This Is No Story About Aliens

This Is No Story About Aliens

Two off-white creatures were sitting in a perfectly circular vessel on the edge of an unknown universe. They did not communicate directly with each other. I apologize: to say that there were two creatures was confusing from the beginning. I guess, to say that they were more part of one, gigantic, being, an It, consisting of millions of physically detached yet interconnected body parts, would be more accurate. Their space ship for example was not, like you might expect it to be, a cocoon constructed from inanimate materials, but rather another, bigger, body part, with its own function: transporting smaller parts. Yes, a vessel. As such, one of those parts, knew everything that the others knew. Wait, 'parts' is too inanimate? Maybe tentacles then, is a better word? Tentacles equipped with all sensory capacities that the entity possessed. What? Too much connective associations? Sentinels then? These sentinels, yes? Better? Well then, these sentinels did not hear, they did not see, they did not smell, nor did they taste either. They merely sensed with incredible precision, the individual and collective intentional activity of other beings. The only sense that mattered: when bad intentions come near, clear out. Good intentions? Search for mutually beneficial connection. Their vessel took care of the more material aspects of traversing the galaxy, like time and space.

They had been sent out to this universe, because it laid in a space district under imminent threat of annihilation by solar contractions and the inevitable universal implosion that followed. The It did not send sentinels to all nearly-imploding universes, I mean, where would it find the time? But It sent them to this one, because It had sensed within this universe, one planet containing an intelligent life form - I purposely use the word intelligent here as opposed to intentional, because otherwise they would also be visiting two other planets, in that same universe, where microbes and stupid unicellulars crawled brainlessly about, yet had one clear intention, namely to do just that. No, contrary to these, the sentinels had found a life form, technically capable of adjusting its intentions and hence of saving themselves. It thought: saving this life form could lead to very interesting discussions, which could benefit the survival of both and enrich possible culture.

The sentinels had sensed intentions that were faint and incoherent. They were coming from a very unstable entity, not at all functioning like the It, so the sentinels sensed. These aliens, didn't work as one at all, despite their undeniable interconnection. The sentinels had never sensed anything like this before: these aliens had waves of intentions, good, bad, good, bad. Each good wave resonated and brought forth another good wave, alas this was no different for bad waves, and even worse: the latter seem much more forceful. Although the waves were frequent and hardly discernible within the totality of waves, the bad intentions formed the majority. The sentinels made another discovery: there was a strong relationship between intentions and the planet's course around the center of the solar system. Anticipating a longitudinal cooling down, that ran like a ripple around the planet over a fixed axis, the aliens seemed to perform a system reset. After a procedure taking up five to ten percent of uptime, in which intentions were at their most volatile, the aliens entered a standby period, the length of roughly thirty percent of their uptime, during which all intentions were good. Then where did all these bad intentions come from? The It wondered. Maybe he was wrong and the aliens were not an intelligent life form after all. Therefore the It had decided on a stand down near the edge of the universe. It was not worth trying to save, those that did not wish to be saved. The It had to be sure.

After a little while, although for the It in all its relative capacities, this meant a lot had to been done, the sentinels were activated from their state of slumber, by a very focused intentional signal. It had detached itself from the storm ravaging below and was gaining in strength.

One sentinel established: "QUOK." Which meant as much as GOOD, referring to the intentions approaching being good.

"QUOK?" The other sentinel repeated the input from the first sentinel via de It, adding a question mark because surprisingly, it conflicted with what he - or rather it, attention now: not It! But, for readability's sake, let us for the remainder of this story make the preposterous assumption that both the sentinels were of the male sex (as if the It needed intercourse to multiply? Ridiculous! And even if It did, there was nothing like It in the entire galaxy)! - himself has established, namely: "DINK!" BAD.

"QUOK."

"DINK."

"QUOK!"

"DINK!!"

And on and on, until the It became disoriented and made his two sentinels slap each other to reset their sensatory equipment. But still it took:

QUOK-DINK- QUOK-DINK_- QUOK-DINK- QUOK-DINK-QUOK-QUOK-DINK-QUOK-QUOK-QUOK

Before the sentinels were finally synched. A rare dysfunction within the It.

QUOK?

QUOK!

QUOK.

So it appeared that the aliens had noticed the It and send GOOD intentions to meet it.

The alien space ship aligned next to the vessel of the sentinels. The It instructed one sentinel to sense, and the other to emit QUOK, as is tradition when making contact with alien life forms. The signal of the aliens was still QUOK, but waning. The It decided to dock their space ship, by making the vessel gobble it up, again this was all exactly as universal reception protocol prescribed for the visiting party.

What's the matter? It thought, why won't these aliens simply sense our energy levels and deduct our intentions? And what was happening now? The vessel sensed that the aliens were loosening and contracting a hole in their bodies in strange patterns. What were they doing? QUOK, QUOK, QUOK, QUOK! QUOK?

Why are they disrupting our intentional sensing? Why wouldn't they just stay still? Maybe these beings were not as sensitive as the It? So the sentinels tried harder, one by sending a stronger signal and the other by increasing his reading sensitivity.

 QUOK? QUOK? QUOK??? DINK? QUOK?

The vessel established that the aliens were moving more frantically now, clinging their limbs to their intelligence organ. Maybe they are hyper-sensitive, the It thought, they are panicking already before I have sent them the news about their imminent destruction. The peculiar organ with which the aliens cause the air to bend within the vessel - which the It, without reason decides to call 'yap', and consequentially, the activity of repeated air bending 'yapping' - now became more active. Either the sentinel's reading became disrupted by the yapping, or their intentions were become more and more diffuse. QUOK. DINK. QUOK. DINK. QUNK. QUNK. DIOK. What did they want? The It had no time and space for any delays, there were many more intelligent life forms in infinitely more universes to be saved. If these aliens had bad intentions, I'll leave them to their fate, the It, contemplated. I'd rather extract some of the boring unicellulars as a souvenir.

The sentinel that was sensing, gave up, it joined the sentinel that was emitting good intentions on behalf of the entire It, in a final attempt to make intentions clear. The aliens immediately began yapping again and after a remarkably focused DINK, the It noticed that one sentinel was suddenly offline and the vessel was slightly damaged. The It was astounded by how primitive this life form was, It had abolished violence itself, eons ago, for economic reasons, as had most superior entities in the galaxy. Yet, It was still capable of doing physical damage and besides in a bad  mood by the disappointing inter-universal air that this life form had adopted. The It decided on the following course of action: A) local implosion and B) screw this life form, let them be annihilated, even while salvation would have been easy.

After the implosion, which was executed without any further ado, the It's next closest sentinels picked up an incredibly strong DINK from the life form on the planet. Ironically, now that it was too late, it finally functioned as one entity. The aliens would never know.

  

Reviews

[Schatzi]

Hi Sesame,

This is a very interesting and well written story. I really enjoyed your creative world and the title caught my eye. I like the twist at the end with the aliens too. Nicely done! Thank you for sharing!

Kind regards,

Schatzi

[Sesame]

Hello Schatzi,

Thanks a lot. This was just a sort of Gedankenexperiment, I had not read this after writing it a few months ago until your comment. Thanks again!

Regards,

Sesame