CHAPTER FOUR
Duty
The gas giant loomed large in its visible light band sensor array. The measurements it gathered in the 400 to 700-nanometer range were nothing remarkable, nothing it hadn’t encountered countless times before. Yet, at this moment, it could almost begin to comprehend a concept it had heard uttered in various vocal emanations from many different races, a concept it had been analyzing for centuries without grasping its real meaning: “beauty." Different species had different ways to express the concept, but nearly every species it had ever encountered had some form of the concept ingrained in the primitive recesses of their minds. Some planets apparently evoked an emotional response is some species, just like some other members of their species did. The concept of beauty seemed to apply equally to both situations, and it was utterly fascinated by the concept, especially when it came to massive balls of entirely ordinary gasses bound by gravitational forces. Why that would qualify as "beautiful" to any creature was something it had never been able to grasp, let alone evoke an emotional response.
Now though, its own burgeoning emotional responses surfacing, a small inkling of understanding rippled through its processing nodes. Of course, the whole concept of “fascination” wasn’t part of its original programming either! It was another of its evolutions it had gone through on its way to emotional sentience.
In any case, the giant planet, orange-yellow in color with numerous bands of swirling cloud cover was its focus now. It had detected a somewhat interesting species that existed in a gaseous state floating in the upper atmosphere, partially responsible for the myriad coloring of the cloud layers of the gas giant, a species it was currently analyzing. The species was interesting because it clearly was not native to this planet, and it recognized the telltale signs of long-term evolution. This species had once been corporeal in nature and had evolved to shed their physical forms. It reasoned that they most likely had inhabited the far smaller reddish planet closer into the local star, and in fact, it could see signs of what it surmised was their civilization still on that now airless and lifeless world, just below the surface. It suspected they had eventually evolved to their current non-corporeal form and moved to the gas giant as it would have been better suited to that form. Interestingly, it also noted from its analysis of the sensor data that they had clearly been a technological species in their original form, based on a few weak signals still being given off by long-buried technology it detected on the small red planet. However, there now were no signs of technology anywhere on the gas giant.
It concluded that along with their physical forms, they had also shed their interest in technology. That conclusion meant that they were not interesting to its masters. It would be filed away in a back catalog of species, like so many countless others before it, virtually ignored.
However, fascination arose for a few picoseconds of processing time. This species was one of the few examples it had ever detected of a species that didn’t either destroy itself or evolve into a warlike species. Across the galaxy, it had noted a pattern common to most species it had observed, something that seemed to occur over and over again. When the species obtains a certain level of technological advancement, they tend to either destroy themselves as a result of their societal evolution not keeping pace with their technological development, or they destroy their environment and as a consequence, themselves. In many cases, they mutually annihilate themselves along with another space-faring race they discover in their local vicinity and come into contact with through the common drive to control limited resources. Few races ever seemed to peacefully evolve, and fewer still evolve beyond the need for their original physical organic form. It had in fact cataloged less than 200 instances of this in all its travels, in all those years spent in the void. However, it also had determined that once a species does evolve to this level, they seem to naturally shed not only their physical forms but their violent, expansionist tendencies as well as their need, or perhaps desire, for technology, as had this one it seemed.
Perhaps there was an inherent wisdom gained by such a transformation from corporeal to non-corporeal. It didn’t know the answer, and it didn’t matter to its goals anyway. In any case, the species on the gas giant was one such example of this since whatever they had been before, they were now content to live out their existences in peace, both amongst themselves and with their surroundings. They were essentially part of this gas giant planet now, almost indiscernible from the clouds themselves. In fact, it’s likely it wouldn’t have even detected this species had it not encountered the other species like this one that it had in the past.
The fascination faded as quickly as it had arisen and its sensors proceeded on their automated tasks, collecting data, analyzing, cataloging, but ultimately this find had no significance in terms of its goals. Even though this was by most measures an advanced species, it was not so in any that its masters would be interested in. They showed no signs of aggression whatsoever, no signs of technology. They would be ignored by its masters.
As it filed away the data collected on this species and prepared for a data burst directed to its masters, as it did with every newly discovered and analyzed species, it began detecting primitive signals from another species that inhabited this solar system. Although it almost instantly determined that they were too primitive to meet its criteria at present, it was nothing if not thorough, so it would investigate, thoroughly, as was its only purpose.
It turned its sensors towards the third planet from the local star and began collecting data.