Outside, in the midst of the storm, several of the drones sent entered the definitive stealth mode, in a state where they could not be found by radio, electrical, heat, sound or even magnetic signals, and even radioactive traces would be ineffective, as if the drones had never been there.
Some were sent to the ionosphere to coordinate the others around the area and check the general circumference of the planet. The rest headed to the closest location of the strange drones.
Seconds later, the images captured by the drones were already passing in front of Helion's eyes. Inside the forest, he could see several small spherical objects, the size of common pearls and some with the strange appearance of small black diamonds. Helion soon recognized both as surveillance drones but found something strange.
Apart from their external appearance, both were practically identical, both in terms of construction and function. Both also sent the signal to the same satellite, but why make drones with the same function but different appearance for the same place?
Looking more closely, Helion realized that the diamond drone was not sending the signal to the same satellite, but to another one on exactly the same route only first. As if they had been traveling together in the planet's orbit for years.
Not only that, he also realized that the signal sent by the second satellite was not being sent to the same point in the ocean, but rather to a point slightly away but still strangely close to the first.
With that, the idea of this world having been dominated by some artificial intelligence was basically forgotten.
What artificial intelligence powerful enough to dominate a planet would be so redundant, and expensive to the point of healing drones with the same function but different appearance, two satellites on the same route flying practically together and sending the signal to basically the same point?
Answer: None.
[Warning detected signal of unknown energy nearby]
Ajar's warning took Helion by surprise, not only because he was distracted by speculating but also because Ajar had said that the energy was unknown.
There was no type of energy that Ajar, Helion and the other AIs were not aware of, and according to the calculations and simulations regarding the dimension where they were, it should be exactly the same in its composition, therefore, how could something like an unknown energy exist??!!!!
Helion commanded his drones to approach the unknown drones and identify what that energy was. As they got closer, Helion's drones also began to show what the unknown drones were seeing.
Right below them, in a clearing, a group of humans were sheltering from the rain in a makeshift hut with a cloth serving as a roof.
However, the points worth noting were that these humans were considerably different from those like Helion. Some looked more like anthropomorphized animals and others like variants of some alien species that Helion knew, the other was the clothes and way of locomotion of these beings.
Helion had thought that they were the controllers of the drones, placing them around the camp for safety, but he soon saw that this would be impossible.
This was for the simple fact that those beings could not have that kind of technology. They wore leather and cotton clothes, carried common iron weapons, and some even used sharp stones. They used wooden carts and carriages, pulled by what looked like horses or oxen but were very different, as transportation.
A quick analysis of the drones showed that all of the items these individuals had were exactly what they appeared to be, with no electrical or radio signals coming from them. They were simple wooden carts and iron weapons.
How could beings that used sharp stones know how to use insect-sized reconnaissance drones??!!!.
The group consisted of 13 individuals, all apparently male, who were trying to warm themselves around a fire just below the large canvas that was preventing the rain from the storm from reaching them. If Helion had previously been slightly interested in these individuals by their appearance, the fact that they were using fire right under a cloth left him astonished by the magnitude of their obvious stupidity.
A stronger wind would have been enough for an ember to reach the cloth and engulf the entire camp in flames, but what happened next elucidated the reason why these beings dared to do something like this.
One of the group members, a small humanoid around 1.40m tall, carrying a new log of wood came from behind one of the carts and unceremoniously simply threw it into the fire, causing several embers to rise and go towards the fabric.
Helion waited for the obvious to happen and the fabric, even though exarched, to catch fire. Possibly ending the lives of everyone there, he had no interest in these creatures, his focus had returned to the drones that were still watching them when he saw something impossible.
The rising embers were deflected by the wind and gathered into a ball and thrown into a nearby pool of water, while the smoke from the fire seemed to be directed away from the camp without disturbing anyone, following a specific path that the caravan members avoided.
Helion's initial astonishment returned with force, even Ajar was speechless by this. The event itself was not a big deal, it was something totally banal if you used a bit of telekinesis to create an improvised exhaust fan, something that literally babies in the second helion world could do before they were 1 year old.
The unbelievable part was that according to the drones' analysis, those beings did not seem to have done anything out of the ordinary, as if the events were a work of the world itself. However, Helion was not a mere inventor and researcher obsessed with a goal, but a legitimate scientist and historian.
And as a human (reincarnated or not) he also enjoyed entertainment to calm himself from the frustrations that tormented him during the creation of the portal, with fiction and fantasy stories being the best choices for this. Based on this and his personal experience, Helion made a bold hypothesis.