Writing challenge - Alien encounters

[Dikiyoba]

Just throwing this topic out to see how much interest in fiction writing and free-form RPs is left at SW. If there's enough interest, I'll probably make this a series.* Since most people are very busy and time constraints are what bring most RPs down on SW nowadays, this thread is completely commitment free. You can post once, many times, or just ignore this thread all together. You can produce a complete short story, a beginning or excerpt from something longer, or just a few paragraphs.

 

Rules

 

1. Follow the scenario description and limitations.

 

2. Everyone's work is independent. You can borrow ideas from posts belonging to other people, but you can't take over or interfere with someone else's continuity or characters. Come up with your own.

 

3. Make sure your writing is comprehensible. Use the best spelling and grammar you can. It doesn't have to be perfect (especially if English isn't your first language), but at least read over it once or twice and run a spellcheck on it before you post.

 

4. Don't be overly negative, especially if you aren't participating. It's okay to ask questions or comment on someone's writing. It's okay to provide helpful critiques if a person asks for it. But don't just complain, or point out flaws without the author first giving permission, and especially don't insult anyone or their work.

 

*If anyone likes this idea and wants to do their own, with their own scenario and rules, great. I'd prefer it if you contacted me ahead of time so we don't end up having multiple threads going at once, though.

 

---

 

Scenario

 

An expeditionary ship [or a small fleet of ships] of a technologically advanced alien species [or multiple alien species] has just discovered Earth and humanity. (Questions to generate ideas: What are the aliens like? Why are they exploring? How do they react to the discovery of humans? Why are they interested in Earth and/or humans [are they interested in Earth and/or humans]? Do they contact humans in any way? What are the aliens' future plans regarding Earth?)

 

Limitations

Setting: Present day

Point of view: Limited to the aliens' perspective only.

 

--

 

Dikiyoba.

[Eclipse]

[Log 02-182 of Technology Directer]

{Dated: Second Galactic Rotation, Fifty-Second Spiral Rotation, One Hundred Fourteenth Solar Rotation, Four Billionth Planetary Rotation, Tenth Earth Month, Fifteenth Earth Day}

 

Given the amount of statistical error guaranteed to exist in our calculations of the location of this habitable planet, we were quite surprised to find this planet these so called "Humans" named "Earth" to exist. I, acting as the head of all matters technological for the voyage for first contact, was instructed to advise the Pilot on the possible locations of Earth. It came as a shock to all on board when I announced that our ancestors' groundbreaking Theory of Symmetry was free of statistical probability and simply a universal law, like that of the "Third Law of Thermodynamics". I explained that Earth was one of just many planets to harbor life and that our mission would not be ending after our meeting with the human leaders. The Theory of Symmetry went so far as to be able to calculate the exact behavior of these humans, if we were to also calculate the values of the variables regarding another solar system some several million light years away. I realized earlier this voyage that were the Theory of Symmetry to be proven true, that my own clone would exist somewhere in the universe. I brushed aside that thought, however, as I knew that what was important was delivering our request to the humans.

 

 

Our request to the humans was written by an underling crew member in our voyager. This underling had spent the entire voyage learning the literature from times old and times new of the different groups of humans. In our speech, we were to waste no time in giving an offer to the humans: they could be evolved to become part machine and part flesh like us, or we would leave them to their own devices and allow them to turn to ashes at the expansion of their local star. This was not a threat. We had learned of humanity's future through the Theory of Symmetry. Another species just like humans in a solar system opposite of where humans currently exist that existed several billion years ago during the second generation of stars had also become a space faring civilization. We knew all about what happened, and did not wish humans to meet the demise of their Twin.

 

 

Our speech detailed one simple request from humanity, were we to bestow upon them the gift of ultimate technology. We asked that humans, upon their evolution, assist us in the discovery of even more species hidden in the vastness of space. The Theory of Symmetry calculated a group of species that had merged as one to develop the resources needed to create a tunnel into a younger universe.

 

 

We hope to accomplish the same, but we need humanity's assistance. The humans, in their current primitive state, do not appreciate the immensity of Entropy. They know of it, but do not worry of it. The deadline for the creation of a new universe draws near, and so to does our ascent to Earth to deliver our thoughts...

 

 

[End Log]

[Goldengirl]

Just throwing this topic out to see how much interest in fiction writing and free-form RPs is left at SW. If there's enough interest, I'll probably make this a series.* Since most people are very busy and time constraints are what bring most RPs down on SW nowadays, this thread is completely commitment free. You can post once, many times, or just ignore this thread all together. You can produce a complete short story, a beginning or excerpt from something longer, or just a few paragraphs.

 

The death of free-form RPs here at SW makes me sad. I've long come to accept that the AIMhacks are the new status quo, but I simply can't participate in them due to an incredibly inconsistent schedule. I end up with free time where I could be RP'ing, but I never know when that free time is going to be. So, hopefully this goes somewhere.

 

---

 

What the humans called anthropology had never been studied in any applicable form. Society was and had been for thousands of years. Its history had been recorded, but it had always been the history of technology and industry, not of wars, religion, or politics. The universally accepted narrative had been a gradual ascent to what the humans may have called 'godhood' as technological mastery over nature grew more and more absolute.

 

"We are anarchists," was the message that flashed across Sydney's large hands in a series of hieroglyphs displayed by the mutable pigments present.

 

"What does that mean?" was the response that colored Damascus' hands in turn.

 

"It means that our society is not governed by political forces or enforced cultural beliefs. Rather, we let everyone live as they wish to live without any coercion."

 

"But of course... What other means could there be?" asked Edo, joining the conversation. However, before Damascus could respond, Edo continued, "It is time. We are approaching the satellite they call the Moon."

 

The three of them turned their faces to the observation pod in between them, gazing intently. The message had been prepared before the three explorers had set off, translated carefully by scholars after prowling through the words that had been intercepted. The body of knowledge humanity referred to as the Internet, which mirrored the Forum used by their own species. With a flip of a switch, Damascus activated the holographic beaming technology that projected a message, a long message communication.

 

Aloha. We are (here the Japanese symbol for friends), et nous voulons communiquer for mutual learning. Here, an image of a lolcat was presented, as it was deemed that this was one of the most commonly understood forms of communication on the planet. The caption read, I can haz peace? A series of the aliens' own hieroglyphic language of representation here were then used, looking like a hyperrealistic portrait of the three aliens themselves, looking like hairy birds with four arms instead of wings. Finally, a line of musical notation, the opening riff to the Beatles' "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" dominated the top half of the Moon while below in binary was written a code for a program that turned out to be a standard text box with a 150 character limit.

[Val Ritz]

<<Surveys indicate highly concentrated artificial compounds, and the atmosphere contains contaminants consistent with industrial society, though not one with advanced terraforming techniques. The planetary composition includes large quantities of oxygen, hydrogen, and silicon. A good deal of the trace elements have been brought to the surface and processed, including high concentrations of complex hydrocarbon compounds->>

 

"Computer, cease report. Repeat last sentence."

 

<<A good deal of the trace elements have been brought to the surface and processed, including high concentrations of complex hydrocarbon compounds derived from metamorphosed biomass."

 

"...Access Imperial legal records regarding the use of subterranean hydrocarbon compounds."

 

<<Imperial Magisterium Ruling 2992384 designated subterranean hydrocarbon drilling and refining as banned in the petition of->>

 

"Skip to relevant data pertaining to use of already extant hydrocarbons."

 

<<-conceded that already extant hydrocarbon derivatives would be allowed to persist and be recycled, excluding native or "crude" fossil oils.>>

 

"Calculate current market value of this planet's processed fossil oils. In Imperial terms."

 

<<Calculating... At current market value, taking into account estimates of trends in the time required for this vessel to harvest these materials and providing an average yield upon sale of all available hydrocarbons, value falls between one and six quadrillion Imperial credits.>>

 

"...Repeat last six words."

 

<<One and six quadrillion Imperial credits.>>

 

"Prepare matter transporters and take us in over their largest body of water, I'm reading a vast amount of material in an aquatic gyre in that location. After that, start plotting an assimilation route to most expeditiously harvest all available hydrocarbon derivatives on the planet. When you're finished, cloak the ship and proceed. Oh, and pour a glass of the Siisaakhi. Tonight we celebrate my coming into an inheritance."

 

Bhel had never been a rich man. But then, he had never discovered a pre-stellar society holding enough fossil oil derivative to construct an entire new ship out of it if he so chose. The life of a salvage trader suddenly held considerably more appeal for him.

[Alorael at Large]

When the unknown spacecraft seemed to appear out of nowhere about 2.5 AU from Earth there was panic. The discovery was slow, of course; by the time light reached us from their location they had had a good 20 minutes to observe us, or at least our recent past. The arrival triggered an uproar in both traditional and social media, wild political accusations, and several small military exchanges. NASA, like other space agencies, was paralyzed by indecision just long enough for the president to order silence. Commander Mateo Ramirez aboard the International Space Station broke orders to do something that would get him tried by court-martial and awarded numerous honors: he said hello. Repeatedly, by radio and by laser and even by simply flashing lights, until the aliens responded in kind, and then burned a slow approach.

 

 

The work to even dock, let alone communicate, took Herculean efforts by the best engineers the Earth had to offer. Speaking brought out the greatest linguists. And then,When the unknown spacecraft seemed to appear out of nowhere about 2.5 AU from Earth there was panic. The discovery was slow, of course; by the time light reached us from their location they had had a good 20 minutes to observe us, or at least our recent past. The arrival triggered an uproar in both traditional and social media, wild political accusations, and several small military exchanges. NASA, like other space agencies, was paralyzed by indecision just long enough for the president to order silence. Commander Mateo Ramirez aboard the International Space Station broke orders to do something that would get him tried by court-martial and awarded numerous honors: he said hello. Repeatedly, by radio and by laser and even by simply flashing lights, until the aliens responded in kind, and then burned a slow approach.

 

 

With feats of impressive kitbashing prowess, ISS and the alien vessel managed to dock. Two roughly humanoid forms, insofar as they had two lower limbs for ambulation and two upper limbs for manipulation with a torso holding everything together, came aboard. Communication was nearly nonexistent, though both sides made attempts. They stayed for eleven days, then left as suddenly as they had come, their craft blinking out of existence from a position a few kilometers away.

 

Earth waited with baited breath. We waited for over a month before a larger craft arrived and docked. Linguists had encountered first contact before, of course, but never with so little context in common. Were sounds even the right medium? Dr. Prakesh Rajagopalan and Dr. Huang Xiaoli led the communications team sent aboard to work out communication. Slowly we learned to talk with our visitors, the Eegheeari, though the language they used was mostly pitched above human hearing. We learned our atmospheres were mutually breathable, though unpleasant. We exchanged monitors and computing devices containing vast amounts of information—the only way we could do it quickly with nothing approaching software compatibility. Just like the space race had brought the USA together in the 20th century the First Contact brought most of the developed world together to try to understand those who had found us.

 

The linguists and and biologists and psychologists went through paroxysms of joy, literal whole new worlds of experiments and data available to them, and social scientists weren't far behind. The physicists had more focused questions, and in short order we had an answer to FTL travel. Engineers and mathematicians, ours and their Eagheeari counterparts, swapped formulas and schematics and found that we'd actually advanced pretty much in parallel. They had some neat chemical tricks along with the newly-dubbed Ahaaghee Drive. We had some polymers they'd never considered. Pure mathematics had some advances that had the experts excited but practical applications remained "ten to twenty years away" as always. The military on both sides had very little to do with the proceedings. Things would've been different if the ISS or the Lehmmnm (named after an Eagheeari hero of different ethnolinguistic background than their most dominant language) had been armed, maybe, or if any of Earth's nations habitually kept arsenals trained on the skies, but weapons just never entered really entered into the picture until things were clearly peaceful. We swapped ideas and histories and learned from each other.

 

 

But what then? Ahaaghee travel shaved the unthinkably vast distance to their planet to a mere five weeks (four weeks for those aboard), but it was still too expensive for routine trade of physical goods, and IT had too many hurdles to really get far on interplanetary work. Major Earth powers exchanged embassies with leading states on Aaghar and researchers trickled back and forth. Small works of art, and even nicknacks and novelties, were traded and then, often, sold for vast sums. The Catholic Church and an evangelical Christian conglomeration funded missions that found some success, to hear the reports; their proselytizers got some converts here, too, starting something like a repeat of the Eastern mysticism fads of yesteryear. But that’s all. Even Ahaaghee jumping was so expensive that its practical effects were limited to some dips in the commodities markets. High-tech manufacturing rejoiced, consumers quietly enjoyed, and life went on.

 

Maybe things would have been different if they were more alien, but they were understandable. Maybe if their technology far outstripped ours, but they weren't actually all that far ahead. Maybe if we’d been ahead instead. Their psychology differed, but not immensely. They looked unlike us, but not bafflingly so. We could become friends, with difficulty, our chuckles and their piercing whistles of humor mixing, but the efforts of living together—our incompatible nutritional needs and barely compatible respiration and the discomfort of spending time in the not-quite-right gravity of each others’ worlds—kept us from intermingling much.

 

We weren’t alone in the universe, but that was one for the philosophers and cosmologists and theologists. We weren’t given the gift of world peace or immense knowledge. We were neither conquered nor conquerors. We weren’t even major trading partners. We just found ourselves in the uncomfortable interplanetary equivalent of friendly acquaintances, giving each other nods in passing while largely ignoring each other’s presence.

 

—Alorael, who brings you this story on behalf of everyone who's had to interact uncomfortably with a stranger. Specifically a stranger with tentacles and probes.

[Student of Trinity]

This is a great idea and I wish I had time for it right now, but I just don't. A month from now should be different, so I'd like to record a sort of vote in favor of the continuing series, for what that may be worth. I like all of the entries so far very much. I have to say that I am particularly taken with Alorael's picture of alien contact as ultimately banal. It's shocking, yet immediately compelling. Suddenly it seems like the default scenario.

[Aran]

I definitely want to do this, but don't know if I have the time. Maybe later this week.

 

Aloha. We are (here the Japanese symbol for friends), et nous voulons communiquer for mutual learning. Here, an image of a lolcat was presented, as it was deemed that this was one of the most commonly understood forms of communication on the planet. The caption read, I can haz peace?

 

Too awesome for words.

 

(I didn't know Japanese also had logograms, but Wikipedia says yes.)

[premonition]

“Useless. Utterly useless.”

 

“It’s not so bad. Projections indicate acceptable atmospheric conditions in less than a kilocycle.”

 

“Teracycles late! Cax’l will secure the grant on timeline alone.”

 

“You’re exaggerating. Besides, we weren’t to know an extinction-grade asteroid would hit the planet. The Council will take that into account.”

 

“I still say Cax’l diverted that into our territory.”

 

“The Council ruled otherwise. Don’t say it again, please, or they’ll sanction us.”

 

“Hah! Just because Cax’l’s spawn is sharing carapaces with the Council Head’s spawn … It’s such a waste. Two perfectly similar planets, same solar system, right next to each other. It was a perfect opportunity to show the superiority of biologically guided terraforming.”

 

“We might still be able to. Cax’l hasn’t managed to fix the sulfur waste problem, after all. We might even be able to improve the process. You have to admit those mammals are performing much faster than the original saurians.”

 

“Yes, but look at the size of the nests. Clean-up alone hardly makes it worthwhile. Though they’re so fragile they’ll exterminate themselves at endpoint. That’s a bonus, I suppose.”

 

“They’re kind of cute too. Maybe we can take some to study.”

 

“… No. No pets.”

[Alorael at Large]

They came in force, a dozen kilometers-long ovoids bristling with pods of incomprehensible weaponry. Their message was clear and succinct: offer no resistance or be crushed utterly. Our planet was theirs and our very lives forfeit. They set their bases down among us, but not many; one devastated downtown Beijing, but most were in isolation. Two landed in Antarctica. One sank deep into the Pacific. Another crunched down onto an tiny uninhabited rock in the Atlantic. Any resistance was quashed instantly and utterly, brave guerillas with clubs and special forces teams backed up by our most advanced weaponry dissolved with equal disregard into a spray of exotic particles.

 

Our conquerors informed us that they were going to extract the Z-state substitial resonance from our planet. We wondered if their translators were broken. A brave few asked for clarification and were brushed off. The aliens stayed for five weeks, then informed us with their usual terse contempt that their work was complete and they would not return. Their bases lifted off in plumes of fire, rejoined their ships, and they were gone. There was some rejoicing, of course, but my colleagues and I are haunted. We perform endless tests, knowing that it is too late to ever know the answer.

 

What did we lose before we even knew it was there?

 

—Alorael, who should really send these to purl=http://365tomorrows.com]365 Tomorrows[/url]. And you should go there for tiny chunks of sci-fi.

[Dintiradan]

"So, how are things between you and WD 2326+049?" WD 1236-495 asked.

 

"They aren't," WD 0133-116 responded. "Things weren't working out, so we decided to have a break from each other."

 

"Ah. Sorry to hear that." Then, after a lengthy awkward pause: "Well, there's always our research, eh?"

 

"That isn't going too well either," WD 0133-116 replied once the other's message was received. "Sometimes I wonder if we'll ever find evidence for our theory." Distance between the two was great -- WD 1236-495 wouldn't begin hearing the response for almost two hundred and seventy-nine years -- so WD 0133-116 used the intervening time to brood. It was a question long pondered by philosophers: was sentience only possible for their own kind? Or could we see the glimmers of self-awareness in younger, less mature beings? For eons their scientists had studied the galaxy, and had long since concluded that they were the only intelligent beings in the universe. Only the few willing to be the laughingstock of the scientific community still watched the primordial places, hoping to witness the early stirrings of thought.

 

WD 1236-495 pulsed back half-hearted assurances, and then there was another awkward lull in the conversation, several millenia longer than the last. Eventually, WD 0133-116 realized it had made the conversation all about it again. "So... how's your work going? What about that G-type main-sequence you were so excited about?"

 

"Nothing noteworthy, I'm afraid. There's frequent flares, but there doesn't seem to be any pattern to them."

 

"Oh," WD 0133-116 replied, its pulses conveying disappointment. Then, anxious to keep the conversation going, "Is its system pretty at least?"

 

"It's alright," the other white dwarf replied. "Four gas planets, four rocky, the usual mix of dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets. Nice mountains on the rocky planets, one of them had replicating carbon-based structures for a little bit. Impressive storms on one of the gas planets."

 

"Hmmm." The search continued.

 

--------------------

Once again, I do way too much research for something, only to have none of it show up in the final product.

 

You may find glimmers of They're Made Out of Meat in this story. Other first contact stories I like are The Road not Taken by Harry Turtledove and The Conquerors Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. The latter is primarily a military drama, but also focuses on the issues that anthropocentrism can cause (even though the species presented are relatively anthropomorphic all things considered).

[Juan Carlo]

edit---woops, didn't mean to post in this thread. Mods can delete if they like

[Aran]

You may find glimmers of They're Made Out of Meat in this story. Other first contact stories I like are The Road not Taken by Harry Turtledove and The Conquerors Trilogy by Timothy Zahn. The latter is primarily a military drama, but also focuses on the issues that anthropocentrism can cause (even though the species presented are relatively anthropomorphic all things considered).

 

"We could be in the middle of an intergalactic conversation...and we wouldn't even know." -Michio Kaku

[Goldengirl]

The governments of the Earth were thrown into a state of disarray. The Russians thought it was some sort of weird show of force by the United States, the United States was suspicious of the European Space Agency, France claimed international prestige while the rest of the European Union wished they had brushed up on their French, and China thought it was a joke since the Moon wasn't visible in the eastern hemisphere at the time of the message.

 

In space, the three aliens awaited a reply. Finally, through a great act of international cooperation, a message was sent to their shuttle from the International Space Station. Edo looked confused as an audio file played, with different languages recorded by different governments all saying the same thing - We welcome you and wish to talk in peace.

 

"What is this?" Edo asked, the pigments flashing on his hands. Both Damascus and Sydney replied with gestures of confusion. Finally, Sydney remembered a bit of arcane information from a corner of the Internet, something about a physical ailment afflicting the strange patches of flesh on the sides of human heads. Struggling, Sydney programmed a new message, far less refined. With holograms once again being shown to the Earth through the use of the moon, the aliens wrote, "We are deaf." Unfortunately, they wrote this in German, having learned it in relation to Beethoven. Even more unfortunately, Germany had by this time lost view of the Moon from its ground-based telescopes. Instead, this message was relayed to the world by China, whose governmental officials had come around to realize this was a very sour joke indeed.

[Goldengirl]

[Forgive the double post, but I have one last episode in the saga of the three alien visitors]

 

The transfusion of knowledge was incredible. Humanity was astounded by the vast extent of technological achievements these aliens had at their disposal. Communication between world governments and the alien trio was at first stilted and slow, even after purely visual means of communication were utilized. The aliens seemed to have a profound misunderstanding of all aspects of human culture they had encountered in their studies before their terrestrial visit; they switched languages casually and frequently, forcing governments to hire a wide range of polyglots who laboriously translated the aliens' communications word by word.

 

Finally, though, the humans managed to get the aliens to write in one language solely, though Western politicians were dismayed to discover that the language the aliens eventually chose was Farsi. From their spaceship orbiting the moon, communications were sent back and forth constantly, with Iran now dominating the conversation between the two species. An actual landing on the Earth was arranged, though the Iranian diplomats were unable to convey the concept of national boundaries to the aliens. Despite all intentions to land outside of Tehran, the strange trio instead landed in Kuwait. An international crisis emerged as American military officials refused to transport them to Iran, an issue which the aliens themselves seemed ignorant of. After one full day of wandering a beach that was cleared of any other visitors by the American military, the aliens resolved the crisis by setting up a broadcasting center that ran a video blog on the Internet. There, they continued their discussions with world leaders.

 

Their hunger for knowledge was insatiable, and soon teams of professors of history, literature, philosophy, and all manner of social studies and humanities were brought in to discuss matters with the aliens. In return, the aliens almost flippantly offered technological and scientific information, presented at rates so fast that the scientific community's collective heads were spinning. They offered the information so fast, and on topics ranging from the arcane to the obvious, that actual applications of the information were slow to come. The theories that had been devised by the alien civilization, dubbed the Scientists rather crudely by humans since the aliens didn't have individual or collective names for themselves, were fascinating and sometimes their applications were immediately obvious. Theories, though, were all that were offered.

 

Then, all of a sudden and without any further contact, the aliens left. Their intense interest in cultural and anthropological issues had apparently been sated. Human curiosity, though, is not so easily satisfied. After twenty years of muddled efforts to make the alien theorems bring utility to humanity, the European Space Agency managed to develop an engine with faster-than-light speeds. Combined with Japanese breakthroughs in replicating the advanced communications techniques that had allowed the aliens to discover humanity, a roughly international crew was assembled that sent a mission to restore contact.

 

Upon arrival at the solar system that had been colonized extensively by the aliens, there was shock. Rather than the prosperous and vaguely utopian worlds of technological and scientific progress that had been hinted at by the three travelers who had named themselves after cities, they found burnt and wasted planets marked by massive craters and detonations. Later investigations managed to piece together a rough narrative of what happened:

 

Armed with an extensive (and now corrected) understanding of human culture, Edo, Sydney, and Damascus shared their findings with the rest of their civilization. The result was disastrous; the public was voracious in their consumption and replication of human ideas, lacking anything resembling the social and cultural constructs that were regarded as archetypes on Earth. Governments, terrorist groups, armies, churches, knitting clubs, slaveowners' organizations, corporations, and the whole host of human organizations emerged and spread, enforcing practices they had stolen from humanity without knowing why they did so. The worst, though, occurred when the aliens began to practice war in a way far more savage than anything humanity had ever done. Borrowing the Schmittian idea that only states could engage in war, they experienced rapid centralization of all organizations under state governments; the states fought to fight, and their combat was a war of all against all, indiscriminate violence to completely eradicate the other. Military technology, previously completely ignored by the civilization, rapidly reached and surpassed human levels, reaching a zenith when an entire planet experienced a simultaneous nuclear reaction of all molecules below its atmosphere.

 

The war only ended when the last two groups, geologists and a group of haiku enthusiasts, simultaneously destroyed each other. The vestiges of civilization were all that remained, the ruins of a society that thirsted for culture but drank from bloody waters. Humanity was left with the sobering possibility that they were, again, alone in the universe.

[Upon Mars.]

You might want to put this on while reading:

 

 

"It wasn't a military, refugee or religious expedition which first found earth. It wasn't a ship or a fleet of ships with shiny ridges or well polished and stylish interiors. No it was a big space junk van, rough in color and round, a perfect sphere with a bronze tan. Not as beautiful as the other ships or cities which grew in the dark reaches of space.

 

The aliens inside having mastered mortality and copied their very consciousness on light and fields beyond 21st century man's wildest dreams and where merely interested in collecting huge quantities of dioxygen and water as to supply their "earthly" brethren who had not yet left flesh when they came to man's solar system. And there it was. That silver and blue marble. A toy called home. And so they descended upon a world of tool makers, blasting radiowaves and still struggling with philosophy, science, mortality, art and the premises of things to come should they survive their first jump into outer space.

 

So small, so puny, they were, they had seemed, that no contact had been previously made suggesting that their existance would be like that of a shooting star, bright but breif in the night sky. A race of beligerent tool makers who clumsily built things out of rock and wood when evreyone had done so many wonderfull things beyond that, man had seemed to have had climbed out of savagery only to become brutes, but none the less brutes equipped. It came to our utter surprise when the earth men decided to lock not just their sights unto the ship as it drew out tons of water from the sea into the ship's cargo bay.

 

The warnings were clear enough, as the earth men did present a warning strike to the ship.

 

What came next for earth was hell. The small craft fell to earth the colossal straw connecting it to the ocean fell into the planet with such a thud I could be heard and seen for miles and miles away. Not ones to exact vengeance too quickly, the aliens had a plan: they would possess the collective minds of men and while remaining counscious kept them alive for centuries in excruciating agony. When the aliens became bored however, they left the apes a gift of centuries worth of technology and information. It wasn't long before man rose up from his cradle and made war across the stars.

They had become the masters of the universe having exacted vengence on the gods who had tortured them and evolved beyond the constraints of their former masters which they tossed about like a cricket ball across space.

 

Moral of the story: the bite of an ant may be dull but so long as you don't sit deliberately on an ant hill."

 

Original text: http://shortsstories.webs.com/apps/blog/show/32005272-pissing-on-an-anthill