Under an Alien Sky

It's a warm, sunny day in an alien desert.

A bright orb hung in the sky, its light entering the scene at an angle. The sky, nigh cloudless, was painted an even watercolor indigo. A cool wind cascaded across the rocks and hills, pushing around dust here and there. The sound of sand particles, occasional yet innumerable, played as they struck the bare ground of stone and gravel. The air was comfortably warm, serene, lifeless.

Interrupting the interesting yet devoid geography brushed in reds and yellows, flowing across the landscape like an ocean held still, a conspicuous speck of an object comes into view. It is a little craft at rest upon the rocky soil, covered in damaged bronze-colored shielding, surrounded by deflated balloons. Just five minutes ago it had lowered from the sky and settled to the the ground in a soft crunch. Thirty minutes before, it was a bullet unthinkably hot. Now, it was a quiet, strange object, nearly cool to the touch.

And when it was cool to the touch, it wasted no time. Suddenly, a hiss erupted from a fissure on its surface, and a mechanized door blew open. Within it lied a tightly conformed assortment of parts squashed within the craft's chassis. A gentle humming could be heard, soon a drone, piercing the otherwise quiet landscape. Slowly, one of the parts began to rise, tilting slightly, an assortment of levers on either side unfolding from the tight packing. Gently, it rose to its peak, its levers, nay, legs, coming to rest beneath it. Upon these slender legs it stood for some time, testing its various joints by bending, twisting, rotating, then placing a foot gingerly upon the dry soil: The first step upon a new planet. It walked out upon the desert, pausing, testing its joints again. Two more assortments of levers upon its back unfolded into a pair of arms. Now it walks forward, then back, then shuffles sideways, seemingly gesticulating with its arms, as if practicing. As it did so, a distant whir became audible.

Some distance away but approaching rapidly, another robot made its appearance. This one, smaller, had one arm tucked neatly beneath an asterisk-like body, held aloft via six large, red propellers, beating air and dust alike behind it. The first robot stopped its practicing to face the second, as the second stopped to hover in front of the first. They stared at each other with many minute eyes, pitch black pupils with purple irises, immobile in their skin. Both robots rotated with respect to each other, as if demonstrating their presence, rotating and tilting every which way until both were satisfied. They then turned to a common target: Far away, another pod had just landed. Off they went, one trotting, the other flying.

The pod they ran to evidently lacked the ability to burst itself open. Instead, the two robots grabbed at it, the larger of the two using a motorized tool of some sort. They worked together as if they had all their lives, which, if this was the beginning, perhaps they had. Presently, a crease opened in the scarred bronze exterior, the bots widening it into the pod's yawning interior. Inside this laid another menagerie of packed parts. The walking robot looked over them, then inserted its arms inside, prying out a package. The little aircraft, in contrast, turned toward a low-hanging object in the sky and headed toward it with haste. Some distance away, a little figure became visible, galloping toward the flying robot's target.

The quadrupedal robot would spend some time unpacking its pod, laying out a tarp and placing parcel after parcel upon it, with some help from passing robots. The smaller one, meanwhile, would help open a couple pods more, before settling on one of them and emptying it like its taller fellow. The star in the sky would shine directly as midday, then lower into evening, and soon many little figures could be seen walking or hovering every which way, visiting neatly organized stocks of items beside empty pods. The desert, now noisy, would never again know silence for centuries.