Dark Star Calling

by Julia Keller

  “Once the transmission is initiated,” he added, “it’ll undergo a ton of stress, but it’ll hold. Mickey? Can you give me a signal level?”

  “I can, but will I?”

  The AstroRob snickered at his own wisecrack. Kendall ignored him, whereupon Mickey cleared his throat and, in a flat voice that was more in keeping with the cold, soulless machine that his designers had intended him to be, said, “Signal level is 140.7 and holding.”

  It was just after noon. They were packed so tightly in the small lab that if anybody moved too fast or gestured too dramatically, she or he ran the very real risk of accidentally kicking, elbowing, head-butting, or chest-bumping somebody else. Every inch of space was occupied by either a person or a chunk of equipment.

  And yet somehow, it didn’t feel crowded. Improbably but magically, everything fit.

  They had worked feverishly all morning long, each at her or his specific task, getting ready for the most bizarre undertaking of which any of them could conceive. The roles were clear: Mickey would monitor the incoming signal from the aliens. Rez would keep an eye on the energy level of the Virtual Tether. Tin Man would attend to Shura—watching her vital signs, making sure she was comfortable. And Violet was in charge of easels, brushes, and paint, the raw materials through which Shura would speak for whatever distant species had tried to contact them.

  “Okay,” Kendall said. “Rez? Ready at your end?”

  All Kendall could see of Rez—all any of them could see of him from their vantage point in the center of the lab—was the wide back of his big red chair. But they all knew he was there. They could hear the low, running mumble of Rez talking to himself. Which is what Rez tended to do at the start of any new project that had not been his idea; he continued to bad-mouth it, but instead of doing it out loud, he took it underground. This is a highly dubious proposition, is what Kendall imagined Rez was murmuring over and over again, even though he couldn’t tell for sure. Followed, perhaps, by Probably won’t work, anyway. Pessimism seemed to settle Rez down. Negativity was his favorite mood stabilizer. But he’d agreed not to bother the others with his doubts, so all they got was the mumble. It was a kind of poem.

  “Affirmative,” Rez said blandly.

  The next sound Kendall heard was a slight click, and then another, meaning that Rez had flipped two toggle switches on the control panel. “Virtual Tether synched,” Rez added. “Online migration in three, two, one. Got it. Synching confirmed. Tether is online.”

  Kendall leaned down and tapped Violet’s shoulder. “All good at your end?”

  She gave him a quick thumbs-up from her position on the floor, where she knelt in front of a wooden crate with an open lid. She didn’t reply out loud so as not to interrupt her counting of the closely packed rows of tubes of paint. She’d already counted them twice and was doing it a third time.

  Violet had gathered every color she could think of on such short notice: the obvious ones like blue and red and green and brown and yellow and black, but some not-so-obvious ones, too, like gravel and sassafras and butterfly wing and raincloud and eggshell and mud puddle, plus combinations like red gold and blue orange and peach white and gray black and lime white. The tubes came from the Color Blenders, the team responsible for creating the revolving constellation of hues that adorned each night’s sunset and each morning’s sunrise on New Earth. Because the request had come from Senator Crowley, the Blenders had been happy to oblige—and without asking a lot of pesky questions.

  A few minutes ago, a single-wheeled, self-driving Uni had pulled up to the observatory. Out popped the wooden crate. Two ReadyRobs had delivered the crate to Rez’s office. Violet had fetched it there and brought it up to the lab by herself. She didn’t want Rez’s staff to know what was happening just one floor above them. Heaving it up through the porthole—even with Tin Man helping at the other end—had left her with a nice little memento: an ouchy twinge in her shoulder.

  “Just about ready,” she replied.

  “Okay.” Anxiety crouched in Kendall’s voice. No one else would have noticed it, but Violet did. He never sounded nervous, not even when he was truly frightened; he had mastered the art of covering up his emotions. Back in the days of the Intercept, it had been a critical skill. “Remember, though,” Kendall added. “We can’t keep Shura hooked up too long. No one’s studied the effects of it on a human being.”

  “Got it,” Violet replied a little testily. Why was he telling her that? She knew that. They’d already discussed it. She knew the danger her scheme might pose to her best friend.

  They’d be uploading a live Tether feed directly into Shura’s consciousness, and the results could be magical—or cataclysmic.

  The circuits could overload.

  Or the Tether could overheat.

  Or the alien signal might be corrupt, injuring Shura’s brain.

  Or the energy vectors—set to levels that were pure guesswork, because nobody had ever done this before with a human—could explode, and the observatory itself be demolished.

  But this was their best shot at getting to the bottom of the mysterious HELP message. And so, risk or no risk, Shura had signed on to be the channel for the alien emotions.

  “Hey,” Shura said.

  Violet looked up. “Hey, yourself.”

  Shura smiled. She’d positioned herself in the center of the room, encircled by three large blank canvases arranged on three identical wooden easels. Just beyond the ring of easels was Kendall’s tripod, bristling with wires and seething with electrodes. Shura herself wasn’t attached to anything because she didn’t need to be—all the signals were wireless—but standing in the designated spot was key. It had been chosen for maximum signal receptivity.

  Violet thought her friend seemed a little self-conscious, just standing there while everyone else worked. Shura swayed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She crossed and uncrossed her arms.

  “Those colors look amazing,” Shura commented, inclining her head toward the crate.

  “How can you tell? All these little white tubes look exactly the same.”

  “I can tell.”

  Bet she can, Violet thought. Shura had once explained that she could intuit the presence of color, even if she couldn’t see it. She could close her eyes and run her hand over a painted surface and know—through her fingertips, through a kind of hypersensitivity to the visual—what color it was.

  And Violet totally believed her.

  “Are you scared?” Violet asked. She had finished sorting and counting the tubes of paint. She stood up. She was outside the ring of easels; when she looked at her friend, it was almost as if Shura were imprisoned inside some magical forest, courtesy of a spell put on her by an enterprising witch.

  That wasn’t really true, of course. Shura could step out at any moment. But Violet knew she wouldn’t.

  “A little bit.”

  “I get that.” Violet reached between two of the easels and put a hand on Shura’s arm. She gave it a light, affectionate squeeze. The arm felt so thin to her. Was there any flesh there at all, or was it just hard bone covered by a bit of skin? Shura was the kind of person who forgot to eat when she was in the throes of a science project or a painting—or anything, really, that fully absorbed her attention. Violet had found her in her lab once, just before she’d announced a major breakthrough on a new antibiotic, so woozy and light-headed from not having eaten a bite for five and a half days that she could barely stand. Violet had quickly made three peanut butter sandwiches and stayed there until Shura ate them, one right after the other. But I have work to do! Shura had moaned as Violet handed her the next sandwich. And then the next. Yeah, you do, Violet had countered, and your work is to finish this sandwich, or else I’ll stuff it in an IV and feed you intravenously. Think of the mess. That made Shura laugh. It also made her eat.

  “What did your office say when you told them you weren’t coming in today?” Shura asked.

  Violet shrugged. “Not much. I think they’r
e pretty used to me by now. If a constituent wanders in, they just give them a form to fill out.”

  “And then what happens to the forms? Do you read them?”

  Violet winced. “I try to. I really do. I mean, I know it’s important. But sometimes I think I’d be better off at a protest rally than sitting behind a desk reading forms. It’s hard to figure out what you’re supposed to do with your life, right?” She smiled at Shura. “For everybody except you. You’ve always known. Art and science.”

  Shura shook her head. “Don’t change the subject. Tell me what you do with those forms after you read them. Or not.”

  “I recycle them. Of course.”

  Shura laughed. Her laugh was soft and almost musical. Violet thought about how many times she’d heard that laugh across all the years of their friendship. In a way, they were oddly matched and always had been: Shura Lu, the scientific genius and magnificently gifted artist, and Violet Crowley, the restless, headstrong rebel and former detective who was now a hopelessly mediocre politician. But somehow it worked. They’d been best friends since they were in kindergarten together, members of the first generation to grow up exclusively on New Earth. She loved Shura, and she knew that Shura loved her.

  If anything happens to her because of this idea of mine, then … then I’m not sure how I’ll live with myself, Violet thought. She felt a sudden clutch of panic.

  “Hey, you two,” Kendall said. “We’re almost ready to crank it up.” He checked some last-minute equations on his console. “Rez? Tin Man? It’s just about time, everybody.”

  “How about me?” Mickey uttered a sound that resembled the squawking of an outraged chicken.

  “Okay, Mickey,” Kendall said. “Forgive me. Are you ready?”

  “Sonny boy, I was born ready.” The AstroRob spun his head around and flashed a few lights.

  “Show-off,” Rez muttered.

  Violet picked out three tubes of paint from the crate. She uncapped them and arranged one on the tray of each easel. She wanted Shura to have a primary color within easy reach as a place to start; later, as the alien emotions and ideas that rushed into Shura’s mind grew ever more complex, the other colors would be retrieved for her use by Violet, the blends and the swirled compounds.

  “Signal level,” Kendall said.

  “Holding stable at 140.7.” Mickey’s response didn’t include a single belch, fart, snort, snicker, or knock-knock joke. This was serious. The experiment would be underway in seconds.

  “Shura? Are you ready?” Kendall asked. Once again, his voice shook just the tiniest bit. A casual acquaintance would not have detected the small quaver, but Violet did. She tried to catch his eye, but he looked away. You can’t even look at me, Kendall? Are you THAT worried?

  “Ready,” Shura responded. Her voice, unlike Kendall’s, didn’t shake at all. It was solid and sure.

  Violet was very proud of her friend. Rez had tried to get them to consider some sort of sedation for Shura, but Shura and Violet had said, in unison, No. Clarity was key. Sedation might impede the signal, keeping it from flowing from her brain into her brush hand.

  She wanted to be as open as she could be, as receptive as possible to the alien transmission.

  Mickey started up the Signal Enhancer. The next sounds they heard were a whoosh and a series of dull thumps and then a louder, longer whoosh.

  It was set.

  As Shura picked up her brush, Kendall continued with his final checklist. “Rez? Tin Man? Violet?”

  The answers came in a flurry: Yes. Yes. Yes.

  Everyone was ready.

  Violet took a last glimpse at Shura. Her best friend looked as she always did when she was starting a new painting; there was excitement in her dark eyes. Her feet were spread. She squared up her body in relation to the canvas in the middle and leaned forward as if she couldn’t wait for the very next moment of her life to arrive. She gripped the brush firmly in her right hand. With the fingertips of her left, she stroked the bristles just once. Violet could almost feel the bristles herself; they were soft, pliable, but also firm.

  Shura picked up the palette with her left hand. Then she gave Kendall a quick nod, her head barely dipping forward at all. It was enough. He understood and nodded back.

  “Go,” Kendall said.

  Mickey punched in the coordinates that switched the signal’s destination from Rez’s computer screen to Shura. Violet was so nervous she felt like throwing up; she wanted to be here, but part of her also wished she were a thousand miles away, because if something went wrong, if Shura ended up injured or, God forbid, if she ended up … No, I won’t think about that, I can’t think about that …

  Violet spun around, looking for something, anything, to hang on to, but the room was too small. No room for extra chairs. There was nothing. She had to stand up straight and deal with the consequences of her idea.

  Shura, she thought desperately, I never meant to hurt you. I just have to know what the aliens are trying to tell us. We all have to know.

  A rapid series of metallic clicks. The signal was switching, intensifying. Rez’s computer screen went blank. The words were whisked away. And then the screen was overtaken by a bright blue light as the signal swelled and prepared for its jump. The receptors in the tripod that Kendall had rigged up began to hum and glow; they were gripped by a frantic vibration as the signal flooded them, on its way to infiltrating Shura’s brain through the Wi-Fi channel. The power drawdown in the lab was so monumental that the lights flickered.

  As the signal hit her brain and skittered across both lobes, Shura gasped. Her brush hand jumped.

  This was it.

  13

  Wonderstruck

  They waited.

  They waited longer.

  They waited and …

  Nothing happened.

  At some point in the first few seconds of the changeover in the signal’s destination, when the alien transmission was reaching Shura’s brain, Violet had closed her eyes, pinching them shut. If something terrible happened to her best friend, she didn’t want to witness it.

  Now she opened them.

  And she saw that … nothing had changed.

  Shura still stood in front of the blank canvas, brush raised and ready, palette poised. Mickey’s attention was locked onto the incoming coordinates. Rez was focused on his computer screen. Kendall was stationed next to the tripod and its bevy of receptors, watching for the tiniest twitch or fizz, while Tin Man watched the device that monitored Shura’s vital signs.

  Still, nothing happened.

  Absolutely … nothing.

  “Told you it wouldn’t work,” grumbled Rez. He smacked the desk upon which his keyboard resided. “Friggin’ waste of time.” He bolted up from his chair, stretching out his arms. “Geez. Trying to turn alien emotions into painting. That’s about as stupid an idea as I’ve ever—”

  “STOP IT.” Shura’s voice sounded like a lion’s roar crossed with a rocket engine. “Just stop. We’re all in this together, Rez. We don’t make fun of each other’s ideas, okay?”

  Rez looked a little stunned. He was used to being reprimanded by Violet or Kendall. Even Tin Man had taken shots at him. But Shura? No.

  “I just meant—”

  “I don’t care what you meant,” she said. The outrage in her voice still hadn’t subsided. “Nobody made fun of you last year for Olde Earth World, right?” She was referring to Rez’s plan to create an amusement park on Old Earth, complete with roller coasters and a variety of rides related to the fate of that tattered planet.

  “No.” He said it simply and quietly. Because she was right. “No, they didn’t.” He sat back down in the red chair.

  “So let’s cut Violet a little slack here,” Shura went on. “She’s doing her best. We’re all doing our best. And besides—” She turned to face the others. They’d been watching the confrontation with surprise and—it had to be said—more than a little bit of satisfaction. “I think I know why it didn’t work. And what we
can do to make it work.”

  “You do?” Violet said.

  Shura nodded. “I do.”

  Tin Man was at her side in an instant. “What do you need?”

  “My medical bag. It’s in my apartment.” She told him the access codes required to enter.

  “Anything else?”

  “Um … yeah,” Shura said. She looked a little embarrassed. “While you’re there, could you make me a peanut butter sandwich? I’m so hungry I swear I could eat this brush.”

  * * *

  By the time Tin Man returned with the battered black-leather bag—and five peanut butter sandwiches, one for each of them—Shura had explained her idea to Kendall, Rez, and Violet.

  “Where’s mine?” Mickey asked in a pathetic-sounding whine as Tin Man passed out the sandwiches.

  Tin Man hesitated. Mickey giggled. “Come on,” the AstroRob said. “I’m not serious. Those don’t appeal to me at all.”

  “Because robots don’t eat sandwiches?” Tin Man said.

  “Nope. Because you didn’t put any jelly on ’em.”

  The chorus of groans ended only when Rez spoke. “If I ever run into Dumb-Ass Dave, that guy’s in big trouble.” He had explained to them earlier why Mickey was the way he was: bursting with bad jokes and silly bits of wordplay that rained over his circuits like confetti. “I’d rewire him myself if I had the time.”

  “Me—or Dave?” Mickey said, chortling at himself.

  As soon as she polished off her sandwich, Shura retrieved what she needed from her bag. It was a vial half filled with a white powdery substance. She held it up to check the level of the contents.

  “Looks like there’s just enough,” she said.

  “What is it?” Rez asked.

  Before Shura could answer, Kendall stepped forward. His body language indicated that he’d like a look at the vial. Shura handed it to him.