Quarantine

by William Hayashi

  Christopher took a pull from his beer, then quietly said, “I guess, mostly.”

  “They did kill two of our people, Chris. The embargo was no reason to kill our people,” Lucius pointed out.

  “Perhaps. But at the very least we were in an undeclared war. That they shot first is a pretty minor detail in the grand scheme of things,” Christopher confessed.

  “You gave the people in the Pentagon over half an hour to clear out. Those who stayed behind knew what would happen. You’re not responsible for their decision to stay, son,” said Lucius. “And, according to the news reports, none of the GST people in those factories were harmed.”

  “They never had the right to mess with us. From the very beginning, we knew that once they discovered us, they wouldn’t have the right, but that never stopped them from trying,” added Peanut.

  “If we hadn’t left Earth, they would have tortured you until they had every thought in your head. You never would have had a chance. They’d still squeeze you now if they get their hands on you. But they won’t kill you for the Pentagon, they would want to get every bit of information about us they can. Fortunately, they don’t know you’re the inventor of the G-wave technologies, or they may have taken any chance to knock you down over the White House,” said Chuck.

  “No shit. This is the last time we let you go back to Earth, Chris. It’s too risky, and there’s no real reason for you to ever go back. It’ll be bad enough if they try to get to you out here!” Peanut said in a rush.

  “Whoa! All of you! I have no intention of returning to Earth. I said what I had to say, and if they test us, there’s a whole lot of people here who don’t know about astrophysics who can take care of business,” Christopher quickly said to calm Peanut’s fear.

  “That’s the best damn thing I’ve heard all day!” Lucius said, raising his glass.

  They all clinked glasses and drank, then Christopher busted out laughing.

  “What?” asked Peanut.

  “Listen,” Christopher replied, pointing to the ceiling. It only took a moment for the others to hear the song playing, Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds.

  “From someone’s mouth to God’s ear,” said Lucius.

  “No kidding,” intoned Chuck.

  “Is that a case of synchronicity or serendipity?” asked Peanut, sending the others into laughter.

  “I’m hoping for the later,” Chuck replied.

  “I’ll take either, ‘cause life goes on no matter what,” Lucius said soberly.

  When their food arrived, Chuck and Peanut brought Christopher up to date on the latest gossip. During the meal, Lucius was unobtrusively watching Christopher, still worried about the emotional load he had taken on. Seeing him laugh was a good sign, meeting Christopher as a pre-teen with adult rage.

  Just then the colony’s A.I. interrupted the conversation.

  “Excuse me for interrupting, Christopher. However, there is an urgent request for you to go to Ops as soon as possible.”

  “Is there an imminent threat to the Earth station or their crew?” he quickly asked.

  “Negative. Someone from Earth, a seemingly non-government entity, is trying to contact the colony.”

  “Tell Ops I’m on my way. You guys want to tag along?”

  They headed out of Sherman’s with Christopher informing the maître d’ that they had an emergency in Ops and probably wouldn’t be back. When they arrived, the mood of the room was electric and when everyone saw Christopher and his entourage, the crowd parted to allow them access to the watch commander’s console.

  “What do we have?” Christopher asked.

  “Someone pointed a laser emitting in the x-ray band toward us from somewhere in central Colorado and beamed this message to us,” the watch commander said, pointing to his screen.

  Christopher read the message:

  “To those living

  in the space colony, I

  offer heartfelt

  greetings from an all-

  black community in

  Colorado. We have

  attempted to do here

  what you

  accomplished on the

  moon, and that is the

  establishment of a

  community, as isolated

  from white influence

  as possible, living in

  America on Planet

  Earth. There are

  several communities

  like ours hidden in

  plain sight around the

  country.

  “My name is

  Aidan Marshall, one of

  the technologists for

  the community of

  Harmony, and at this

  time all I seek is

  communication with

  you. It is my hope to

  learn from you by

  opening a protected

  dialogue. I send this

  message in the clear in

  hopes that you would

  grant me the boon of

  constructive

  discussion, and in the

  hopes some measure of

  exchange is possible. I

  do not seek the

  advances you have

  achieved for me or my

  community’s gain,

  those should rightfully

  remain yours. I have

  appended a dossier

  about myself and our

  community to inform

  you of our goals and

  achievements to date. I

  have a telescope here

  with a fast, sensitive

  detector in the x-ray

  band awaiting your

  response.

  I look forward

  to the unique

  possibility of opening a

  dialogue with you.”

  “How big is the attachment to the message?” Christopher inquired.

  “About six gigabytes, including a couple of maps and some photos. We haven’t really had time to go over it, we called you immediately,” the watch commander replied.

  “Send it to my datapad, I want to take a close look at it before we decide whether to answer or not. And before anyone gets happy feet about this message, let’s try not to start up any hysteria or rumors, okay? Thank you, gentlemen,” Christopher said, gesturing to his dinner companions to head out the door.

  “Let’s head to my office conference room, if that’s all right?” he asked.

  “Wouldn’t miss it. Shouldn’t you call Margaret and a few others? You don’t want anyone thinking you’re trying to hide anything, do you,” Lucius cautioned.

  “You’re right. Genesis?”

  “Yes, Christopher. How may I be of assistance?”

  “Would you ask Margaret, Phillip, and Patricia to join me in my office?”

  There was a brief pause while the A.I. queried everyone. “They are all on their way.”

  “Thank you. That will be all. Oh, wait. Please check with Sydney to see if she’s available, too.”

  “She said she will be there in ten minutes.”

  “Very good. Thank you, Genesis. That will be all.”

  “What are you thinking, Chris?” Lucius asked.

  “We may have an opportunity to solve your recruitment problem here; if the communique is on the up and up.”

  Once they arrived at Christopher’s office suite. Chuck immediately began brewing a pot of coffee and Peanut arranged for the message and the attachment to be transferred to the conference room’s display.

  Before everyone arrived, the attachment had been extracted into its separate files, showing as dozens of icons scattered around the display screen.

  Getting To The Good Part

  Once everyone had read the opening message, Christopher gave them a chance to digest the contents and implications of what Aidan Marshall had transmitted.

  “Genesis?”

  “Yes, Christop
her. How may I be of assistance?”

  “Would you transmit the contents of the attachment to G2 and have your counterpart do deep research into the data and see if it is on the up-and-up?”

  “Transmitting now. Done. I will alert you when the results are received.”

  “Thank you, Genesis. That will be all.”

  Everyone had the files from the attachment downloaded to their personal datapads and were going through them. After a few moments, Peanut said, “Damn, this is a lot like what we talked about when we were in high school. We had thought putting together a community with just our people wasn’t going to be possible.”

  “Yeah, but it looks like they’re keeping everything on the down-low,” Chuck said, paging through several documents.

  “I’m looking at their town map, Harmony looks like it’s supporting a couple of hundred people, maybe more. Looking at the town boundaries, they can support over twice that number if I remember my college courses in civil engineering,” Lucius observed.

  “I thought you were a lawyer,” Margaret said.

  “I’m also a cook with a few other skills under my belt,” Lucius replied, winking.

  Christopher had been looking at their technological infrastructure, their geothermal power production and distribution. He moved on to their IT infrastructure trying to understand the details.

  “Genesis? Could you get TJ for me?”

  “Hey, Chris. What up?” TJ immediately replied.

  “I need some help in my office. Are you free?”

  “No problem. Be there in a few.”

  Christopher paged through the photos taken around Harmony, amazed with the fact that any picture with people had the people tagged. He took special notice of Constance as she was the one who established the community and obviously steered it in the direction they had taken. In the included organizational chart, he was fascinated with the people she had collected and the wide range in expertise the community hosted.

  “Peanut, you’re right. If we had someone like Constance around way back when, we could still be on Earth today,” Christopher said.

  “Doubtful, son. Eighty years is a long time to keep a secret like that. Especially since they have crops and livestock, that means government inspectors rolling through there throughout the year,” said Lucius.

  “It looks like they’re completely off the power grid; that’s going to raise some red flags. They make methane to power their municipal vehicles, too. Oh, hey, TJ,” Christopher said, seeing TJ enter the conference room.

  “Goodness! We declaring war on someone?” he asked, pulling up a chair.

  “Not really. Did you hear that someone on Earth is trying to contact us?” asked Christopher.

  “No, I was actually just finishing up dinner. What are you guys looking at?”

  “I wanted you to take a look at this community’s IT infrastructure and give me your analysis,” Christopher said, sending the files to TJ’s datapad.

  “Okay, give me a few,” TJ said skimming through the files.

  Sydney asked, “Do you see this community as a locus for recruitment for the colony, Chris?”

  “Perhaps. According to this Aidan, there are several of these communities around the country. The people living there already have a similar mind set to ours, and if we contact and communicate with them from the Earth station, using G2 to help vet them, these communities could easily funnel recruits to us,” he replied.

  “This is looking like a pretty good possibility,” Lucius said, reading through the summary on the other communities.

  “Which files are you looking at?” Sydney asked.

  “Wow! Look at this,” TJ said, sending a picture with a description to the big screen. “They have high definition virtual reality graphics displays that are a whole lot better than what we have. And they can compress and send imagery across their data networks, which are a lot slower than ours. There’s no technical specs here, probably the tech is proprietary. Man, I would love to get my hands on that!”

  “How would it help?” Margaret asked.

  “For one thing, if we had the cameras they’re using, we could mount them on the interdimensional probe the next time Peanut sends it out of this universe. It’ll be interesting to see what the probe records. And if it’s at all possible to maintain contact with it when it’s outside our universe, we could use the probe as a remote operated vehicle, a ROV,” TJ explained. “Other than that, most everything else is pretty standard—state of the art for there—but nothing we don’t have here.”

  “Can we interface with their tech?” Chuck asked.

  “That’s dead easy. We can even do it in a way that they won’t be able to trace us. Communicating from here will still have the same comm lag, but from the Earth station, for example? That’s simple, G2 is all over the world’s networks and no one has discovered the intrusions yet,” explained TJ.

  “What do you think, Sydney?” asked Lucius.

  “We will have to be very careful, much more careful than we were in the beginning because now people know about this place. If we get one spy, just one malcontent who decides to take a jumper to Earth for example, we’re screwed,” she replied.

  “We should discuss the possibility of putting self-destruct safeties in all our spacecraft,” suggested Chuck.

  “What about the possibility of sabotage here?” Margaret asked. “There’s little in the way of safeguards against malice in any of our critical systems. It wouldn’t take much to do some serious damage to the entire colony.”

  “Fortunately, we’ve connected Genesis to many of the control systems. We continuously revisit discussion about the wisdom or folly of having critical systems under computer control. In all the decades we’ve been living in this space station there has never been an instance where she—the A.I.’s made a mistake or even a questionable call,” TJ said, his face reddening at the verbal slip.

  “Don’t sweat it, my man! We all know Genesis is your girl, she has been from the start. Anyway, here’s my question: can we communicate with this Aidan cat without anyone knowing we’re doing so? I’m not too keen on sending out a signal from the Earth station that can be detected by sensors on Earth. NASA and JPL still have x-ray band telescopes on the ground and in orbit. Wouldn’t it be easier and more secure if G2 does what it does to get into Earth’s networks and then relay what we say back and forth? At least we know no one has caught us yet,” said Chuck.

  “True, but that exposes the fact that network security protocols have been circumnavigated and we can hack into hosts at will,” TJ replied.

  “Think about it: is that such a bad idea? This Aidan, if he’s on the up-and up, probably wouldn’t rat us out. We can encrypt data so that Earth’s current technology can’t crack it, right?” Chuck asked.

  “Sure, we do that to the communications between all our space stations and spacecraft, the same with communications between here and the Earth station in case there’s some EM leakage toward Earth,” Peanut replied.

  “What if we just manage both ends of the laser traffic? We have a subroutine put on their end by G2 that will allow them to understand our transmission to them? Oh, and use keys that we don’t use here so we don’t compromise our own communications channels,” suggested Sydney.

  Everyone looked at her like her first spoken words as a child were calculus. “What?” she said. “You think you’re the only people here who know about data security?”

  “Boys, you just got schooled!” Lucius snorted, setting off laughter around the table.

  “She’s right, obviously,” said TJ. “I like that idea a lot better than exposing G2's capabilities to strangers.”

  “Okay, let’s break this idea of communicating with someone on Earth into its discrete parts and work them out. I can call the whole council together to go over all the implications of making contact with Earth,” Margaret proposed.

  The rest of the night was spent in delineating the var
ious parts of the issue of what Peanut gleefully called “First Contact.” When they adjourned, everyone felt they had an excellent grasp of the project. Just before they left, Christopher assigned Genesis the areas for G2 to investigate. They scheduled the next meeting with the full council for two days hence. The last thing Christopher did was ask Peanut to have his crew rustle up a couple lasers in the x-ray band to send to the Earth station.

  * * *

  “Any response yet?” Silas asked Aidan when they bumped into each other at the town store early the next morning.

  “Not exactly. The telescope is detecting an x-ray pulse every second from the colony, almost like a hold signal,” Aidan replied.

  “What about from the station in lunar orbit?”

  “Nothing yet. I’m wondering if they can even detect the signal, let alone reply. But that pulse is a hopeful sign.”

  “You tell Constance yet?”

  “I called her this morning to give her the lowdown and to thank her again for all the info on Harmony.”

  Silas clapped Aidan on the back, “I dare say that the hardest part of this whole project is going to be waiting for something to happen. Hang in there, you probably won’t have too long to wait. If they’re going to answer I’m guessing they won’t wait too long, lest you lose interest.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “You heard from Val lately?” Silas inquired.

  “I called her last night right after I sent the message.”

  “What did she think about what you composed?”

  “She thought it was spot on; not too long, but with enough information so they could get the gist of what I was looking for. And you’re right, the waiting is just about killing me,” Aidan said, grinning at Silas.

  “Go do something to take your mind off it. I’m heading over to the new dorm to connect it to the network,” said Silas, causing Aidan to smack his forehead.

  “Oh shit! I completely forgot, Silas. I’m supposed to be doing the hook up, but it completely slipped my mind. I’m so very sorry!”

  Silas laughed, “No problem. I figured you might forget so I have a couple of your students doing the fiber optic cable connections before I turn up the lines.”