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            “Have they all left yet?”

            “I think so, I swore I saw the last shuttle leave a few minutes ago, rising in the east.”

            The two people left were sitting in a hastily constructed nest of metal grills and girders, which sat atop a line of rocks much like a birds nest. The questioning one was a huge and ancient Galen, he like his companion were amongst the early elderly, who seemingly got more alive as they aged. The other was a willowy old human, his slender form was perhaps the opposite of the old galen, unlike most of his contemporaries he wore his hair in silver wisps, quite unkempt. Why these two senior gentlemen were left on the ground, whilst their ground crews sort of altitude was a little complex, mostly it was fear, and secondarily it was because of the seniority. At some particular moments they believed that if they died now they had at least had a long life.

            The metal gantry was suspended on stilts hanging mostly above the rocks of the ridge overlooking the wooded valley, but beside them the highest spire of sand coloured rock reflected the afternoon light upon them if it was not for the gentle breeze at this height then the heat and glare might have been uncomfortable. The two Gentlemen were now seated after the willowy one was complete leaning over the side of the railing checking the situation. It was quite necessary to manually check everyone had left, because what they were about to do was quite possibly dangerous, and more importantly no one knew what was going to happen. The technical crew who had been assembling all their equipment had no keen wish to stay and observe, as far as they were concerned their work was done.

            “I think we are ready, are all the shuttles beyond the atmosphere? I don’t think we should start before everyone is a good long way away.”

            “The last shuttle is only at 240km, I think we should give them a few more minutes, it’ll give us time for the computers to check the equipment, and for us to have a little drink.”

            Though the bird’s nest of metal was perhaps the most visible piece of equipment, there were in fact many other pieces scattered on this crest that divided the jungle below. Most of the equipment shared the same design, a kind of hemispherical turret, some had by now bloomed open, the outer panels peeling back like a flower to reveal the lenses and apertures of the instruments beneath, other turrets were still locked down and immobile. Aside from these instrument mounts there were other things, mostly dominated by the big aerials and dishes, most of which were actually for transmitting a pre-defined signal, rather than beaming up information to the orbital stations.

            The old galen had by now magically appeared a large ornate bottle, which he was trying to unscrew the top off, it was of course alcoholic, though precisely where he had hidden the bottle in the gantry, and how he had managed to secret it there was unclear. Galen regularly indulged in alcoholic drinks, in fact nearly always consumed something alcoholic, this of course was not because of vice, but because Galen biochemistry treats alcohol as nothing but another fuel source, however this drink was not entirely benign to the Galen, and can be generally thought of as a stiff drink. To the human of course this drink represented happy oblivion in excess, but not enough to deter him from taking a swig. It was if one did not know the program, a remarkably nice afternoon, the dogged look on the two remaining faces on the scene saw beyond the strange calls of the aviforms, and the beautiful scenery. They were if you had the experience, portraying almost exactly the faces of those who after years of dutiful service within the laboratory were now forced outside in the weather to do field work, the look that embodied loathing of the variability and chaos of real life. Though this was pretty much true of these two, it really represented the fact that their hard work over the last years was in fact approaching verification, in an environment which they had little control over. In addition they had no idea what was exactly going to happen, a fiercely unscientific situation which required the additional chemical support.

            “Ready?” The old galen said, his tone of voice suggested no hurry.

            “As good a time as ever” the human paused for a moment, and then continued “I wish we knew what was going to happen, if I die I’m blaming you.”

            There was another pause, as both parties tried to remember the little cultural differences between their different races.

            “I realize I made an inconsistency there”

            “Ah, good…”

            “Just one of those things you say… you know, like I’m fine, or, it could be worse.”

            The entire experiment was in fact based on some very limited studies. The goal was to communicate with the nanological entity that was entwined with the biology and the earth of Tempes. After literally years of research, something which in today’s age of near instant analysis thanks to immense processing power was all but gone, they had cracked some of the way that the nanological units communicated. The theories were about to be tested, complex arrays of antennas were about to transmit across the whole radio and microwave frequencies, from wavelengths kilometers long, to mere milimetres. They had learnt enough to begin to comprehend how the machines used these frequencies, they hoped that their program would provoke a response, but well in the knowledge that they had no idea how to communicate ideas exactly. It was quite likely that this diverse machine entity had no traditional sense of language, and the fundamental differences between them and the machine might not be easily reconciled.

            “Shall we make a start?”

            “I’ll let you press the big button”

            To the human’s surprise he just pressed the button, this was perhaps an extension of his colleagues way of taking things literally, but frankly it was probably too easy to dither about it, best over and done with. The radio and microwave transmissions were of course being transmitted silently, but the frequencies had been scaled and were now being repeated to the operators in an audio format. The gently modulating frequencies were in fact quite pleasing to the ear, despite the harsh tones these melodies were being played on.

            Nothing seemed to be happening, this was one of the good scenarios, this state of affairs continued for several minutes until his colleague spotted something.

            “Look” he pointed towards the sun lit stone next to their position. The coarse weathered surface was in fact beginning to shine metallically. “It’s beading up like mercury” this was in fact a very accurate description, the metallic beads were growing on the rock surface, just like mercury.

            “I wish you had not pointed that out, shall I call up shielding?”

            “Yeah, it looks like whatever is going to happen is going to happen soon”

            Around them on the rock faces the little beads of metal ran together into even larger spheres, concentrating their combined processing power, on some of the larger ones, little lines of blue-white light crawled over their surfaces, only beginning to hint at the energies and information being processed inside.

            “Hurry some of it is trying to crawl up the slip-coat surface on the gantry-”

            “-it’s ok, ‘it’s ok”

            There was a slight jolt as the frame they were sitting in rose a few millimeters as the field slid between the nest and its support, this sphere of shields although transparent to the optical wavelengths was opaque to microwave and radio frequencies, hopefully preventing any nanotech inside from continuing to function, similar fields were beginning to flick over the instrument mounts, the only sign of this happening was from the slight jolt from their instruments.

            “Just ran a check, nothing nasty inside here with us, though I’ve just lost comms with a sensor mount, a optic line malfunction.”

            “Sounds a bit suspect.”

            Outside the surfaces of the spheres roiled in blue white light, and them immediately stopped, their surfaces becoming still and all light extinguished. Both of the observers were paying attention when this happened.

            “What just happened? You think they managed to pull together enough processing power to work out we’re just trying to provoke them.”

            “Weird, are those spheres getting any smaller?”

            “Not to my eye, you would think they would just melt back into the rock.”

            “I don’t like this its too quiet.”

            So they ended up both sitting there, enshielded and separated from events, waiting for something to happen. What had happened so far could not have been the total sum of the reaction, though how long would they have to wait for this to be confirmed.

            “How long are we going to have to sit here” The Old galen rumbled.

            “You don’t think they are going to wait until our shields fail do you, that’ll take days” Somehow the bottle stowed away would probably not be sufficient nourishment, though quite certainly the time would pass away quickly. “Wait a second, I’ve got something interesting, local microwave and radio has been slowly ramping since the event started, I think we could reasonably expect a decline now if all had finished.”

“Delayed response? The signal is growing logarithmically now, have you seen readings like this before?”

Unlike the galen, who had spent most of his work in the theoretical, the man had probably qualified as a resident by the number of hours he had spent on the surface. So far in his experiences he had missed some of the most spectacular observed events on Tempes he had always put this down to bad luck, now it seemed like he was going to paid back, many times over. He was not relishing his immediate future, sometimes even Tempes takes a life.

“No never,” his voice hushed “never.” This was in fact a lie, very rarely the planet did have these radio storms, but it was true to say that no-one had ever experienced them first hand.

“Getting some seismic now, doesn’t look natural, but its big for nanotech.” In the galen’s mind he pictured thousands, perhaps millions of tones of the liquid metal rushing and pooling in the ground beneath him. Such a mass had an astronomic computing power, if computing power were all that was required, even the most strenuous of tasks could be accomplished by a far more modest amount, whatever was pooling was certainly going to a do a lot more than think.

“Getting a seismic focus on the valley floor in front of us, looks like we’ve got the best seats in the house” both of their hands had long since resigned to the frantic motions of organizing their workspaces, by now they had surpassed some kind of crisis point, and both had moved into using the displays through neural interface, “Whoa, that’s a big spike, I would love to think that’s natural.”

“Two spikes,” the galen said, “two spikes, split a fraction of a second apart”

Deep beneath the valley floor the nanotech was streaming in through the faults in the rock, but to gain sufficient density, the rock was slowly being pushed aside. “More, four or five at least. And another round, this really is turning out to be something.” The pooling nanotech was gaining the working volume to change it’s surroundings, pushing aside rock and creating its own structures, already intellects far greater than any conceived by man were orchestrating deep below the ground.

In the valley floor below, a rising cloud of dust suddenly grew spires of rock, a dozen slanted pinnacles thrusting radially outwards. Creating a ring of spikes like some great crown.

            “Dear God. This is serious brown trousers time.” The length of the rock pinnacles could have been supported by the native rock, it would have fell apart in huge boulders, but its surfaces now mirroring the sunlight betrayed the nanotechnological support. Another seismic salvo heralded a second set of concentric spikes around the last, the rock gliding out of the ground like unsheathed claws. “Just when I thought it could not get any worse…”

            “Although I have not spoken, I assure you that I feel exactly the same way” the galen said, an event as spectacular as this required a kind of running commentary. “This’ll worry you, but I am picking up a spatial distortion.”

            “Well that’s never happened before, the nanite I knew were never capable of spatial distortion.”

            “I think I can safely say that you have never worked with nanites on this scale before, do you reckon they are intrinsically capable of it, or that they have just built from the rock?”

            “I have no idea,” the man’s voice distant. From their vantage point the rock spires only occupied a few degrees of their vision, but there was a dawning realization that megatonnes, perhaps a much larger volume of rock had just slided obediently out of the ground to form these structures, spires hundreds of metres long. They were both sharing that particular moment when the difference between the power of a man and a machine became apparent, the unfolding events were simply beyond human scale. A hurriedly constructed monitoring system warned them that the local nanotech had began to start up again.

            “Trouble at home, those spheres are thinking again.” The white lines idly spread over the globes, like slow lightning. “I wish I knew what was happening” In the far distance loops of silver played over the spikes, part metallic from the nanotech, part luminous from the power and the information they conveyed, even nearby some of the spheres distorted sending forth tendrils to probe the gantry, “steady there, someone is getting inquisitive.” Threads of metal were playing across the outside of the field, recoiling from the contact, growing around them like some curious silver tendrilled plant.

            At the center of the crown of spires a central mass was taking shape, to be visible from this distance it had to be tens of meters across, it seemed to be fed from an upwelling column of metal rounding out at the top forming a sphere, it had already began to receive and extend prominences from the surrounding peaks. The combined luminescence of this activity was beginning to trace flickering shadows against the natural sunlight even from this distance.

            “I’m getting nonsense data from the down sensor platform, comms flickering in and out of clarity, I think someone is seeing how we work.”

            “Leave the link, I rather them play with that than try and break in here, this is already far too intimate for my taste.” At this particular moment a flash of light emanated from the center of the circle, the hanging sphere already bloated from its rapid growth dulled, and then expanded. The way it expanded was curious, its outermost layer exfoliated off in a number of thin sheets, drifting away from the center regardless to gravity or wind, as each plate broke off another layer would crack and flake away. Though this detail could only be seen by the instruments, the sphere had appeared to grow greatly already, and it was only the overlap between the expanding sheets that gave it its optical solidity.

            “I was not expecting that.” The galen could not think of any follow up, “I really wasn’t”. The sphere was continuing to grow, its radius was such that soon it was going to contact the ground beneath it.

            “I wonder how far it is going to expand? Don’t look at me like that, it was an idle question.” A pause full of cogitation was lifted by “You don’t really think it’ll come this far do you?”

            For the next couple of minutes they silently observed its expansion, except for to perhaps comment on some variable in the data they were collecting. Although lacking the drama from before, the inexorable expansion of the dark sphere caught the attention, it continued to grow regardless of the terrain, or from speculation of its original volume. The outer surface was now made of literally millions of the wafer thin plates, and as it expanded new plates would seamlessly glide in to place maintaining the absolute surface of the growing form. They watched as the stone pinnacles slowly sunk into the expanding surface.

            “This would be a very good time to stop don’t you think” Secretly the waving tentacles of nanotech over their shields, continuously probing for any weak point was beginning to drive the poor old man insane. But still the sphere expanded. After a few minutes more the galen interrupted.

            “Its growing according to a inverse square function, if this keeps true we could be sitting here for some time if its going to expand to where we are.”

            “How far away is it now?”

            “Twelve hundred metres, closing at one metre per second at current.”

            “So we’ll be sitting here a while then?”

            They did in fact have to wait for over half an hour, which was just long enough to render down their last remaining reserves of courage into a apprehensive silence. The dull metal wall of the sphere had been gliding slowly up the hill for the last few minutes, and from their pinnacle it formed a solid wall encompassing all they could see ahead of them, the distance was diminished enough for them to see the plates on the shell.

            “Do you want me to do a countdown” the galen said.

            “I rather you didn’t,” the wall was certainly only a few seconds away now, “if you survive, just remember I did not want to be here.”

            “Same applies to you, I can’t think of anything better at the moment” the wall was getting really close now “Get ready.”

            The black wall of the sphere deformed around the shield surround them, for a brief moment the wall had wrapped all the way around them trapping them in an artificial starless night, but the black sheets in front of them began to peel away layer by layer, at first only a few gaps were visible showing tantalizing violet light on the other side, but more and more fell away showing the night inside the sphere.

            “I nearly forgot to breathe just then.”

            The black wall of the sphere was still growing behind them, but inside was mostly free space, lit by an eery blue-white glow, in the air above them sheets of the black material races away from the center towards the growing edge, some times groups of several dozen would soar by like two dimensional flocks. The landscape below looked much the same, though the light had reduced the verdant forest canopy into a sheet of brooding dark shapes.

            “So what now do you think?”

            “I am actually trying to confirm I haven’t died.”

            The crown so far away was now awash with a bright light, the flares and prominences which had before leaped between them far more closely resembled the ones on real stars, being almost too incandescent to look at, the suspended center was also a bright point or light, though its luminescence was unstable, flickering like light through the surface of the sea.

            “Getting back to my sensors now,” the galen said, “you simply wont believe the distortion signatures in the center of that thing, every kind of energy you can think of, radiative, distortional hell even mass signatures is going crazy in the center of that.”

            “Suggestions?” the human asked “Any references to near death experiences and light filled tunnels will not be well taken at this point.”

            “Singularity, wormhole terminus, trans-D?”

            “Yeah ok, can we pin in it down specifically?”

            “I can try”

            The flickering core grew brighter, not greatly so but enough to be noticeable, it then returned to its original luminosity but now at the center of the crown were two points, the new, and fainter one began to spiral away from the focus, in the passing few seconds, another two were nearly created simultaneously just a fraction of a second apart.

            “Ok, this is just getting weirder, first the crown, then the sphere and now this? Too much. Just too much.”

            “I think I can confidently say those points are wormhole termini though I still can’t pin down the middle one, I think its some kind of trans-D thing, it does obscene things to spacetime when one of those little points are made.”

            By now a whole galaxy of little light floated in the center.

            “If I may be permitted a bold hypothesis, but these wormholes may be linked to other worlds, there is mass coming out of them anyway.”

            “I was thinking something similar, because you know that in some way this world is alive, perhaps it’s calling on its friends for assistance in giving a response.”

            “Usually I would cite the fact that different races really do think in alien ways, but the same thought had occurred to me, I just want to know what would have happened if we had tried to run away.” The lights in the center of the circle were shifting, although they spiraled as they did before there was a subtle sense of order now “Did you see that, you know the lights? Oh my!” in the space it took for him to describe the phenomena the lights had shifted transiently through a perfect geometric alignment.

            The old man did see the very same moment, but he was becoming increasingly concerned by fluctuations on the hydrogen frequency, “I think someone is trying to say hello.” In front of them the lights soared outwards, whilst expanding their curved paths managed to depict several regular polyhedra. “You wish you had run away now?”

            “Over my dead body”

            Though both the men were pretty much on the knife edge of having a mental breakdown, the shield shell resonated to their laughter, outside the lights began pairing into little groups orbiting each other like little solar systems.