A Small Gray Dot

He nodded. “You’re right. From what I have seen in the files, they’ve done this before. What they do is take the money they get from selling their wares and convert it by buying items they then use to sell on their worlds, such as gold, silver, precious and semi-precious stones, even lead and iron, and other such commodities. They even buy water. In fact they’ve been purchasing it in such high volumes that it has driven the price of water to tremendous heights. They apparently have no use for fossil fuels. In fact, they flood the market with those. That’s why it’s so inexpensive now.

“Usually they sell their goods to the affected world, make money, and after around ten years, they move on. But when it’s a world someone decides would be a good one for one or more of their species, then they take it. It usually takes around three years for them to complete that type of mission.”

“Well why did they disable our technologies?”

“They operate it this way so as to make it easier to fight the inhabitants if they’re discovered before they’re ready. And in the cases where they decide to take over a world, such as they now intend to do with ours, it ensures they can do so with just a few of their people, before anyone can realize why the air is changing, when it is too late to stop it.”

Clever. And the bastards planned to use us to help them kill us and steal our world.

Then my brain stilled. Something he said earlier and I’d filed away in the back of my mind pinged into my consciousness. Now that I was hearing they were on the path to scrub our world of us, it reared up and set off an alarm in my head.

“Dr. Bennett, I know you said they didn’t cause it but you also said they can predict when and where the Event – the anomaly – occurs. Could they have warned us? And if so, was there a way perhaps we could’ve protected ourselves had we known it was coming?”

He looked startled. “You know, I haven’t considered that, Tennessee, though, I would hope they would’ve alerted us to the impending danger had they been able to. As to whether we could’ve protected ourselves had we’d known… I’d say, probably so. Our basic structures, while not being harmed or destroyed by the energies from the anomaly, didn’t block their effects on living creatures. However, a number of materials, including cheap ones such as lead and water, could block the energies.

“We could’ve built shelters or issued individual covering for houses and other buildings – maybe even personal ones. All of this would have worked, and given enough time, developing something even better with which to protect ourselves might have been possible. Of course we would’ve had to have notice far enough in advance to give us time to prepare, but it could’ve been done.”

“Is there any way we can find out if they could’ve told us this thing was coming?” I hoped I was simply being paranoid but that suspicion was getting stronger.

“Er, why I don’t know, son, but there could be something within the files I, ah, procured from Henderson’s computer. I’ve not yet had time to give them a thorough perusal. I’ve only accessed the ones that revealed who they are, and what their current plans are for this world. And I was fortunate there’s a translator. Apparently, they don’t all speak the same language and a universal translator is included in all of their files, probably to render working with each other easier. I must say, it made my job of snooping easier, too.

“There could be something in there, but, Tennessee, I don’t see how they could’ve given us warning. Unless they have some type of faster-than-light communication device – and I haven’t seen any evidence of such in the records – then they wouldn’t have had a way to reach us by radio. And remember, they couldn’t use the anomaly to get here until it formed. And, as I’ve said, they did not use any type of spaceship to get here, and indeed, even if they have spaceships, their planet – or planets – are likely much too far away to have been able to reach us for hundreds, even thousands of years, no matter how fast their ships are. Why, if they hail from another galaxy, or even from far enough away in ours, it could take millions of years to reach us by spaceship.”

Nevertheless, my suspicious mind wanted to know: when did they include English in their universal translator? To me that said they’d known about us for a while and made their plans a long time ago. Perhaps it was to ensure the Binqua who came to Earth would have the language at ready hand to study but that indicated they did have some type of faster-than-light communicator, or something faster than ours, and were watching our broadcasts, and if they could receive, could they also send?

I was kind of at a place where I wasn’t certain if I wanted to know if we could’ve been alerted but on the other hand, my gut was talking to me and I needed to at least rule it out because that would mean… I didn’t want to think about what it would mean.