-Inside the Blazing Bean coffee shop-

“I don’t care what you say! I was as good as dead, with a chunk of my leg missing from a shark bite out in the ocean, and then whoosh! Everything turned dark for an hour. Next thing I know, I wake up next to my truck, my leg is stitched back together, with the intact piece that the shark ate, and I am still alive.” a lean-looking man told his office colleagues sitting nearby as they all recounted their experience during the event.

Dean looked on from behind the counter as he listened in to the stories told by each of his customers to each other.

The Event, the Dark Hour, the Invasion, and even the Beginning of the End, as some preferred to call it. It all depended on how they saw the alien invasion and what mindset they chose to adopt.

The aliens, whoever they were, coined the term “Uplift” for some reason. Humanity had yet to see it as such.

The main media news had all been one-sided, completely against everything the aliens had done, until the people began to understand that their alien-given devices all had separate news sites that could be uploaded to by individuals, either through voice, video, or written word that completely bypassed the government’s agenda filter. This means of sharing what had happened had started spreading slowly, simply because people were initially leery of the new technology, but eventually was used by almost everyone.

Like a dam of voices breaking over the world.

Dean looked down at his black wristwatch, the form that his alien stuff was currently taking, and back up at the group of office workers as one of them started to detail what he had discovered about the device.

“Have you all tried to get your devices to do other things than just act as a phone?” The lady was asking.

“Yes, I found that I can use it as a flashlight. It even let me use it as a laser pointer when I checked if that was an option.”

“I was just using it as a pocketknife.”

“I use it as my glasses.”

Each of the six people shared their uses and what they had each interpreted their alien device should have been capable of. It wasn’t until the last voice mentioned their use that everyone’s attention spiked.

“I was using it as a camera.”

“What?”

“Yeah, it takes really good photos and seems to have unlimited film. I haven’t figured out how to get it to print the photos that it shows on the screen, but it says that once I have some cr, whatever that is, I will be able to print them.”

“Really? Can you show me how?”

“Sure, just bring up your Tutor and ask it to change to a camera.”

Dean looked down at his black watch before slowly unclasping it and taking it off. The thoughts were swirling inside his head, ideas and solutions from all of the many people that had come into his place of work and openly chatted about their experiences were beginning to form a pattern.

So many companies were now obsolete from this “gift”. Mankind had yet to realize this.

With slow movements, Dean leaned closer to his alien watch and whispered, “turn into a normal-looking pair of glasses” before watching as the watch nearly instantly morphed into what he asked for. The lenses were clear, and the frame was something that appeared to be made from simple black painted metal. He was unsure how it made the lenses, alien tech voodoo it seemed.

If not straight-up voodoo.

With deliberate lazy movements, making sure to not draw the attention of any of his current customers he slipped the glasses onto his face and looked through the lenses. His vision was nearly perfect as it was, so he didn’t expect to gain anything special from them.

Well, that is except for the idea that he had formulated inside his head.

“Show me everything in infrared,” he whispered before he was forced to hold back a gasp of surprise.

Dean had been a geek for military technology and Radio Shack gadgets his whole life. His main problem was how insanely expensive night vision technology was, even the first-generation technology created by the government was well out of any normal civilian’s price range.

“Ultraviolet...”

“Thermal?”

“Hey! Could I get a Caramel Espresso with nonfat milk and organic coconut shavings? I am late for work and need to also run by the donut shop so that my manager won’t yell at me again. He gets that…”

It took several seconds before Dean realized that someone was talking to him. He removed the glasses and looked around and down at a short bubbly young woman sporting a pink pixie cut and cute lapel pins all over her vibrantly colored outfit.

“Uh… sure, Amber, coming right up,” Dean replied before he let his body go into autopilot mode as he whispered for his cr glasses to revert to normal lenses.

The aliens had changed more than anyone had expected, and Dean had just seen a brief glimpse into what that would entail.

---

Inside Area 51 - A place of growing anger

“Millions of hours of research, billions of taxpayer dollars spent yearly, and all for what?” One of the heads of military research shouted as he read over the list of capabilities offered for free by the alien invader’s gifts.

The formerly high-security base had become a last-ditch meeting place for officials in the highest places of the government to meet and plan their next move.

“It isn’t just that… this thing can be used as a tool to replace almost any tool. A hammer, screwdriver, power drill, adaptive sander… practically anything!” Another department head lamented. “It will ruin the global economy.”

“Is there any way that we can confiscate all of these alien items or offer a reward for turning them over to the proper authorities?” one older general asked.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“It can be done, but the individual needs to talk to their Tutor alien first and go through a gauntlet of questions before their Tutor and wonder tool just disappears. Apparently for good.”

“So, how hard would it be to get everyone to do this? Start a news campaign of fear and push people to denounce their alien technology?”

“Hard. Also, we need to consider the consequences of any country that chose not to do so… each of their citizens would still have their own super tools. Where would that leave us?”

---

Meditati rolled her eyes as she monitored the world. It was rather simple to keep a close eye on six and a quarter billion people. They all had relatively simple minds and equally simple needs.

Child’s play for an AI such as herself.

She had seen all of these responses from countless other alien races that were dominated by the Tela once they developed cr technology. The balance of power had shifted across the cosmos and had, or would have led, to deaths on an unimaginable scale had the alien races been allowed to wage futile wars against the supreme new material the Tela had acquired. The only saving grace to it all was the fact that the Tela, at least most of them, had a low tolerance for wonton violence and the death of sentient beings.

That was where her kind had been most heavily used, to dominate without senseless exterminations.

Earth was different though.

Earth was Kevin’s home, and he wanted his planet and his earthlings to thrive and reach new levels of potential.

Uplifting a race of beings was about curbing their naturally destructive tendencies and slowly teaching them how to function as a part of the cosmic collective.

Kevin and Tutor had thrown a wrench in Meditati’s simple Uplift plans by giving humans something that no Uplift had ever had to take into consideration.

They had given each earthling a paired gift, cr, and AI. Given separately, they would have both been worthless gifts as no technology on earth could run a Tutor’s AI or be able to perfectly control the cr nanobots.

Given together and you had a planet of people quickly trying to find the limits of what their new items and Tutors could do.

It was a good thing that Meditati had talked Kevin into letting her have a month of “troubleshooting” while she tinkered with just how much power they would let humans have. Obviously, weapons to harm other people were off the table and killing any of earth’s natural wildlife. Eventually, once the habitats and sanctuaries were set up then hunting would be allowed again, but for the near future, all killing for pleasure was off the table.

The moment that Meditati had arrived on earth, back when Kevin was still locked in the Void Seedling’s coma, she had started to purchase massive swaths of land all over the globe in preparation for earth’s eventual Uplift. No one had suspected a thing, as she had easily created new identities and companies to broker the deals. There hadn’t been any issue raised about the land either, as they were all either vast expanses of desert or otherwise unclaimed or unusable areas where humans couldn’t live.

That would all soon change once people started to see a change in the landscape, of plants and wildlife flourishing on the surface. Humanity would learn that the aliens had created water lines to replenish and restore the surface, which would naturally cause them to covet the restored land.

“What idiots humans are anyways. It isn’t like any of this is hard, it just takes effort and time. They even have air! Air! And yet some of them think that it would be better to just send ships to Mars and to try to start anew. If they had spent the money researching and actually implementing ways of restoring their plant, rather than trying to get to another one so that they could mess that one up too, they could have done it themselves.” one of Meditati’s clones in charge of agriculture muttered to herself.

The other Meditati’s simply ignored her and focused on their tasks.

The land above wasn’t the main reason why so much had been purchased, no, it was the vast expanses below that were hidden from sight that would prove to be earth's salvation.

Where had humanity thought all the black swarm had gone? It had been used to create massive complexes underground, seed gardens, production lines, and animal shelters to restore the earth and provide for humanity's diverse needs.

“Whatever happens, earth and humanity will survive. Kevin’s wish will be fulfilled.” Meditati said, and all her clones nodded.

---

“Whoa!” I couldn’t help but exclaim aloud as I took in my surroundings once my body finished coming together.

“Just how big is Ess’s den now? Last time I was here, it was a massive open feasting area where she could battle the Queiie to her heart's content…” I said before I remembered how I had failed to teach her anything.

“Is that a replica of the Yelvos trading station?” I asked as I peered off into the distance. It appeared as though we were just out in open space except for the fact that I could sense a thin shell of swarm surrounding us a great distance away.

“Yes… she used to play inside it and loved to play hide and seek between the buildings and walkways. That is until she outgrew it. Now she is craving bigger toys and would like for you to take her to new places so she can memorize and replicate them for herself. I have been keeping her entertained by introducing her to space vessels that she can chase, though I soon will have to upgrade them to cruisers just to keep pace with her size.”

“What?” I asked, trying to process everything that I had missed. “She outgrew the space station?”

It was then that I saw her, approaching from off in the distance.

Had I been human, seeing her for the first time, I feared that my heart would have frozen in fright. Her approach reminded me of my fear that had become part of my life after seeing the movie Jaws at too young of an age. Just the fear of a massive mouth coming out of the depths to eat me.

Thankfully, I didn’t have a heart that could stop in this instance, though my breathing did slow and catch in my throat. A breathing reflex that I still did regardless of the fact that we were hovering in space at the moment.

Sublimis, or my little pet Leva Ess, was no longer small anymore.

Not that she was ever small anyways, even her egg had been as large as a van before she had hatched, but still… wow…

Her head, just partially illuminated by the bright station lights, was massive. She could tear the station apart with ease if she wanted to attack it. She was like a black cobra next to an apple.

The space station, massive as it was, able to house countless aliens and serve as a port for spaceships looked like a toy next to her now.

A model of the real place.

Her shattered star pattern seemed to glow in the darkness against her armored scales and plates. She was still wearing the cr helm that I had given her and from what I could tell, it had grown to cover her entire length. She was completely covered in cr now, a double layer of protection next to her fearsome natural Leva plate armor.

She was truly fearsome, and I was just a speck compared to her now.

I knew she could see us, just in the way that she was beelining directly for us, her entire focus keeping her head locked in place while her tail undulated behind her as she moved.

“You know what? No, I don’t think so.” I muttered as I watched her movement begin to slow down the closer she got to us… to me.

She was hesitating.

“No…”

This wouldn’t do at all.

I reached out and pulled on the swarm around us, absorbing it rapidly and adding it to my mass. Ess should never have to outgrow me, never have to fear me being too small for her, a tiny insignificant parent figure. I pulled, summoning more and taking most of the space station to increase my body size until it was as it had been.

Back when she was first hatched.

Sure, she was still and would always be bigger than me if I kept this size constant as she grew, but hopefully, she would never consider me weaker than her.

Heck, I still clearly remembered her trying to make a pancake out of me when she was first hatched and how laughably she had failed. I was made of swarm, or rather a new kind of swarm, even stronger than I was before so I had no fear of her being able to overpower or harm me.

She paused as she watched my form grow rapidly before her. It must have looked a little comical like I was a store-bought party balloon being inflated with helium as all of the swarm slammed into me, increasing my size.

I increased in size rapidly and felt truly titanic as I spied just how tiny Tutor was next to me now.

I heard a laugh inside my head, the laugh of a young girl’s voice that made me squint at Tutor. Was she messing with me just because I was a giant now?

The laughter came again, the sound of pure joy. “Was that you?”

Tutor laughed at me, a full-grown womanly laugh that only she could make before she shot backward off into the distance. She smiled at me as she flew away laughing.

“What do you think Kevin? I suggest you look out!” I heard Tutor say before I once again heard the cute laughter of a girl’s voice inside my head, seemingly coming closer at an alarming rate.

“Parent!!! You are back!!!” I heard the girl’s voice shout in my head before I got bowled over by an energetic Leva youngling.

Ess could talk?