jeriendhal | FYS: The Visitor, Part Eight

Ahn had finally accepted the Groupmind's assertion that she was experiencing an incredibly advanced version of the Screaming Room, when she stepped outside the healer room and into the endless lawn of curlgrass, to find an animated stick figure standing in front of a blackboard, also animated with a variety of pastel colored diagrams.

Also waiting for her was a comfortably padded lounge chair, and a bowl of fried jin sticks sitting on a small table beside it. Which led to her interrupting the explanations for several minutes as she reveled in the sensation of tasting food, even fattening BadFood, for the first time in about a millennia.

I'm sorry about that, the stick-figure/Groupmind said, once she was able to focus her eyes again. I'll turn down the intensity of the tastes in the future. Humans can't remember tastes vividly without a physical prompt, so I can't record and play it back, normally.

“Don't you dare,” Ahn said, mouth stuffed with imaginary magical food. She swallowed and continued. “Speaking of which, why haven't you shown me what a human looks like yet?”

I'm attempting to avoid invoking xenophobia, fear of The Other. There are several major physical differences between humans and The Race, and given the mass of information I must present to you, I really don't want to cloud the issue at this point.

“But you want us to live among them.”

Not quite. Please be patient while I explain.

The drawings, which until this point had been of primary solids, the basics of mathematics and engineering, disappeared in a whirl of chalk, replaced by a diagram of a star system, eight worlds marked in oval paths around a yellow star. Not Home, but this new Solar System they had arrived in, she guessed.

This is the system you're entering. A dotted line led from the edge of the blackboard to just beyond the outermost planet's orbit oval, ending in a little drawing of the Great Hope. Your ship has just crossed the orbit of Neptune. Moving out from the Sun, the first two planets of the Solar System are unsuitable for colonization. Both are far too hot and incapable of being terraformed with the remaining resources available in the system.

“'Remaining resources?'” Ahn asked.

I'm getting to that. The third world, Earth, was the birthplace of Humanity, and by extension myself. A box appeared around the third world and expanded, displaying a beautiful blue and brown world, with alien continents and extraordinary seas. Around it circled a ribbon, gleaming silver. It is currently lying fallow, as it is being re-terraformed after suffering severe environmental damage. Humanity itself lives on the Ring, an artificial habitat circling Earth, monitored by Groupmind Prime. You may consider it off limits. Aside from the heavier gravity and thicker atmosphere compared to your homeworld, We are absolutely adamant that no settlements are to be reestablished there.

“But that's where the Great Hope is heading.” She stood up, tracing a line with her finger on a straight path from the ship to the Earth. Underneath her digit, the line followed, until it intercepted the brown and blue world.

For the moment, yes. A course correction must be attempted within the next few months to avoid that. Groupmind Prime will not allow your ship to come near Earth and threaten Humanity. Nor will I. Please understand that I have full control over your ship at this point. If I believed you to be an actual threat, you would have never been allowed to wake up from your long nightmare. Instead you and the rest of your fellow minds would have been quietly cut off from your needed life support, and the Great Hope would have been diverted into the Sun.

“Wh-what?” Ahn stuttered, stepping away from the stick figure. “Why? We're no threat to you!”

No, you are not. I determined that when I examined your laughably primitive computer system. So there is room for compassion. Be thankful for that. Otherwise we would have pursued our primary function. No human must ever risk coming to harm. Never.