The first shot of the life-scan beam struck a circle of land in Asia around three miles across. In the light of day, the effect of the beam would have been visible to the naked eye—it turned every nonliving object in its field transparent. The scan hit the mountains of northwest China; in daylight, an observer would have seen a spectacular sight as sunlight refracted through the mountain range and the ground under her feet seemed to disappear, revealing an abyss into the depths of the planet. Living things—people, trees, grass—remained opaque, and their forms would have stood out clearly against the crystal background. However, this effect only lasted for the half a second it took the beam to initialize, and onlookers would likely assume they had imagined it. Besides, it was nighttime.

In the direct center of the beam’s field was the village school.

“First random site … we’ve got green! Vessel Blue 84210 reporting—we have discovered life on target number 500921473, Planet Three!”

The beam began automatically to sort the many life-forms it had hit, entering them into its database in order of complexity and according to an initial intelligence estimate. At the top of the list was a group of life-forms inside a square shelter. The beam narrowed and focused on the shelter.

The High Archon’s smart field received an image transmission from Vessel Blue 84210. He projected it onto the black background, and in an instant, he was standing within a projection of the village school. The image-processing system had removed the shelter from view, but the life-forms inside were still hard to make out, as their bodies were so similar to the silicon-based planetary surface around them. The computer eliminated all nonliving objects in the image, including the larger, lifeless body the other beings encircled, and the beings now appeared suspended in a void. Even so, they were still dull and colorless, like a bunch of plants. This was clearly not a species with any remarkable phenotypic features.

Vessel Blue 84210 was an interstellar warship as large as Earth’s moon, and in its position outside Jupiter’s orbit, it was like an extra planet in the solar system. It fired a four-dimensional beam that moved through three-dimensional space nearly instantaneously. In a moment, the beam had arrived at Earth and pierced the roof of the village school’s dorm. It scanned the eighteen children inside down to their elementary particles and transmitted the enormous amount of data back into space at an unimaginable rate. The main computer of Vessel Blue 84210 had a storage capacity larger than the universe itself; in an instant, digital copies of the children were constructed and stored there.