Chapter 373: UFO Ruins
Seeing Jason’s slightly furrowed brow, one of the senior educational psychologists quickly elaborated.
"Actually, we’re actively trying to establish two-way communication with it right now, but it’s hard to tell how much it truly comprehends."
"However, its cognitive development is accelerating daily."
"As for its baseline instincts... it is inherently playful and deeply curious about us. That’s why it became familiar with our presence so quickly. We’ve been playing simple, interactive games with it around the clock."
Hearing this, Jason stood up and took a few deliberate steps backward along the shoreline, moving closer to the team of psychologists.
He activated the quantum-encrypted channel built into his power armor’s helmet and whispered, "Is there any way we can just physically capture it right now? Or perhaps find a way to lure it aboard the mothership?"
The entire Federation was risking annihilation by holding the line on this irradiated planet, and it was all for this Gaia entity!
If they could secure the asset right now... humanity could evacuate the system and survive!
But reality was rarely that simple. A lead biologist shook her head slightly, speaking back over the encrypted channel. "We can’t just ’catch’ it. The entity hasn’t exposed its central biological core to us yet. Trying to blindly dredge the ocean would be useless..."
"Furthermore, luring a planetary organism away from its native ecosystem is incredibly difficult. We need to forge a much deeper psychological bond and continuously tempt it with cultural stimuli. We just aren’t there yet. But... you are welcome to try it yourself."
For any newly awakened sentient lifeform, an intense instinctual attachment to its birth environment is standard biological behavior. Coaxing it to willingly abandon its home for a completely alien environment was a monumental task.
"But what could possibly tempt it faster than this slow psychological conditioning? What does it biologically require? Fertilizer? Specific inorganic salts? More sunlight?" Jason asked, staring out across the pale, bioluminescent green ocean.
The biologists all shook their heads. What else was in the ocean besides sunlight and water? With its atomic-scale manipulation capabilities, the entity could likely synthesize its own inorganic salts on demand!
"I see..." Hearing the explanation, Jason didn’t know what else to suggest. Feeling a bit helpless, he walked back to the edge of the surf.
What could possibly tempt a primary producer, an organism entirely devoid of predatory desire, one that willingly allowed itself to be eaten by lower lifeforms?
Aside from its innate playfulness and childlike curiosity, it seemed to have absolutely zero material needs.
"How about I give you a name?" Jason suddenly said, projecting his voice out over the ocean.
His power armor’s external acoustic speakers amplified his words, broadcasting them clearly across the water.
Unexpectedly, the bioluminescent hues of the seawater began to swirl and change rapidly. A dense cluster of algae gathered on the surface, forming a small, glowing green sphere that bounced up and down in the water—almost as if it understood him.
Was that... a nod?
Jason was stunned. He had just thrown the idea out casually; he hadn’t actually expected the massive alien organism to comprehend the concept of a personal identifier.
He glanced back at the psychologists, who were already whispering excitedly. "It advanced again! A massive cognitive leap!"
"Incredible! It has finally reached the baseline linguistic comprehension of a human toddler!"
A cognitive leap? Just from that? Jason was taken aback but quickly regained his composure. He looked back at the glowing green sphere bouncing expectantly in the surf. He hesitated for a moment. "Uh... I suppose it should be a female name, right?"
Since the education teams had been actively conditioning the entity with a feminine psychological profile and human cultural norms, it was only appropriate to give her a matching name.
He thought for a moment before offering, "How about... ’Elara’?"
The small, glowing sphere on the surface immediately began bouncing up and down again in an exaggerated, rhythmic motion, perfectly mimicking a human nod. It clearly liked the name.
"She’s nodding! Look at the telemetry, she’s actually nodding! She’s successfully internalized the physical gesture of agreement!" The researchers frantically recorded the interaction, rapidly adjusting their massive sensory arrays.
Jason, however, wasn’t caught up in the academic excitement. He focused entirely on communicating with ’Elara’, struggling to figure out how to coax the massive entity... or rather, her... onto his starship.
"How would you like to come up there and play?" Jason asked, pointing toward the sky. "There are lots of kids up there, endless fun things to do, and thousands of really, really nice people... I promise, they are wonderful people!"
He gestured broadly with his armored hands, trying his absolute best to appear gentle and inviting. He had never been a father and had absolutely no experience talking to human toddlers, let alone alien ones. He felt incredibly awkward, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing trying to abduct a child.
After listening to his pitch, Elara completely ignored the offer. The glowing sphere shook rapidly from side to side in a clear ’no’. Then, the water rippled as she formed various strange, playful shapes on the surface, seemingly demanding that Jason stop talking and just play with her in the water.
"It’s a massive starship, Elara. A really, really big ship," Jason tried again, attempting to tempt the glowing sphere. "The lights are on twenty-four hours a day, the engines never stop, and there’s absolutely no environmental pollution... We can travel across the entire universe together!"
A small wave suddenly surged forward, splashing directly against Jason’s boots and lower armor. The little green sphere bounced triumphantly on the retreating surf, highly amused by her own prank.
Jason was taken aback. Chuckling despite the apocalyptic tension, he sat down heavily on the wet sand and playfully splashed a handful of water back at the sphere. "You know what, Elara? It’s not that we are overly materialistic or greedy. It’s just... we have to leave this planet very soon."
"Planet... do you understand that concept? Yes, your home world. It is actually a massive sphere floating in space... We have to leave here soon, and we will probably never come back."
"Sometime in the near future, a wave of heavily armed strangers is going to arrive here. And we have no idea if they are going to be kind to you, or if they are going to hurt you..."
Jason let out a heavy, genuine sigh.
The small sphere continued to drift and bob on the surface, seemingly unable to process the complex concepts of interstellar war and evacuation Jason was trying to explain.
They had been splashing water at each other and having a genuinely good time, but in that moment, Elara seemed to pick up on his sudden shift in emotional resonance. The playful rippling of the ocean calmed significantly, the water growing still and quiet around him.
After a few minutes of silence, realizing that his emotional appeal wasn’t translating, Jason decided to pivot to their secondary objective.
Helpless to convince her to leave, he pulled up a series of holographic projections from his wrist gauntlet, displaying various composite images of the enemy’s automated scout ship. He showed them to Elara.
"Look closely at these... Have you ever seen a vessel that looks like this? Yes, it would have been underwater. Have you seen it before?! A very, very long time ago... do you remember?"
It took another fifteen minutes of frustrating, fragmented communication before Elara finally grasped what he was asking. The little glowing sphere immediately began bouncing up and down in rapid affirmation.
"What do you mean? Is the vessel still down there in the ocean?"
The little sphere immediately shook violently from side to side, a clear negative.
"So the ship is gone? But did it leave anything behind? An outpost? A beacon? Can you show us exactly where it used to land?"
Jason fired off three questions in rapid succession. Realizing he was overwhelming her, he carefully repeated them one by one, terrified the nascent intelligence might lose the thread of the conversation.
The little sphere bounced up and down enthusiastically, nodding repeatedly.
Receiving the affirmative confirmation, Jason shot to his feet, his heart hammering against his ribs. He instantly opened a secure tactical channel.
"Marcus... prep the submersibles and the escort fighters immediately! We just located the alien ruins!"
Whether the enemy had left behind functional technology, telemetry data, or absolutely nothing at all, the Federation had to investigate the site. It was their only lead.
A few minutes later, a heavily modified, forty-meter-long military submarine breached the surface near the shoreline. Federation engineers had been frantically retrofitting it for the past hour.
It was originally a crude, diesel-electric attack submarine belonging to one of the native nations. Fortunately, it had survived the global nuclear exchange relatively intact, allowing the Federation to commandeer it for short-range operations.
It was a necessary compromise. To maintain absolute stealth and reduce their orbital footprint, the Federation had ceased all heavy dropship traffic from the Deep Space. They couldn’t risk bringing down one of their advanced deep-sea exploration vessels; they had to rely on this salvaged native junk.
"This is a disaster. We really should have brought the heavy exploration subs down before the blackout..."
"This hull is completely decrepit... The structural integrity is compromised by rust! It’s a death trap! Are we seriously going to dive in this?"
"Stop complaining! This is the most intact submarine left on the entire irradiated planet!" several of the retrofitting engineers barked back, frustrated by the complaints