The Probe

Boone and Lili first encountered the alien probe in the Amish town of Paradise, Pennsylvania, where it was responsible for the deaths of several citizens. They arranged for the probe to be retrieved by a Liberation team without the knowledge of the Taelons ("Float Like a Butterfly"). It was housed at Liberation headquarters for study ("Resurrection").

The probe was programmed to seek and study life forms having a minimum electrical impulse level and define their tolerances under a variety of life-threatening conditions. As part of this mission, the probe was capable of ingesting organisms and replicating robotic copies of them. In Paradise, replicated butterflies invaded a subject organism's body, inducing it to place itself in harm's way. The butterflies would then record the results and return to the probe. When damaged or destroyed, the replicated butterflies secreted a substance that hardened within a few seconds ("Float Like a Butterfly"). The probe used a neutrino pulse to store and transmit its data ("The Scarecrow Returns").

The probe proved capable of replicating a human when it ingested and copied Liberation scientist Rayna Armitraj. It also demonstrated the ability to change form, becoming a cloud of particles that could move as a unit and reassemble themselves into the probe's normal configuration ("The Scarecrow Returns"). The DNA sequence—and in the case of humans, the mind—of an ingested organism remained within the probe's databanks ("Destruction").

The probe possessed several offensive abilities. It could use its replicated robots to defend itself or to attack. In cloud form it could envelope individuals with a crystalline growth ("The Scarecrow Returns"). It contained an airborne bacteria designed to be deadly to Taelons and impervious to Taelon antibodies ("Infection"). It also possessed a directed energy weapon that could kill a Taelon and a self-destruct mechanism ("Destruction"). However, the probe was programmed to use aggression only when threatened ("The Scarecrow Returns").

The Liberation at first believed the probe to be of Taelon origin. But this assessment was contradicted by a detailed analysis of the probe's instructions. The probe's transmissions from Paradise and Liberation headquarters, both tracked by U.S. satellites, were directed toward a nebula on the other side of the galaxy from Taelon, and its program was written in Taelon script but in a "different dialect" that felt "off" to Boone ("The Scarecrow Returns").

The Taelons were, however, acquainted with the probe. Da'an recognized its transmission patterns, and Quo'on called the implications of its presence on Earth "extreme." The Taelons possessed a device that when placed over the probe's anterior aperture, rendered it inert. They took custody of the probe after nearly tracking it back to Liberation headquarters. ("The Scarecrow Returns"). Kee'sha studied the probe at the Taelon research facility in Naryan Mar, Russia, attempting to extract its computer memory. However, the Liberation learned of this from Rayna Armitraj, whose mind was trapped within the probe, and mounted a successful mission to destroy the probe before its data could be retrieved ("Destruction").