On the gleaming white plains of the Moon, a spacesuit-clad contingent stood next to a tall drilling tower. The emissary of the Devourer Empire stood somewhat apart, his giant frame another towering silhouette against the horizon. All eyes were firmly focused on a metal cylinder being slowly lowered from the top of the drilling tower down into the drill well below. Soon the cable was speeding into the well. On Earth,two hundred and forty thousand miles away, an entire world was glued to the unfolding events. Then came the signal; the payload had reached the bottom of the well. All observers, including Fangs, broke into applause as they celebrated the arrival of this historic moment.
The last nuclear bomb that would propel the Moon out of orbit had been put in place. A century had passed since the Eridanus Crystal and the emissary of the Devourer Empire had arrived on Earth. For humanity, it had been a century of despair, a hundred years of bitter struggle.
In the first half of the century, the entire Earth had zealously thrown itself at the task of constructing an engine that could propel the Moon.The technology needed to build such an engine, however, utterly failed to materialize. All that was accomplished was that the Moon’s surface had gained a few scrap metal mountains, the remains of failed prototypes.Then there were also the lakes of metal, formed where experimental engines had melted under the heat of nuclear fusion.
Humanity had asked the emissary of the Devourer Empire for technological assistance; after all, the lunar engines would not even have to be a tenth of the scale of the countless super-engines the Devourer possessed.
Fangs, however, refused and instead quipped, ‘Don’t assume that you can build a planetary engine just because you understand nuclear fusion. It’s a long way from a firecracker to a rocket. Truth be told, there is no reason at all for you to work so hard at it. In the Milky Way, it is perfectly commonplace for a weaker civilization to become the livestock of a stronger civilization. You will discover that being raised for food is a splendid life indeed. You will have no wants and will live happily to the end. Some civilizations have sought to become livestock, only to be turned down. That you should feel uncomfortable with the idea is entirely the fault of a most banal anthropocentrism.’