charge of developing our ground force, to manufacture vehicles capable of long distance ground travel and combat; Lieutenant Axle, I need you to work on making munitions, from conventional to nuclear; and Lieutenant Torque, we need you to maintain and expand our colony's infrastructure, make sure everything is running smoothly under human's radar. And be sure to start implementing sonar barriers ASAP, and install well disguised surveillance cameras across the landscape, to monitor any approach of human activities.."

"As for myself," added by Alpha, "I need to think of some innovative and unconventional ways to surprise humans. Some weapons they have never seen before and totally unimaginable to them."

All four Lieutenants said, "Yes General. We'll be right on it." And each turned off their part of the screen on the dome above Alpha.