“Hmm. Amy, I’m afraid I’ll have to report that as an unauthorized launch to the IAU. Their worry being that it could have been intentionally hijacked by somebody or something, perhaps even an alien life form. Now it may have been merely a malfunction but they have to cover all bases. At least it will be documented for scientists to study.”
“Well crap. That will probably lead to questions that we don’t have answers for.”
“Probably. Expect a questionnaire from them in a few days. Standard procedure. These flubs usually don’t amount to anything so don’t worry. Goodbye Dr. Godwin. Take care.”
Amy hung up the phone about to cry and looked at her mother.
“Are we okay, Mom? I feel like I just a received a speeding ticket.”
“Well, it is what it is, Amy. Things don’t always go as we plan. And you didn’t do it; you were just the unfortunate messenger. Besides, that MEP did launch successfully; now we wait.”
And wait they did, for fourteen days, until a disturbing call came into Jen’s office from Goldstone.
“Mars Payload Operations Center, Godwin speaking,” she answered, thumbing through a thick MOM document.
“Doctor Godwin? This is Seth Binder at Goldstone calling.”
She set the book aside and pulled out a pad of paper. “No, this is her mother, Jen Godwin. She’s the one who called a few weeks back about the strange MEP-1 launch but I was there; I’m in the loop.”
“Good, then I’ll get right to the point. For the past two weeks, telemetry from your escape pod has been steady and rock solid, following its com protocol precisely. However this morning things changed.”
“Changed? How?”
“The signal has become intermittent on a periodic basis, like something or someone is keying it on and off. It’s a rather long pattern but one of our radio astronomers first noticed it and wrote it down.”
“Strange. Could it be from a wiring failure, a loose connection? It is a prototype you know?”
“Doubtful, ma’am. It’s not a random sequence but a well-defined one like a repeated SOS but more complicated. Whatever it is there is definitely intelligence behind it.”
“Can you describe it for me?”
“Easily. It’s one long sequence encompassing four shorter internal sequences. The entire loop lasts but a few seconds followed by a long pause. It starts long, short, long, short. Then long, long, short. Then long, short and a single long finishes the message. We even tried Morse code but that just yielded a jumble of recurring letters that made no sense.”
“Well thank you, Seth. I’ve written that information down and will spend some time trying to decode it.”
“Fine, Jen, but I suggest you spend all your time trying to decode it. It could very possibly be our first alien communication.”
“Thanks, Seth. Call me if things change.”
Pensively dropping the handset in its cradle, her face paled remembering his admonition; spend all your time trying to decode it --- our first alien communication.
As she sat spinning a pencil, staring at her note, she saw nothing more than the Morse code that Goldstone had already rejected. She realized she needed help.
“Amy, can you meet me at the MEP station in the dome? I have some rather disconcerting news.”
“Sure, Mom. See you there.”
Upon her arrival, Amy found Jen standing, arms crossed, staring at a blackboard she had rolled in from the A/V storage area. On it, scribbles surrounded a central sketch that resembled a bird’s eye view of a two-lane highway striped down the center by malfunctioning lane striper. Large chalk bubbles encircled the four missing-stripe data groups with counts and widths floating below them. At the top of the drawing in large letters was ‘MORSE CODE?’ marked through with a large X.
“What’s this,” she asked, tilting her head, trying to make sense of the sketch.
Before answering, ignoring her question for the moment, Jen approached the board and chalked ‘Binary Data?’ under the marked-through top line.
“Sorry, honey. What was your question?”
Amy stared back with an inquisitive smile. “Boy, Mom, you’re really wrapped up in this. What the hell is it?”
“According to Goldstone our MEP-1 is now ad-libbing, sending out extraneous telemetry signals modified by periodic pauses. It started this morning.”
“Oooh, the plot thickens,” she said, moving closer to the board, examining the weird dashed line. “Did they eliminate the possibility of an intermittent short circuit as the cause?”
“Yes. Too predictable and regular. They think there’s intelligence behind it.”
“What kind of intelligence? For God’s sake, it’s an autonomous spaceship with no riders inside unless there’s a stowaway.”
“Well as hard as it is to accept, they think there might be a stowaway, an alien life form inside trying to contact us.”
“Oh my God, that’s crazy, Mom. I’m going to wield Occam’s Razor here and say there has to be a simpler answer than aliens. Has to be.”
“Well then you take over, girl, and find me an answer… one that the folks at Goldstone will believe.”
“Okay, where do I start?”
“I suggest at the top.”
“Fair game,” she said, pointing to the top line. “Why is Morse code marked through? Looks like a reasonable suggestion to me.”
“Goldstone already decoded it and found a ‘jumble of recurring letters that made no sense’,” she said, referring to her notes.
“Have you, yourself, tried to decode it using Morse? Seems simple enough.”
“No, not really, but---”
“Google dah-dit-dah-dit for me, please.”
“Says it’s a ‘C’.”
“How about dah-dah-dit?”
“G.”
“And the third pattern, dah-dit?”
“An ‘A’,” Jen said, an upward curl forming on her lips, feeling a vague familiarity with the letter group.
Amy suddenly knew the fourth letter before she asked. All at once, a warmth washed over her, her mind began to spin with realizations ordering the past years of her life into perfect harmony.
“And the last code, dah, will be a ‘T’ for Thymine, the fourth nucleotide needed to create life. That jumble of recurring letters they ignored is the key to our existence.”
Then with an epiphanic gasp she shrieked, “Oh my God, Mom, after all these years, Nissy’s offspring is aboard that pod and headed for earth. And it’s trying to contact us through the only means it has.”
Jen swayed for a moment grasping for anything then fainted, falling into her arms before hitting the floor.
“Mom! Mom! Are you okay?” she asked, carefully laying her limp body by the blackboard.
In the seconds that followed, seemingly hours to Amy, her mom fluttered her eyelids and then awakening, beginning to rouse, spoke the words of the Lord’s Prayer. However, as she reached the Amen, she didn’t stop. “And Lord, though we know not what we’ve done, please guide our intentions with your powerful mercy. Amen.”
Amy followed, bowing her head. “Amen.”
Jen rose to her feet with Amy’s help and embraced her.
“Oh Amy,” she said, pulling her closer, “Your dad would be so proud and excited with this discovery. I wish we could tell him.”
“But he won’t hear us, Mom.”
“I know, honey, it was just a wish.”
Eventually settling back to business, assessing their situation in the dim surroundings of Dome 5, they weighed the options for handling their discovery’s disclosure. Two urgent matters surfaced immediately: First, call Goldstone with their new revelation and ask how much time they had until earth intercept, and then call Blake Lipinski to notify him his project was a success though not the one he wanted. Neither call would be easy.
Chapter 23
SCOOPED
A my sat alone, her hand on the desk phone, and watched Jen leave the dome. She had begged her to stay for supp
ort but the meeting she had to attend was hers to chair as the new Mayflower MTS-1 Mission Director.
Although Amy didn’t mind making the calls, the gravity of the first call to Goldstone troubled her. Especially when she realized she would have to describe the whole LTS project with its DNA sequencing capabilities to a group of mathematicians, engineers, and astronomers. On top of that, they would want to know about Nissy, an omniscient quantum computer secretly tucked away from public knowledge, the creator of the stowaway creature in the pod. She felt she was doomed from the start.
She drew a deep breath, released it forcefully through pursed lips, then lifted the handset and pushed redial.
“Goldstone Deep Space Network, this is Seth Binder. How may I direct your call?”
“Oh, hi Seth Binder. This is Amy Godwin calling from MOE. You’re manning the front desk now?”
Laughing, he replied, “We do everything here, Amy; usually whoever’s closest gets the honor. Budget cuts and all, you know. I was just passing by. What’s up at MOE?”
“Oh, not much. Except we just decoded the message buried in the telemetry from the MEP-1.”
His voice raised an octave with his response.
“Really? We’ve had half our staff working around the clock on that one and a lot of them will be really pissed with your scooping us. They have a big pot riding on the odds-on favorite… and it isn’t MOE. What did you find that we missed? Is it alien?”
“Oh, you did find it; you just didn’t carry it through. How big was the pot?”
“Last count it was about five grand with JPL’s bets included.”
“Wow, big money. Who’d you pick?”
“Well, after reading your impressive bio how could I not pick you? I’ll get quite a return on my dollar, it seems. Now clue me in.”
“Those random but recurring letters you found using a Morse code template were not random but the first letters of the four base nucleotides found in an earthly DNA strand.”
“What? Well for God’s sake, Amy, no wonder we didn’t recognize those letters. Our staff is a little light on geneticists and biotechnologists. But what business do they have traveling through space piggybacked on the telemetry from an interplanetary space craft? Again, is it alien?”
“The stowaway? No, not in the sense that you mean… but it is from Mars.”
“Okay, now I’m really lost. Explain it in simple rocket science terms.”
Chuckling, she answered, “Remember our New Science on Mars launch from the Cape a while back? It was called MPDV.”
“Yes, six or seven years ago if I remember correctly, I was still in high school playing football. Hey, in your bio it says you landed that ship on Mars single-handedly. Is that really correct?”
“It’s true. I was a nerd. A bit geeky for my young age.”
“But-but you couldn’t have been much older than twelve at the time, four years younger than me. Here I thought I was a hero because I could land a pigskin in moving hands fifty yards away.”
She laughed. “Funny, Seth. Our goals were what we chose for ourselves. I guess mine were a tad larger.”
“Not entirely, Amy. My dad chose that path for me, but when I broke my collarbone on a stupid fumble, I had to change it or drop out. I picked astronomy because I loved the night sky and wanted to know more.”
“Good for you. You seem to be doing okay now.”
“I am. I thrive on surprises from space like the one I’m about to hear.”
“Okay then, let’s continue.”
She paused and took a breath, remembering.
“One of the experiments carried on that payload vessel was the LTS or Life Teleportation System. A miraculous machine, it could sequence those four chemicals using detailed instructions from earth into complex DNA strands for advanced medical treatment of sick and injured colonists. It could create vaccines for new viruses, synthetic organs for transplants, even healthy replacement bones for broken ones.”
“Good. I’m following you… mostly.”
“The day after it landed on Mars, we sent it an inaugural message imbedded in a small DNA data file. A simple phrase ‘What hath mankind wrought?’ it never made it there unaltered. That same night, we think, a sentient near omniscient, quantum computer created by my dad surreptitiously attached a very long set of DNA assembly instructions to it and sent it on its way. After that, the system locked up and was never heard from again… until yesterday. Seth, we now think the LTS created a synthetic entity or being on Mars that night, making it about six years old right now. It’s stowed away in that pod, trying to contact us, coming toward earth.”
“Oh my God, Amy, that’s frightening especially with that message and the sentient computer’s override. You just can’t make that shit up. If word of it gets out---and I’m sure it will---a huge shitstorm will hit all of NASA, so get all your ducks in a row.”
“Wow. Gotta go now, Seth, and attempt damage control. Oh, have you done calculations on the trajectory---when it’ll arrive at the rescue point?”
“As a matter of fact we have. At least we could do that successfully. You have ninety-three days to prepare for the worst or best day of your life as the case may be. Stay in touch. We’ll start an hourly track on it now, knowing what’s inside. Goodbye, Astronaut Godwin, and good luck with your creature’s arrival.”
Pulling the handset from her ear, she hesitated then jammed it back. “Oh Seth, before you go, I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“What if I want to answer the signal on its uplink, can you do that for me?”
“Depends. What kind of message?”
“Thought I’d respond in kind, of course. First, in Morse code and English.”
“Well I don’t think I can personally do that for you, Amy, but we have a few hams, amateur radio operators, on our staff. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind doing it if I told them they were talking with a real Martian android.”
“More like a Nissoid, Seth. Its creator’s name was Nissy, a quantum computer, and it would be wrong to assume it resembles a human or even a robot. It’s a living, existing life form forged from digital computer commands and four vats of organic chemicals.”
“So it could be a modern Frankenstein’s monster, huh? Or even a life form we don’t recognize with three heads, four arms, and eight feet---an octopod.”
“Yes, possibly.”
“Now that is downright terrifying, Amy. But sure, we can tune our big transmitter to umm… 317.5 MHz, point our big dish at Mars and send away. All we need is a message.”
“Okay, then try this: ‘Who are you?’ first and see what happens. At the same speed as the incoming message, have your telegrapher repeat it five times, wait five seconds sending one dot per second, then three times and wait three more seconds without the dots, then reverse the entire sequence including the letters in the message. Do it until the telemetry signal’s modulating code changes.”
“Got it. But what, besides the question, does that timing and switch-up tell the- the Nissoid, for lack of a better word?”
“Hopefully, that we know and understand the DNA architecture. That we are geneticists and we comprehend its makeup and want to help. DNA strands are always built in the 5’ to 3’ direction. It should be extremely smart. Smart enough to recognize the format of a message like that although it’s only six. But since DNA structure is apparently the only language it knows outside of Morse code the message should force a response.”
“Hey, Amy, want to come work with us out here in the desert? That’s quite good. We could use a mind like yours.”
“No, but thanks, Seth. I’ll be talking to you from Mars next year and that’s my goal for now.”
“Okay then, I tried. This message should hit Mars and the pod within the hour. Will you be available for a callback then?”
“Oh, of course, on pins and needles.”
Exactly one hour and twelve minutes later, the desk phone rang, startling her awake. She fumbled for the phone,
dropping a thick manual titled MOEMEPMAN 3.2 to the floor.
“Hello? MOE Dome 5, MPDV Mission Control, this is Amy.”
“Amy, Seth here. You were right. Soon after we sent your message out, nine-minutes and fifteen seconds to be exact, that constant CGAT code riding the telemetry signal stopped abruptly, as if the sender was thinking or creating an answer. Then seconds later, it restarted with a new longer coded message using those same letters in a different order. We thought you’d like to know.”
“Well sure. Did you copy the new code?”
“Yes, in Morse code again, it read, got a pencil and pad?”
“Now I do, go.”
“With a similar repeating pattern, it read, ‘TGCCGTTGAATATAGCAACAT.’ That’s dah, dah-dit-dit, dah-dit-dah-dit---”
“Never mind the Morse, Seth, let me mentally reassemble that DNA code into triads so I can decipher the message. TGC is N, CGT is O, TGA is T, ATA is a space, TAG is A, CAA is M and the final CAT is Y.”
Trying to read her scribbling in the dim light, she brought the pad to eye level and laughed.
“What’s so funny? Was it a real answer? Who did the thing say it was?”
Still chuckling, she answered, “Yeah, it was a real answer all right, real clever, but it didn’t help at all. However it did give me a clue as how to converse with it.”
“Who did it say it was, Amy?” he asked impatiently this time.
“Two words: NOT AMY.”
“Yeah clever… and evasive. But-but how did it know your name? We didn’t send it.”
“My name was in the original data header we sent to Mars. It’s smart. It picked that up from reading its own DNA. It must have an internal reader, assembler, and sequencer and that is very dangerous.”
“Why would you say that? What makes it dangerous?”
“Exactly what I would have expected from Nissy, it has the power to chemically reproduce itself. It’s a self-replicating organism.”
NISSY Page 18