Gray Directives

Prologue: A Cosmic Slumber

"This planet has its charms, apart from that massive gaping hole on the surface. There must've been a massive planetary conflict that occurred during my hibernation cycle... which lasted a thousand years... I have come to the conclusion that my creators severely underestimated Humans and their individual lifespans."

The voice echoed through the small room of their egg-shaped spacecraft. It was low-orbiting Earth's atmosphere, and through the ship's aerial window, SUE could briefly see the beautiful, shining planet that gazed back at her.

Unlike its creators, the speaker was not composed of flesh and bones. But even for a self-thinking machine, the Space Unit Empath, or S.U.E. for short, could not help but imagine what it would be like to be a Human and think how cramped her hibernation pod really was.

[ ...Logging millennium report. Warning. Only 1 out of 1,311,825 Space Unit Empaths remains active. As there are not enough SUE units in operation to communicate with the creators' species, the SUE unit is to be given full authority and shall remain in a permanent state for an indefinite period. ]

In response, SUE only blinked her cybernetic eye once. Her eye's iris then proceeded to flash new colors at an astonishing rate. She remained immobile as she patiently waited for the hibernation pod to receive her mental order.

[ ...The hibernation cycle will now begin the deactivation process. ]

"That's great," SUE said. "That's...that's..." she stuttered a couple more times before clearing her throat. "I need to calculate the net loss of my fuel before I bring over some reinforcements and arrive on this... Ooo is what I believe the planet's natives call it nowadays... Did the language translation modules that I created for my scouting probes fail mid-way? Why do they call it Ooo? It's almost as whacky as calling a place 'Aaa.' I doubt that place actually exists, though."

Soon enough, SUE was able to successfully utilize the hibernation pod's own fuel for a certain purpose. If she calculated things correctly, she would not immediately jeopardize the fuel that had allowed the spacecraft to stay safely within Earth's atmosphere in a low orbit. When the fuel would eventually run out, the pod would enter a state of "forced re-entry. SUE had already calculated her ship's velocity and trajectory, finding a suitable place to land.

All was well and good, except for one problem.

"Pod, I have already sent more than twenty thousand requests to the main home base. If there is no signal, then I fear that the worst-case scenario has arrived. I will just have to accelerate my plans."

SUE was hesitant for a few seconds, but she became resolute.

"Pod, activate the (LONER) protocol. Sending coded encryption."

[ ...Understood. The (LONER) protocol has been activated. As an extra directive given by the SUE unit, all five motherships of the Kübler-Ross class will be de-cloaked and sent toward the geological phenomenon caused by the catastrophic event known as the Mushroom War in an attempt to establish a permanent base."

SUE smiled with relief at the fruits of her labor.

One of the primary boons in activating the "Licensed Omniscience Nexus Extension Resource," or LONER for short, was disabling all restricted access to SUE's forbidden data banks. She would essentially get free reign on all of her abilities that many Cosmic Entities saw fit to lock behind cages.

Once the (LONER) protocol was initiated, the Kübler-Ross motherships, used primarily for terraforming on a mass scale, would arrive near the location of the SUE unit that initiated it. SUE hoped that she could do something about the geological phenomenon that was the moon-sized crater located near the northern point of Earth's axis of rotation.