Ancient Robot World

As far as our … can tell, there has never been life on the planet they have ominously dubbed the "Observation Terminal". But there is no shortage of activity. The surface is densely built up, massive artificial structures placed upon the bare bedrock in neat, orderly rows that cover almost three quarters of the planet. Billions of mechanical drones maintain them, performing tasks ranging from menial clean-up to running highly-complex assembly lines.

Their exact purpose remains, however, unclear. Our … are preparing to send a team to the surface to investigate further.

As our … pass amongst them, the drones on the planet ignore their presence and continue going about their tasks. All efforts to communicate with the drones have failed, and even attempts to disrupt them produced no reactions - the drones simply rode roughshod over the interfering …, causing serious injury.

Since then, our … have shifted their focus to the programs steering the drones. Analysis of intercepted signals suggests there is an overarching system steering them. However, the encryption it uses is extremely sophisticated, and it has proven hard to find out more.

While our … have been unable to make further progress investigating the planet, a team has been investigating the array of objects spread across the system. There are over ten thousand of them, all told. Most of them are long and cylindrical devices that still seem to be operating - they are transmitting a signal towards the planet. Given their shape and the fact that they seem to be without exception pointed towards various points in our galaxy, we cannot escape the conclusion that this is an absurdly huge sensor array. But who could have built it?

In a daring move, our … managed to implant spyware into an access terminal to the drones' mainframe in a moment while no drones were nearby. The intrusion does not appear to have been detected yet. Our impression is of a highly sophisticated system - beyond even our own networks, probably - but one which did not anticipate the need to protect itself. No doubt the physical deterrence of the defense fleet was deemed sufficient. Nevertheless, the systems we are infiltrating are vast - a term which seems a gross understatement for this planetary system - so it will take some time to find out more.

It seems the automated systems in Ultima Vigilis are older than we can imagine. The data systems we have hacked do not give us any clues as to the identity or ultimate intentions of its creators, but the one thing we have managed to ascertain is that they arrived no less than 1.2 billion years ago, and departed soon after setting up the system as an observation post to surveil our entire galaxy.

Remarkably, the system is still operating even after all these years: the array of installations spread across the system are, it turns out, highly sophisticated sensors. They send a live feed to the planet, where the central operating system processes it into information the drones can save and store. Spurred on by shortages of space and matter, it appears that they have improved their data compression techniques with determination: the massive structures on the planet purport to contain the sum of all observations ever recorded. However, we cannot test this assertion, since the data is compressed well beyond our ability to decompress it.

Disturbingly, a reduced stream of "highlights" is still being broadcast into empty space. But surely no one is still listening, after all this time? Regardless, our programs are poised to take control of the drones. We may now shape the system to our imagination - if we dare.