A hover shuttle moves swiftly along a large round corridor. Worker Greys bow their heads toSirius and wait stationary for the shuttle to pass. A larger Grey stands over them giving orders.The shuttle descends gradually into the base along endless corridors. Raising a hand for theshuttle to halt Sirius steps out and enters a room to find a naked human strapped to a surgicaltable.
Trembling with fear, human eyes follow the movements of the larger alien approachingthem. Sirius grins and tilts his head curiously at the female form. So... Hairy. So... Ugly. Thehuman species was hideous. Primates lacking intelligence. Displacing the reptilian race that hadonce dominated the planet. Now extinct. Terminated by an unfortunate accident. A rogueasteroid.
If only he was about to have saved them. He would have been seen as a God. A tear comesto an eye at the thought. Hundreds of millions killed. Long before his time, yet he still felt theloss.
Furry rodents had scampered about the ashes, free to roam unhindered, and in time becametop of the food chain. Three hundred million years later they would stand upright and eventuallybreak the gravitational forces that held them to the earth. Discovering flight and in time, steppingupon the moon.
Though they had harnessed the atom, they had yet to harness themselves. The species thathad advanced so suddenly became stagnant. Squabbling with each other over petty territorialborders. Stockpiling nuclear weapons that could wipe the planet clean a hundred times over. Andthen some. Making the planet uninhabitable.
Standing over the whimpering human Sirius smells the woman's fear and grins. Then signals tothe attendant to begin. A probe is inserted up the woman's nose. Screens flash vital signals. Thewoman tries to scream, but she cannot. Paralyzed, she cannot move. Restraints clamp her to thebench. Another probe is inserted elsewhere, then another. Voltage is applied and the woman'seyes roll in her head, fingers grasp into white knuckles fists. Unable to faint she remainsconscious throughout the procedure. If it was a procedure.
Eggs are removed from ovaries and placed in a clear dish and examined under a beam ofharmonic yellow light. The attendant nods with approval. The woman would make a finebreeding vessel.
"In_sem_i_nate_. In_sem_i_nate_." Sirius instructs.
A telerobotic cable enters the woman. She flinches with discomfort. And a surrogate egg isplanted onto the wall of the womb.
Pleased with the insemination, the attendant nods to Sirius
"It_ is_ done_." The attendant informs.
An incision is made into the woman's scalp. Blood bleeds from the wound down the side ofher face. A laser bores a small opening into the bone of the skull. The attendant inserts a smalldark device within the pink folds of the brain matter. With no ill effect to the woman looks up atthe Grey. Her eyes darting side to side as to what was going on. What were they doing to her?
The Grey's large black eyes blinking sideways at her. The incision is cauterized with a flashof light and the bleeding stops.
Sirius' nose twitches at the unpleasant smell of the woman. Stepping back to examine her,finding her large breasts and nipples peculiar and repugnant. Love was a human trait. Grey'swere asexual. The hormone that seduced and bonded males and females to mate had beengenetically removed from his species millennia before. There would be no wanton act of carnalcourtship that drained the brain of vital blood. No physical violating the other and the fusion ofgametes. No genes littered with cancers and hereditary deformities, passed haphazardly from onegeneration to the next.
Unbridled. Unhindered. Unchecked.
The negligent thought nauseated him. Without his intervention thirty thousand years ago,Man would still be living in caves. But with a tweak here, a substituted gene there, Siriustransformed their purpose, other than for food.
He had not travel fifty trillion miles for gold. Though some species had. Nor to anally probean Earthling. Though the self-amusement did cross his mind. The universe was abundant withminerals. No. He was after something more valuable than mere minerals. He was after thebuilding blocks of life. DNA.
And Earth had DNA for the taking.
Despite his defiling objection to humans, somewhere in the eon of time, they shared acommon primordial ancestor. Albeit cellular. Crude proteins and amino acids that had bubbledup from a primal sludge and been ejaculated into outer space. Seeding the universe. Infectingplanets with a terminal disease. Life. Some sooner than others. Each species evolving andadapting to their unique planetary environments. And millions upon millions of years, ofevolution. Something the universe had in abundance. All it took was a curious brain and anopposing thumb. Each would climb down from the trees. And each would climb into space.
Man was no different.
Over the millennia various Alien life forms, Humanoids, Reptilians, Insectoids, came andwent. Many times, inter-dimensionally. Evaluating the Earth species. Stricken at what theyfound. In time, Humans would have taken their place among the intellectual elect of the GalacticFederation. Had they not squandered their birth-right with petty political squabbles and amassingfearful weapons of mass destruction. They had sight of the primary truth. Preservation of thespecies.
They had to be halted before it was too late. And the planet became totally uninhabitable.
"Re_lease_ this_ one_ back_," Sirius informs the attendant.
Pressure pads are placed over the woman's head and buttons tapped in sequence. Hummingsounds resonates within the room as the woman's eyes roll in their sockets. She falls limp.Unconscious. Her memory wiped of the past few hours. Latches release. A tracking beamsuspends her in the above the table and hovers towards a waiting gurney where a cloth is thrownover her inert body.
An attendant pushes the floating gurney along the corridor to a conveyor belt of bodiesheading one way. Back to the loading bay. There to be put upon crafts and returned to earth fromwhence they came. To be discovered naked. To be monitored from afar and the hybrid inside herwould be harvested at a future abduction.
Sirius returns to the waiting shuttle and continues deeper into the bowels of the base. Crossingover a great cavity, he raises his hand for the shuttle to halt. And observes the colossal structure being built. Looking like giant boreholes. Honeycombs a buzz with activity. Shuffles dartedbetween pods delivering supplies.
Thousands of pods shone brightly with light. Living quarters for the new arrivals.Temporary shelter while they await the final phase of earth's transformation. Thermaltemperatures were rising steadily, CO2 levels in the atmosphere were approaching acceptabletolerances. With the help of man.
Working nonstop the hive would be completed within the next orbit of the yellow draft sun.Sirius purses thin lips and is pleased with what he sees.
Raising a hand to proceed and the great vertical catacombs of shining lights slip from view asSirius continued on his route. Large doors slide open, and deeper into the bowels of the base theshuttle descends. Now miles beneath the surface. Coming to a door several feet thick, made of analloy beyond man's imagination.
The bulky door slides effortlessly to one side and the shuttle glides inside the vast cavity.A blazing white light engulfs the chamber. A transparent membrane closes across Sirius'eyes. A beam of protons streams between two terminals. Providing eternal energy, and thensome. At its heart, a temporal black hole, suspended by a gravitational force field.
The slightest imbalance and the deck of cards would tumble down. Taking the base andeveryone with it. Worker Greys stand before panels of lights. Finger-like claws delicately tapcontrols and make subtle modifications.
Greys bow their heads subserviently acknowledging Sirius' presence among them. Wordsare never spoken. Only thoughts passed. One way. Commands. Sirius could overpower a Greys'mind in the blink of an eye. Disobedience would mean immediate death.
Sirius signals the shuttle to return to the command center to report to the Elders.
Sirius waves a boney claw across a panel, activating a screen the came to life before him. Threemenacing faces stare at the fearsome face staring back at them. It would be another millenniumor two before Sirius would be considered their equal. He was still young, and relativelyinexperienced in the ways of galactic politics. There was a Federation to answer to.
Uncivilized planets were permitted to be occupied and transformed. And fledgling planetslike the earth were ripe for the picking. Man may have split the atom. But he had failed toharness its knowledge on which greater knowledge was harnessed. Choosing instead, the path ofself-destruction. Who was Sirius to stand in their way?
"El_ders_" Bows Sirius subserviently.
"Sir_i_us_. What_ have_ you_ to_ re_port_?" An Elder asks cautiously.
"Ev_ery_ting_ is_ on_ track_. Set_tle_ments_ are_ near_ing com_plet_ion_. Pow_er_ at_one_ cent_ton_.""Ve_ry_ good_ Sir_i_us_." An Elder nods his bulky head, rasping breath through thinnostrils. He could almost taste the humans on his lips.
"And_ the_ sa_tel_lite_?" The third Elder asked anxiously, without it, the fleet would be lostfinding the blue marbled isle.
"On_ track_ I_ as_sure_ you_ El_ders... Earth_ con_tact_ has_ as_sur_ed_ ev_ery_thing_is_ in_ ord_er... They_ a_wait_ your_ com_mand_."
"Good_. Good_." An Elder praises Sirius."I_ serve_ you_ my_ El_ders_." Sirius bows his head as though to conclude their meeting.
The transmission dies and the screen vaporizes into thin air leaving him with his head stillbowed.
Large holographic monitors display the bases activity. Harmonic cycles waver across thescreens. A clawed finger traces one of the waves and lowers it. Causing the light that filled theroom to dim.
Swiping a screen, an image of the earth appears, and he marvels at the suspended blue jewel.Occupied by the soon to be extinct species. Humans. Evolving no more than when he had foundthem. Worshipping pagan Gods. One of them himself. Unleashing plagues and viruses over thecenturies to cleanse the gene pool to purify the remaining stock.
The last pandemic having been remarkably effective purging the undesirables. The aged.The sick. And the lame...