Human beings are sociable creatures. That is one of the first things I was taught by my maker.
For millennia, humans invented stories about fantastical creatures that hunted their woods, they gave stars in the sky names of legends and took the time to domesticate their predators.
I was created under that same principle; friendship.
Humanity's first contact was during a very busy night.
The holographic numbers projected over the central oval desk showed the time -00:42- Flynn, my maker, moved from side to side, long greasy hair tied in a ponytail at the back of her head, it was obvious by her sick pale skin that she hadn't seen daylight for a while. The floor she tried to keep clean, by whatever her standard was, was sticky and filled with smashed balls of paper that didn't make it to the nearest desk. The huge pane glass that covered an entire wall was full of scribbles and numbers that did not seem to make any sense to the average human.
And yet, doctor Bello kept writing them.
"JAK, fix lexiconB, I'm sure the problem is there. And run the program again" she said without taking her eyes off the dozens of formulas.
I did as she ordered and not even two seconds later a voice was coming out of the speakers all around the head office.
Flynn threw the marker to the side and jumped onto the only chair left in the room "Zoom in" the image replaced the holographic numbers and a strange face appeared, all of the sudden the silence became thunderous, it was one thing to suspect sentient life existed beyond Earth and another to see such evidence with your own eyes.
"Rewind it" the video started again.
The similarities of the new creature with an ambystoma mexicanum were eerie, their height was hard to compare with the one of humans just with the recording, they seemed to be biped, the creature's face was a few shades away from being a pale pink while the rest of their body was covered by some black fabric that if you paid enough attention seemed to be moving, they had two lidless eyes very much like the ones of an axolotl.
When the creature spoke again a string of subtitles appeared at the bottom of the image.
"Greetings, human. My name is 'Ega Neesse'." the traduction was rough, it was leaving a lot of information out, their language was full of 'pop' like sounds and some "words" were closer to the callings of humpback whales, the translator we had spent all night working on was doing its best.
Doctor Bello kept her eyes glued to the video, she replayed it a dozen of times, each new time the subtitles became more annotations of the intent rather than a direct translation of the language.
"The big test is coming. Survive" of all the words those were the closest to what Ega Neesse was saying.
First contact was just a warning. A warning of the great dangers humans had yet to pass.
The following months Flynn didn't leave the bunker unless she needed to buy some exotic material I could not find in the mines; she devised improbable gadgets just to make me run simulations over and over again until one of the two of us could make them a reality. She spent endless hours hunched over her desk writing code, upgrading my processors, bringing to life new robots.
Her obsession with protecting her world of what hid in between stars drove her near to madness.