Chapter No.79 Discovery
Sometimes little things are more important.
The next day we traveled down to the surface of the planet in one of our larger shuttles. We decided that Alice, Ellen and Ben would be enough protection. We didn't hurry our approach to a main city complex in order not to damage any of the many birds flying about. We ended up setting down in a large plaza surrounded by buildings that resembled trees. Their surfaces were smooth, and they had branches that stuck out horizontally with plenty of round windows. These buildings were tall, and they had flat pads sticking out of them at varied levels. Egg-shaped flying machines flew around like busy bees at neck break speeds just barely avoiding collisions.
Eventually, some of them landed nearby. Round doors opened and bird aliens jumped out and approached our shuttle.
After a few minutes, a large group of aliens surrounded our shuttle. We decided to have Molly and I come out first, followed by the others.
"Greetings and salutations," I said. The universal translator emitted the proper tweets and whistles. "We are from a distant galaxy and have noted that you have a space telescope in orbit around your planet. We are interested in what you might have discovered with it."
"Where did you come from?" a male asked.
We could tell it was a male because it had a wattle, a small red fold of skin hanging from its neck. The females didn't have them.
"We are from a spiral galaxy approximately fifteen million parsecs from this galaxy that we're in."
"How is that possible?"
"We have what we call warp technology. It allows us to effectively travel many times the speed of light."
That resulted in a fusillade of whistles. It made me think of a bunch of guys watching a touchdown being scored by their home team.
"Our great thinker Cosmish said that nothing can travel faster than light," the male said.
"He's right. We don't actually travel faster than light. What we do is ride in a warp bubble that expands space in front and contracts it behind, forming a wave of sorts. It allows us to glide along on the wave, which can travel faster than light."
"How is it possible to form a wave in space?"
"It takes a lot of energy, which we produce from antimatter annihilation."
That resulted in another fusillade of whistles. Evidently, they really didn't understand what I was telling them.
"We will show you our images of outer space," the male said. "Come with us."
We followed them to a large nearby domed building. The inside resembled a planetarium, which used to be popular on Earth. What we saw displayed boggled our minds. They were able to project a three-dimensional display of the Virgo cluster and beyond. What was surprising was how detailed the galaxies were.
"Holy hell!" I exclaimed. "This is absolutely astounding!"
"I think I can make out the Milky Way galaxy," Molly said. "It's that small spiral right there." She pointed at it.
"That's where we're from," I told the four aliens who had come into the planetarium with us.
They all looked at where Molly was pointing.
"Is there any way we could get a copy of this?" Molly asked our androids.
"We have already recorded their data," Alice said. "It contains information about several million stars in the galaxies of this cluster."
"It's too bad we couldn't reciprocate for this data," Margaret said.
"We have already added Alexa's and your compilation of the Earth's current bird species."
Alexa and Margaret exchanged surprised looks.
I turned to the aliens. "We have added the data on our planet's current bird species to your system. Our planet suffered an asteroid collision that destroyed most life, but there were some species of birds that survived."
"We appreciate that," one of them said.
"We would be interested in your ideas about traveling faster than light," one of the others said.
"We will need to work with a translation of the math concerning that. We will see how that goes and get back to you."
Molly smiled. She knew I was blowing smoke up their asses. There was no way we would give that information to them. It could lead to future trouble.
We soon said our goodbyes and returned to our ship. Later that evening at a supper of steak, potatoes and broccoli accompanied by a Cabernet, we discussed our latest contact.
"They seemed rather sedated about us appearing like that," Margaret said. "I would have thought that they would be more cautious."
"Obviously, they haven't experienced any bad aliens," I said. "Hopefully, they will remain like they are, a peaceful and curious species."
"I could never imagine birds becoming intelligent," Alexa said. "Some anthropologists thought that we might have had an intelligent dinosaur if they hadn't been made extinct by the KT event."
"Yes, but that's what led to the evolution of birds," Margaret said. "However, none of them became intelligent like this species."
"Maybe this planet never saw lizards," I said.
"That's possible, but it's difficult to imagine the direct evolution of intelligent birds," Molly said. "Maybe they were introduced here by some other process."
"We could spend years trying to determine how they came to be," Alexa said.
"I suppose it doesn't matter," I said. "At least they aren't causing anyone trouble."
"That gives them a zero on our obnoxious alien ranking," Marie said.
"Where would humans be on that ranking?" I asked.
"Ten," she replied.
We laughed, but it wasn't funny.
This chapter hints of things to come. The next chapter changes everything,