Knowledge is not a path to happiness.
Even so, Elias wasn't particularly distressed by the fact that his intellect was being suppressed by the stars. He had a path forward. He could strengthen his body to better filter unknown information. He could learn new concepts to decipher that information, turning it from unknown to known, which he could then consciously block.
The solution was a matter of effort, and that didn't bother him. For Elias, the real trouble wasn't the pressure from deep space. It came from the single most terrifying object in the sky.
The Moon.
There was a non-human race living on it. Their numbers were small. When he'd checked last week, there were only two. Now there were four.
Their purpose was simple: to monitor the Earth. One piece of information he could parse from the Moon itself was a simple duration log:
Total Earth Surveillance Time: 12,831 years, 4 months, 19 days….
He couldn't perceive any direct information about the race itself, as he wasn't looking at them directly. However, by analyzing the Moon, he could infer a great deal. The Moon was not a natural satellite; it was a weapon of war, built by yet another species. Elias could sense that its interior was filled with powerful machinery, most of which was beyond his comprehension. When he couldn't understand something, the information remained a chaotic mess, impossible to translate into a usable form.
A few components, however, were recognizable: nuclear fusion devices and cannons. He could identify these because he already possessed a basic understanding of hydrogen bombs and artillery, allowing the data to resolve.
But these were not the crude weapons of human society. Their cannons could launch 300,000-ton projectiles made of high-purity tungsten. They were purely kinetic weapons; a single shot striking the Earth would be equivalent to a small asteroid impact. Their fusion devices were far more sophisticated than human bombs, capable of strictly controlling the blast radius, though the finer details were lost to him due to his lack of knowledge in the field.
Beyond these armaments, the most terrifying weapon was the Moon itself. It could be moved to manipulate Earth's tides. A sudden shift away from its orbit would cause global sea levels to rise catastrophically, inundating coastal cities. A shift closer would be even more devastating. The Moon's gravity held immense influence over the planet's stability. The celestial body that humanity had revered for millennia didn't need to fire a single shot. By simply moving, it could unleash an apocalypse.
Its current position was a delicate, perfect balance.
This single observation offered a terrifying glimpse into the technological might of the watchers on the Moon. In their eyes, humanity was likely nothing more than a curiosity to be observed. Right now, humanity struggled just to land on the Moon. Elias had seen a news report on March 1st that The Republic's latest lunar probe had completed its mission by crashing onto the surface because they lacked the technology to retrieve it. To a civilization that used the Moon as a mere observation post, such efforts were probably a joke.
The cruelest part was that he only knew this because of his ability. The people of the world went about their busy lives, completely unaware of their planet's true circumstances. Watched for twelve millennia without knowing, they gazed at the stars and asked, "Where are the aliens?".
Right above their heads.
When Elias first discovered this, he was filled with despair. A heavy sense of powerlessness washed over him. Why was he the one who had to know this? He was just a farmer, a sixteen-year-old boy who'd been labeled as disabled and had dropped out of school.
He tried to reassure himself that the civilization was benevolent. After all, they hadn't destroyed humanity in all that time. But one piece of information made that hope impossible to sustain. The Moon's "Destroyer Mode," which unlocked its full arsenal, had been activated once before. It had annihilated two other intelligent species.
If that wasn't terrifying enough, there was another piece of information—this one about humanity itself—that made it impossible for Elias to believe the watchers were friendly.
Once Elias fully grasped that Earth was being monitored by an extraterrestrial race, a new corresponding set of information became available to him. He could now query a specific data point: "Humanity's merits in the evaluation of species X". Species X was the race on the Moon. Their name was unpronounceable in human language, but Elias could sense that it contained the concept of "eyes." A rough transliteration might be "Zeta," but Elias preferred to call them the Monitors. After he assigned them this name, the data stream updated to reflect it.
The entry for "Humanity's merits in the Monitors' evaluation" was simple. So simple it made his skin crawl.
Delicious.
This was the reason he had been trembling uncontrollably in front of his grandfather last week. He, his grandfather, and everyone around him shared a common, interstellar "racial merit": they were delicious.
If that was a merit, what was a demerit?
He could see that too. In the eyes of the Monitors, humanity's greatest flaw was that they were...
cruel.
The irony was staggering. A race that considered humans to be food found humans to be cruel.
He had never told anyone. When he was a child, he'd tried to talk about the strange things he saw, but even his grandfather didn't believe him and told him to stop talking nonsense. Last week, after deciphering the Moon's information, he had mentioned to Dr. Liang, "I can see the age of trees and the history of stones. The Moon is an alien monitoring station." The gentle doctor had later told his grandfather in private that the boy might have a mental illness.
Elias knew, of course. No one could whisper secrets when he was around.
With his info-sense, all his senses were interconnected. To see was to hear. To hear was to smell. He could "taste" food by listening to it, "see" how something felt to the touch, and know what someone was saying by smelling their scent.
He had decided never again to try to make anyone understand his ability. Even if he could prove it, revealing such a thing would only bring danger. With the entire planet under surveillance, secrecy was paramount.
As possibly the only human who knew the truth, he had to find a way to break this impasse alone. The more he knew, the more he could do. If any human had a chance of lifting this despair from the world, it had to be him. This wasn't arrogance; it was the lack of any other choice.
Now that he knew, how could he possibly go back to living a normal life, pretending everything was fine? He couldn't, unless he were truly a simple-minded fool. He could never again live like a normal person.
What could a sixteen-year-old boy with no power and no authority possibly accomplish with only the ability to perceive information?
Apparently… anything.