Chapter Two

The Mighty Probe

The Krellic string left the sleeping probe just shy of the Moon. His automated systems kicked on and eventually placed him at a point away from the Earth just beyond the farthest of the worlds’ primitive satellites. When he awakened, seconds later at Earth, on what most of the inhabitants called 13 and 14 August 1977, the Krell’s programming instantly enhanced his personality.

No longer a humble “it” probe that dutifully served the Gorth and was a second class citizen compared to the Traveller, he became a male named The Probe, a long oppressed slave who’d finally had it with his masters, and, even more so, with “walking boss” Traveller. Although there were a quarter million probes and thousands of Travellers, Mimi had made him and his nemesis singular. She also deleted all ties he had with other probes and Travellers. She also selected male for his gender because her small study of the planet informed her that it was still guided by ancient instincts that were slow to dissolve.

Now the definition of self confidence, The Probe made an initial scan of the Earth and laughed. “Just the shithole I’ve been looking for.” And he was all smiles and sunshine inside when he thought about the “special beam” attachment he’d be sending to “asshole” (Traveller). The smiles and sunshine inside increased while The Probe digested the data from the blue world below.

One of the key components to the alteration of the probe’s personality had been a command that kept him from looking too hard at certain things–mainly anything that had to do with the Krell. Mimi knew that her little jest could easily fall apart if he began to compare the present to the past or located something in her actions that ran contrary to the probe’s fundamental programming. He knew about her but did not think about her in relation to the present. A simple deflection sub-program fixed that.

The new and improved Probe easily hacked the satellites and devoured the planet’s crude radio and television transmissions. In intelligent mammal lifeforms there are only so many possible languages; these tend to repeat themselves, not in symbols per say but in context. The Probe was equipped to understand languages of the seven types of intelligent life (so far located) in the galaxy. He was neither confused by context nor easily surprised.

In an effort to cut back on all the blather, The Probe eventually selected a single television station in the planet’s northern hemisphere for serious examination: KXKVI Channel 14 in Seattle, Washington, USA. On the day of 13 and 14 August 1977, non-affiliated KXKVI broadcast six straight hours of something called “Superstar Wrestling.” Other than noting that the Nuclear Age had already begun on Earth and yet there was virtually no sign of integrated circuit technology, what aired that day on KXKVI only bolstered The Probe’s certainty about his plan.

Superstar Wrestling that won his heart. It was something new that existed only in this world. The Probe understood it was not “real” but was a strange theatre that most people looked down on (or so those people claimed). Probe was all in for wrestling and happily discovered that it was broadcasted from all over the world. After listening to several wrestler interviews (the best featured Lumberjack Luke who called the audience a bunch of “pig farmers”) he began to refer to himself as The Mighty Probe. At the end of the show, he quit KXKVI and began the “mark protocol.”

According to The Mighty Probe, the Traveller was thirty-two light years away. Although the string beam would reach her instantly, Traveller was the same as an organic lifeform and could not go faster than light speed. The time frame of thirty-two years meant nothing to the Probe or Traveller, who had been in service for tens of thousands of centuries, but for the stunningly short-lived creatures on the world below it was a long time. The deal was the same for Traveller, who, despite being kidnapped, would experience even far less time due to relativity. Still, it pleased The Mighty Probe that his actions were dictated to her by him and that she had no choice but to obey. Lovely word, obey, as long as one is on the right side of it.

For one brief moment, “probe” almost resurfaced as he marked the beam. The return to a mundane task almost caused his former self to reconsider the situation. But Mimi protected the project from that sort of thing with an image of Traveller laughing at the silly probe. She knew that probes had a much bigger grievance against Travellers than they had ever admitted to. Actually it was more of a hunch, but a good one.

He imagined Traveller laughing at him, daring to  call The Mighty probe a pig farmer. Oh fuck no! The precaution worked even better than Mimi had dared to dream. And it was The Mighty Probe who laughed as he finished preparing the loaded beam, bounced it off Earth, “caught it” and flung it to Traveller.

The beam was merely information, much like an email, but it came without the usual announcement, which allowed the tractor beam concealed within the millisecond it needed to latch onto Traveller before her reaction system could do anything about it (a sort of spam filter). And also within the beam was a link to the consciousness of a single human being. Trickery is almost unheard of in space, this made the whole affair (which the Mighty Probe believed was his idea) especially tasty.

Upon completing his task, the Mighty Probe settled down to watch more wrestling, which went well with the glow of his magnificence.

On a side note, of interest only to Earthlings, radio waves were shredded from the beam when the back end of the string snapped shut, way the hell out, about two light days from where he had launched the thing. If he had set it to snap where he was the entire planet would have run like a bell due to space warpage. All that came back was a normal, meaningless “leakage” of radio waves that replicated the coordinates. And although little came from it, The Mighty Probe would later be pleased because his actions had caused the famous “Wow! Signal.”

End Chapter Two