The ship floated in the blue hush of Neptune’s shadow, quiet as a secret. Inside, two beings watched Earth’s arteries pulse.
“Look,” Quorl said, nudging the feed into sharper resolution. “They’ve added twelve kilometers of blacktop since we started this scan.”
Vipp leaned in. The screen displayed a writhing tangle of cars crawling through a city at dawn, metallic skin glinting under the rising sun.
“They move with purpose,” Quorl murmured. “Observe their nesting formations—linear precision, no wasted motion. Elegant.”
Vipp squinted. “Is it elegance… or just a traffic jam?”
Quorl’s head swiveled slowly. “Do not let the noise distract you from the architecture.”
On the screen, a traffic helicopter circled, reporting congestion with all the weary resignation of a veteran diplomat. On the ground, vehicles honked in brief, barking bursts.
“Sound-based language,” Quorl said. “Short-range, possibly tonal. Primitive, but effective.”
Vipp frowned. “But… the soft ones. The bipeds. They keep crawling in and out of the machines. They feed them. Clean them. They even build them shelters.”
“Lice,” Quorl declared with a definitive click of his mandibles. “Highly industrious. Possibly bred for maintenance.”
“They pay money for them.”
“Currency exchanged between host and symbiont. It’s not unheard of.”
Vipp tilted his head, thinking. The screen showed a car wash now, soap foaming across a glossy black vehicle while a human leaned against a vending machine, sipping coffee.
“They… name them. Some paint eyes on the fronts.”
“Religious iconography,” Quorl said, tapping the translation log. “These are tribal totems. Painted identifications. Earthlings revere their mechanical gods.”
“Then why do they crash so often?”
Quorl gestured to another feed—an auto repair shop packed with limping sedans and limbless chassis. “Trial by combat. Weakness is purged. Survivors are restored by priest-lice.”
Vipp watched a mechanic rub his forehead, defeated by a stubborn bolt. The wrench slipped. He cursed.
“Strange rituals,” Vipp said.
“Strange to you,” Quorl corrected. “But the Metal Ones are clearly adapting their world. More roads, fewer forests. Asphalt veins spread like a neural net. It is only a matter of time before they complete the full planetary circuit.”
A silence passed between them. Earth rotated slowly on the screen, its skin etched with grids, veins, and restless chrome.
Vipp adjusted a dial. A new feed appeared—an aerial view of a shopping mall parking lot. Hundreds of vehicles lay motionless in the noonday sun.
“Are they… hibernating?”
Quorl didn’t answer at first. He stared, tapping his chin in thought. “Meditating, perhaps. A synchronized ritual. Or death rites.”
Vipp raised an eyebrow. “Death rites that end when someone hits the unlock button?”
“I said perhaps.”
Vipp turned away from the screen, glancing out the viewport. “Should we make contact? Offer resources? Warn them of interstellar traffic law?”
Quorl clasped his hands behind his back. “Too soon. Their roads are incomplete. Their governance still fractured. They war constantly—Ford versus Toyota, sedan versus SUV. But when their highways fuse and form a planetary circuit…”
He trailed off, reverent.
Vipp’s eyes followed Earth’s horizon. Roads crisscrossed like scars, widening every year.
“When?” he asked.
“Extrapolating current rates of road construction, about three hundred solar rotations,” Quorl said.
“And if the flesh-lice revolt in the meantime?”
“Then the Metal Ones will crush them. Slowly, but with good traction.”
They turned away from the screen. Behind them, Earth buzzed faintly—gears spinning, engines rumbling, cities exhaling CO₂ like nervous breath.
The aliens set a return course.
The cars had more work to do.
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