EarthFall---Chapter 3

   The walk back was without incident, the girls quietly and slowly making their way back up the trail. When they got back to the house, they proceeded to shower, change clothes and eat. The three then discussed what they had been through. They quickly came to the conclusion that, as remarkable as it had been, it was best to keep the incident to themselves. Surprisingly, it was Mariko who speculated that there was really no point in trying to get anyone in a position of authority to believe them. The Government either already knew, which in that case it seemed wise to just surrender the alien sphere and hope for the best when they showed up, or they didn't, and they would miss out on being subjected to hours, if not days, of interrogation and whatever tests the government could think of.     
Then the attention turned to the sphere. Mariko took it from her bag and put it in the middle of the table. It was perfectly round, with a metallic, slightly reflective surface. It was completely featureless, and the only sign of it's true nature was that it sat where it was placed, instead of rolling around as expected.
"Hear anything now, Molly?" Jenny asked.
Molly looked pensive "No, and I'm not sure what we're supposed to do."
"Maybe we should break it open?"
"What if we can't?" Mariko asked. "It's not from this planet, you know. And even if..."
"Well, what do you suggest we do?"
"I don't think that's my decision. or yours. It's Molly's."
Molly ran her fingers over the surface of the sphere It was smooth as glass, but slightly pliant and warm to the touch.
"I think we should wait. I think it'll come out on it's own."
"Is it telling you that?" Jenny asked.
"No, it's just a feeling. We should wait, ok?"
They agreed. Mariko returned it to her bag, put it upstairs near her sister's bed, and when Mark dropped by they gave him an extremely abridged version of the days events. Molly checked on it several times before they went to bed, but the sphere remained quiet.
    
  A few hours later, as the girls slept, the sphere finally began to vibrate softly. The intelligence inside woke up.  
  The surface of the sphere seemed to swim in the moonlight, and then silvery filaments, spider silk thin, extruded from the sphere's surface. These filaments twisted into thicker strands and spread out, probing the surrounding areas. They manipulated the sphere quietly from the bag, and sat it on the floor, as more filaments continued their explorations.
 Several found Molly's cell phone sitting on the bedside stand, pulled it down to the sphere, and quickly began to disassemble it. Several more filaments, detecting a power source, snaked into the nearby outlet, and began to convert the energy and feed it back into the sphere. As the filaments pulled apart the phone, the sphere analyzed the components and began employing them them for its own uses. It first interfaced with both the cellular and wireless receivers and quickly began tapping the wealth of information from the human's global network.
   The sphere had compiled thousands of languages from hundreds of different sentients over it's existence. Learning the basics of humanity's most widely used languages took it only minutes. It rapidly gained more comprehension with every piece of information it processed, and adapted the terrestrial lexicons to it's own to make the process easier. Over half the information was clearly useless to its goals, while a quarter more required specific cultural contexts to properly understand; these were marked for later analyzing. A basic information filter now built, the sphere began learning at a geometric rate about humanity.   
 While it did this, the silvery filaments disassembled the phone's other components, including the case and started reassembling them around the sphere into more useful configurations.
    As the sphere probed the human's recorded history, a jumble of emotions ranging from wonder to disappointment flashed through it's mind as it witnessed the species highest achievements as well as their vilest crimes. It remained largely impartial, having experience of similar events of many different civilizations. It quickly ascertained that the dominant species of Earth had reached their current status for only a fraction of their planet's existence. They were practically infants, and acted as such. But it saw that there was much potential in this race, if they could overcome their base nature of competition. Their obvious affinity for creativity and innovation would serve them well if they finally reached this goal. 
   The sphere continued on, locating and infiltrating the most guarded secrets of the various Earth governments mainframes, looking for references to the arrival of it's shipself. There were none, which was unsurprising. Although humans had advanced their technology at an amazing rate (especially in the last century), it still paled in comparison to the sphere's. The planetary defenses were practically nonexistent; this was consistent with its relative isolation.                
      It turned its attention to the other components of the disassemble phone. The sphere quickly discerned the camera, interfaced and bonded with it. It looked around at it's surroundings, noting the sleeping human nearby. So this was the one who rescued it? It sensed there had been more, but as soon as it had been removed from it's ship self it had been deprived of most stimuli and information, and shocked into inactivity by the trauma.
   But despite it all the sphere was relieved. The beacon had worked. The signal the beacon had broadcasted was designed specifically to be received by sentients that fit a certain, vital set of criteria. This criteria included a specific level of intelligence and other elements necessary for the sphere to achieve proper levels of communications and actually help the beings of this planet. It had only been a matter of good fortune that not only had it picked the right set of criteria from what little information it had gleaned in the fall, but also that the proper receiver had finally caught the signal; even then, relatively unfamiliar with the human's anatomy, the signal had almost created a fatal feedback loop in the receiver before the sphere was able to properly attune it, and lead the receiver to the sphere's location.
  Using the phone's GPS, the Sphere triangulated it's location, and began accumulating specific information about the area. From it's studies, it knew that humans required a period of inactivity called sleep. The Sphere would give these humans roughly six more hours to sleep, while it accessed the human's satellite grid. It would create several programs hidden in the systems to scan for and detect anomalous energy signatures coming from space. Particularly those generated by an object reentering real-space.    
Then it would awaken the humans and attempt to establish communications with them. The humans needed to be warned, and prepared.