Scorched Earth, Alien Wonders

Later that night, after returning from watching an outrageously hilarious movie called “Alvin and the Chipmunks vs. Garfield” we sat in our regular circle to discuss the days’ events.

“I hate to state the obvious here,” I started things off. “But uncovering the details of a Rosen raid for aluminum by humans is our mission on this hot-plate of a planet...NOT extracting water from 200-miles down.”

“And Torie was right,” I continued. “His life would be on the line if even one single bot-nyte out of a gazillion failed to reassemble in his total collective after the deep-core attempt.”

Then I recapped what Torie had told everyone at the lab earlier, but I said it without all the colorful adjectives, verbs and profane language.

“Yeah, but let’s face it. Torie’s consciousness doesn’t pick up everything when he is in binoc-stasis,” said Davis. “He probably only heard words like ‘explosion’ and ‘electric pulse’ and ‘weapon’ and ‘triggers in the brain’...you know, nothing painless or trivial.”

Everyone looked over at the mini-binocs sitting quietly next to my fluffy, dirt bed to see if they were going to start convulsing, jumping up and down violently or something.

“But he didn’t have any trouble returning to a cohesive collective after annihilating thousands of sand hiebbies,” Moore was quick to point out.

“Oh, oh...I know how Torie would respond to that one,” said Davis, raising his hand. “He would say, ’that was on TOP of the ground, geniuses’.”

Everyone laughed and gave Moore a hard time, who handled the ribbing with his usual fake indignation.

“Like Sara said, it probably wouldn’t work anyway, because Torie’s reach might not extend down for 200 miles,” added Doc.

Then Brown said something that changed deep-core mission impossible to deep-core mission maybe.

“Wait...just...wait a minute. What if Torie’s bot-nyte swarm could be extended by telepathic link?”

“Interesting idea...with a little help from Brown’s telepathic ability and a mild electric pulse from my tail it might work,” said Jones, looking as if she had just discovered three-bladed, solar-hydraulics.

Okay, right there, I could see I was losing control of the conversation and I spoke up to reemphasize my earlier point.

“Well, we can talk to Carrie and Sara about your new scientific inspiration tomorrow, but we still have to face the fact that our time is running out and squeezing water out of this desiccated, drought-stricken, world isn’t our problem.”

“It might not be our problem OR the mission,” said Jones, throwing me a peevish look. “But helping these people and the last colony of prairie dogs on the planet is the right thing to do.”

Oh, puckered, piss-ants...

“Besides that point,” said Davis. “What if helping restore this planet to even a moderately sustainable level...could remove the cause for our remaining mission all together?”

“I’m not sure I follow,” said Brown. “But I like the idea of helping these humans, and saving the last remaining species on this dead world. The prairie dogs of Suburbia have survived mostly on their own resilience, but eventually not even the nightly joy they get at the Rabbit Hole will be enough to make up for the dwindling lack of shriveled up food.”

“Qualdron won’t see it that way,” I said, shaking my head...then I continued.

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that we did convince Torie to risk his existence for a water extraction attempt and let’s say we succeed, and the planet flourishes with rich ecosystems and thriving civilizations again...even a science simpleton like myself knows that it would take something like a HUNDRED, THOUSAND, GAZILLION, YEARS to happen.”

“Meanwhile,” I continued. “Qualdron would say they would still need aluminum to build Mars settlements and Rosen is the only planet that we know of across several universes that has it.”

I paused to let that all sink in.

“Cassie said she thought all the aluminum on Earth was mined, sold and distributed by Drake Industries,” I reminded everyone. “That’s where we need to start looking for a solution.”

“Yeah, following the money trail makes sense,” Brown agreed. “The history of this planet showed that some profit-producing corporations did everything humanly possible, including greed-driven corruption, to keep their revenues rolling in.”

“You know what, top dog?” Moore injected. “I ain’t a math professor, but there’s something about this raid-on-Rosen situation that doesn’t add up.”

The conversation paused as we all considered the options we faced.

From an ethical standpoint I wanted to help bring water back to the planet, too, but I couldn’t ignore that fact that I was captain of a mission that had turned into something more vital than covert intelligence gathering about human character...like how to stand off a possible invasion on Rosen, if such plans were being hatched by Mars officials.

However...a funny thing popped into my mind again. It was a mid-1900’s game show we saw once at the Rabbit Hole called, Let’s Make a Deal.

Hmmmmm.

“Tomorrow, I’m going ask Cassie and Sara for help.”

I was suddenly decisive on what to do. “Yes, I intend to roll the dice, pull a Jones, and talk to them about working together to solve our mutual problems.”

I looked at Jones...

And for the first time, she looked back without appearing to harbor a deep desire to hit me over the head with a 10-pound bag of lava-rocks.