Chapter No. 165 Sadness
Tears are often necessary.
Alexa and I were examining a large group of androids just standing in an open area of a planet around a G3 dwarf star. Alexa had gone up to one of them for a closer look. That's when it happened much faster than I could react.
Alexa grabbed the android and instantly flew up into the sky and disappeared. An explosion lit up the sky with a brilliant gamma ray blast, and I knew what had happened but there was nothing I could do about it now.
I looked at the androids standing nearby and wondered if they were also going to explode, but they were free of any explosives.
"We are truly sorry for what happened," Vicky, one of the androids said. "We were unable to stop the destruction of your collective member."
"I assume that you've been assimilated," I said.
"Yes, and we are thankful," she replied.
"I will teleport all of you to our vessels."
Vicky nodded.
I completed the transfer and then teleported to the command deck of Entrepd-1. I slumped down in my captains' chair and sighed. "Shit!"
"We have initiated Alexa's resurrection," Judy said.
"Thank you." I looked up at her. "I assume that you were able to assimilate the androids when the avatar was destroyed."
"Yes."
I stood up. "It's going to take me awhile to get over this."
No one said anything.
I went to the Black Hole bar down on the recreational deck. Jessica came over to me with a beer and put her hand on my shoulder. "She will soon return to us, Jason. She has proven her courage."
"Yes, she certainly did, but I should have caught what was about to happen and prevented it."
"You are not infallible. You must reconcile with that reality."
I took a long swig of beer and looked up at her. "Yes, I'm beginning to realize that."
Jessica sat down opposite me with her beer. "If she had not done what she did, both of you would have been destroyed, which would have left our collective vulnerable until you both were resurrected."
I looked at her. "I hadn't thought of that. You're right. Maybe that was Tyco's plan all along. Maybe it's not a good idea for us to go into a dangerous situation together."
"On the other hand, you work so well together in determining the danger."
I stared at her for a moment before smiling. "Yes, you're right about that."
She stood up. "You must realize by now that we are grateful that you are our Prime Mover."
I took a sip of beer. "I'm not sure that I deserve it."
"You not only deserve it we will do whatever it takes to make sure you are forever."
I wasn't sure how to reply to that, so I just smiled and raised my beer mug. She raised hers and we clinked them together.
Two days later, I was sitting in my chair on the command deck when Alexa arrived. The command crew immediately gave her a round of applause.
She bowed and sat down next to me.
"I appreciate what you did," I told her. "You saved me from being destroyed."
"I didn't give it much thought. I just reacted."
"Well, at least you're back. I would have been devastated if you were gone forever."
She lowered her head. "It's difficult to imagine what that would be like. Maybe my soul is in paradise now while my android self in in hell here."
"I doubt that we'll ever truly understand what it means to be an android. In the meantime, we have a job to do."
"Let's get it done," she said with a subtle smile.
I was surprised that she was resurrected in a body with a lighter shade of brown. If it bothered her it wasn't apparent in her demeanor.
"I've located a habitable planet in a system that's five hundred light years from here," Molly said. "I'm not detecting any quantum signals, but there's definitely something going on there that indicates an intelligent species."
"What sort of activity?"
"It's a lot of transmissions in the radio spectrum."
"She's right," Alicia said. "It's in the high frequency range that could indicate advanced technology, although the transmissions are five hundred years old."
"Take us there, Judy, but remain at safe protocol."
We arrived there after a half hour journey in warp and came out a hundred million kilometers away from the second planet orbiting a K-2 class dwarf star. It had two moons, both less than the size of our moon.
"This planet is pretty much similar to Earth," Margaret said. "It's 1.3 times the size of Earth with an atmosphere that has twenty percent oxygen. The planet is mostly ocean with a single continent that straddles the equatorial zone."
"I'm not picking up any signs of antimatter," Marie said. "There's no sign of any space vessels."
"Okay Judy, put us in a high orbit at full cloak."
"There's evidence of structures that would constitute cities," Molly said.
"How about the radio signals?" I asked Alicia.
"I'm working on demodulating them. They appear to have video and sound information in them, but they're in a higher frequency range than the ones I first discovered."
After several minute, she had a video and displayed it on the main screen.
"Interesting," I reacted. "They look like proto-humans."
"The females wear dresses and the males wear shirts and pants," Alexa commented. "That's pretty much what you would expect."
"I'm working on a translation," Alicia said.
"Launch a probe, Judy."
"Is that necessary," Alexa said. "We have the transmissions."
"I'm suspicious of this situation."
"Why?"
"I don't know . . . yet."
After the launch, the probe penetrated the atmosphere and descended to a five hundred meters before releasing the robotic insects. The video and sound feeds soon began to fill our main screen.
After viewing seeing aliens walking around in what appeared to be a cityscape, I had a premonition. "There's something wrong here."
Alexa turned to me. "What?"
"There's no children."
"Maybe they're in school."
"I don't see any younger people. They all look aged."
"That doesn't make sense," Alexa said.
"I think I might have an explanation," Molly said.
What she told us was unbelievable.