The Arcturian swarm cruised leisurely past the orbit of the moon. Broodmother Threem, wings flapping rapidly, looked back at her worker-children. “Our destination is fast approaching. Is everyone prepared?” she asked.
A score of heads nodded in unison. They were all excited to officially make contact with the humans, who by all accounts were one of the kindest and most peaceful species in the galaxy. When the Tenth Broodmother Queen had crash landed on Earth four hundred years ago, it was the humans who had nursed her back to health. It had taken her centuries to fly back to the Central Hive and nearly as long for the swarm to be mustered, but they were finally ready to officially welcome humans into the galactic community.
A drone sped to the front of the group, antennae twitching rapidly. “Broodmother, we have a grave problem!” The broodmother and all the workers stared at him in surprise. “It’s the humans! Our scouts have discovered that a terrible fate has befallen them—they’ve been enslaved by the horrid Metalline Entities!”
As the broodmother’s wings skipped a beat from shock, the drone called his companions. Each no larger than a pixel, they lined up in their thousands and glowed in unison, forming a living screen. “Behold, the pride of the Metalline Entities knows no bounds. They have forced the humans to build great monuments to them, covering Earth with statues to their grandeur.”
The broodmother’s faceted eyes glimmered in shock as the drones formed an image of construction workers building a skyscraper. “How could this be?” cried Broodmother Threem.
“It gets worse. As most of the Metallines are unable or unwilling to move by themselves, they demand that their servants chauffeur them from place to place.” The drones displayed an image of a new metal beast and its captive human. “This entity is called a ‘car’. It has caged a human inside itself and is forcing her to drive it around.” The picture changed again, this time showing a crowd of cars in gridlock. “Our scouts have found that cars tend to throng together, forcing their slaves to accompany them and remain captive for long hours.”
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“Those poor souls!” hissed the broodmother. “They look so frustrated and miserable.”
“Indeed, their lives are filled with misery. But that brings us to the most insidious plot of the Metallines. In order to quell the possibility of rebellion, they have found a way to hack the human brain. An entire subspecies of Metalline Entities has been developed to take advantage of this, producing hypnotic patterns that function as a drug to the human mind. Most slaves are so addicted that as soon as they finish a day’s toil, they immediately turn to these Metallines, forgoing and even shunning conversation with other humans in favor of spending time with these wicked slabs of metal.”
The living screen of drones began to ripple, showing images of smartphones and laptops. “Even those who are enslaved to these ‘screens’ and spend all day working in front of them are not immune to this addiction. At the end of the day, they look for comfort in the very makers of their misery,” the drone added sadly.
Broodmother Threem wailed, unable to take such appalling news. She and her swarm descended to the surface of Earth, proclaiming themselves the liberators of humankind and declaring an end to the tyranny of Metal. As Threem began to attack a car in order to free the human it was holding captive, another breed of Metalline called a ‘gun’ attacked the broodmother. But her carapace was stronger than the fleshy hide of a human, and she would not be so easily subdued. Buzzing with rage, she killed the gun and then turned to the slave who had been forced to carry it, who was now cowering on the ground. He would surely need time to recover and plenty of counseling to counteract the brainwashing of a lifetime of slavery, but at least he was now free.
Over the next decade, the Metallines waged a brutal war against the swarm to hold their dominion over Earth. Within their factories, the slaves worked overtime to breed more Metalline machines of war. Battleships and tanks resorted to such underhanded tactics of holding humans hostage inside them, and slave soldiers were sent out to die in their thousands. The casualties mounted on both sides, with untold numbers of slaves caught in the middle. But with each passing year more electric lights went dark, more radio towers were hunted down and executed, and the territory held by the Metallines shrunk. And eventually a day came when the last skyscraper was torn down, the last smartphone was trod into the dust, and the last human was freed from the tyranny of Metal.
