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Chapter 324 A Monkey With A Laser Gun

"Something on the island is causing the production of mana in such a high quantity that the equipment capable of seeing it shows us as a pulsar star due to the planet\'s rotation. That means we\'re constantly sending a beacon telling anyone else that\'s capable of detecting it that \'WE ARE HERE\'. The only question that remains, now, is how fast is the beacon traveling through the cosmos?" As Dr. Hawking said that, the screen behind him zoomed out until the entire planet was visible, then zoomed out again until it was the size of a marble. The still image on the screen began to move, the flashing light of mana flickering on and off like someone who knows nothing about Morse code playing with a light switch. From the side, it almost appeared that Earth was a dying pulsar star, ejecting the last of its mass before it goes supercritical and explodes in a last, desperate act of wholesale self-.

Aron watched with a look of fear on his face as he came to the realization that they had been sending this signal for more than two years, ever since he\'d built the transformer-equipped fusion reactor. The horrifying news meant that whoever, or whatever, had sent the moon-sized object or vessel to them must have known about Earth for at least two years.

The most devastating part of the news is that he still had no idea how long it had taken the creators of the object to discover the signal he\'d been sending. It had to be within two years, but did that mean the incoming object had been in the neighborhood? If not, had it been launched yesterday? A year ago? Two years ago? The uncertainty terrified him.

Dr. Hawking, knowing nothing of the panic attack Aron was having, continued, "Together with all of that, we have to realize how new we are and how young our discovery of mana actually is. We\'re still amateurs, so mistakes like this are only to be expected. If the, what we\'re currently calling \'Builders\' are familiar enough to recognize this signal beacon for what it is, we must be a very tempting target to them. Imagine what you would do to a monkey that\'s in possession of a laser weapon—the best we can hope for is that they take it from us in a benevolent manner.

"But if the \'dark forest hypothesis\' is true, well...." Here, he paused again as information on the dark forest alien contact hypothesis was uploaded to the minds of the human attendees. "If it\'s true, then we need to prepare for the worst."

(Ed note: the dark forest hypothesis is one of the SWAGs (Scientific Wild-Ass Guesses) as to why we haven\'t had contact with alien life yet. It posits that the civilizations that exist are both silent, for their own protection, and hostile to every other form of civilized life in the universe, which is why we haven\'t detected them and why we\'re lucky we haven\'t been detected in turn.)

"We must be prepared to face an enemy that is absolutely \'other\' to us. One that we cannot anticipate, we cannot understand, and we cannot even begin to fathom in any way, shape, or form. We absolutely must NOT use ourselves as a reference, as that may cost us dearly in the long term.

"Although this is the first object we\'ve discovered that\'s headed toward us, we still suspect that there might be more. But since the satellites that discovered this one weren\'t really optimized for the task, we can\'t see much farther out than ten or so light years. So what we need to do now is make plans on how to move forward from here," he finished, then returned to his seat.

There was a long, drawn-out silence in the room that was practically palpable for a solid ten minutes as everyone digested the information they\'d had dumped on them over the past hour or so. Each person had their own thoughts as they digested the information the best they could with their genetically enhanced brains, which were the only thing that had allowed them to at least keep calm throughout this particular meeting.

It wasn\'t every day that they were informed of a potential Extinction-Level Event (ELE), after all.

"I assume that, together with this announcement, you already have a course of action in mind, right?" Alexander was the first to speak, as always. He had grown accustomed to Aron immediately handing him an intricately detailed course of action whenever the two men met, so in his heart, he was hoping that today\'s revelation would be the same.

[Unfortunately, he\'s hearing this for the first time, just like you. And as you\'ve already noticed, we were called to this meeting using Protocol 404, which means this discovery is completely \'fresh\',] Nova said with a frown. [Protocol 404 is an emergency protocol that was triggered when it became apparent that all of your inputs were necessary to create a reaction plan for this discovery.]

"We\'ll start by shutting down the thing sending the signal before anything else," Aron said. It would hurt, since he would be temporarily losing the AIs\' main quantum server as it was entirely mana-powered. Still, it would only mean a temporary increase in load for the rest of the server superclusters that Nova had been building, and the drop in actual performance wouldn\'t be completely devastating. But what would really hurt was that his main atomic printer would also be shut down while it was being converted from mana to electricity as a power source.

"With that out of the way, we still have a bit of time to think and come up with an action plan. For right now, let\'s take a break to gather our thoughts and adjust to the new discovery," he finished.

Everyone agreed, since they definitely required the break. Besides, time spent digesting now would lead to increased productivity later, so the meeting split into small groups or pairs that were accustomed to working together in order to lay the initial groundwork for their planned suggestions during the brainstorming session that was yet to come.

After all, "more haste, less speed" was a saying for a reason.