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[completelycrazy]

[Newt has definitely not been up all night building salamander-proof enclosures out of spare Null parts so the fact that he sounds both tired and revved up on way too much coffee is just your imagination.]

Two questions, Hadriel. One: Tell me about the cave monsters. What all has crashlanded here before I got here? Specifically, I'm looking for stuff that a person could feasibly, like, catch. Or at least put down and drag into town for some post-mortem studying. This includes stuff that might be a good food source, maybe? I don't know. Depends on what's out there.

[The food source thing is secondary in his mind, but the masses don't need to know that. He's already expecting to catch some flak for this.]

And two: Anyone got some time to help me wrangle some salamanders, at least? I'm thinkin' two should be good. I'd like to grab some other stuff too, but again, depends on what's out there. Gonna start with the salamanders for now.

Comments

[completelycrazy]

Are you kidding? Earth is a rarity when it comes to planets. You've heard of the Goldilocks zone, right? There's that, plus our atmosphere, plus relative gravity... If the Precursors need a planet with those specs, their options are limited. It's not like Earth is their only pet project, either. They're career colonizers. They have tons of these processes in motion. Hell, they had to wait on Earth for millions of years. It wasn't ready on their first test run with the dinosaurs. The fact that they came back shows you how desperate they are for planets like ours.

[Way to go Lance, you got him started.

But, right, yes, robocrabs.]

Oh, uh, good call. I'll keep that in mind. Guns and rockets, right? Man, I'd still love to get a look at that... Uh. Like, after it's dead, or something.

[lifetothefullest]

[He'll just ignore the condescending part of that with the practice he's gained over the years of working with Brennan and her team. Instead--]

So these Precursors just kind of suck at not using up all the resources on not only their own planet, but a bunch of others.

[Or at least that's the impression he's getting, because wow, if they not only need Earth but are after other planets too then they're seriously terrible at resource management. Or they're just greedy, but whatever.]

After they're dead seems like the better plan. I actually kind of wonder if they're edible, especially considering the food shortage right now.

[completelycrazy]

[Okay, Lance, well-played. That gets a laugh.]

Guess so, huh? That, or they just don't care. It's possible that humanity is in the early stages of what eventually led to the Precursors' scramble for resources. If they have the technology and know-how to open interdimensional portals to terraform planets across the universe, they have to be seriously advanced. That means they're likely overpopulated and they have the medical advancements to keep their species alive for much longer than their natural lifespan. I could see humans doing the same thing down the road, if we have the resources for it. I mean, hell, we already are. We value our own comfort over the lives of anything else on our planet, sometimes even the lives of each other. What's a human to creatures like the Precursors? We're the equivalent of cavemen to them.

[ANYWAY...]

Y'know, you're not the first person to ask me about that. Edibility is gonna be tough to determine beyond trial and error. Eating random monsters probably isn't a great idea. [...] But I guess trial and error isn't a totally crazy process if Hope can bring people back from the dead. I mean, I'm not about to volunteer, but I don't know. There's probably enough people around here willing to be guinea pigs if you really want to test that kind of thing.

[lifetothefullest]

[Lance could go into a complicated psychological rant about self-preservation instincts, selfishness, and morality, but he decides he doesn't have the energy for that. Besides, something else Newt said stands out to him.]

If they have terraforming technology, why do they need a particular type of planet? Isn't that the whole point of terraforming?

[He's becoming less and less impressed with these Precursors every second, which is sad because super advanced aliens should be cool.]

Yeah, I'm sure someone around here will eat one if they find them, so we'll probably get an answer at some point. The situation isn't quite dire enough for me to be interested in risking it either.

[completelycrazy]

It is, but I got the sense that their terraforming tech was relatively new. They took a swing at Earth toward the end of the Mezozoic Era, but the atmosphere wasn't quite right, so they had to shelve us and come back millions of years down the road. Terraforming takes serious resources, too, so the closer they start to their ideal atmosphere, the better... Not to mention terraforming can't account for things like gravity. [At least not that he knows of. Maybe the Precursors are capable of that sort of thing, but that level of technology would be insanity.]

That's the kicker about terraforming. They're doing it because they need the resources, but terraforming comes with a massive down payment. It's a risk. Once they commit to a planet, it's too costly to give it up.

[He's sort of speculating at this point--the Drift only showed him things from the Kaiju perspective, and even then only in bits and pieces--but he thinks his logic his sound.]

Hah, fair enough. I guess if thinks really get that desperate, I'll look into it, but... Eh. [That sounds boring and he has enough cheese puffs and coffee to last him a bit.]