Supreme Astrolord Klonex's paled skin glittered in the light of the thunderbolt crackling into life around her Mindstaff.
She lowered the staff to the human's throat beneath her feet and spoke into his mind.
''We do not hate your kind, soft one. The oxygen in your planet can fuel our research into flammable gasses. Your little lungs breath too much.''
The human's mind was frantic, but as its eyes fixed on Klonex's, its final thought was Why can't I just live?
*Crackle*
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Klonex sighed. She rolled her Mindstaff between her powerful, leathery fingers.
The technique to craft the shock absorbing Obsidian shaft was learned through the minds of Dawlish Dwarf Lords. Now extinct. They used too much Obsidian.
The smelted phosphorous alloy of the staff dome, allowing her thoughts to be projected ever further, was developed by a combination of Erilon 7 mining techniques and Gumban alchemy. The people of Erilon 7 were incredibly helpful, but their equipment would have taken far too long to reproduce. Claiming it instead was far more economical. Gumbans were just annoying. Little whiny things.
These civilizations were necessary casualties. Klonex's mother, Supreme Astrolord Poknella taught Klonex how to be a true leader of the Ancestors. We serve the universe. We can technologically advance all the peoples in all the galaxies. We can comprehend anything. We can understand any technological or scientific breakthrough discovered and created by the lesser races. We can implement them better than the race that envisioned them, because we can see how they connect to the knowledge of all the other races. It makes no sense, no sense at all, to let them waste their resources on hapless ventures, when we can use those resources to much greater effect.
All this, Klonex knew. Yet she was unsatisfied today.
Why can't I just live?
The humans hadn't offered much. Wheels and sundials mostly. Klonex didn't admire them like other races. In her opinion, they weren't yet technologically ripe, give them a few millennia longer and they might surprise us, but as it is there wasn't much to be gained. Her resourcing general however, claimed their wet little planet was fit to bursting with natural elemental resources. ''Their minds aren't ripe.'' He had mused, ''But their planet is.''
Yes, their minds weren't ripe, and yet... when she delved into one of their scared little heads, Klonex found them oddly fascinating. From what she gleaned of their nature, it seemed as though they didn't care that their minds were not being used to full effect. She watched one kicking a rock against a bigger rock for four hours, researching what he had hoped to achieve. Was it fire? Was it stonework? Finally she could take it no longer and delved into the human's mind.
''What are you hoping to achieve?''
The human looked at her... I... I like to hit that little white mark... I... I am just trying to hit it 4 times in a row, because the most I have managed is 3
*Crackle*
At the time she had killed the human simply because she thought him broken. Now... she wasn't so sure. They seemed to enjoy... stupidity.
Why can't I just live?
Suddenly, Klonex put her head through her Mindstaff and called out to the Ancestor fleet. ''We are withdrawing. Let the humans have their strange fun.'' She paused and then added, ''Show them how to make fire first. Help them get started.''
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Ancestors. I have gathered our fleet here for a reason. Next to this dying star even we are dwarfed. I have a proposal... no, I have a command.
We have become stupid. We are the most intelligent creatures in the cosmos, yet we are plagiarising, kleptomanical idiots. We hear the thoughts of millions, yet are thoughtless.
Look around you. Name one thing, one thing, which we invented ourselves. Even the language we communicate in is not our own, we replaced our own linguistic heritage when we found a civilization with a more expressive language than our own.
I looked at humans today. Dumb, pink, fleshy humans. I found something I could not comprehend. Contentment. I am not content with my Mindstaff, my energy, my language being the ideas of another. I want to force myself to think my own thoughts.
That star dies in 20 minutes. I have placed several artifacts around the cosmos, mapping and evaluating every detail of this universe. When that star dies, it will create a black hole. We learned on Gordinak's 3rd moon that through a black hole is an alternate dimension formed by whatever the first light it absorbs is.
When that star dies, I will project an image of this entire universe directly into the black hole. We shall have our own universe, and whatever we create, whatever we discover... will be our own.
