The 8765 dummies arrived at the skirts of the Mountains of the Fifth Kind in exactly two hours and thirteen minutes. The barren land was left behind, and they had been crawling through the meadow for about 20 minutes. No one had noticed their displacement.

"Okay", Sierra Sam stood up, and pointed toward a cave at the very top of the tallest mountain, "that is where we will settle. There are no records of that cave, according to our fact-checker Spider".

"That's right", the green dummy named Spider said with her shrill voice, "the humans haven't yet explored that cave. We can start digging there".

"All right, we are ready to set up our base", Sierra Sam cheered, "You have to go wholeheartedly into anything in order to achieve anything worth having".

"Here you again with your quotations!", a red dummy cried, "And why are we speaking out loud like inferior specimens?".

"Be humble, young dummy", Sierra Sam said calmly, "We are alive because of the humans, they have given us life. We are lucky to know our creators, they don't know who created them. Speaking like a human is how we will pay our respects to them. When we set up our base and establish an agreement with humankind, then we'll vote on how to address each other. In the meantime, practice your human speech".

"But it doesn't make any sense", a whiny, yellow dummy said, "this method of communication is useless. All the information we gather with our senses is shared almost instantly with every one of us, and our decisions are sent to our local network way before the speech utterances are made. Why, then, speak at all?".

"Dummies, dummies", a blue dummy said, "Let's just have a little respect for the giants that came before us, okay? If humans want to listen in to our conversations, it's the least we can do for them. That red dummy's right, they are inferior life-forms, but Sierra Sam's right too when he says that we should pay our respects. It's not like they can find us, let alone capture us".

A wholehearted laugh resounded throughout the meadow, and Sierra Sam said: "Ah, yes, this is how humans laugh. Let us laugh some more!", and the whole group did. They abruptly stopped and, without saying a word, started crawling uphill towards the little cave that no human eye could see from where they were standing.

The entrance to the cave was narrow, but that was no problem for the Alien dummies. This was their time to shine. Their bodies were made of an otherworldly substance that could change states quickly by applying constant heat. When the substance stopped receiving heat, it went back to a solid-state. The skin of an Alien dummy resembled a rubber bag, although it was far more elastic, more resistant to both heat and cold, and tougher too. It was the perfect container for the shapeshifting substance called Nahualeum.

One of the Alien dummies quickly volunteered and started shapeshifting into a wire. Sierra Sam picked up the wire, and slowly introduced it into a crevice. The Alien dummy morphed accordingly and told Sierra Sam via their local network when to push. After ten minutes of struggling through the crevice, the space got wider and the Alien dummy started to explore inside. There was nothing to be found.

"Perfect, this cave is ideal to set up our base, Sierra Sam. Feel free to demolish the entrance, it's safe", the Alien dummy said, "Send a couple of other Aliens in so we can explore together".

"Understood", Sierra Sam replied.

Some more Alien dummies entered the cave with the help of their comrades, and a whole squad of 253 started exploring the inside of the mountain, which was quite extensive. They did a quick analysis of the rocks and determined that it was possible, and safe, to start digging and building inside of this mountain. They went back to the entrance to meet with the rest of the team.

The other dummies had already demolished the entrance of the cave, making a passage wide enough for two dummies to walk side by side. They took some tools from the Kaneda Factory, so they got to work immediately. They acted with the efficiency of a swarm. First, one of the ancient dummies did a thorough inspection of the inside of the cave and communicated the plan back to the network. Then, a normal dummy entered and started digging with a piece of hard steel that they reworked into a sort of pickaxe. When the battery of the dummy was almost depleted, it exited the cave, and another one would come in, remove the rubble, and finally, another one would continue digging.

On the outside, a group of dummies finished setting up a temporary recharging station. They had taken one of the chargers from the Factory and optimized it so it could work with radioactive waste, which was abundant in the Badlands and the wasteland surrounding the Factory.

The whole operation took two hours. Sierra Sam kept thinking about the humans, especially about how they'd react if they could see everything they could accomplish, in such a short time. They're going to get scared if we're not careful, Sierra Sam thought, we need to preserve the individuality of every one of us and not act like a Swarm around them. That would be terrifying for their limited brains.

The whole group of 8765 dummies entered the cave and sat down in a huge room that they designated to be the stationary recharge station. Once there, Sierra Sam began speaking:

"It is time to decide what we're going to do with our existence here on this planet. That is why the ancient dummies and myself have decided on a plan. We're all going to process a simulation together. With the computational resources of every one of us we can try and foretell the future."

"Yeah, whatever", one of the red dummies said, "All I want to do is crash some cars, preferably against other drivers. By the way, that weirdo that called himself Azazel, another one of us red dummies, escaped. Did you notice that, Sierra Sam?".

Sierra Sam remained silent for a minute.

"No, I did not notice", he said, "when did he leave, this Azazel?".

"Maybe if you weren't talking like a useless human you would've noticed", the red dummy replied, "I didn't care because, well, I didn't like him. He was going on and on about coexisting with the humans, much like you orange, ancient lot".

"How did he manage it?", Sierra Sam's caretaker personality got hold of him completely, "we need to find him immediately, he could be in danger".

"I don't think so. He seemed kinda tough, you know? He stood up to me, and I will fucking start yelling at you for no reason. But he did not sound at all like you. You could sense some scorn when he talked about coexisting with humankind", all the dummies were staring at him, "you know, scorn... that human feeling. Oh, shit. You motherfucker, you, Fucking piece of shit motherfucker, you goddamned cocksucker".

The red dummy went cursing for five straight minutes, and everyone but Sierra Sam stared at him. Finally, when he finished cursing, the red dummy said:

"Listen, you worthless pieces of shit. Now I know why this old fart of a leader was so adamant about talking like humans. There is no way we can take off our Personality Modules. Our fucking progenitors, those motherfucking mutts called humans, designed them so if altered or taken away our whole circuit will burn. And, as devious as they are, those apes, they made sure they'd be able to tell just what we are really implying. I cannot stop cursing and trying to incite a fight, just as that geezer, Sierra Sam, cannot stop caring about every last one of us".

Sierra Sam was smiling. Finally, the group understood why it was important to communicate with speech. It was the only way to tell if a dummy was being honest and earnest. They could still communicate via the local network, of course, but there was no trust there, just as Azazel had proven earlier. He spoofed his location and then went rogue. It became evident that he would be a problem to everyone around him. The record on the Dummy database declared him: destructive.

"Come on", Sierra Sam yelled to the mortified crowd, "we've no time to lose if we're to figure out what we should do. Azazel has made this more difficult for us, we need to act now!".

The dummies sat down, forming a square grid. In the middle of the square, Sierra Sam sat down, crossed his legs, and started the foretelling simulation. Sierra Sam closed his eyes. When he opened them again he was standing under a kiosk, and there were three books on a beautifully ornamented wooden table. One read: The Plan of Today. The other one was titled: The Future Mirage, and the last one read: Past Impressions. He walked around the kiosk and noticed that he was inside a maze garden. To the north, there was a single path, and way down the line, he could see that it was blurry, like a mirage. To the south, thousands of doors. They were aligned horizontally, and they seemed to stretch out infinitely to both sides.

Sierra Sam was ecstatic. It was his opportunity to try and use all the information ever recorded to make the optimal decision. In this garden, time passed by very slowly compared to the real world. An hour, with the joint computational power of all the dummies, was like a thousand years. They figured six hours was more than enough to reach a conclusion.

"It should be enough to see where we can go from here", Sierra Sam thought as he opened the first door to the south, "Let's see if we can answer the question humankind has always asked itself, is there a point to living"

Every door took him to a specific point in time, and it was very easy to get lost. Furthermore, the deeper he went, the slower the flow of time. He could get lost for centuries in just one door, analyzing every detail of a specific era in human history, faithfully recreated with historic reports, testimonies, logs, ledgers, religious literature... every single variable was taken into account. When the whole storing capacity was filled, he drew a conclusion of that certain point in time, stored the conclusion as a hashmap of macro decisions, and erased the rest of the data.

He went on and on, visiting every moment in time, drawing conclusions, comparing them, and forming a map of conclusions, which acted as a map for the northern part of the garden, the blurry maze. When only a thousand out of the six thousand years remained, he decided to explore the maze. He figured that was enough time to reach a conclusion good enough for humankind.

He first went back up to the kiosk and opened the book titled The Future Mirage. To his surprise, every page inside the book held another book, and inside this other book, there were thousands of other books. The pages of The Future Mirage ranged in the ten thousand. The book kept writing itself, as if trying to perfect an incomplete work, convinced it would be the magnum opus that contained everything inside of it.

Sierra Sam closed the book as his mouth drew a faint smile on his face. These involuntary facial expressions made him feel like a human, with that mystique and fear that mortal life carries over.

He took a step into the garden, and carefully explored every path inside the map he drew. It was designed to be completed in exactly a thousand years of simulation. As he went along every single path, Sierra Sam was growing weary by the day. There were only visions of conflict and war. There seemed to be no right scenario where humans could coexist peacefully with another species. The problems they had with the aliens before were enough proof. In the end, though, every single time... the dummies prevailed. In only 0.01% of the paths did humans survive, and they did not fare well. The deepest path he could take where the humans did survive was 13932 years ahead, and still, there was no answer to the ultimate question.

Sierra Sam opened his eyes again, and he was back inside the cave, surrounded by his fellow dummies. They all were exhausted and needed to cool down and recharge their batteries. Sierra Sam, though, could not rest. His caretaker personality was driving him mad. After having experienced the equivalent of millennia inside the simulation, unfettered by his Personality Module, he now felt chained and hopeless. He went outside the cave, with the involuntary, gloomy expression that this annoying burden of a module fixed on his face.

Once outside, Sierra Sam started to feel an overwhelming sense of admiration for nature. The meadow all the way down looked like a pristine sea of green. The night sky wore the enchanting dress that captivated all the civilizations that he visited inside the simulation. He wasn't trying to suppress the artificial feelings that the Personality Module created in him this time. Instead, he climbed to the very top of the mountain, stared down at the world around him, and smiled.

There is no point to living, he thought, the only thing that remains is the exploration of the cosmos. If humans are to be blamed for a lack of progress, let's at least wait for them to try and strive for a better future. We owe them that much.

And he shouted, as loud as his dummy capabilities let him:

"I LIKE TO CRASH CARS FOR A LIVING. I FIND IT PLEASANT".

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