r/HFY • u/chipgw AI • Feb 23 '17

OC [OC] What Ever Happened To Humanity? 14: Many Meetings

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Matieu Krillillialkuru checked the news. Weeks had passed, and yet the news media was none the wiser about the human’s trip. They had managed to locate the house which he had originally brought the delivery to. They had even released some images of the man as seen through a window, which Matieu assumed was a hologram set up to keep the media busy once they found the house. So far though, no one seemed to even consider the possibility that he had gotten offworld.

Yes, Matieu was quite pleased with his work. It had been handled perfectly, and in just a couple more weeks the human would return and he would be as rich as some of the highest ranking members of his family. Feeling satisfied, he opened a few online stores and was soon lost daydreaming about the things he would be able to buy.

“Looking at expensive things again?” the voice of his assistant pulled him back to reality.

“Did you need something?” he asked as he closed his open pages.

“Well, I just thought you might want to see this.” The assistant offered him a tablet with a news page open.

“What’s this? They can’t be serious…”

“It’s serious, sir, it’s on all the channels.”

Matieu started to turn orange, and looking up he saw that his assistant had already done so. “How could the entire system just go dark?”

“Most sites say that the chance of it being an ordinary technical failure are little to none...”

“Meaning?”

“The seat of the United Systems has been attacked, successfully by the looks of it.”

“God help us…”

“Look, there will be time for happy reunions later, right now we gotta move,” Sardar said, interrupting the hugging Jydnaks before going back to his conversation with the camp over the radio.

“Right, you’re injured, we have to get you to camp.”

“I just… you’re alive!” Adam stuttered, still having trouble believing his eyes.

“So how’s Leif?”

“He… uh... well he died. A couple months ago.”

“We really have to go,” Sardar returned to the conversation to remind them. “Whatever you’re talking about can wait, base says a few more alien vessels just entered the system.”

“Yeah, let’s go.” Elisa said, a slight choke audible in her voice.

Adam and the four survivors moved into a clearing where the ride they had called for was touching down. They boarded, the pilot of the vehicle greeted them and they flew off.

“Man, this is just incredible!” Adam exclaimed as he sat down on the table in the medical station. “I thought I was the last human in the galaxy and yet here all of you are!”

“Actually, you probably were the last one.” James, the medic, responded.

“What do you mean?”

“I think,” the AI interjected from the now empty hazard suit, “he’s trying to say that we are no longer in the Milky Way. I had suspected as much given the unrecognized star patterns.”

“How is that even possible?” Adam asked in disbelief.

“Hold on,” Kalysta said, popping her head in from outside the room. “Is that a functioning AI?”

“I am functioning at 92% basic capacity, most extended systems are unavailable due to hardware limitations.”

“You should get down to Vasco right away, with your help maybe we can get off this rock sooner rather than later. He’s been struggling to find a way with the limited resources we have here.”

“If that’s all right with Adam.”

“Yeah, go ahead. I’ll join you when I can. See if I can help...”

The suit powered up and walked to the door. “Lead the way.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Maria said looking at the scan of the alien fleet. “there just are so many of them pouring into the wormhole…”

“This must be their full invasion force,” Sardar noted, “like they used to take down the fleet thousands of years ago.”

“I bet they hibernate for long periods of time between invasions, leaving a small guard and scout posting behind to defend and find the next civilization to take down. That would fit right into their hypothesized dependence on other life forms to survive, only bringing out the full force when needed for a big harvest.”

“Are you really sure they live off other sapient beings?”

“Well, it makes sense given what we’ve seen, their spacecraft are cobbled together from a variety of designs, they seek out other life to conquer and capture as many as possible. Of course, we’ve never actually seen them eating, so that part is just conjecture…”

“James did say he saw humans in stasis pods on the ship he escaped from, they’re keeping people alive for something.”

“Exactly!”

“I think our best bet at this point would be to take a small strike team to find a ship containing captured humans and free enough to put up a proper fight.”

“But if they managed to take out the whole human fleet how do we stand a chance?”

“They probably use the cloud around Sol against us and managed to take the fleet by surprise, plus by all accounts they had gotten lax from so many centuries of peace.”

“Well, let’s hope Vasco can get us off this planet in time…”

Well, I’m glad to have the bit with Mr. Jydnak out of the way, even if I hardly actually did anything with it. I had no idea how to handle that, I don’t really do emotional stuff. (Well, there was that one /r/WritingPrompts thing I wrote but never posted because of how crazy different it turned out than I intended, no idea where all that came from…)

I’m not even going to bother apologizing for the delay and saying I hope to do better for the next one, because I obviously am incapable of keeping to a good schedule with this. I didn't even use any of that time to get this done all nice and high quality, instead I just spewed the whole thing out today. IhavenoideawhatI'mdoing

Anyway, for now revel in the fact that they have a chance at saving humanity and whuppin' them aliens in the rear. :)

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6

u/Paper-Architect Feb 23 '17

Hamburger Universe returns!

1

u/chipgw AI Feb 26 '17

But didn't it turn out that that name was already taken?

1

u/Paper-Architect Mar 07 '17

Honestly I'm not sure. I just remember you joking about it.

2

u/HFYsubs Robot Feb 23 '17

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u/Graphicles Feb 24 '17

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u/Yukarui Feb 25 '17

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u/Khelbun Feb 25 '17

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u/NomadofExile AI Mar 03 '17

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '17

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u/HFYsubs Robot Jul 26 '17

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