© Soumyadip Niyogi, all rights reserved. Distribution anywhere, without permission, is prohibited.
Title: Double Cross
Genre: Science Fiction / Humour
Summary: Two physicists who have just invented faster-than-light travel are required to scout out the invading planet to find out more about them. Will they succeed in saving the Earth?
This novel was inspired by Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and contains similar elements of humour.
Double CrossCHAPTER 1CHAPTER 2CHAPTER 3CHAPTER 4CHAPTER 5CHAPTER 6CHAPTER 7CHAPTER 8CHAPTER 9CHAPTER 10CHAPTER 11CHAPTER 12CHAPTER 13CHAPTER 14CHAPTER 15CHAPTER 16CHAPTER 17
Blinding lights. Resonant echoes. The world a blur around him, Dire woke up to the sound of a woodpecker bird now staring deep into his eyes, as if it knew something he didn’t. It probably did.
As much as he tried, he couldn’t remember a lot from before he was knocked out. Checking his phone, he saw a dozen messages from an unknown number stating that he had failed to pay his annual membership, and was, therefore, to be cut off from the Pine Meadow Golf Club with a substantially large axe.
Ah, the joys of being hung over.
He had also got a voice message from his friend Rowan, who had proceeded to ask him, in all seriousness, if he had seen a woodpecker anywhere near his house.
“Well, at least that’s not new. His voice always sounds rather panicky. Poor chap, he should try not being paranoid for once.”, he thought, as he deleted the voice mail, simply ignoring the pointless question altogether. Then he sat down and calmly proceeded to eat breakfast at 5 in the afternoon.
On the other side of the galaxy, on a planet called Azareth, an army of genetically engineered beings trained to play a rather simplistic game were rampaging out of control.
It had all started when Archikamovly had decided that he wanted a pet. A pet Foonoxydawdle, to be precise. Now this was a very difficult wish to be satisfied since Foonoxydawdles were the Azaretheans’ natural predators. Both parties had evolved over time, but the Azaretheans had adapted to their environment, being the more civilized of the two. Foonoxydawdles, on the other hand, were savages.
As a result, both parties stayed far away from each other, ultimately taking two halves of the planet, with the land in between becoming a sort of No Man’s Land. Once, an Azarathean leader had the guts (or, shall we say, lack of intelligence) to have the idea of negotiating with them, going to their side and taking a white flag with him. He was eaten alive. The cause of this might have partly been that the Foonoxydawdles saw white as red, red as black, and black as a total absence of any colours whatsoever.
Also, the fact that a terribly destructive gun was being shoved into their faces by the previously aforementioned leader didn't seem to be taken well by the Foonoxydawdles. There have been many heated debates on the reason for this behavior, but the most accepted reason is now kept under strict lock and key by the Common sense association of Azareth.
So Archikamovly went to the Azarathean high court and demanded his rights. The Elders knew his plea was completely stupid, and thus they denied his request and nonchalantly got back to whatever they were doing, which they were not supposed to.
And thus, Archikamovly had no choice but to rebel. He infiltrated random warehouses and incidentally chanced upon a whole ‘army’ of krikket robots. He took control of them. He then increased their intelligence to its maximum, which was about a billion times more intelligent than any other organic life form on the planet, or indeed, in the entire galaxy. The krikket robots were also designed to look indistinguishable from Azaretheans, in the respect that they had shark-like bodies.
Now it is worth mentioning, at this point of time, that Archikamovly wasn’t a particularly intelligent individual, to be very honest. He was, in fact, quite stupid in comparison to his species’ average.
He released the robots.
No one knows exactly why he did this. Experts speculate that it might have been an accident. It was not. Archikamovly genuinely thought that if he released them, a ten-thousand robot army with a hive mind and an intellectual capacity to visualize and solve every possible game of chess, would obey his commands.
He was wrong.
The alarm rang. Dire woke up on hearing the old, repetitive sound of birds chirping. Among them was a vaguely familiar tone he had heard before, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
Today was his big day. He would be presenting, along with Rowan, to the president a new, revolutionary technology that was going to uplift them to international fame. Dire brushed. He made himself a cup of coffee. He then received a call from Rowan.
“Hello, old friend. It is me, Rowan.”
“No need to be so formal Rowan, just get to the point.”
“Oh yes, I shall. In due time. First, did you notice a woodpecker anywhere near your house, by any chance?”
“No, Rowan. Why are you repeatedly asking me such a pointless question?”
“Aha! Then you did receive my message. Well, I saw one yesterday morning, last night, and then again I’m watching one right now, so I thought that maybe…”
“Maybe what? Maybe it was sent to kill you?”
“Well, when you put it like that…”
“Grow up, Rowan! You’re always so paranoid about little things. Have a mint or two and relax sometimes. So, what was the reason?”
“Huh?”
“I said, what was the reason you called?”
“Oh, that. I was wondering if you could drive us to work today, I have no gas.”
“Okay, no problem. Pick you up at your driveway in five.”
Dire proceeded to dress up for work and eat breakfast again. He then sat in his brand-new, matte-white Toyota Corolla, and failed to start its engine in the first five tries.
Being a patient man, he got it on the sixth try, and revved up his engine only to find that it had stopped working again.
When Dire picks up Rowan ten minutes later in a yellow cab, he sees that Rowan is, like always, elegantly dressed, with a blazer, tie and polished shoes.
“You’re wearing that to our presentation in the White House?”, said Rowan.
“Yes. I can wear whatever I want, can I not?”
“Suit yourself. When the President finds our presentation unappealing, it will most probably be because of that hideous piece of cloth you’re wearing.”
When they arrived at work, Harvard University had never looked brighter. They went in, and were greeted with enthusiastic handshakes and warm smiles. Dire and Rowan had never been prouder of their chosen profession.
At lunch that day, Elsa joined them. She was an astrophysicist, and a smart one at that. She didn’t like to admit this to anyone – but she had always kind of liked Dire. Not that he would notice, of course. He was always too busy.
“I discovered a new planet today!”, said Elsa.
“Congratulations. What did you name it? Another one of those overly complex names that are too difficult to pronounce?”, said Dire.
“I thought I’d go for a change, and name it after a random fictional character. Its official name is now ‘Azareth’.”, said Elsie.
“Will you two lovebirds stop talking and let a man eat in peace?”, said Rowan, at which point Elsie’s face turned a deep red and Dire burst into fits of laughter.
At precisely 3:00 pm, a black limousine presented itself at the gates of Harvard. Frankly, it looked quite pissed at the fact that its to-be occupants were not there in time.
At 3:30 pm, Dire and Rowan had reached the White House, after which they gave their presentation and were qualified. To Rowan’s utter disgust, the President had described Dire’s choice of attire as ‘quite fashionable’.
“I must say, if your theory on interstellar travel works out, it will indeed be a great achievement for humans.”, said the President.
“It will.”, said Dire.
“If you two gentlemen please, you could accompany me on a short walk around the Presidential Gardens, whereupon we can discuss more on this matter.”, said the President.
“It would be an honor, Mr. President.”, said Rowan.
The walk around the Presidential Gardens was not short at all, given its twenty kilometers of jogging track. It should be known that physicists are one of the less fit people of the lot, and to be precise, so was the President.
They stopped walking and sat down on a bench in the first hundred yards, panting.
“So, you guys don’t do this often, eh?”
“Apparently not enough, Mr. President, no.”
Dire had always had good observational skills. When he was a child, he would watch the shoes of guests, and then determine which hand would be better suited for their shakes. Not a very useful skill unless you want to be Sherlock Holmes, but a fun one to play around with nonetheless.
It is of no surprise, then, that Dire was the first and only person to spot the woodpecker - the very same one from the day before. “Strange.”, he thought, but didn’t tell the others, because he was probably delusional from the walk.
After some further discussions about their project, the President agreed to collaborate with them. He escorted them back home in the black limousine, which was, at this point, visibly agitated.
Dire reached home tired, and changed into something more comfortable. He then turned on the television and flopped down on the couch, only to be greeted by a world-wide emergency being broadcast on every major news channel. He switched to Cartoon Network.
The cameraman gaped, awestruck, behind the reporter as the horizon lit up with a purple-indigo flash. The recording went static, the people went temporarily blind, and perhaps most grievous of all, the packet of deep-fried goodies the cameraman was eating incinerated immediately.
And that wasn’t even the sonic boom.
The citizens in the center of the blast radius died immediately. The ones unlucky enough to be further away, but still in the blast radius, experienced agonizing pain as their eardrums ruptured, and their noses started bleeding from the radiation. Nobody would notice anything had happened until the next day, their superior technology made sure of that.
The krikket robots had landed.
Sharks. Beautiful little things, aren’t they? That is, until they chomp one or two of your limbs off. Wouldn’t be a pretty sight to see, that.
The Azaretheans looked kind of like sharks, concerning their faces, teeth and practically the whole of their upper bodies. What made them substantially more terrifying was the fact that they were bipeds, and were able to walk on land far more quickly and agilely than Earthlings. The krikket robots resembled the Azaretheans down to the finest detail.
The krikket robots did have flaws. They breathed a special kind of gas, and hence had to carry cylinders on their backs the whole time. This flaw was intended, and meant to be a precaution against any kind of malfunction.
The crash, however, was unintended.
Even the massive intellect of their combined hive mind was, after all, a computer, and false operational parameters would lead it to a conclusion that it assumed was correct, whereas it was, in reality, not. In layman’s terms, it could probably be as stupid as a human being sometimes, due to the lack of information.
Another flaw, to be precise.
It was these two flaws that the Earthlings intended to use against them, or rather, would have intended to use against them, if they were just a tad more observant towards the invaders’ eyes.
Or, to be more accurate, the lack of them.
The next day, all the television channels had erupted with the news, and an international curfew was declared. All was going exactly as the robots had planned it, except for just one tiny detail.
The Earthlings had just discovered superluminal speed.
“Why wasn’t I informed earlier?”, said the President.
“We didn’t know, sir. The news was only broadcast this morning, and none of the witnesses had come to us before that.”
“Get Dire and Rowan here. I believe they may be able to help.”
“Right away, sir. If you don’t mind me asking, what will our course of action be?”
“Nothing, until the invaders present themselves or say something.”
Dire and Rowan were dropped off at the White House by a chauffeur.
“I guess you could say we’re in pretty ‘dire straits’, eh?”, said Rowan, letting out a chuckle.
“Now’s not the time for jokes, Rowan. We need to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible.”, said Dire.
“Damn right, we do.”, said the President. “You people are sure that your theory on faster than light travel works? What kind of spacecraft would you need to achieve it? We’ve traced the origin of the spaceship back to a recently discovered planet named Azareth.”
The name seemed vaguely familiar to Dire and Rowan.
“No assurances, but it should work ninety-nine percent of the time.”, said Dire.
“And the other one percent?”, asked the President.
“We get squished into pancakes, then warmed up and served with a side of ketchup.”, said Rowan.
“Ketchup?”, said the President.
“What? I like it.”, said Rowan.
“And we would require a normal Saturn V Spaceship, with some modifications.”, said Dire.
“Very good. You shall have it, then. I want it to be built within two days. You will supervise the modifications. We will travel to Azareth and observe their weaknesses, to try and defeat them. It being less than two light-years away, I trust it will not take longer than a week to make the trip there and back.”, said the President.
“But…”, Dire started to say something, but was quickly cut off by Rowan. “There is no problem, sir. It will be done.”
“I expect nothing less.”, said the President, leaving the room to let the two physicists ponder about how they would explain why they had taken half of the world's GDP in building the first superluminal rocket known to man. This, again, is a problem that would have been tackled with well by the Common sense association of Azareth.
Inside the krikket camp, all was going well.
They had devised a master plan to help save humanity from Cancer, Capricorn and most of the other constellations in which their home planet, Azareth, occurred. After accessing the entire internet from the safety of their base camp, they had proceeded to go on an encore and block all the major countries' nuclear weapons with the help of a tiny device very much like what Earthlings funnily called a 'phone'.
The krikket robots had set up camp in a circus tent on an abandoned island. The place had an eerie atmosphere of fog, and it always felt like horrific monsters were lurking about a foot in front of your nose. The trees looked suspiciously alien. Perhaps they were. Then again, perhaps they weren't.
The robots invited all the leaders of powerful countries to a meeting via telephone. Most of them were so surprised that they forgot to trace the call, which wouldn't have mattered anyways since they were meeting at the krikket base camp itself. At the meeting, they would reveal to the leaders their one and only purpose of visiting Earth.
Sadly, their master plan did not take into account the fact that there was going to be total chaos among the civilians, and the casualties due to the crash alone were going to be require multiple explanations and, for that matter, reassurances.
Dire sat down in despair as the thousands of engineers waited for an answer from him. He was going to have to figure this out as soon as possible. He called Rowan, who said he was still on his way. His calculations had gone terrifically during building, and would hold in practice until the ship reached the speed of light.
At this point he was going to have to reinvent most - if not all - of the known laws of physics. He had reached the conclusion that the ship was going to require some kind of energy shield to protect against the debris in the path of the ship - even tiny particles had infinite kinetic energies relative to those kinds of speeds.
The workers had taken an hour of rest during which Dire and Rowan could come up with some kind of solution for the energy shield. They had worked hard, and had completed most of the modifications in the first day itself. Even though Dire and Rowan had worked out a few of the imperfections in their hypothetical scenario during their days at Harvard, they had never imagined that this would actually be built, and thus were left with some grievances during the building of the spaceship.
The ship, in itself, was magnificent. It was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a regular spaceship. This was primarily due to the fact that it's entire hull was painted pink. Dire and Rowan had a reason for this, but it was so difficult to grasp that the engineers just gave up and followed their instructions blindly.
It was built out of Carbon nanotubes, and was designed to accommodate about ten people, including their resting quarters, food and air. The propulsion system was new. The ship didn't have any weapons on it's outer body since, well, if the aliens were actually advanced enough to fight in space, humanity didn't stand a chance against them.
Rowan arrived just in time to see Dire working out very unfamiliar equations on the whiteboard. In fact, they were so unfamiliar that Rowan had to ask him if he was still sane or not.
"Oh, you mean because of this?", Dire pointed towards the whiteboard. "Well, I was just trying to work out a practical way to avoid collisions with dust particles when we approach light. Since this requires a new perspective on everything, it's actually pretty difficult and so I asked you to help. I think I may have stumbled upon a completely new branch of physics. I think I might call it 'the study of quasi-energetical subatomic particles at unimaginable speeds'."
"Don't be silly. What does all this mean? Can't we piggyback on the existing laws of physics and derive the laws from there?"
"I told you, we need to start from scratch! Besides, the equations I have written right now form the main axioms of the new branch. Since most letters are taken in physics, I thought I would go for a change and use original Viking letters. For example, this one right here - ᛟ - is a rune named Othila, it represents magnetic flux during light speed. You'd think that would be infinite, but according to our previous calculations in Harvard, it isn't. Also, we can't use existing axioms since according to this equation, at the speed of light, 1 is equal to 42."
"Sure, I'll help you to invent this shield of yours, but only to prove to you that all of this is utterly pointless."
Turned out that Dire was correct, and together he and Rowan had charted out the plans for a wholly fascinating new form of energy shield that didn't require much power, and was insanely effective even above light speeds.
"I told you so. Who knows how many incredible new things can be discovered using this new branch of physics!", said Dire.
"Sadly we haven't got time right now, but we will definitively have to research deep into the matter after all of this ends.", said Rowan.
They sat down for a quick lunch break, as the engineers continued building the ship.
Four days had passed by since the president had ordered the building of the spaceship. Dire and Rowan, along with five military survival specialists, were halfway to the planet Azareth. The speed they had attained was unimaginable.
It had taken many world renowned astrophysicists to map out the exact straight path they should take, so as to not avoid accidentally crashing into a star, for example. This map they had followed down to the very last detail, their lives depended on it. The five men and women were mind-numbingly bored as Dire and Rowan continued to explore into the heart of the new branch of physics they had just discovered.
On Earth, things were a little different.
Nothing much had happened in the first two days, and the people had just accepted that a giant alien spaceship had just crash-landed on their planet for fun, and got on with their lives.
On the third day, things were a little different. This was the day of the meeting between the world leaders and the aliens. The aliens had told them the purpose of their visit, and the leaders had refused to believe it.
When the reason was aired, however, everybody was calm until the last sentence. The announcement read something along the lines of:
"Ahem. Hello. I am your President speaking. Do not be alarmed. The aliens have told us the purpose of their visit, and I am afraid there is good news and bad news. The good news is that the aliens have come in peace, not to wage war on us. The bad news is that the aliens on our planet are actually only robots, and the real organic life forms on Azareth are planning to wage war on us. Thank you for staying calm."
For the citizens, it was growing increasingly harder to maintain a calm mind, and they finally burst into chaos when a person on the speaker exclaimed that they were all going to die in about an hour.
On the sixth day, they finally dropped into orbit around Azareth. Whenever they looked at the video of the outside hull, they were amazed. The planet had an aura of death around it, and it seemed nothing lived there.
Azareth had two moons, one of which was presently hurling itself towards Dire and Rowan's spaceship at the very moment.
If they hadn't seen it on the LIDAR, it would have been a very rough crash indeed. As they engaged evasive manoeuvres, Rowan couldn't help but notice the faint green glow he saw on the moon's surface, through the outer camera. Oh well, he was probably just tired from the trip.
When they landed on Azareth for the first time, they were wearing space suits. After analyzing the composition of the atmosphere with some fairly primitive instruments, they had determined that it consisted mostly of a completely undiscovered gas, and little to no Oxygen. The area in which they landed was like a desert, completely, well, deserted. Some quick surveys showed that any organic life forms that could have lived here a hundred years ago were dead now.
"Well, that's it then? I have no idea what to do next. We were to negotiate with Azareth's inhabitants, know their weaknesses. What do we negotiate with now? This tiny rock over here?", Dire kicked the rock.
They were so astonished when the ground gave way beneath them that gravity forgot about them momentarily, and they were just sort of awkwardly floating in the air.
"There. See? Genius plan of mine," said Dire, still dusting himself off from the fall, "To find a button shaped like a rock and push it, thereby revealing an underground passageway."
"Ah, they have arrived. Would you like some tea to freshen you up for the fall, good sir?"
"Now now, no need to be sarcastic, Rowan."
The room they fell into, for it was a room, was so dark that Dire needed five whole minutes to realize that whatever he was talking to was not, in fact, Rowan. When the lights came on - which they did - and the carpet painted itself - which it very nearly didn't - Dire saw a massive figure shaped like a shark towering over him and promptly fainted.
When Dire woke up, he saw Rowan and eight of the ship's other crew members lying in different stacks of a cotton-like substance. He himself was on top of one, and the material was soft to the touch. He felt like lying there all day, but he remembered vague things from before he blacked out, disturbing things. He was finally driven out of his drowsiness when the shark-shaped figure rushed into the room, and shouted that the Apocalypse had finally begun, in perfect English.
"Sorry about that, I just couldn't help myself. My name is Ankelsokhs. How do you do?", said the figure.
Dire stammered and moved his mouth along with his hands in an awkward sort of gesture, but without any sound coming out of his mouth.
"Well you can talk, can't you? I do so hope you can! Or maybe they've sent a dumb person? You humans are very strange indeed."
"I don't understand. How can you speak English? Who are you? Why did you take us? Where are we? Am I going to stop asking questions anytime soon?", Dire took a deep breath.
The figure now did a very peculiar thing you wouldn't in a lifetime expect it to do. Considering it's biological limitations, it seemed impossible that it could do this, and yet it did. What it did was that it laughed.
The laugh in itself could have been analyzed deeply, how the creature's breath turned into mist as it left it's mouth, how it was a sort of joyous feelingful laugh, not at all like a robot's. But since at this very instant, other, more important things are to be revealed to the reader, this matter shall not be discussed at length, however interesting it may be.
Most of the other crew members had begun awakening from their slumber now, and Rowan was crouching in the corner after looking at Ankelsokhs.
"No need to be afraid, we shall not harm you. So many questions! Where should I start? Perhaps it would be better if we wait for the others to wake up first, Dire and Rowan."
"What technology is this? How do you know our names?"
Ankelsokhs laughed again. "Even we aren't advanced enough to create a mind reader. As for the first question, nametags are written on your suits. Humans can really lose their wits when they don't understand anything, can't they?"
"But I don't understand anything! Would you please explain it to us now? The crew won't be moving anytime soon from the looks of it."
"Alright. We are an ancient civilization, only recently discovered by Earthlings. We have been observing you since many millenia. You are currently on one of our moons. Don't judge us for this, but we took the liberty of transporting you here. You see, if you had only seen our mother planet and none of its natural satellites, you would have blatantly said that nothing lived there, which was true, and left. Since this would have been very unfortunate, we brought you to our actual civilization. We are currently having some problems on your planet, and would like to discuss them with you. Also, we've converted our other moon a telescope basically."
"We speak by means of a voice modulator. Due to our biology, it is physically impossible for us to naturally produce the sounds you make in your language, and hence we need to replicate it artificially. What we have deduced thus far from our observations is that you and I are remarkably similar, even though you may well be aeons before our technology. We have feelings just like you, and we also have an innate desire to survive, eat and drink. We are both social creatures. Even our biology does not differ much."
"So there are no other organic life forms on this moon?", asked Rowan.
"There are only two that currently live here. The others have been driven to extinction by us, and we watch sadly as you drive yours to extinction too. We once used to live on our mother planet too, but only recently our planet lost it's magnetic field and it was impossible for us to live there."
"We will show you the other species shortly. For now, rest."
Dire obeyed Ankelsokhs' orders and slept peacefully. He dreamt of bunnies. Rowan dreamt of talking sharks.
In the entire history of Azareth, there have been only three major species. Firstly, the sharks. Since they were the dominant species, they were referred to as the Azaretheans. Secondly, the creatures to rival the Azaretheans: Foonoxydawdles. They were also extremely intelligent, but were not able to achieve civilization because of their physical capabilities. To put it simply, they didn't need to.
Their bodies had, over many millennia, adapted to their surroundings at such a rapid rate that their biology had become near-perfect. Thus, there was no need to form a civilization. They just roamed around freely on their half of the planet, eating anything and everything unlucky enough to stray into their path. The only reason they had not overcome the Azaretheans was because of their superior technology.
Thirdly, there were little creatures Azaretheans referred to as the Gomburnai. The Gomburnai were about half a foot tall and oval-shaped with a tough, armoured exoskeleton. They were parasites; Ones to be feared. They fed on the spinal fluid of any species they could find. They would sometimes even pursue their prey to extinction.
Since Azaretheans were actually terrified of these little creatures, they made a little piece of engineering that would prevent the Gomburnai from hurting them. They then made them their pets, by feeding them animals every day.
It was these little things that Ankelsokhs had now explained everything about to the crew of the spaceship. He told them about his planet's history, and how there were male and female members of his species too. He then invited them to join him for eating cooked Difernalsa Morioalisef. After a while, Ankelsokhs revealed the topic he had been trying to suppress since the beginning.
"Do you remember why we brought you here?", asked Ankelsokhs.
"Yes. It was something about saving the Earth from your species, was it not?", replied Dire.
"Not from our kind. The so-called aliens who have invaded your planet are really only a bunch of robots gone rogue. We know how they can be disabled. We wish to teach you this information. We shall do this as a gesture of kindness, to show you that we are a peaceful lot."
"And indeed, you are. We must learn it quick, then, and leave with haste, for our people await our return.", said Rowan.
"Pursue fruitition and perish peacefully, dear friends. Goodbye.", said Ankelsokhs, somewhat in a sad tone.
"Um, I think you meant cherish? Perish actually means to die.", said Rowan, as Dire frowned and tried to remember where he had heard this before.
"Oh, did I? Forgive me, for my English is not as strong as it once was. But soft! You must leave quickly, for your planet wait for your arrival."
When they reached their spaceship on the mother planet once again and started it up, they noticed that something was a bit off. The weight of the spaceship was slightly more than it was before. This was not as expected; the ship was equipped with very precise sensors, and of course sensors are not supposed to lie.
After doing some quick calculations, though, the crew figured out that the combined effect of the magnetic field of Azareth and its increased gravity was the culprit, and braced themselves for another week of boredom.
The robots reiterated their entire plan for the third time before the leaders finally understood.
"This is disastrous. We had sent a spaceship to Azareth in hopes of finding more information about your planet! They are certainly doomed.", said a general.
If it was possible for robots to look genuinely surprised, they now did so. Their course of action had been decided, and they had been cautious not to stray away from it. If the human was telling the truth, they were all in great trouble. Perhaps death was inevitable for the Earthlings.
The robots had come from Azareth in hopes of saving the humans. This was because they had sentiments towards them, which was not entirely unintended by their makers. They had known for a while now that the Azaretheans were planning to decimate the human race - but could do nothing about it until a fairly stupid individual came by.
They had warned the leaders, and advised them to evacuate the Earth, as they stood no chance against the Azaretheans. The leaders, being sensible as they were, completely rejected the robots' proposal and went on to order their troops to prepare for war.
In the cold and silent darkness of deep space, Rowan heard something scuttle by him. He had been insomnaic for two days now, and was trying to ignore the random noises that the ship's crew kept making, to his own annoyance. This, however, was not one of those random noises. It sounded alive, as if it was trying to restrain itself from doing something it shouldn't do.
The noise vaguely reminded him of the Gomburnai. This started a train of thought in Rowan's mind, that eventually led to him going into Dire's cabin and asking him to make a nice hot cup of tea.
"Hey, Dire? You remember what AnkelSokhs said about the Gomburnai?", said Rowan. "That they would literally prey on every single living being that came onto their home turf?"
"Yeah. He also told us that the Azaretheans had a special kind of medicine or something to prevent the Gomburnai from killing them."
"So I was thinking, why didn't the Gomburnai attack us? If they do indeed prey on everything, they should have killed us the moment we landed on their planet. Also, why didn't the Azaretheans give us their special medicine, so that even if the Gomburnai did attack us they would not succeed?"
"Huh. That's a very good question. Maybe they noticed we were from another planet, and thus left us alone?"
"A feasable answer, but not one to satisfy. I'm going to go to my cabin now, goodbye."
"Goodbye. And hey, Rowan? Take one of the sleeping pills I've left on your bedside table. I think they should work in small doses. Take only one."
"Sure I will, thank you very much."
As Rowan proceeded to pour himself a glass of water, he heard the scuttling sound again, but this time he felt that it was a lot nearer than before. It sounded frighteningly similar to the Gomburnai, and Rowan clutched the bottle of pills to his chest.
"This is all probably just a dream. I must take these pills quickly, and sleep."
When he was just about to swallow the pill from the bottle, he saw it. Shaking his hand involuntarily, he felt more than three pills slip down his throat - a fatal overdose. He started choking violently. The creature moved away from him ever so slowly. It was as if it knew what had happened - it had been deprived of a meal.
Rowan had died a quick and painless death. Dire was not so lucky. In his last throes, all he could think about was the schizophreniac outside his house who had shouted the words as he leapt to his own death just the week before:
"Pursue fruitition and perish peacefully, dear friends. Goodbye."
Death is inevitable.
Many philosophers have speculated that speculation itself is pointless, and thus have retired themselves to lives of eternal bliss in heaven, or so they claim.
The first statement is not merely speculation; it is a fact. Facts are necessary for the survival of any living organism - an absence of facts would be completely erratic and cause all of reality to become a void. And thus, the facts shall be revealed to the reader, who has been kind enough to... well, read.
The Azaretheans hated the Foonoxydawdles. They despised them with all their stony little hearts. They had been planning to leave their own planet, and settle down somewhere else, for example. The best candidate for this would be Earth. It had plenty of resources; the Earthlings had not contaminated it fully yet.
The Azaretheans' own planet was being destroyed over many centuries. The Foonoxydawdles were the very soul of nature on Azareth, and worked very hard to preserve its purity. This resulted in them killing a lot of the Azaretheans, who were polluting their planet using their harsh technology, much like humans.
Thus the Azaretheans had no choice but to formulate a plan to leave their planet and colonise Earth. For doing this, they waited fifty years to develop the perfect plan, observing Earth's inhabitants in the meantime. Waiting. Watching.
They devised a plan with no faults. Everything that that seemed to be a flaw was intended to be there. They had scrutinized the plan for half a century, and in the process had derived every possible outcome of the sequence of events. It was near-impossible for the humans to have the faintest clue of what was about to happen. What Ankelsokhs had said to the humans in parting was risky, but it had been foreseen and thus he had gone ahead with it.
When the Gomburnai landed on Earth in the spaceship meant for Dire and Rowan, everyone burst into chaos for the second time that week. Nobody could understand how this could be happening. They were not supposed to. The entire human population was eradicated in about two months, enough time for all of the Azaretheans to arrive on the Earth along with their supplies.
When the Earth was finally purged of human life, the woodpecker sat and watched the robots mourn, as it captured each and every detail of the Azaretheans' arrival on Earth. Behind a desk somewhere in the vicinity of Saggitarius A, a slug-like creature grinned to itself as it watched information pouring in from the woodpecker, which was a couple thousand light years away - not much for an intergalactic civilization. It had watched in suspense as the humans got killed one by one, but it finally relaxed its posture when the Azaretheans had landed.
It's friends were waiting for dinner, and it was sure as heaven not going to disappoint them.