“Best friend?” Rachael asked with a pained look.
“Well, second best friend,” Joshua replied with a wink followed by a small peck on her cheek. “Don’t worry. It’s not like we would have hung out at a corner bar and had a few beers if he’d gotten his request for the android.” He stopped and laughed. “Hey, maybe a drunk alien might cough up some secrets.”
The allusion caused Rachael to think of the Rock Candy Dance Club and their first night together. “It’s incredible that I show up for an interview, and we end up talking to aliens and falling in love in less than forty-eight hours,” Rachael observed. “Are we in a Nicholas Sparks movie?”
Joshua nodded. “I know. What are the odds?” He elbowed Rachael as he drew alongside her.
“It’s what I was telling you that day when we had coffee. Sometimes the long shot doesn’t seem plausible.”
“Like cells assembling themselves into life without any help—without a first cause, as you put it.”
“I think that’s a good example. And talking with Seth, for the record, hasn’t changed my way of thinking. Quite the opposite.”
“So what you’re saying is that our meeting and becoming lovers wasn’t an accident.”
“I think I am.” She smiled as they neared the clearing, the valley dipping below them. “It’s what Romeo and Juliet is about. Two young people from the houses of Montague and Capulet are destined to fall in love.”
Joshua cringed. “Hmm. Let’s not go there. They were star-crossed lovers. Not a happy ending, if I recall Brit Lit 101 correctly.”
“You do, but this is Berkeley, not Verona, Italy, and I intend to hold onto you, mister. We don’t have to hide our relationship or worry about feuding families like Shakespeare’s lovers.”
Joshua kissed her on the lips. “No, our feuds are with NASA, the White House, and the Pentagon. A piece of cake, right? Which is not to say that Vinod wouldn’t like to parry and thrust with Porter. Let’s hope it never comes to that.”
They’d arrived at the clearing and paused to look at the view.
“You’re avoiding the issue,” Rachael remarked. “Kinda like Seth does sometimes when he changes the subject abruptly or answers obliquely. What do you think of fate with a capital F on it?”
Joshua settled on the ground, legs crossed, the basket by his side as Rachael joined him under the shade of a long fir branch.
“God?” he said. “I’ve given it a lot of thought over the past year or so, but I still don’t know. The existence of primordial spookyons might be evidence of a creator, but it’s still circumstantial. It’s speculative, just like your theory of cell assembly. Maybe we should ask Seth about the big picture. The petrins have had a few billion years to think about the idea of a creator.”
Rachael shrugged. “It wouldn’t make any difference to me whether Seth gave the idea a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down.”
“Really?” Joshua said, caught off guard by Rachael’s response. “Their input wouldn’t sway you if they’ve come to a definite conclusion that no first cause was necessary for creation? Not even with all the intelligence of the collective at their disposal? Or with the input of thousands of other civilizations spread across the universe? Surely they’ve considered the existence of a superior being and have some kind of opinion for or against its existence.”
Rachael shook her head. “No, I can’t envision anything they might say that would affect my beliefs. They’re pretty much baked into who Rachael Miller is.”
“But they’ve achieved immortality,” Joshua said. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”
“No, not really. They found immortality by using science that was available to them thanks to the existing universe.”
“I know what’s coming. Who put the science there? Or the universe?”
“Right.” She pointed her index finger at the left side of Joshua’s chest. “Belief is something written on the heart, Josh. It’s not digital and it doesn’t have anything to do with backup copies or frozen frogs. What I have is an inner certitude, and as Henry Bowman might have put it, you can’t hack that.”
Joshua crossed his arms and laughed out loud. “I do believe Dr. Joshua Andrews and perhaps an entire civilization of thirteen trillion individuals has been bested by Rachael Miller’s theological musings. You’re pretty convincing.”
“I have my moments,” she said, leaning over to kiss Joshua. “Now I hope that the cucumber sandwiches are still fresh. No meat. Just veggies on whole grain bread.”
“I’m sure they’re fine, but—”
“What’s up?”
Joshua glanced at his wrist as his Apple watch began to vibrate. He’d been leaning back, arms braced against the hard-packed dirt, but he sat up straight in order to look at the watch.
“A notification on my Apple watch,” Joshua replied.
“What is it?”
Rachael opened the cooler and produced two bottles of chilled water as Joshua angled his wrist to better see the face of the watch.
“What’s the matter?” Rachael asked, noting the concerned look on Joshua’s face.
“It’s a news alert from CNN.” He read the headline, shut his eyes tightly, looked again, and took a deep breath. “I don’t know about God or heaven, but all hell’s about to break loose.”
“Why?” The carefree smile vanished from Rachael’s face.
Joshua didn’t answer. He grabbed his cell phone and brought up the CNN app to get the full story signaled by the alert. “Good God no!”
“You’re freaking me out. What gives? Is it about the Ebola outbreak?”
Joshua shook his head. “Scoot close and watch with me.”
Rachael inched closer to Joshua as he opened the live stream from CNN, her head by his shoulder as she glanced at the phone screen.
“I repeat,” a female voice said. “This is CNN breaking news. Contact has been established with aliens. An explosive new video obtained from an anonymous source shows what our science contributors have identified as a Bowman sphere at the NASA Bowman Particle Research Center in Berkeley, California. Our source tells us that NASA has been using it to communicate with extraterrestrial intelligence.”
The accompanying video showed the interior of the bat cave with a scientific team conducting a routine session with Seth. A close-up shot of the sphere was seen as it brightly glowed its characteristic green color.
“How in the hell did anyone get that kind of footage?” Rachael asked, spellbound by the images. “Porter’s video surveillance system is locked down as tightly as anyone in the world could make it.”
“And there’s no way anyone without clearance could have gotten into the bat cave,” Joshua added.
The female news anchor on CNN, a young brunette with a white blouse and a dark skirt, answered Rachael’s rhetorical question. “CNN has further confirmed that the video was obtained by a hacker who breached the servers at the particle center.” The shot tightened as she spoke against a background that showed the entrance to the particle center. “Along with this video, these images were also obtained.” The entrance of the center was replaced by pictures that Joshua and Rachael were well acquainted with, pictures that very few people had seen until now.
“These images purportedly show, respectively, the alien home world that researchers have been communicating with and one of the alien creatures.”
The image of Seth was instantly recognizable to Joshua and Rachael.
Joshua’s phone began to vibrate, and the text alert and call ringtones on Rachael’s phone began to sound every few seconds.
“It’s Langdon,” she said. “Wait, it’s Williams too.”
“Make it all three,” Joshua said. “Langdon, Williams, and Porter. They want to know where we are. We need to get back to the center ASAP.”
“Need?” Rachael said. “I’ve been ordered back. Porter is not a happy man.”
The anchor continued. “CNN has learned that messages are coming in from multiple nations and organizations
, all demanding that the United States disclose whatever information it has on the aliens and that all knowledge acquired thus far, as well as the sphere, be shared with the governments of the world.”
“Demand?” Joshua said.
“The world?” Rachael said.
Rachael and Joshua exchanged glances as they ran up the trail. They were both thinking the same thing: had Vinod gotten fed up with Porter and NASA and decided to tell the world about the petrins? Maybe, as Vinod himself was fond of saying, he’d gone rogue.
25
The Sixty-Million-Dollar Man
Joshua and Rachael hopped onto the Harley and rushed back to the lab, weaving in and out of traffic quickly given the gravity of their summons. They knew that the whole project might be in jeopardy, and the administrative team would no doubt want to find both the source of the hack as well as a remedy for it as soon as possible. Dealing with government bureaucracy and security measures was one thing; engaging in sensitive diplomatic relations with the nations of the world was quite another.
“That might be above our pay grade,” Rachael said.
“That doesn’t mean Porter won’t put all teams on the hot seat,” Joshua added. “I suspect he’s mad as hell.”
As they entered Langdon’s office, Vinod was sitting on one of the couches, and a video conference with Porter and Williams was in progress on the monitor. They sat down on the couch next to Vinod as the irate voice of Porter demanded an explanation for the hack.
“God damn it!” Porter shouted. “How the hell did this happen? All security measures were formulated and implemented by the best IT personnel at the Pentagon.”
“We’re looking into it now,” Langdon replied. “The server logs show definite evidence of a breach sometime yesterday. The IP Address of the hacker has been traced to somewhere in Russia, but proxy servers were used, so it may take time to track down the perpetrator. He—or they—could be anywhere in the world. The breach has been plugged, not that it’s going to make much of a difference now. The cat’s out of the bag. The entire world knows what we’ve been doing in the bat cave.” His voice sounded resigned and weary.
“We’re definitely in damage control mode,” Williams said, “and I want all options on the table.”
Porter, however, was more interested in assigning blame. “I’m thinking that whoever did this had some inside help,” he stated, “and my prime suspect is sitting right there in that room with you.”
“Hold on,” Langdon retorted. “You don’t know that for—”
“Screw you, Porter!” Vinod shouted, knowing the general was referring to him. “This is your fault—yours and your almighty team from the Pentagon. You’re in charge of security, not me. If you’d put me in charge of securing those servers instead of your lame-ass, incompetent IT personnel, none of this would have happened. I wrote the algorithm that made communication with Seth possible, but I wasn’t good enough for the United States government?”
“How did someone in a foreign country thousands of miles away know what was happening four hundred feet below the particle center?” Porter asked indignantly. “It had to be an inside job.”
“Maybe a member of one of your own security teams leaked the information,” Vinod shot back. “Washington has more leaks than an old faucet.”
“Let’s calm down and focus on solutions,” Williams interrupted. “The importance of talking with extraterrestrials has been taken to a whole new level, and we can’t treat the sphere like a football that’s handed off from one player to another. We will, of course, conduct a full investigation of this hack and find who’s responsible, but we have more immediate problems to deal with. The White House is getting bombarded with calls from foreign governments demanding equal time with the sphere. The United Nations General Assembly and the U.N. Security Council are in session, and countries are demanding a response from our U.N. ambassador.”
“Screw ‘em all,” Porter replied. “We own this sphere, and it’s tough shit for them. We have no obligations to foreign governments regarding private government research.”
“How about we try to play the angle that the video and the pictures were a hoax,” Langdon suggested, his tone optimistic. “We can just deny everything. Videos are faked all the time.”
“I agree,” Porter declared resolutely. “We haven’t been able to create entangled spookyons since Henry Bowman’s work, so we have plausible deniability.”
“That’s not going to work,” Williams said. “The leaked images are extremely high resolution, with incredible detail that would be almost impossible to create on Earth. No one is going to believe this is a hoax—certainly not professional analysts in the military or intelligence communities. At this point, it’s politically untenable for us to continue to keep this a secret and not provide at least some access to the sphere to outside entities. But I want to share it in a secure manner such that we continue to get all information gleaned from Seth. Otherwise, we’d face redactions from other countries as well as from the petrins.”
“We can’t just flippin’ hand over the sphere to some foreign bastards,” Porter said. “We have no idea how they’d apply information they received from the aliens. Sharing information could create global instability.”
“I’m forced to agree,” Joshua stated. “If the sphere breaks, or if whoever we give it to follows shoddy security protocols, it could be a disaster. Just imagine what would happen if the sphere was directly connected to the Internet. Seth would have access to unlimited information, much of it unflattering and downright confusing. He could nevertheless digest it in a few hours, and it would take our teams years to explain what it all means.”
“Or we could discontinue the program altogether,” Porter said, raising a finger and sitting forward in his chair. “We’re not gathering any actionable intelligence, and some of the joint chiefs think the project is becoming a liability. If we break the sphere, our problem is solved.”
“That’s absurd,” Joshua said. “Why don’t you shut down SETI while you’re at it since they expect to receive a meaningful signal within thirty years?”
“Is that all you’re after?” Vinod asked, hardly able to contain his anger. “Actionable intelligence? Like I said from the beginning, you’d like nothing better than to weaponize what we learn from Seth.”
“If that’s true,” Joshua said, “then maybe we should pull the plug. I’m not here to play war games, general.”
“The program will continue at the president’s insistence,” Williams replied. “I understand all your concerns, but we need to figure out a way to give controlled access to Seth to other nations while maintaining complete control over the sphere. We also need to restrict the information flow into and out of the sphere like we’ve been doing with the audio interface. I’m open to suggestions.”
Rachael had been quietly listening to the conversation and finally chimed in. “I have an idea that addresses all of the concerns that have been mentioned.”
“What is it?” Williams asked.
“For God’s sake,” Porter said. “She’s just a reporter.”
“Hear her out, Mitchell,” Williams advised. “It’s not like we have viable options at the moment. I’m looking for nuance, not a binary decision of share or don’t share.”
“How about we build Seth his android?” Rachael said.
“How’s that going to help?” Langdon asked. “I’m not following.”
“Look, we can’t just hand over the sphere to someone else,” Rachael explained. “There’s too much risk of it breaking or being used insecurely. But if the sphere were encased in an android, the risk of breakage would be minimized. As far as security is concerned, it would be much easier to control an android than an isolated sphere. We could demand that our own security teams be with him at all times. With Seth in android form, the only way anyone could interact with him would be verbally, not digitally. Nobody would be able to hack him, so to speak. The security team could record all conversations wit
h him so that we would get a complete record of all information he gave to anyone. We could also shut him down anytime we felt the need to, meaning that the information flow to and from the sphere happens at our discretion.”
The group pondered Rachael’s idea for a few moments. Vinod expected Mitchell to launch into another tirade but was surprised by his response.
“If just keeping the sphere to ourselves isn’t possible,” Porter said, “then this android idea may be okay if we can build in the right security protocols. The android would essentially function like a firewall, one that we control and set the rules for.”
“Robert, what do you think?” Williams asked.
“I’m open to this idea given our current circumstances,” Langdon said. “The android body can become a secure protective case around the sphere to preserve its structural integrity. The fact that other nations can only interact with the sphere using speech limits the amount of information that Seth can send or receive, and we can monitor this communication down to the last syllable. It’s not optimal, but given the current situation and the fact that we’re not going to just hand over the sphere to anyone who demands it, it may be the best option. I also like the fact that we can monitor the android twenty-four-seven and shut it down anytime we wish. Only we should have control of that process, by the way.” Langdon rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I think it might work.”
“Very well then,” Williams remarked. “I’ll have to get approval for this from the higher-ups, but I think we should start working on this right now. I don’t know how much longer we can hold off on not allowing Seth to communicate with other countries given the furor that the CNN story has generated. Robert, I want you to assemble an engineering team and start thinking about how to build the android. Mitchell, I need you to come up with the security protocols according to the rules we’ve outlined today. We’ll reconvene in a day or two to see if this is even feasible.”
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