BC3F4A spoke to Mother in waves of color, using motion instead of sound.

"DEPENDABLE AQUIFEROUS SUBSTRATE. (Approximate) USABLE SURFACE - TWENTY-FIVE (percent)."

For nearly four hundred years, F8EFCE had been known as Mother on Settlement 248-239-206. As the current leader of her species, all Harvesters reported to her. And the report BC3F4A gave pleased her. A usable underwater surface of only one quarter of a planet was not a large amount, but it met the criteria for habitat cultivation.

BC3F4A viewed her home settlement through the eyes of a stranger, having been on harvest duty for one hundred years. She was the first to come back with a report on a planet that held any reason for promise, one called 180-560-680. Still, she was tainted with disdain. Settlement 246-239-206 had lasted all of 400,000 years—a drop in the bucket when compared to age of the Empire. The settlement before 248-239-206, where Mother's gene line originated, had lasted twice as long. Now, with its scant usable underwater surface and the wasteful ways of BC3F4A's horde, 180-560-680 would be lucky to last 100,000 years.

And then what? The descendants of that planet's Mother would birth another cadre of Harvesters, to find another world to infect and destroy. This is where BC3F4A turned her disdain into rage. Due to her status as Original Harvester of Settlement 180-560-680, she would become the new Mother of her species, yet the reign of her kin would not last but for a fracion of the time that Mothers of ages past had enjoyed.

Indolence affected her species. According to legend, as their lifespan grew tenfold and more over eons, now surpassing four hundred years, their numbers dwindled in kind. And with only a thousand millenium before 180-560-680 must be abandoned, their population will no doubt dwindle more.

Oh! The indigenous primary lifeform of the planet BC3F4A had chosen to harvest! With them, her disdain turned to envy. Their lifespan was measured in decades, perhap seven or eight if they were lucky, with a usable range of only a third. Why, it took longer for her kind to digest a meal! During her grooming of the primary lifeform, governments fell under the guidance of her claw. She steered them to wage war on one another, as a way of solidifying her command. The winners of the last war she had started now trusted her brethren completely. As such, it became time to betray them. Not all at once, nor even quickly, at least not in the time frame of their feeble minds. Yet inexorably, undeniably, over the next one hundred millennium, 180-560-680 would be turned to a wasteland. Its inhabitants would die off as BC3F4A and her kin ravished its resources, then left it dead and barren, to infect another world.

One of her brethren, 285790, held a different point of view. He turned his disdain toward compassion. He would run counter to the wishes of his kin, and take sides with the primary lifeform. For all intents and purposes, BC3F4A encouraged him to do it. A challenge to her rule could be mounted, as a way to bring some excitement to what was otherwise a dull and droll task.

She sent him on a routine scouting mission to observe the primary winner of the Great War. His task was to see how their use of atomic fission as a means of destroying themselves was advancing. Upon noticing a deviation in his flight plan, she hailed him by swirling a message on his ship's heads up display.

"BOOM BOOM."

"GOING DOWN," he swirled back.

"(Shall I) CALL SHIPS (for backup?)" she asked, as her sensors indicated that he was approaching the point where the primary lifeform's primitive radar might notice him.

"KISS A COP," he swirled back as an insult. "(I'm) GOING WAY DOWN (to land.)"

"YOU ARE DONE, SIR!" she replied, bristling at his indignation. She knew for certain he was going to die, as his ship had no way of landing on the non-water surface of a planet.

"BOOM BOOM," he swirled back, signing off.

A teletype dated July 8, 1947, from General Blanchard of the United States Eighth Air Force Division to the Dallas headquarters of the FBI spelled out a plausible explanation for the crash.

The 509th Bomber Squadron of the Roswell Army Airfield has reported the crash and recovery of a flying disc. It is confirmed to be an experimental aircraft, hexagonal in shape and 30 meters long. There were no survivors.

If there's one thing humans do better than Spitfires, it's lie. Even if, after seventy years, all we do is lie to ourselves, saying everything will be all right. But one thing I know is for certain. This is where we as humans say, 'Our time is now.'

The Spitfires told us to trust them, and be subservient to them. We had only to wait a little longer, and grow up a little bit more. And while we waited, they said, they'd give us so many things. And they did! Microwave ovens and medical miracles. They gave us transistors and computers and wide screen TVs.

All they wanted from us was our oceans.

Unknown to every one of those scaly, back-stabbing frogs, Saint Charles survived when he crashed his refractive ass in Roswell back in—what was it? 1947? The docs fixed him up nice. The geeks even fixed his tablet, so he could talk to us in swirly pictures.

And did he ever paint pretty pictures! Swirls of mist and rainbows, all dark and gloomy gray. Images that told of the Spitfire's disgust for us mealy bipeds, that crawled by the billions on the Earth.

We should've known that they despised us, long before Saint Charles came. The frogs don't even have a real mother, what with being born in communal sacs and all.

I'm surprised they didn't come here to eat us.

It seems the Spitfires, according to Saint Charles, forgot to let us know that they need to warm our oceans by another ten degrees Celsius or so. Maybe if they'd learn how to generate body heat, they wouldn"t be so cold all the damn time.

So we painted pictures of our own, on tablets of our own design, rife with our lies and gifts of subterfuge.

Today, I'm the one who paints those pictures. I am the fifth Saint George.

United States Air Force General Leon Michael Porter, Director of Interplanetary Intelligence, Earth Control Unit, reporting for duty, Sir!