Chapter 8:

In the garage Will, Paige and Jake all sat in their usual places as they waited for Sil and Artie to begin their story. After a brief internal agreement between Sil and Artie, Sil started to tell the story he had been waiting to share for centuries.

“To begin with, as I mentioned before, I arrived on this world around the year 1500. For now, I will not be going into detail about my method of arrival as the point is moot in regards to our immediate issues.

My people were in the midst of a troubling time for our society. Even with our level of technological development, it seems short sightedness is not a uniquely human experience.

Societal unrest had led to a fairly deep division in my family, in particular, and my brother had begun to show signs of escalating violence and delusion. Things between us finally came to blows when I encountered him out in public, throwing things at a family that had done nothing to deserve it. I intervened, allowing the family to escape.

I then lost my temper. In the fight that followed, I left my brother unconscious on the ground, and went home as quickly as possible.

At that point, I had already been preparing to leave home. I wanted to go somewhere beyond the reach of the social strictures that bound my world, but did not yet have a destination. The vessel before you is actually the main preparation I had made, so I had planned to retrieve it and some basic necessities.

While exiting our family residence, my brother ambushed me, managing to stab me with a blade designed to bypass my resistance and healing abilities. I was able to shove him away, and used the blade he had tried to kill me with to slice through most of his neck. He didn’t survive the encounter.

Feeling what the knife had done, and its effect on my system, I could feel my own system shutting down. I knew I had limited options.

Luckily, I had Artie, and he knew how to store my consciousness in this vessel. However, we still had to escape.

Since I didn’t need to concern myself with supplies for my physical body at that point, I ran to the nearest transport hub, and opened a portal. This world is one of the more popular destinations from our historical records. However, to the best I could determine, nobody had made the trip here in several decades.

This was no great surprise, as my people are prone to getting bored and moving on to the next destination. I felt confident it would be a relatively safe choice. It also met other criteria which can be discussed momentarily. So, that is how I ultimately chose Earth.

With that, I have explained why I left when I did. I did not, however, explain why I had been planning to leave my home already, prior to that altercation.

In the last few years before we left, Artie and I began to suspect there might be something guiding the chaos in our society. We were unable to put a name to who or what might be responsible for what we were seeing, but the circumstantial evidence was significant. Making matters worse, that evidence pointed to the distinct possibility that this hypothetical entity originated outside of our own world.

Additionally, the implications of what we did succeed in finding led us to believe that something was trying to spread its influence. While all of this was inherently uncertain, the theory fit the evidence well enough that doing nothing would have been unconscionable.

With that resolve, we attempted to tell people in a position to actually be able to investigate the situation and do something about it. Unfortunately, we were completely unable to get anyone to even acknowledge the possibility.

My people are an extremely proud species, entirely convinced of their own supreme place in the social order of the universe. Because of this, the idea that an outside force could be manipulating them was dismissed out of hand. It didn’t matter that my supposition was based on actual statistical evidence, as they refused to even look at what we had put together.

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I have observed some parallels in your own world, and if I’m honest, those examples have made me question the validity of my previous observations before. Then Artie and I looked into the ‘Evidence’ being pushed by those groups, and quickly realized there was a fundamental difference. Our theory is based on reality. It’s an important distinction.

Anyway, back to our story, after achieving absolutely nothing with our own people, we came to the conclusion that we had only hope of being able to effectively combat the influence of this unknown entity. We would have to grow a force of people capable of countering a socially disruptive entity that may well originate from a different planet.

These people couldn’t be delusional enough to believe in poorly defined evil cabals, or that planets were flat. However, they had to be open minded and objective enough to accept new information based on logic, and change their opinions and understanding accordingly.

All of that led to the plan that we ultimately chose to pursue.

We decided the best way forward would be to share the technology that led to primitive worlds thinking my people were sorcerers and spellcasters. This was, as you might imagine, something far more easily said than accomplished.

First, we needed a way to manufacture that technology, which is considered a strictly controlled item, in sufficient quantities. With time, and some, admittedly, less than legal activity, we were able to clear that hurdle.

Then, we needed appropriate hosts for that technology. This is the additional criteria Earth met that I mentioned earlier. It isn't as simple as just handing it over, as it isn't something just anyone can utilize here. Hence, our decision to come to a world where the inhabitants naturally evolved to be extremely similar to our own.

You see, what we had to offer required a people with an aggressive enough natural bearing to use it, a lack of conflicting technology, and genetic code similar enough to that of my species to allow the technology to bond with them.

Earth fit those parameters to a significantly higher degree than we had ever expected to find, and therefore became an obvious choice.

Before I move on, are there any questions about what I have already discussed? I am aware of the weight of the knowledge I’m putting on your shoulders, but frankly we don’t feel we have another choice. We need you to trust us, which in this case means providing you with all of the blatant honesty we can manage.”

Will and his friends seemed to shake themselves after a moment, and Jake summed up the thoughts of the three friends.

“Ffuuuuuuuuuuuucckk…”

“Eloquent, and accurate,” said Paige. “As far as questions go… I’m pretty sure we have the gist of what you’ve said so far, Sil. That said, you have dropped a whole lot of heavy shit into our brains. Let’s take fifteen to process a bit, then come back to continue the story.”

“Agreed,” chorussed Will and Jake.

“Very Well,” concluded Sil.

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Internally, so as not to be overheard, Sil and Artie decided to have a brief conversation while Will and his friends got drinks and digested what they had been told.

"I have to admit, they are handling all of this quite well," said Sil, "I'm a bit surprised, to be blunt."

"I had noticed that as well. I believe it may have something to do with their ages and general disposition.

From historical records, their generation experienced an economic recession during early adulthood. That collapse severely hindered the economic development of their generation as a whole. It also left many of them with an above average level of apathy and general cynicism.

While I cannot speak to the effect of this on their long term mental health, it does seem to have enhanced their ability to cope with adversity. It may well allow them to internalize what they are learning, while maintaining mental stability."

"So, you don't believe their reactions can be used as an accurate assessment of how the rest of their society may react to this sort of news?"

"I do not, but for our immediate purposes this may well prove to be a large boon."

"Right. Well, it's nice to meet and interact with other beings in the meantime. Only having one person to speak with, outside of myself, for hundreds of years can be surprisingly isolating. I'm certainly glad we have never been romantically entwined. That would have been as unfortunate as one of humanity's reality television shows."

"The feeling is quite mutual, I assure you."

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