Quetzacal's easy task
The sun was shining through the panes of glass, and life on planet Earth was waking up on to another day. Human toil, the futility of it all, the involuntary toil mostly motivated by self-interest, was about to add another piece, another insignificant drop, another tiny bead to the necklace of human existence.
At the same time, Quetzacal sat down in his holographic office. His work assignment was not significant. It was, one might say, ordinary, routine. Nothing extraordinary awaited him.
He smiled. He looked once more at the planet Earth on the holographic screen. In his alien language it was not called Earth. In his language it had no name. Besides - do people give names to stones? Or - to trees and bushes? No.
Quetzacal saw it the same way. As the alien coordinator of the construction of the flight channel, he had his duties. And he did his job well. He was also well paid for it. His alien species did not use currency. Strange as it may seem, the reward was the number of partners he could afford. And he could afford more than enough. He had a good time. And that was why he worked hard and well.
An even more amused smile appeared on his lizard face. Today would be an easy day. The construction of the flight corridor was going well, they were even working overtime and it seemed that they would complete the assigned tasks earlier than expected. And that would mean bonuses, rewards and praise. And that made him feel great. It would mean many more partners. And he liked that.
He stroked his lizard skin with his claws. This gesture was a sign of bliss and contentment. The scales on his body aligned so nicely. When an individual of his species was fighting or was upset, angry or perhaps in danger, the scales on his body would get into a fighting position. This also happened when he felt stress, nervousness or tension. However, none of this concerned Quetzal at this moment.
***
He programmed one work step after another on the holographic screen with his mind. The machines would do everything. Precisely, without hesitation, and quickly.
There were billions upon billions of individuals of his kind. His kind lived on hundreds of millions of planets. It expanded and conquered the universe at the speed of ravenous locusts.
Quetzacal checked the construction axis for the last time. Today, in the path of the flight corridor stood some insignificant planetary system orbiting a single star. People called this star the Sun. To Quetzacal, it meant nothing. Just a stone in the road that needed to be rolled away, just a hole that needed to be filled in to make the path straight. Soon, space vehicles of his kind would be hurtling down the flight corridor at celestial speed. And no space debris was allowed to stand in their way. And the planets of this planetary system were stellar garbage. In a few moments, Quetzacal would crush them to dust, thanks to powerful machines, and he would deal with what was left as he always did. Like garbage. And that would be all for today. He had an easy task ahead of him. He began to whistle in a lizard-like, alien language and increased his brain activity to get the job done quickly.
***
It didn't take long before he had everything ready. He casually glanced at the biological scan of the planets he was about to blast away. None of the planets showed any significant level of life. The first planet, closest to the star that people called Mercury, was completely dead, the second planet, Venus, had terrible climatic conditions for any life, and the third planet was littered with shoddys. Some kind of inferior living species. Quetzacal and his companions looked at what the biological scan showed the same way people look at, for example, earthworms or ants. Does a person who is building a highway and comes with heavy machinery to dig up a meadow and build another mile, look at how many earthworms or ants live in the meadow? No. It's secondary information for people. Unnecessary. No one cares about the lives of earthworms, beetles, ants and other biological life forms living in the meadow. Quetzacal did not care about humans either. Humans, as a completely insignificant and inferior species, were completely indifferent to him. Quetzacal took one more look at the biological scan of other planets, more out of interest than for anything else, and then began construction. Massive spaceships, construction machines, flew out of his planet to overcome a great distance with a planetary jump, and having appeared near the star that people called the Sun, they began their destructive work. Not a single planet in this solar system was to remain. Everything was to happen in a short time, because Quetzacal, his advanced alien species and technology worked quickly and precisely.
And meanwhile, unsuspecting humanity was waking up to a beautiful, sunny day...
