Chương 94: To Come in Peace

There was a general hubbub at the first-contact reception. A series of polite, if confused smiles crossed the faces of the various countries' delegates. They hadn't yet seen what anyone with heightened senses could feel. Something was approaching.

"Asvex, asvex," I tapped my arm while two more hands shaded my eyes, and I turned to Parsnip.

"Weren't those…"

"—the people who created us to farm us for desirable traits for their offspring?" She tilted her head.

"I thought they all died out after the mimics nommed everything on their entire planet? Nom nom." Mister flash-frozen blueberry to my left was trying to make himself as small as possible.

"Anything you'd like to add?"

"Oh, uh, well, Asvex? Yep, that, err, us. We didn't all die out." He cleared his throat. He was sweating.

"There were several initiatives to protect the genome of our species, and the species itself. I'm part of the Stellar Initiative, but there was the Ixl Mixl protocol, the Green Tower, Alkhr'dophe… we had a lot of ideas back then, which was bad because they were mostly bad ideas, but now we only have one, the right one. Buuut I don't think I'm technically allowed to talk about… what is that green piece of paper?"

"This is five dollars," I said, opening my wallet a crack.

"Half a silver quarter! And there are so many dollars left in your leather money sack too." He squinted.

"Are you trying to bribe me?"

"I would never." I stuck the five dollar bill into his poofy jacket.

"This is simply an investment. You want a house with a picket fence, no? So tell me, what are your plans on Earth?" He blinked at me with an uncomprehending stare. I gave him another five bucks. And another. By the fourth, I was seriously considering knocking on his forehead to see if any brain cells were home when with a sudden start, he lurched.

"I, uh, um… I really shouldn't… my people, we came to, er… spread good vibes? Really, we, er, didn't know Earth was populated by sapients until recently. Radio signals only travel so fast, and our ships travel much, much faster. It was four, maybe three? Three of your years ago when a scout returned and broke the news, and by then the previous council had already set course, and our final fuel scoop had died, and I really, really do want to help fix your world right up because I don't… think…

we have anywhere else to go?" That sounds reasonable. Assuming he's telling the truth.

"Why so uncertain?" Parsnip asked, getting uncomfortably close to his face with her mandibles.

"Um. Well. I'm just a guy. I'm not really privy to the plans of the Helmsman, nor what the Bureau of Change is cooking up to save our civilization next, haha."

"Helmsman?"

"Our, er, leader, designated so during times of crisis, or when an important task needs doing immediately, and there is no ideal office for managing it. And the Bureau of Change is just that. They manage change. They research it. Solidify it." … I'm going to have to learn how alien governments work, aren't I? This is definitely outside of my area of expertise.

"I have never seen so much money in one place," Friendzone said, oblivious to my and Parsnip's stares.

"We just use accounts linked to DNA scanners. This oddly untraceable tender is primitive… but in a cool way." I squinted at him.

"In your eyes, Earth is retro?" He squinted back.

"Yes." A wave ran through the assembled throng of representatives as they were trying to make sense of an ever increasing babble of the bug queen. A notification on their cybernetics no doubt — all but two had those little cybernetic ports behind their ears, under their jaws, or more popularly, on their wrists. It was unnerving to watch them all turn as one at an unseen signal. Gotta make sure those things have a solid anti malware package. But that would be meddling with mundane, political affairs.

Custodians aren't supposed to meddle on that level either. There in the sky, a small dot turned into a rather large oblong saucer. More of a squeezed hotdog than a saucer, really. At first it had the color of the sky, but as it got closer some cloaking device that felt awfully similar to [Of Many Colors] changed its surface to a silver sheen. The futuristic looking silver object landed with a bone-deep thrum, opened up, and revealed… nothing inside, only a steadily unfolding set of machinery.

There was a flash of light. And suddenly a delegation of three blueberry individuals was standing atop the platform the ship had unfolded into, and from which a staircase was unfolding from a seemingly endless roll of purple carpet. The carpet's nice, but that's a mobile teleporter. Safe. Smart. More advanced than our technology by leagues, though then again, they are definitely showing off.

The lead individual — a rather androgynous humanoid with purple hair and skyblue skin — reached the final stair and leaped to earth with a hop.

"Once again, we walk among fertile soil," they muttered, audible to enhanced, translated through my system interface from Swahili, of all languages. They looked confident, even as security had already amassed and this whole deal was about to turn into a diplomatic crisis. You could crash a birthday party, but you couldn't crash official first contact with a friendly alien species and come away without having a lasting impact. The Asvex diplomat smiled as if they knew this.

The bodyguards and security detail of over a hundred countries' representatives flinched collectively as they raised a flat hand — pinky and thumb split away from the other three digits — and loudly cleared their voice.

"Ni Hao. Ave. Bienvenue. I am Stevissa, and I have come in peace. Am coming. Apologies, you have so many, er, languages. I've only had two months to acquire a cursory understanding." They claimed as much, but nonetheless switched through six languages in four full sentences. Their pronunciation was flawless, but for a slight unplaceable accent.

"My people have come from far away to offer you cooperation. We offer you peace. Technology. Already our agents have saved lives worldwide, deploying without fear, and soon, your world will be saved in absoluteness." They spread their arms, and that smile… it didn't matter who you were attracted to, that smile could melt your heart and better senses with a snap of a finger. It was as if every flourish, action, and lilt of the words was perfectly designed to appeal to the buttons inside my brain, to me, only me.

I checked my system for any intrusions into the mental firewall. None so far. This was all just mundane charm. Everyone except the insect queen was enthralled by the performance.

"Lies!" The insect queen's voice tore the air in a screech as she clung to her palanquin.

"Deceit! This creature is an Asvex. Krik tak lik'kattata tizztz! Shapechanger! I have seen your murals, I know what you are, what you did, sinful ones!" The Asvex went entirely rigid. It appeared so enthralled by its own performance that it had just noticed the bug among the mammals for the first time.

"... how the Hellworld have you things survived?" Oh, what I would give to see the emotions wafting off of them. But transforming now would be a bit conspicuous, considering the lightshow and the theme song that would be awfully loud in the ensuing silence.

"You, y-you…!" the insect queen was foaming at the mouth. Attendants wiped her face down, but the shivers were going through her entire body. At the signal of one of the more ostentatiously dressed helpers, her palanquin turned around to go back into the tent they had teleported into. It was a shocking silence as humanities delegates watched one first contact be superseded by the next.

"Well, that was awkward." The Asvex delegate cleared their throat.

"Anyways, considering you people are all still here, who wants to talk peace and buy laser weapons?" There was likely no better way to make the monkeys of Earth ook and aak in unison than the promise of something shiny, expensive, and thoroughly destructive to whichever monkey they least enjoyed the presence of. Delegates caught themselves, security was waved away, and everyone was all smiles, if somewhat awkward at the edge. The buffet had gone untouched by the bugs as they had just barely reached it.

The Asvex delegate made a delighted noise as they bit into a creampuff, a koeksister, and a chunk of prianik. The cinnamony, spiced good had been baked just for this occasion in the shape of a honeycomb. An inscription on it read 'Welcome to Earth'. There was a sinking feeling in my stomach as I watched them chatter on, charming people left and right with smiles, clasped hands, and bursts of small alien oddities in behaviour. These truly were the friendliest aliens we'd ever encountered.

They were chatty, witty, and so photogenic too. The rest of the bug delegation was sitting at the side, fuming. The twitch of their antenna told of anger, of a fury barely kept contained. They knew that if they did anything in this moment, it would change the world. And yet, it seemed like it was their fate to be ignored and set aside. It was hard to tell they were angry at all and not just patient if you hadn't spent a few months among them.

I felt sick in a directionless way, watching something too large to stop unfold in front of my eyes. [Friendly notification! The Convergence event you have signed up for will break in 27: 19 minutes unless you enter. Please enter the convergence zone.]"Parsnip. We're leaving." Parsnip perked up. She had gotten her hands on two koeksisters, somehow, chowing down nervously on the syrupy braided dough.

"We are?"

"We have a job to do. We can visit your mother straight after."

"Oh. Okay." There was a pause before she trudged through the snow along with me.

"Sam? I don't feel so good." The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"I… don't know what to say." Or do, as a matter of fact.

"It's a lot, coming at us all at once."

"Like an avalanche!" Friendzone helpfully pointed out.

"I saw those in our records once. They didn't look too large on screen, but in the simulator… let me tell you, you have to be really good at running to outrun those."

"Yeah." Friendzone walked after us, oblivious as always, and was left outside the dome as soon as we entered the convergence event. In case we failed, he had the job to slow down any escaping critters until we respawned.

"I just… expected them to be dead," Parsnip said as she cleaved through a snow-colored mimic.

"It seemed right, in the way a wicked antlion is buried by his own pit, just like in the stories and faetales. We have many names for them in our languages, and some curses too. Not fun names!"

"Like sinful ones?" I asked.

"Because they made the mimics?"

"Not only mimics. They made making things a habit. They made things that made things, until a planet was just that, one singular thing. They did it to their own. They are world enders." +++ The official arrival of the Asvex hit social media like a bomb. First one alien race, and now a second one? People were going crazy over so much novelty. But then, I would've too if I were just a normal person at the mercy of the increasingly chaotic world.

To them, it looked like the good guys just received double reinforcements. Alas, I was a Custodian, and Custodians were still swamped with jobs. The convergence events in Antarctica were awfully easy to handle, considering that there was no cover for the murderbots to hide. That counted doubly for me, but a bit of lead, lasers, and plasma fire, and Parsnip and I saw the better of them. Parsnip had an odd build.

She'd seemingly gone for a cluster of random essences, whatever struck her fancy at the time, and ran with it. [Plagiarize ++] allowed her to copy and retain inferior copies of up to two skills or magical abilities. Currently, she had taken Addy's [Wonky Wardrobe] and my [Arms & Arms Proficiency] to support her fleeting yet intense interest in anything new and shiny.

The Weapons platform 7A essence granted her a skill which increased her next attack's effect on target for every different way she'd damaged the target before. She would first hit a target with a laser to cover heat damage, then score a hit with her wand of poison mist against biologicals, or directly switch to acid needle launchers against everything else. With heat, acid, and possibly poison down, a glancing hit of 7.

62x39mm from her mundane AK (it was a gift from me and Addy for reaching level 30) hit like a small grenade. The following explosion from her boomstick vaporized even the toughest of murderbots, assuming she could deal damage with the initial shots in the first place. The damage increase fell off after a while, requiring her to re-apply the previous damage types, and if she screwed up the order, she could end up reinforcing a damage type the enemy was strong against. It had been working out for her so far.

It was, if anything, even more tool dependent than my own build, but she made it look easy. Her main synergy was especially effective with many arms. The Weapons platform 7A essence had definitely made its way onto the shortlist for my choice of essence at level 75. Level 75. Getting there seemed like a far-off dream. Leveling had slowed to a crawl long before I hit the 60s. There was no hard cap on the levels you could reach, besides the time you had to live and grind those levels.

As you reached higher levels, killing tiny mimics worth two soulcoins gave basically no experience anymore. But they still showed up for every mimic incursion in droves, and they still had to be dealt with. Maybe in an ideal world, all the tiny mimics could be funneled into the sub level 30s and 40s, while those above were assigned threats at equal or slightly above their own level. But if there was one thing that was consistent with the world, it was that good too often made way for good enough.

Necessity murdered perfection. And boy was there a lot of necessity on Antarctica. We spent days fighting mimics in a white-on-white landscape, fighting murderbots with snow camo, fighting evil moss, and more. There were no pain lizards here, likely due to the climate, but there were enough targets still to net me another level. [Congratulations! You've reached level 71] [+7 Body, +4 Sense, +7 Mind, +7 Soul] Lotta sevens.

A week after said convergence event in the Antarctic, I was lounging in the Free Poker League HQ, one leg up on the sofa's armrest, the coming and going of people boring into my head like workday tinnitus.

"Ugh," Becca groaned, folding herself over the backrest. She was wearing her photogenic robot body, the one that sorta looked like a hot, semi-dressed athlete in the olympic 100m hurdle sprint. Her metal face was formed of hundreds of mechanical doodads just for the purpose of making human facial expressions, which reportedly took her months to get right. Her chest piece and a part of her hips and thigh were colored darkly to meld her contours and imply clothing, but it was mostly a psychological effect.

Becca could grow her bits out whenever she so desired. She had a fully moddable body, one of many she kept tinkering on in her free time. It was so much fun to watch, and watch her spark with joy whenever she got a new idea to work in practice. Currently, her selfie-proof face was busy melding into a blank, featureless slate. She loved to present as a robot, but she was a mimic queen, er, mimic queen essence holder, the only one in the world. Sometimes, that mask came off.

"Long day?" I croaked.

"I spent three days inside a Kaiju sea turtle off the coast of India, paralyzing its motor cortex, then trying to interface with it while the system created an ad-hoc dictionary. Its name is Steve. Turns out it used to be someone's pet, but through time, effort, and magical bullshittery, it's now the size of a small island that just happens to eat krill."

"How large exactly?"

"Two by point-seven miles. He is going to cause massive local depletion of krill population wherever he goes now that he's in the pacific, but he seems to have made friends with the whale Custodians. He thinks they're, and I quote, 'cute'."

"Huh." A giant sea turtle. First a giant bird, now a turtle. Earth's oceans might start to get crowded. With any luck, some magic was going to sink into the seas and make prey species multiply faster or something. Of course, magic had to sink that deep first, and even if it did, there were still mimics in the Mariana Trench. Another problem I can't ever hope to solve.

With any luck, Steve the island-sized sea turtle was going to help with that situation, if only because he wouldn't want anything dangerous to exist in proximity to his pet whales. Every day a new sentence is born that nobody has uttered before. That was probably one of them. After a ponderous pause, Becca turned her featureless steel face towards me.

"What's up with the bloody piece of rebar?"

"It's a piece of rebar. It's also in my chest, piercing a lung and cutting my heart." I took a measured breath, suppressing a shiver at the feeling of metal scratching along the underside of my ribs.

"Shrapnel from an exploding fuel oil depot." It was a chain reaction, caused by a self-destruct sequence of one of the murderbots. By the time [One Moment] triggered, the arm-length piece of metal was already halfway through my chest. I had to cast the spell again manually to speed up time back to normal so I wouldn't have to suffer the feeling of it boring through my chest in slow motion. Becca's entire face folded into a frown.

"Yikes. Want me to dissolve it for you?"

"Nope. I'm waiting for Addy, or the heal-focused newbie that joined last week. Wanda was her name, I think?"

"Yep." Becca stretched, her voice doing a funny machine synthesizer sigh.

"I'm pooped. I think I'm done for at least a day. Until there's another Kaiju out there, Imma go be a toy firetruck." And then she shrunk down, morphing into a premium toy firetruck in shiny red and white, featuring working pumps, hydraulics, and all. At the sound of her honk, Orianna peeked inside the breakroom, regretting it immediately as Becca began chasing her around the office, slapping her with an extendable ladder and spraying water at her through her firehose. And so I was damned to sit here all alone.

Once you got over the adrenaline, it was quite boring. Entertaining myself with media feeds helped, but only so much. Everywhere I went, there was always a chance that one of the streamers, commentors, or news outlets would comment on the difference between the alien heroes known as the Asvex Hero League, and Earth's own Custodians. Barely anyone mentioned the bugs, except as an addendum on the side. Bugs were out. Hot superheroes were in. Custodians? Custodians were effective.

We were beloved by many, and mistrusted only by vocal minorities and the few countries that outright banned our existence under their legal framework. Custodians had been under intense public scrutiny for two years now. People knew what to expect from us, and to some, that predictability made us boring. The alien heroes though, those were the new hotness.

And they were hot, each and every one of them proudly presenting chiseled chins and beautiful lips, small noses and bright eyes, smooth yet athletic bodies, belly-button deep v-necks, butts, bulges, and boobs. They never wore shoes. One of the prime exports of their giant Fathership were self-sealing outdoor socks. Thin, adhering, easily cleaned, they lasted for a lifetime. They were making the sock and shoe industry gulp with worry. Maybe. Maybe this, too, was just a fad.

The Asvex sold more than just sock-shoes though. There were travel logs and alien novels of far-away worlds, small gadgets mixing magic and technology, oddly disjointed and whacky alien media. They didn't seem worried that we'd figure their tech out anytime soon, which was either a sign of confidence, or it was just a mistake given the voracity of our tinkerers. But overall, the interspecies trade was… good? No, it was great. Heck, they gave away a freaking cure to Ebola on the second day after their arrival.

Heck, diseases were disappearing inside and outside of populations before human organizations even started testing alien-made cures. Some news outlets declared it a miracle. Others blasted Custodians for not being able to live up to the same level of world-fixing heroism. It wasn't fair, but that was the media for you. Your image was glass, seemingly see-through, but distorting the reality behind it, and shattered just as easily. Nobody had shattered the image of the Asvex, yet.

Friendzone was nice, but there were certain things even he didn't talk about, no matter how many dollars I bribed him with. And I was getting… antsy. Annoyed. Suspicious, as people did when they were handed free stuff. The alien ship was a black box to us. Besides the one official tour that was clearly a heavily edited propaganda piece, none of it ever showed what life was like on their own ship. Heroes came and went, often to smaller landing ships, or flying directly into the sky once their work was done.

They're definitely competition. But if we're competing over who can save the world the fastest, then I won't stop them. Be my guest. This is, literally, what we are made to do. The system hasn't even put any soulcoin rewards on their heads, which should be a sign of trust. We can save the world together, as long as the image of friendly, altruistic helpers persists for both sides. As long as nobody fucks it up. Please. Nobody fuck it up. Eventually, through all the daydreaming, medical help arrived.

Addy, oil-caked and with slightly singed hair tips, stomped on over to my side. She didn't comment on my injury, which would have been life threatening to anyone with a couple hundred less Body. I watched her hands deftly work at removing the piece of rebar while preventing me from bleeding out.

"You're pretty good at this." She didn't look up at me, focused entirely on her task.

"It's what I learned from my peers in the Cauldron."

"Ah. Well. I learned how to dance." Addy huffed. She divided the wounds between ourselves with [We'll be fine], then siphoned her own away with [I'll be fine] before doing it all two more times.

"There. Good""Girlfriend not dead?"

"Girlfriend not dead. Congrats. You saved a life, your own this time."

"Nice. Yippie." I gave Addy a long hug, and stood up again, only for her to gently yet firmly press me back into the sofa.

"Ooh. Girlfriend sexy time?"

"I…" Addy blinked in confusion.

"It's barely noon. You're covered in blood. No, Sam, you need to rest. This can't go on."

"I could take a shower?" I offered.

"AndI'm closing convergence events. I'm doing Custodian things all day."

"You have been volunteering for the most dangerous, reckless, over-your-level quests and danger zones, without a break, for days. You're not even asking the other Sam's for help."

"Because the amount of level eighty-plus convergence events just keep on rising! I'm just… maximising my impact. And they're needed elsewhere." Smiley Sam entered the room with barely a whisper, six eyes meeting six eyes. She squinted in faux jealousy, pointing at Addy, then at me. It was her slotted Addy-time, and I was butting in. I made a sign that I'd be done in a minute before focusing back on Addy.

She had the oddest look on her face, like she wanted to say something, but was having trouble finding the right words for it?

"Addy? You've not exactly been available much this week either."

"I… have been plotting."

"Plotting?" That perked me up.

"Maybe even scheming? Ooh, is it a way to get Genesis back for punching you in the face? Maybe some secret weapon that will turn Trust's telekinetic whirlwind into nothing more than a stiff breeze?"

"I had a talk with your social media manager."

"With Tanya?" Why was I feeling a sort of directionless, subliminal dread all of a sudden?

"Essentially, you want to have a big impact on the world, for the better. We're past the point where you can just… punch or shoot every problem in the face to solve them. So, I got you a quest for something you're best at. Using your mouth." I tried not to laugh, which was rather easy when Addy hit me with the 'I'm serious' look. She took a deep breath.

"You'll be appearing on one of Genesis' talkshows later this afternoon. I don't know what I'm expecting. Maybe talk to her, find out what her buttons are, maybe turn her into an ally."

"A friendmaking mission?" That was a first. It wasn't the easiest request either.

"And, uh, if she talks shit about the league, or about us?"

"Then I want you to destroy her the only way you can. Be yourself. You're oil and water, Sam, and she just invited you into her own lair."