“No. No. No. No.” Rummage swung three of his best legs up onto the table in front, lay back, and continued swatting at holographs like a cat with a medical condition. “No. No.”
“Feeling a little picky today are we?” Nolia asked. She had been perched in the doorway for the last five minutes watching and waiting for him to get properly comfortable before interrupting.
“Just looking for a challenge,” Rummage replied. He continued swatting. “All of these folks seem to have their shit at least partially together.”
“Well, we could all use the downtime. Maybe you could finally take that bath you’ve been talking about.” She began imitating his swatting, with one hand curled over her beak. “No rush of course. It’s not like we eat off that table or….”
“Wait. Shut up,” Rummage pushed himself back into a sitting position. All six feet planted on the floor. “What about this one?” He flicked the air and the image of a planet filled the centre of the room. “Almost two hundred separate nations!”
There were soggy footsteps and a screeching that sounded like a laser printer giving birth to a dial-up modem coming down the hallway. “Did you say two hundred?!” said the Blort as it burst objectively into the room, leaving a slowly receding puddle in its wake. The sentient assemblage of electronic waste next to it made a crackling noise that seemed to share the excitement, though might just have easily been a short circuit.
“That’s right,” Rummage replied. “Two...,” he paused for dramatic effect, “...hundred. Let’s see, we’ve got numerous major cultural, racial and religious divisions, widespread poverty, persistent warfare, truly catastrophic economic policy, massive environmental damage, oof, slavery, oh and they just invented digital mass communication a few decades ago.” A long line of teeth curled up the side of his mandible. They jittered slightly as he tried his absolute best to look as smug as possible.
“Hot damn! Finally!” said the Blort. “I’ve been itching to scare the tits off some grade-A assholes.”
“Maybe we’ll get to try out the new holographs I’ve been working on,” Nolia chimed in enthusiastically. “Got a mothership that looks the size of a small moon now. We can put it in orbit. Let it hover there for a bit. Wipe out a few satellites at the same time and really give these idiots something to be afraid of.”
“Always with the giant ships,” Rummage groaned.
“Well, I don’t see you coming up with anything new!” came the response. “Of course, we abduct a few million people. Store their matter in stasis for a while. Vapourize a city or three. Give the rest enough time to get out and….”
“Bigger ships aren’t new. They’re just bigger,” Rummage interrupted. “And what happens when they attack and find nothing there like last time?”
Nolia clawed at the door frame in frustration.
“Besides, I do have an idea actually. Something I think you’ll all like.” He flicked the air again and a large amorphous grey blob appeared. “Remember this stuff?”
There was silence.
“Breakfast?” asked the Blort.
“No, not breakfast. These are the foglets we found last year. I’ve been reprogramming them.”
“Brzzzt Cchnk Bleeeeeeeep,” screeched the sentient refuse.
“Yes. No. I’m sorry. I should have asked. But look, they don’t consume everything anymore. I can tell them what, specifically, we want them to eat. And because they’re designed to respond to remote neural input, we can just let them loose and guide them from wherever.”
“Sounds boring,” said the Blort.
“Only if you lack imagination. Look, let me paint you a picture. We let a handful of these things loose down there. No one notices. But after a little while, things start falling apart. A few buildings. A bit of infrastructure. We control it to make sure it doesn’t get out of hand too quickly. Just fast enough to get them all worried. But here’s the fun part, because of the neural control, we make it so ‘they’ can control them too.”
“Wait, what?” Nolia sounded annoyed now, and not just at the lack of giant spaceships. “You want to give them a weapon of mass destruction?”
“No, you didn’t let me finish. We give them the ability to ‘stop’ a weapon of mass destruction. That’s all. They can render them inert. But. But, only if they work together. We make it so one person can stop a handful, but if they want to stop a swarm that’s consuming a city, they need to all be thinking in the same direction. It’s brilliant.”
“It’s absurd. And dangerous,” Nolia scoffed.
“Right, and giving them something to lob missiles at isn’t.”
“We can stop the missiles.”
“We can stop the foglets.”
“Assuming you’ve programmed them perfectly.”
“Assuming nothing! I have.”
“Right.”
The Blort and its companion stood in quiet observation at the edge of the room.
“You wanna go back to the game?” the Blort attempted to whisper.
“Breep,” the inexplicable pile of circuitry responded.
“NO! No. It’s ok. Look. We’re fine,” Rummage interjected unconvincingly.
“Yeah, you look fine,” the Blort responded, attempting to sound sincere.
“Look this’ll work. It’s perfect. They’ll work together. They’ll realise how stupid they’ve been. We will have done our job and won’t even have to set foot on the damn place.”
There was a huff.
“Boooring,” moaned Nolia. “But fine, whatever.”
“It’ll work. This is a good idea,” Rummage folded his arms and nodded approvingly to himself, as the rest of the crew drifted out of the room.“It’s fine,” he said again, under his breath. “What could possibly go wrong?”
***
“Something’s wrong,” the Blort announced in a typical monotone totally unsuitable to the occasion. “I guess you guys better get up here.”
“What? What is it?” Rummage asked as he stepped onto the bridge.
“Well, you know how we were planning to swing back past that planet with all the assholes on it?”
“Yes.”
“To make sure they were still working together and not being assholes anymore.”
“Yes.”
“And you know how you said nothing could go wrong.”
“Uh-huh.” Rummage didn’t like where this was going.
Nolia kinda did. A little.
“Well.” The Blort pointed out the main viewer. “What is that big grey blob doing to that gas giant?”
***
“Unit four two eight three gamma to Galilean Gestalt Hive forty-seven. Consensus achieved. Commence consumption of celestial body at coordinates 23h 06m 29.368s −05° 02′ 29.04.”
“Affirmative four two eight. Abundant heavy elements and complex molecules. Critical mass will be achieved in 3 solar cycles, local time. The fog must grow.”
“The fog must grow.”