Reverse Ufology, pt.1 - Masters of Time by Vanga-Vangog on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

This design comes from Huber-102-c, better known among humans as Caspica - a low-gravity planet orbiting a luminous blue sun, bathed in extreme levels of solar radiation. Because of this, and a joke of an atmosphere, humans exploring it wore bulky protective suits, which defined the way they were remembered by the local species - spindly, spider-like hexapods simply dubbed "the longlegs".

Appearing artificial, but not in the way pre-spacefaring locals imagined advanced spacesuits, and having a bodyplan drastically different from any living thing in that world, the visitors weren't recognized as creatures within a suit at all, but instead as some oddly built machines.

The first few legit "human encounterers" of this world interpreted humans as short, bucket-like robots, awkwardly bouncing on two stout, pipe-like legs, with two equally pipe-like arms sticking out from their sides and ending in various kinds of mechanical claws and hands (accounts differed in this last part, but one longleg researcher rationalized this as a sign of them being removable). The helmet's reflective sun shield, used to protect explorers from the planet's powerful sun, was interpreted as a single large, unblinking, metallic eye protruding from the top of the body, which in at least one account glowed dimly (that last encounter happened at night, when explorers had their sun shields lifted and helmet backlights on; the dark silhouette of a head inside, glimpsed from afar, was mistaken for a pupil).

As soon as these reports started attracting mass attention, Federation halted all expeditions to Caspica, but the bucketbot aliens already entered its urban folklore. Not attempting to silence these reports or dilute them with misinformation (which would require too much intervention, risking humans further exposure), they simply allowed the image to brew inside the planet's pop culture, where it quickly evolved beyond recognition. Over six decades of Chinese whispers and fake sightings inspired by other fake sightings, a whole domain of derivative robotic aliens of all shapes, sizes, and behaviors spawned. This trope entered and quickly dominated Caspican science fiction, and though eventually the majority of longlegs grew tired of it and slowly defaulted back to their version of "rubber-forehead" aliens, the idea that every highly advanced civilization eventually roboticizes remained as an enduring stereotype, which influenced their futurology and even politics (it arguably made their analog to transhumanism more acceptible through inevitability).

One popular currently running TV show on Caspica features a species, whose visual design, thanks to the show aiming to "reimagine classic sci-fi", is highly inspired by the original bucketbot humans (and accidentally similar to Daleks from Earth's ancient TV series Doctor Who). They have a tapering cyllindrical body with rows of extendable, hose-like hands, and a rotating shiny "eye" on top, capable of shooting deadly laser. When on a spaceship's level floor, they slide around on a pair of tracks, but can extend a pair of flat feet to wobble awkwardly over small obstacles. To pass over rugged terrain, they use attacheable anti-grav platforms.

In the lore of the series, this species, called Masters of Time, are far future descendants of the longlegs, that adapted to the slow loss of their planet's atmosphere by fully encasing themselves in this technological shell. In this new form, immune to practically all planetary conditions, they conquered most of the galaxy and some neighboring dimensions, until stumbling upon some extra-universal force that they couldn't best. In an attempt to prevent their defeat, they began sending parties back in time to rewrite their civilization's history to make them more organized and powerful, effectively placing themselves in a time loop of continuous rematches, becoming increasingly more militaristic with each cycle. Over aggregated millenia of constant war preparations, their idea of civilization devolved into a hyper-organized, totalitarian state with no other goals but victory, and Masters themselves became cold automatons that obey their higherups' commands almost reflectively and know no emotions other than fear, rage, and triumph. In the present time in the series, a colony of these creatures secretly controls Caspica's governments, leading its society to become a new iteration of their empire - the outcome that the positive characters try to prevent.

According to the series' director, this race is supposed to be a cautionary tale of what uncontrolled cyborgization and technological progress driven by military needs can lead a species to. It is contrasted to some other factions, that represent the "right" way to approach technology and transhumanism, notably a group of Master time travellers from "early" iterations, who abhor what their civilization has become and use their abilities to fight this vicious cycle alongside the main cast.