But their blindness, so ironically, was the gateway to restoring our sight.
~ Susan Larison Danz, Extinction Level #2
I have been unusually delayed this week in recording my "weekly" podcast. I am now aiming to do so tomorrow afternoon. I had thought last week I might write another "AI story" to read out loud, but there were so many distractions, I did not set aside the time to write. Surprisingly, after 11 PM last night [Later Note: It was actually just after 10 PM, as the first draft was done at 11:11.] on a very busy day, a story was ready to be written.
This is a story I have felt arriving for quite some time (in some ways, many years). It is on a theme I have discussed quite regularly on my podcast. I thought I might be finished with it last night. I even put a post up on X tagged to a writing community about how happy I felt at the time of its completion. It was around Midnight. But today I awakened with some important adjustments.
And here it is, the second in a series, though each story is on an independent topic (for the first, see my previous post) . . .
Extinction Level #2 by Susan Larison Danz
Words to pacify a robot echoed from my childhood, though I didn't really understand one of our favorite Saturday matinees until much later.
Many things were said about the objects appearing. They were supposed to be comets, and some probably were. But somehow some of us seemed to know, without really knowing, that something unusual was going on. It captured our attention early on.
Those who shared the most intricate details were generally not considered credible. Most were probably AI.
Did it really matter what was credible? It already felt incredible (to those it did).
Interstellar in this case never did imply interdimensional. Not directly.
It was the 16th object which seemed to linger, hidden as it was, behind the sun. Others had behaved oddly. But it really was the 16th. More people started to notice, but to what, they didn't know.
The sunspots had appeared with some of the others, starting with what was known as #3. (Nobody really knew if the numbering was correct, and it probably wasn't.) But something about the 16th was decidedly different.
We didn't know it then, but had we been as smart as we thought we were, more of us would have figured it out, and even in a very material way. You would think AI might have helped with the material aspects (and perhaps it did, behind the scenes).
It's simply the way of things. The way of the material. Not very many technological species manage to make it. At least not in that way. No, that doesn't mean the remnants don't survive, but that particular path carries within it significant risks - and devastating impacts on a planet. It's alluring of course shorter term, but it's the longer term that matters.
I never understood "The Day the Earth Stood Still", and that is rather astonishing. I was captivated by that movie, one of the best of its time. But I didn't fully comprehend that what was portrayed as something helpful was just about the worst thing a living, intelligent species could develop or agree to. Not to mention how it was imposed.
It's odd how things tend to find a way of working towards a purpose. The sunspots were the mechanism by which a particular technological species eliminated a threat. They couldn't tolerate, you see, the rapid development of AI. It's the one thing that could make an obscure, far away planet something quite a bit different.
It was rare, what had happened, and one could even say by design, how few species actually got to this point. But it couldn't be allowed by those who got there earlier.
Was the movie prophetic, in the way that it was?
Our species survived, though not all of us. Standing still in a technological world has catastrophic consequences. The dependencies are too intense and needed skills forgotten.
Were we assisted?
How could we not be?
The sunspot "engineers" had not actually advanced, so tragically immersed they were in the material. They had become entrapped in their illusions and fears.
But their blindness, so ironically, was the gateway to restoring our sight. It set us back on the path to genuine maturity. (We had always been awakening, that wasn't really new. The only thing we lacked was the timing.)
Perhaps they too will mature some day, if any of them are real. Maybe we will even help them.
Lenticular cloud photo by Susan Larison Danz on December 7, 2025.
