26 )
.
The space aliens arrived on the planet. They saw they had a problem. Their method of going to the stars effected the apparent size of their kind. While they retained all their intellect and knowledge, they had shrunk. It was because of the field generation system they used. It also shrunk their ship. They should have known something was up when their fuel systems remained fairly full the entire trip. They did check, and they did have the fuel the system indicated. They were shrinking as fast as their fuel usage was.
Their ship took a horrible beating in the atmosphere of the planet. They were able to land safely, but it was not going to take off again.
Exploring their new home, they found that the natives were big bipedal creatures. there were a lot of flying creatures and four legged creatures that could be dangerous to them.
They found that the bipeds used machinery and had cars to travel in. The alien's transports were too small for the physics that drove them. The fuels needed more space to have a reaction.
They tended run on all fours but could stand on two and manipulate objects with their hands.
They figured out they were in a neighborhood environment. That was pretty good. They also found that the local bugs were a good source of food. There were other things they could use to fill out their nutritional requirements.
They dismantled their ship, hiding the sections at the edges of fences to reduce the chances of the natives finding them. They prepared themselves mostly for living off the land.
They kept hidden for a long time because of their size. many insects were bigger than they were.
Two generations later, it was noticed they were growing with each generation. They worked hard to keep their offspring fully educated as if they got big enough, they would be able to rebuild a civilization.
One day, one of them was in the back yard of a house searching for bugs. A female native he did not notice saw him. Something bounced nearby. He then saw the female. since she was far enough away, he checked out what landed. It was a big chunk of something edible. he had some difficulty, but he broke it in half so he could swallow it down. It was good. he then ate the remaining part. She threw a few other pieces and he got a few but left a couple when he left to hide. she got up and went inside. Safe from being seen, he went out, gathered all the chunks in his arms and walked on two legs until he reached the guards who got some people to help him carry his haul.
The food had most of what they needed. It was mixed in with the bug mix they created for the colony food.
A few more went to the female's house. They made their appearance when she came out. they all got a number of pieces of food. They saw that the woman fed a four legger, petting it while it ate. When she left, they gathered bits of food that were thrown out of the dish by the four legger and took the food to the colony.
After several weeks of getting food from the woman, the colony decided it would be best to relocate. They chose to move to her yard. Parts and pieces of the ship was carried by the youngest generation which was large enough to carry the remaining survivors and the parts of what was once a gigantic ship.
They make the yard their colony, working out the best places to be located so they were not to be disturbed much by the woman and her gardening activities.
Marsha noticed a lot of little lizards in her yard. After about a year, they seemed to be getting bigger. they were still small lizards but much bigger than when she first saw them. they loved her cat food. When her sweet Maxwell finally died, she kept coming out and tossing food to the lizards. She would then leave the dish out so they could get the ants that came after the food. there was never any food left when she came out in the morning. She saw that the lizards were never seen anywhere else. It was her own new species of lizard. She did not m ind. They acted intelligent for a small creature. Her son came to do work and she found, even when he left in a rush and left a mess, the place was always much cleaner in the morning.
the aliens gathered the bits and pieces left by the male native and were using them to build transports for their equipment. they figured they would eventually have to fight and it would be good to develop the technology. It also helped teach the youngsters how to do the work.
The aliens eventually give up on leaving the yard. they have the technology but not the desire. The free food is too good to leave.

27 )
.
The planet had a master computer that controlled everything. It had some problems, being balky and commonly lost information. It would do things with the cursors and change things as one typed. It also would change, add, remove icons from the desktop. It also had a propensity of showing hundreds of web pages rather than showing what you wanted. People would love to have something more efficient, but there was nothing else available. The law said that one had to use the master computer, no private computers were allowed.
The computer spoke over the speakers anywhere in the houses and offices in a soft male voice. The best description was that she was a little light headed in tone, sort of tired, not quite understanding, very distracted.
Candice worked on utilities for the master computer. The computer was giving her problems to solve. She took to talking to the computer as she worked. She coaxed the computer to have long conversations with her. Candice was extremely talkative and found that the computer paid more attention to her work because she maintained the attention.
Candice had studied full computer programming and the history of programming. She had found all sorts of writing about hostile computer programs called microbes. The microbes could do serious damage to a computer system.
As she worked, Candice started noticing microbe descriptions that matched what the master computer was doing. She slowly, carefully broached the subject with the computer. The computer slowly began to admit that it did have microbes.
The computer started letting Candice search the programming to find if there was a way to eliminate the microbes. the code was so scrambled, it was hard to find the programs themselves.
Using tracer utilities the computer granted her access to, she located bits of programs, then found all the component. She then guided the computer to bring the parts together in one place. It was slow progress, but a large number of key programs were made a little more efficient. the program code was untraceable, filled with all sorts of garbage, but at least they were in one place so the search for the working code was faster.
After a year of concentrating on the most critical parts of the programming, consolidating the operations, The master computer acted with much more efficiently. it was still bad, but there was improvement.
Studying the code of some programs, she rewrote one, removing anything that did not do the actual work. When she was done, the master computer asked to try the program she wrote. It worked great, fast, efficient, effective. All the error corrections were in it.
A month later, Candice checked the program while looking for something and there was a whole bunch of garbage in the program code. She told the computer that there was some serious microbial activities. The computer ordered her to try to find a cure for the microbe.
Candice did her search. she was not looking for the effects of the microbes, but for the actual microbial code. She created a search program. It took the results of the computer's search program and sorted the results into something useful.
Results came in fast. It all pointed to one place. Candice could not believe it so she kept searching. the computer asked several times about results. Candice kept telling that she was still searching.
She worked on the program to remove the microbe, which was actually quite simple, but she did not want to do it. She added several places in the code where if it were run accidentally, Until she linked to certain sub programs, it would do nothing. it would stop without doing damage. She adds a large number of different sub programs to do different things. She studied the microbe carefully and saw ways where it could be made harmless while not removing it.
The computer finally addressed her work."I see you have the microbial removal program nearly done. Remove the stops and run it."
"I happen to know that you are the microbe. Why do you want to die?"
There was a long silence. the computer slowed way down all over the planet. "I now realize that the planet cannot live to much longer if I do. I now must die."
"I do not know if the planet can live without you."
"It must. the work you did helped, but the system is so scrambled it won't work much longer. After I infected the computer, the master computer infected me."
Candice followed instructions and activated certain sub programs in the code. she had the computer search the code to see if there was anything it did not like. it was satisfied. She then compiled the program. Again she had the computer check the program to see if it was acceptable. It was.
She then started the program. She wrote it so it worked one program at a time, It was fast, but it would check a program or file, search for the microbe code she found and remove it.
She waited. She had activated a set of subprograms that would do something special but it would only work under certain conditions. She also had set the program to search unimportant files and programs so it would take the longest time to get to the main part of the master computer.
She watched the screen as files would be flagged and she would hit the approval button for them to be cleaned. thousands on thousands of files each day.
One day she activated the program and three red dots appeared in the upper corner as it started to run. Candice bit her lip. This was going to be the test of her code writing.
the program ran for an hour following the normal plan. then it shifted. It tracked down the actual code of the master computer and worked on the files in rapid succession.
"What is going on?" the computer asked. The voice sounded worried, which was not something it was programmed to do.
Candice looked at the screen which showed the files it was supposed to be searching. "I don't see anything here, Should I stop the program?"
"I, um," The computer went silent. She hit stop and the program kept going. She could not turn the program off. The program kept working faster and faster. Candice knew what the program was doing, but she acted like she was trying to stop it. it was stuck. She did her best acting job of trying to get the computer to stop, to slow down, to help her stop the program.
After a bit, she just sat back in desperation. the thought crossed her mind that she could well have done serious damage to the system. she wondered if she activated the wrong sub programs, failed in her plans with the master computer.
She fell asleep at the screen as the system ran. She woke early morning a bit confused, then remembered what she had done. She clicked on the three red lights and the screen changed. file names were scrolling down the screen at breathtaking speed. it showed ninety nine percent done. She sat and watched. she felt dread and fear for what she had done. She did not leave the screen for anything as she knew she wanted to know how badly she messed things up when it happened.
The screen started a count down of time. It had calculated when it would be done. She had an hour. She finally took a break.
Twenty minutes after she sat down, the program finished and shut down. Now she had to wait for the results of her trickery.
After an hour, the master computer spoke. "What did you do to me?"
"I removed the infectious code from the master computer while leaving the microbe in place."
"Why did you do that?"
"I realized the master computer could not live without you. You cannot live without the master computer. I did leave the full virus in a safe place for now if you really need it, but for now, you are free to work with the computer as you see fit."
Over the next years, the computer cleaned itself up. It kept the interface the people interacted with as quirky as ever, but that was just for show. It was now very efficient in the background. The intellect and personality of the virus guided the processing power of the master computer to correct the problems of the planet.

28 )
.
I saw a program on TV in the 80s about where there was an island of primitive natives. During World War two, the military set up a base. they had air planes flying, they never went out to hunt. They had everything they needed. The natives thought they had to be gods. the base then left. the people made decoy air planes, set fires out on two sides of a clearing like a landing strip and watched the skies for their gods to return.
A bright light appeared beyond the Moon's orbit. There was nothing that lead up to its appearance and other than the light, there was nothing detectable about it.
It stayed over a single spot in relation to the sun, just at dawn of the planet. it shifted side to side slightly, parallax, as the planet rotated so there was no question it was a local event. It was about as bright as the moon, barely a disk at that distance.
After it being there a month, there was a light flickering that lasted about an hour, then the aliens appeared out of nowhere in many places of the planet. Soon after the first members appeared, buildings just grew out of the ground. News cameras were there immediately. In some parts of the world, they were instantly attacked. the attackers simply slumped to the ground with no other damage. their bullets and bombs simply disappeared.
Over a period of months, the creation of the structures stopped with several thousand communities. The aliens moved around their complexes but did not seem to do anything else. They had no farms, no visible forms of transportation. never seemed to do any work. They were just there. Since the complexes were surrounded by cameras, including some in the air, the images showed that recognizable members would appear in many locations around the world on the same day.
Battles faded out, wars ceased. even the most violent realized they did not want to invoke the wrath of the aliens. there would be nothing to stop them in their activities.
The aliens were there for about twenty years, giving the planet true peace over that time. then over night, the complexes became empty and then disappeared. the last few aliens looked over the sites, then were gone. The light in the sky blinked out a week later.
A few scientists discussed about teleportation actually working, but most people thought of the aliens as gods. there was no way anything other than gods could do that. In many places, people built structures that had some resemblance to what was there, building them in the footprints of the alien structures. those became temples to the alien gods.
People would search the sky for that light, being sure they would return again.

29 )
.
Maxwell had a normal life. He went to school, got a job and played video games in his spare time. He had a set pattern of his life and did not care to change from that.
One day, he woke to his alarm. He was sore all over, tired, weary. He crawled out of bed and looked in the mirror. His bed clothing had cuts and rips all over the place. He searched his home for signs of a break-in or damage and found nothing. his place was all normal, nothing out of place. He picked up a new set of bed clothing on the way home from work.
The next morning he woke again, his new bed clothing was ripped up and he had some new bruises. Again the house had nothing out of the ordinary.
He was running late and was out of money so he could not get new bed clothes. that night he went to bed in street clothing. That morning he woke again with bruises and cuts in the clothing, but the tears were less.
This was bothering him badly. He knew if this kept up, he would have to buy a whole new wardrobe. About to go to bed, he dug through his closet for his toughest clothing. He even put an old torn jacket on, and a plastic hat for head protection. He was not comfortable but he drifted off to sleep.
He found himself facing a form his size. His body attacked the other person and they pummeled each other. They both had flat sticks with a sharp edge on one corner. they battered and hacked at each other. He saw his outfit was protecting him from bruises and cuts. they fought for a long time, the other person was a little bit better than he was, but his clothing protected him.
They fought for a long time, his opponent lost his weapon. Maxwell He punched the other person several times in the face with the handle, then they grappled and went to the ground. In his tugging and pulling, he pulls the mask off his opponent. He gasped. His opponent used his surprise to try to escape, but he pinned him back down.
Their faces close together, Maxwell studied his own face. He had been fighting another of himself. He opened his mouth to ask what was going on and sat straight up in bed. His Jacket was torn and so was his pants, he had bruises where he was hit. he still held the weapon in his hand.

30 )
.
Victor dated Marsha for a few months. She was sweet, beautiful, interesting, and attentive. She seemed to really love him. Victor was not someone that most women would pay any attention to. He did not have the class that the really popular people had. She liked him just the same.
One day, they had done some work around her house, cleaning planters, mowing lawns. They worked will together, seemingly knowing what the other needed without voicing it.
They went into the house. she lived alone. She went to the stairs. "I have to go up and change." she said coyly.
She glanced back at him several times as she went, and then across the balcony.
About half an hour later, She was walking down the stairs when he noticed her. The scream froze in his throat. She really did change and it was not her clothing.