Trinity's Legacy

by P A Vasey

  “This is all wrong, you know,” I said, not looking at him. “The answer to the most important question - ‘are we alone in the universe?’ - is out there, and we’re going to try and kill it.”

  “I guess the Army and political priorities are different to those of NASA,” said Goatee quietly.

  I thought about the priorities of the Army. To follow orders and to win, protect America, at all costs. But these days, in the age of the Internet and open access, surely recruits came with pre-existing notions of fairness and honour? Maybe each new campaign had to be ‘sold’ to the men as a heroic act no matter the true goals. I couldn’t decide whether this was going to be any different.

  “You know, there’s another way of looking at the Fermi paradox,” said Holland, arms folded and leaning on the wall. I arched an eyebrow, wondered where he was going with this, and whether I gave a shit. “Go on?”

  “Well, the reason there are no advanced civilisations…”

  “Er, we now know of two,” interrupted Goatee, slurping on his coffee.

  “One, actually,” continued Holland, holding up a finger. “Because I’m not counting us. Compared to these aliens, we wouldn’t be classified as ‘advanced’.”

  “All right, there’s only one we know of…” I said.

  “Yes, so the question is, why, in a universe with billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars, are there no more?”

  “And you know the answer, I suppose?”

  “There’s a theory which posits a bottleneck in evolution preventing civilisations achieving interstellar travel.”

  “What sort of bottleneck?”

  “One in which the incremental process of evolution generates intelligent life which is not quite intelligent enough to avoid its own destruction.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “So what you’re saying is that the development of intelligent life is fairly common, but always self-destructs before becoming spacefaring and able to spread beyond its planet of origin?”

  “Exactly.” Holland smiled like a schoolteacher complementing a backward pupil. “Consider the staggering number of near-misses we’ve had with our nuclear arsenal - and I’m not even including the weapon which blew a hole in space-time outside this window. We’ve accidentally lost nuclear warheads. One actually fell into a backyard in South Carolina by mistake. And, remember the near miss in 1960 because of the moon?”

  I blew out my cheeks as I recalled the details. The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) had mis-identified the rising moon over Norway in 1960, and announced an almost hundred per cent certainty of an incoming nuclear attack. A snap decision had to be made in minutes by grossly misinformed personnel controlling the most fearsome power possessed by humanity.

  “We were lucky,” I said. “Somebody saw sense before pressing the red button.”

  Holland looked at me with fresh interest. “Any nuclear strike in ‘retaliation’, and humanity’s adventure on Earth would be over. Think about all the nuclear weapons in the world, where they are and who controls them. Dictators, demagogues, madmen. People who believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom and the afterlife now have the means to achieve it for all of us. It only takes one mistake. One idiot with his finger on the button.”

  I felt depressed. Outside, the Army’s weapons of destruction were being zealously and eagerly assembled. “You think this is our bottleneck,” I murmured.

  “Yes. I think all emergent civilisations reach this bottleneck, and with one exception - the alien race we’re now aware of - all fail to get through it. What makes humanity any different?”

  “But what if the appearance of aliens on Earth changes all that,” said Goatee, animatedly. “First contact, and all…”

  Holland pulled a handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his brow. “How we handle the appearance of aliens is going to determine whether we continue and advance into the stars, or whether Homo sapiens’ existence on this little planet is going to cease after, what, a hundred and fifty thousand years at most? Hell, the dinosaurs with their little brains had dominion over this planet for about a hundred and fifty million years!”

  I was about to point out that it was Homo sapiens’ big brains that had gotten us into this trouble in the first place, but Holland suddenly put his hand on my arm. His eyes flicked back and forward between Goatee and me, and then he dropped his bombshell.

  “Someone else has to go through the wormhole to make contact. Someone more qualified. Talk to them, before it’s too late.”

  I tried to hide my astonishment. “What? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  Holland was nodding vigorously. “Yes, yes. It’s the only way.”

  He grabbed a keyboard and his fingers were a blur, the monitor scrolling through text and numbers to produce a graph that looked like a waveform with the heading ‘spin correlation of entangled electrons’. I leaned down and got into his face.

  “You can’t be serious. You’re not actually going to do this, are you?”

  He looked up briefly, but kept on tapping commands into the keyboard. “Why not? If we wait for the politicians to approve it, it’ll be too late. As soon as Adam Benedict makes an appearance the military are going to get first dibs.”

  He stopped and pointed at the chronometer on the screen. “Right. We’ve got thirty minutes before it opens again. Let’s go.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Goatee. “If it isn’t a quantum teleport, then it has to be a traversable wormhole and you’ll end up there, dead, in the middle of space.”

  Holland folded his arms. “We’ll never find out by sitting here with our thumbs up our asses.”

  “Send a probe through,” I suggested.

  “Then what? How do we get it back?” He shut down the screen and stood up. “I’m going in. If you’re not going to help me, get the fuck out of my way.”

  I shook my head. “This is crazy. You’re going to die.”

  “Or worse, you’ll fuck things up even more,” said Goatee.

  Holland’s eyes had a manic glare now. “You know I’m right. We don’t have time to debate this. If we lose - poof!” He made an expansive hand gesture. “Endgame for humanity!”

  “You can’t,” I said. “You don’t have the authority.”

  “I believe I’m in charge of this research facility.”

  “And I believe you answer to Director Hubert,” I said, with a coolness I didn’t feel. “Let’s give him a call.”

  I walked over to a satellite phone sitting on one of the other desks and picked up the receiver. I started to dial but out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Holland was pointing at me.

  “Put the phone down,” I heard him say in a strange voice.

  I looked up and saw the gun in his hand. It was shaking a bit, but pointed at my head from a distance of two yards. Goatee had backed off against the wall and looked terrified, raising both hands in the air. I slowly lowered the receiver onto the cradle and raised my hands as well. “I’ve had guns pointed at me before,” I said. “You’re not going to shoot me”. This didn’t sound convincing when it left my mouth, which had suddenly dried up.

  Holland actually gave a sneer. “This is bigger than me and you. So yes, I will shoot you if you try and stop me.”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind,” said Goatee.

  Holland’s lip twitched. Not much, but enough to show that Goatee’s dig had hit the mark. “I’m the only one here in their right mind. Sit down on that chair and put your arms behind your back.”

  Goatee shook his head and looked back and forwards between Holland and me. He took another step forward, and held out his hand. “Give me the gun, Mike.”

  “Don’t be a hero,” I said to Goatee, fighting to keep my voice even. “Do as he says.”

  Holland’s tone hardened. “Yes, do as I say or …”

  Goatee rushed Holland, pushing me out of the way. I tumbled backwards and into the desk, just managing to stay upright. There was grunting as they took handfuls of e
ach other's clothing and attempted to wrestle each other to the ground. Then Holland released a handhold and started jabbing Goatee in the ribs. Goatee released both hands and grabbed Holland’s hair, bringing his face down sharply onto his bent knee. Blood flowed from Holland’s nose and he staggered backwards, still holding the gun. Goatee rushed him again and now they were fighting over the gun, each had a hand on it, the other gripping the other’s hand in a manic dance. Holland tried to kick Goatee but he jumped backwards out of range, letting go of the gun hand. As Holland raised the gun Goatee charged him, head down like a bull.

  “No!” I screamed.

  The gun went off, it’s retort loud in the confined space. Goatee jerked to the side and fell to his knees. He made a hissing sound and grasped at his stomach where there was a rapidly spreading patch of blood. I ran over and caught him just as his body crumpled to the ground and before his head hit the linoleum. His eyes were staring, fearful, his face contorted in agony. A muted groan came from his lips, which were already turning blue. I pressed my hand to his stomach, but no matter the pressure I applied the blood still gushed between my fingers and oozed under my hand. It spread onto his pants, the bright red quickly darkening, taking on a brownish hue.

  “Leave him, there’s no time,” urged Holland from behind me.

  I looked over my shoulder and saw that he was backed up against he desktop, still pointing the gun at me. I shook my head. “You can’t be serious. He’s going to die. We need to get help.”

  Holland wiped his face with the back of his hand where there was a bit of spittle mixing with the blood from his nose. “It’s too late for that. I need to get to the wormhole when it opens. The future of humanity is at stake.”

  I ignored him and turned back to Goatee, who was now unconscious and breathing shallowly. A trickle of blood appeared at the edge of his mouth. I took his pulse, which was thready and irregular. Unbidden, a vision of my daughter popped into my head. Grey and lifeless on a slab. My heart took a jerky beat and my eyes filled with tears.

  The gun boomed again, and the linoleum exploded next to me, showering me in splinters of wood and plastic.

  “I said leave him,” shouted Holland. He grabbed my hood and pulled me to my feet, and then thrust the gun in my face. “I’m going through the wormhole. I need you to witness what I’ve done. Tell the world. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” He nodded towards Goatee. “Or the one.”

  In the back of my mind I knew he had just quoted a Star Trek movie, that scene where Spock sacrifices himself for the crew of the Enterprise. This, after Holland had just shot and probably killed one of his colleagues. I realised he was completely unhinged. I nodded dumbly, my mind churning through all the possibilities to form just one idea. One action. But I had no idea what it was yet.

  Clutching my arm and with the gun firmly but discreetly placed in the small of my back, he guided me up the hill to the edge of the crater. The two MPs guarding the access staircase asked for his pass, and after a cursory inspection waved him through. As site Chief Scientist he’d made sure that the cavern was off limits to all personnel in the hour or so prior to the predicted wormhole opening, and had set up cameras and monitoring devices around the walls. Everyone was in the laboratories and mobile offices readying their equipment to record it’s next appearance. I squinted up into the morning sun and rubbed at the perspiration on my forehead as I took a sneaky look around the facility as we walked. There were embankments surrounding the crater, in concentric circles down the slope to the access road. Every ten yards or so there were gun emplacements, machine guns, and the MARRS remote weapon system manned by more soldiers that I could count. No one was looking in our direction, all eyes were focused outwards. We started down the staircase, our feet making metallic noises with each rung. As we descended, I saw he’d positioned the CCTV cameras so that we wouldn’t be visible on the staircase. When we reached the bottom he pushed me towards one of the large rock piles scattered the cavern floor. We crouched down out of sight and I surreptitiously glanced at my watch. I reckoned we had about three minutes before the wormhole appeared again.

  “It won’t be long before he’s discovered, and the alarm raised.” I said, trying to make him understand. “There’s still time. You can go back. Get help. Think about what you’re doing.”

  He looked at me in an off-base kind of way. “I can see the bigger picture. Why can’t you, of all people?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean,” I said.

  He waved the gun towards the centre of the cavern. “You’ve spoken with him. Heard the alien’s voice. There’s nothing more important than this, nothing. I’ve dedicated my life to Astrobiology, the study of extra-terrestrial life. This is the holy fucking grail for me. The gold at the end of the rainbow.”

  “What are you going to say to them? Have you got your speech prepared?”

  To my surprise he nodded eagerly. “Yes, I certainly have. I’m going to make them understand that when humanity finds out we’ve made contact with an advanced alien culture, all our petty squabbles will disappear. I’ll make them understand that we know that our survival depends on all peoples coming together as one species - the human race. That finally, we’ll grow up and reject ancient and divisive belief systems that’ve been the cause of conflicts throughout our history.”

  I remembered the few occasions I had made contact with the alien mind. The ‘alien-ness’ and feeling of superiority had been overwhelming. I didn’t think they would care about what Holland said about humanity.

  I was about to say exactly that, but he continued. “I’ll present humanity as being at a crossroads, where we’ll need to divest ourselves of millennia of irrationality and break out of the bottleneck to move forward as a new member of the interstellar family.”

  I shook my head. The interstellar family. He’d definitely been watching too much Star Trek. His eyes glazed over, and he seemed to be speaking to himself now.

  “I can do a better job speaking for humanity than Adam Benedict - a grieving widower with no scientific background or training in first contact. Yes, the fate of humanity rests on my shoulders now.”

  “You’re fucking deluded,” I said. “They won’t be interested. This is a suicide mission. And you might just make things worse, have you thought about that?”

  He blinked a few times and wiped a drop of sweat from his eyes again. “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe you should come with me?” The gun was back in my face. “Your testimony not only as a doctor but also as a female could help. Like on the Pioneer plaque, showing them that we have two sexes, you know?”

  I did know, and recalled seeing this in a documentary. The plaque showed nude figures of a human male and female. The man holding a hand up in greeting. The woman just standing meekly by his side.

  “What, you want us to strip off and go naked together into the wormhole?”

  He gave me a glassy stare, and gripped my arm even tighter. “No, but you’re definitely coming with me.”

  “No, I’m fucking not,” I said.

  He jabbed the gun harder into my rib cage and continued to stare into my eyes, sweat dripping down into his glasses. “Don’t you see? This’ll work better. Ambassadors for the human race. You and me!”

  I was thinking about my options, which included a straight knee into his groin, but then a diffuse light began to permeate the cavern and sparkling patterns started to appear on the walls. I peeked out from behind the rock to see a basketball-sized orb materialising in mid-air pulsing silently through the colours of spectrum.

  “It’s here,” Holland hissed excitedly.

  I sat back against the rock, realising that it was too late, despair chugging through my veins like concrete. I watched the orb contract and then expand into a glassy sphere a yard or more in diameter. The hairs on the back of my neck started to tingle, and I felt the temperature drop noticeably. My breath started to mist, and I felt a pressure on my chest to the extent that I suddenly had to physically concentra
te on the act of breathing.

  Holland pulled himself to his feet and with a grunt, jerked me upright. “You’re … coming … with … me…” he gasped, with each word yanking my arm and pulling me closer to what was now a roiling ball of fire. I felt my head spinning and pressure mounting behind my eyeballs, and I saw that he’d lowered the gun. With a supreme effort I pulled my arm free from his grip and made a grab for it. He resisted and after a few wrestles the gun flew out of his hand and bounced behind the rock. I dropped to my knees and crawled towards it, each inch feeling like a mile, the air thick like treacle. Twisting painfully to look over my shoulder, I could see Holland was torn with indecision whether to try to grab me again or to head towards the sphere.

  “Holland, forget it! Get behind the rock!” I yelled, the words being sucked from my lungs as if someone had put a vacuum cleaner down my throat. He grimaced and shook his head, lurching forward one faltering step at a time, until he dropped to his knees directly underneath the sphere. He stared directly into it, and flinched as it contracted and expanded, its surface becoming inflamed, watery and glistening.

  Then I saw the stars.

  A galaxy appeared, a cartwheel with an outer rim of young stars and a core that resembled a bulls-eye. Spiral arms extruded from a massive black hole at its centre. Nebulae could be seen, gigantic clouds of gas and dust where new stars are born and created.

  Holland reached out and touched the bright rim of the globe. His fingers became elongated, like rubber being stretched, morphing into shapeless liquid-like tubes. Then everything exploded in a convulsion of matter and energy and the inflating sphere engulfed him and expanded towards me. I dived behind the rock, hoping that it was sanctuary. In the split-second before I lost consciousness, I saw people running down the staircase, covering their eyes, their mouths opening and closing in silent screams.

  Then darkness fell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Through the Wormhole

  Like in my dream, there was a perception of being switched on, as if my consciousness was coming back online. There was no sense of physicality, no pull of gravity, and none of my external senses seemed to function. But I could think, and abstractedly I remembered Adam’s use of the philosophical proposition cogito ergo sum by Rene Descartes.