Not Alone

by Falconer, Craig A.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Really.”

  “So now that you’re sticking around, when are you going to release that phone call from Slater when she threatened us right before the raid?”

  Of all the things Clark could have said, this was among those Emma expected least. “I haven’t really thought about that.”

  “Don’t,” Dan said.

  Clark looked at him. “What? Why?”

  “I don’t want to be in the news anymore,” Dan said. “And it would strengthen Godfrey’s position?”

  “And?”

  “And Godfrey gives me a bad feeling.”

  Clark rolled his eyes and groaned.

  “What do you mean?” Emma asked. “What kind of feeling.”

  Dan shrugged. “I dunno, but it’s not good.”

  SUNDAY

  D plus 5

  McCarthy Residence

  Birchwood, Colorado

  Sunday morning passed painfully slowly, as though the time zone on Dan’s phone had been changed to Tortoise Time and the sand in his mental hourglass had been switched out for treacle.

  His legs grew ever more restless on the edge of the couch as the day wore on; his eyes and ears grew tired of the news stations’ grating graphics and jingles; his entire being grew frustrated at the passivity of it all.

  Before Friday, Dan had been trying to make something happen: Disclosure. And though something equally important was supposed to happen on Sunday — the grand revealing of the alien plaques — Dan couldn’t do anything to make it happen any faster. Like everyone else glued to their TV, all he could do was wait.

  There had certainly been plenty of times over the last few weeks when Dan had found himself watching the news to see how leaders and citizens in different countries would react to the latest developments, but up until now he had always known that he would be responding. He always knew Emma would be there to tell him what to do next to build upon those reactions, always with the ultimate goal in mind.

  Emma was still there, of course, but as she said the previous night: the goal had been achieved. And so it was that Dan now found himself adjusting to his new role of spectator rather than participant. Though glad and more than a little proud to have done his part to bring things this far, Dan wasn’t relishing this new feeling of impotence that came from sitting on his couch, waiting for news.

  The 4pm announcement that the images would finally arrive at 6pm made these final two hours the longest yet, but the definitive ETA turned Dan’s restless frustration into a more excited anticipation.

  Minutes later, a single word flipped Dan’s mood yet again.

  “We’ve been told that we will receive three images,” Sarah Curtis revealed, “at three-minute intervals. The first will show the international team holding the plaques, for scale and verification purposes, and the next two will be close-ups of the plaques. A statement from the team, complete with annotated images detailing their interpretations of the plaques, is expected at some point tomorrow. For the quickest and best analysis, stay tuned to Blitz News where an unrivalled panel of experts will discuss the images as soon as they come in.”

  “Complicated much?” Clark said.

  “They probably want to give us a chance to digest it all,” Emma said. “To see what we make of the plaques before they tell us what they think.” She and Clark then turned to Dan, waiting for his input.

  “Interpretation is a bad word,” he said without looking away from the screen. “It means there’s doubt. Ambiguity.”

  “Interpret just means explain the meaning,” Emma said, surprised by Dan’s take.

  Dan shook his head. “It implies subjectivity.”

  “No it doesn’t. Maybe if it said justifying their interpretations. But not detailing their interpretations. How is that subjective?”

  Dan slowly turned to Emma, who was right next to him on the couch. “There’s a reason people say things are open to interpretation,” he said, an unusual edge to his voice. “And there’s a reason the international team aren’t saying anything until tomorrow.” He turned back to the screen.

  Clark and Emma shared a look.

  6pm could not come soon enough.

  D plus 6

  White House

  Washington, D.C.

  “You must be able to find something out?” President Slater said, more pleading than forceful.

  Jack Neal sighed; he had been doing this a lot lately. “Valerie, there’s nothing to find. No one at NASA has heard from him since he entered the compound. We now know where that is, but there’s nothing we can do about it. The team members haven’t been able to speak to anyone on the outside. They’re under legitimate military lockdown.”

  “So you’re telling me that I’m going to find out what the plaques say at the same time as the public?” Slater asked, almost spitting out the last word in disgust.

  “This is where we are,” Jack said, resorting to one of the first lines he taught Emma to use when dealing with dissatisfied clients. “The only thing we can control is where we go next.”

  “We’ll go wherever these damn plaques take us,” Slater said, beyond frustrated to be as passive a viewer as Dan McCarthy, but with a lot more to lose.

  “This is where we are,” Jack repeated meekly.

  Slater ignored him, put her head in her hands, and cursed the name of the man who had landed her in this steaming pile of political horseshit. “I swear to God, Jack,” she said after a few seconds. “If that bastard Walker’s not already dead…”

  D plus 7

  McCarthy Residence

  Birchwood, Colorado

  Dan’s heart quickened as the Blitz News countdown timer ticked towards zero.

  With four seconds to go, Sarah Curtis interrupted the countdown with the news everyone had been waiting for: “The first image has just come through.”

  Seconds later, it filled the screen.

  “They look like tablets,” Clark said.

  Dan scanned for details. The entire international team was present, arranged like students in a makeshift school picture with the tallest at the back and the shortest at the front. The shortest were the lucky ones; the ones holding the plaques. Each plaque looked roughly the size of Dan’s old laptop — fifteen inches.

  “A plaque basically is a tablet,” Emma replied, taking everything in almost as keenly as Dan.

  Dan’s eyes rested on the team members’ faces, trying to read them. Most of the scientists wore natural-looking smiles, some looked forced, and one or two appeared as though they had never smiled in their lives.

  “I mean a computer tablet,” Clark said. “It looks like the back of one of those. One that’s been engraved. Can’t see what’s engraved, though.”

  Clark’s was a good point: nothing on either plaque was clearly visible. Blitz News zoomed in close after showing the team photo for thirty seconds or so, but the lighting made it impossible to discern much. All attempts to reveal detail by adjusting the contrast and exposure were futile.

  When a straight line on one of the horizontally held plaques finally presented itself after further attempts to manipulate the image, Sarah Curtis gleefully announced: “A line!”

  This was as far as anyone got until a new countdown timer appeared after two minutes, counting down from one minute.

  Dan clutched a printout of the Kloster letter in his hands. It was his own original attempt rather than one of the vastly superior translations that had been made since, but it was good enough to remind him of what to expect.

  ”An unfamiliar solar system” and “a timescale for the Messengers’ return,” Kloster had written.

  Dan breathed in shallow gulps, genuinely struggling to comprehend the magnitude of what he and the rest of the world were about to see.

  In forty seconds, he would see the close-up details of the first plaque. In four minutes, he would see the second.

  Dan made an effort to control his heart-rate.

  These were messages.

 
This was contact.

  He was giddy.

  * * *

  At 6:03pm, Dan McCarthy laid eyes on a deliberate message from an intelligent extraterrestrial race.

  The first plaque, displayed without official comment, was divided in halves by a vertical line. The dividing lines and the other engraved details were perfectly clear, appearing in a strong grey which contrasted well with the much lighter silver of the plaque.

  The leftmost panel contained one large hollow circle, distinctly underlined, with what looked like linear representation of a solar system below. A small circle in this row was also underlined.

  Their solar system, Dan thought to himself. Their planet.

  Dan’s hunch was supported by the panel on the right, which also contained one large circle above a row of smaller ones. The relative size of these circles — these planets — as well as their relative distances from each other left Dan in no doubt that the planet highlighted and underlined on the rightmost panel was Earth.

  “Look,” he said, hurrying to the TV and pointing at the small representation of the solar system. “Mercury, Venus, us, Mars… I’d know that picture anywhere; it’s exactly like my poster. And that’s the alien solar system on the right. Just like Kloster said!”

  “Why do the planets go right to left from the sun?” Clark asked. It was the first question in his mind.

  Dan shrugged. “Why do we usually go left to right?”

  Clark conceded the point. “Fair enough. But what does that plaque actually tell us? We still don’t know where they are. There’s no star, no distance, nothing.”

  “It gives us a scale,” Dan said. “We can work with that. Besides, there’s another plaque. Well, three more… but one more that we’ll see.”

  Emma called Dan back to the couch with her hand, politely asking him to get out of the way and be quiet. She didn’t doubt his analysis, but two scientific experts in the Blitz News studio had started talking and she wanted to hear them out.

  One of the studio experts was Penny Holmes, a so-called “rockstar scientist” who hosted a primetime astronomy show every Thursday. Penny was as famous as scientists came but had completely avoided commenting on the IDA leak until after President Slater’s fateful Disclosure announcement, at which point she broke her silence and expressed Kendrick-like levels of unreserved optimism. Emma didn’t recognise the other expert, a much older man whose name she missed and who had been introduced as an exobiologist.

  Penny and the exobiologist, along with Blitz News anchor Sarah Curtis, talked through the same thought process that Dan had just detailed. Sarah even touched on Clark’s question as to why the representation of the Earth’s solar system had Venus to Earth’s right and Mars to its left rather than the more typical left-to-right layout.

  The one-minute countdown timer for the second and final plaque appeared after what seemed like no time at all. Talk in the studio inevitably turned to speculation as to what this plaque would reveal. The exobiologist reminded everyone that Kloster’s letter said the plaque displayed a timescale for the Messengers’ return. His words killed the conversation.

  “Ten seconds,” Sarah Curtis said. “But we may have to wait a few seconds longer, as we did earlier.”

  Sure enough, the image of the first plaque remained on the screen for several seconds after the countdown reached zero. But then, before Sarah could even introduce it, the second plaque appeared.

  Now assuming that the aliens read right to left, Dan’s eyes shot immediately to the right of the plaque. This time, there were three panels. At the bottom of the rightmost panel, he saw another linear representation of Earth’s solar system. Again, it went right to left from the sun.

  Above Earth’s solar system, there was a more complicated series of graphics. Four large squares filled the rest of this rightmost panel, each containing an X symbol at its centre. From the available context, Dan took this to be the sun. Each of the four boxes also contained a small underlined circle: Earth.

  Crucially, Earth’s position varied between the boxes.

  In the first box — the top right of the four — Earth was directly above the sun. In the top left box, Earth was directly below the sun. In the bottom right box, Earth was directly to the left of the sun. And in the final box — the bottom left — Earth was back above the sun.

  “Orbit,” Dan said.

  To confirm this suspicion and provide the information necessary to make sense of the next panel, the Messengers had included a small but helpful symbol to the immediate left of each box. The first symbol was a hollow circle. The second, beside the image of Earth halfway around the sun, was a circle with the right half filled in. Three quarters of the third circle was filled, in keeping with the image, and the final circle was entirely solid. The contrast between the silver plaque and harsh grey engraving made all of this easy to discern.

  Dan moved to the central panel, which was slightly more straightforward. Most of the panel was taken up by twenty-eight small equilateral triangles, organised in seven perfect rows of four. Above these rows there was a narrow box containing a single triangle next to ten solid circles. The equation was missing an equals sign, but Dan figured it out.

  280 orbits, he thought. 280 years.

  Dan’s eyes finally moved left to take in the final panel. Immediately, he felt heat in his throat; goosebumps on his neck; strain in his heartbeat.

  “Dan,” Emma whispered.

  He heard the whisper clearly but didn’t acknowledge it.

  “Dan,” Clark said, much more forcefully.

  Dan flicked his eyes to Clark without moving his head.

  Clark struggled to form the words. “Does it mean we’re fucked?” he eventually choked out.

  Dan swallowed deeply, hesitated, then gave a dejected shrug.

  Emma reached for Dan’s hand and squeezed it tightly. Her hand was so much warmer than his. She met his eyes with an expression even more distressed than Clark’s, like nothing Dan had seen from her before.

  “It might not,” he said, trying to convince her, as though they’d crossed over into some parallel universe where he was the strong one.

  Emma shifted along the couch and rested her head on Dan’s shoulder. Clark stood up and turned away from the TV with his hands on his head. The exobiologist in the Blitz News studio was using phrases like “undeniably hostile” and “potentially imminent”.

  “It might mean something else,” Dan said, now trying mainly to convince himself. “We might be okay.”

  Clark shook his head briefly while maintaining firm eye contact with Dan, like one doctor passing bad news to another.

  Unable to convince himself — much less Emma — that everything was going to be okay, Dan sighed and looked to the ceiling for a few seconds. He then peeked again at the TV through the fingers of his free hand.

  As his eyes stared at the godforsaken alien plaque, Dan McCarthy struggled to imagine how anything could ever be okay again.

  Part 6

  DS-1

  “I occasionally think how quickly

  our differences worldwide would vanish

  if we were facing an alien threat

  from outside this world.”

  Ronald Reagan

  D plus 8

  McCarthy Residence

  Birchwood, Colorado

  The final panel contained a representation of Earth’s solar system identical to that on the right-side panel of the first plaque but for one thing.

  Again, Earth was underlined in the small linear solar system at the bottom of the panel and also represented by a much larger underlined circle above.

  Both of these representations of Earth contained the same alarming feature, most visible on the large Earth at the centre of the panel but still chillingly discernible in the linear solar system below.

  In both representations, Earth was clinically dissected at its centre by two lines; one horizontal and one vertical.

  One more line extended further from the circle at a
45-degree angle. This line was dashed in several parts rather than solid like the rest. It began at the edge of the circle and didn’t touch either of the two main lines which created the ominous crosshairs-like image that already had everyone feeling so uneasy.

  “The protruding line looks like an arrow without the point,” Penny Holmes said on Blitz News.

  “Hmm,” the exobiologist said, sounding like he agreed.

  “Right,” Penny said. “But we can’t just assume it means—”

  “What else could it mean? We’re quite literally in their crosshairs! And even if we all agree on the timescale of 280 years, 280 years from when? 2218 sounds far enough out that we’ll probably have destroyed the planet or ourselves by then anyway, but we don’t know that the craft landed in Lake Toplitz in 1938. It could have been lying there for a hundred years before the Nazis found it, maybe more.”

  Dan could hear Penny trying to get a word in over the insistent exobiologist. The second plaque still filled the screen, now joined by a headline which read: “Kerguelen plaques suggest hostility.”

  The next voice Dan heard belonged to Sarah Curtis. “Okay,” she said, in that inimitable newsreader’s way of shifting gears. “We’ve had Billy Kendrick on hand to give his reaction, so let’s head down to Myrtle Beach now. Billy, I’m sure this comes as more of a surprise to you than anyone, bearing in mind your confident comments that these plaques were — and I quote — “an olive branch” from the Messengers. How do you respond?”

  “Don’t do that,” Billy said, appearing again on a stage surrounded by thousands of revellers whose big weekend would be over in a few hours. There was no celebration now. It reminded Dan of the previous summer when people had gathered to watch the US compete in World Cup matches on huge outdoor screens. The news coverage of the first few matches showed jubilant scenes of late-night partying, but on the night the US team got eliminated it looked like a well-attended funeral.