Chapter 81

"Please do Scotty. I'm floundering around a little here. I guess I don't really know where to start."

"I think I should let you know what kinds of things drones usually do for emerging civilizations who use them. You should understand though there is no precedent for a civilization exactly like yours.

"No civilization has had the type of communication that you have before. There will probably be many things the instantaneous communication you have will enable, things that haven't been possible before.

"I'm starting with something which hasn't been possible before, but might be important. I think the first thing we need to do is ask the Aliens to leave the other two drones in orbit around earth also.

"It won't make any difference to their effectiveness for protecting this system from interlopers and it will help to have some of their sensors trained on earth.

"If we are all spread out equally around earth our gravitational effect will be attenuated and we will have fulltime sensor coverage for all the earth. This arrangement will also facilitate transportation from one side of earth to the other.

"The additional sensor coverage will make weather forecasting easier and it will also allow us to provide fire protection for the entire earth. If we notice a fire we will be able to extinguish it before significant damage has occurred.

"It will also help us clean up the surface, as you will surely want us to do. Garbage collection is always an onerous task for any civilization, but we can take care of it with no problems. We can easily collect discarded items and sort them for recycling or reuse. We can also aid greatly in repairing forestation that has been devastated by previous resource collection.

"I might also add that we can be a boon to archeologist and historians by retrieving specimens they could never find or could only recover by extremely painstaking work.

"We are able to make three dimensional representations of the locations of these artifacts and then remove them for study with less trouble and greater care than can be achieved by manual retrieval.

"For instance, my sensors have already located several frozen remains in glaciers that would probably not have ever been located any other way.

"If it becomes necessary to obtain petrochemicals or minerals from the earth we can do it in seconds without the bother of drilling or mining. We can perform most of the work of growing and harvesting crops and we can even deal with insect infestations without the use of pesticides. We can simply collect the majority of pest and process their biochemicals for other uses.

"We can also take better care of the livestock than humans ever can and when the time comes we can process the livestock much more easily," Scotty said.

These were things I hadn't even considered. Probably because the technology was so advanced I hadn't even considered using it for mundane task.

"I can see there is more to this than I could have imagined Scotty. Please ask the Aliens to position the other drones as you determine will be best. I'm assuming they won't forbid our using them."

"I'm sure they won't. We are all practically identical. It would be senseless to spread them over the system merely to have them wait for intruders which will almost surely not come.