Transmission

by Morgan Rice

  “What for?” Luna demanded, in the kind of indignant tone that said she was ready to fight them off, lawyers or not. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “They think I did,” Kevin said. “They think… I guess they think that I made all of this up to get attention, or to con them into giving me medical treatment, or something.”

  “Then they’re idiots,” Luna declared, with the kind of iron-hard certainty that no one else around him seemed to have. “You gave them messages from another world. You told them all about a planet they would barely know anything about otherwise. You helped them find the meteorite thing, even if it was empty. It isn’t your fault that aliens are weird and send rocks to people as presents.”

  That was a way of looking at it Kevin suspected that nobody other than Luna could manage. Even so, it felt good.

  “So, you believe me?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I believe you. I believe in you too. You’ll find a way to deal with this.”

  “And you climbed over my fence just to tell me that?” Kevin asked.

  Luna put a hand on his shoulder. “What are friends for? I like sneaking in. It’s fun. Besides, I need to take you somewhere.”

  Kevin looked back at her in surprise.

  “Where?” he asked.

  She smiled wide.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kevin checked how he looked in the mirror before heading out. It wasn’t vanity; he wanted to make sure that there was no possible way anyone could recognize him. He had his hoodie pulled up over his head, dark glasses on to break up some of the lines of his face. It wasn’t great, but if he hunched in enough then he could almost convince himself that people wouldn’t be able to tell that it was him.

  “It will have to do,” he said to himself.

  His mother had left the house a few minutes before, out talking to more lawyers, or maybe trying to find another job, not that anyone wanted to hire the mother of the boy who’d lied. The doors were locked against the continued presence of the reporters out front, and would probably stay that way even after she got back.

  “She’ll be mad if she finds out I did this,” Kevin said, but that was part of why he was wearing the disguise. He’d been sitting in the house too long, with no school because of his illness, no chance of going out because of both the reporters and his mother’s fear of what might happen. He was going crazy there, and he suspected that was only making things harder for his mother. He needed to get outside at least for a while.

  His phone was full of messages from people he didn’t know. Some were questions, more were insults. One or two held threats, or promises that they would pay Kevin if only he would tell them his story.

  Kevin wasn’t sure that he wanted to be careful then. He felt as though he might explode if he stayed hiding out for much longer. He looked out the back, trying to judge if he could get out of there the same way Luna had gotten in. A few weeks ago, he wouldn’t have had to worry about it.

  Now, he thought about the tremors that came and went in his body, the moments of losing time and the dizzy spells. He fetched a stepladder from where his mother kept it in the garage, setting it up against the fence and using that to climb over, to a small path that ran between yards.

  Kevin kept his head down as he went along, making sure that no one saw his face. Even though the part of town where he lived wasn’t a bad one, it was just a few blocks to a more industrial area, where factories stuck up like fenced-in boxes, and occasional rusted out machinery pointed to the businesses that hadn’t done so well.

  “Come on,” Luna said, after they hopped the fence, setting off at a walk that took them through some of the abandoned buildings, past graffiti that looked as though it had been painted with someone’s eyes shut.

  They came out closer to the center of town. Kevin kept his hood up, sure that even here, away from his house, people would spot him.

  “We could go to the mall,” Luna suggested.

  Kevin shook his head. “Too many people.”

  “The square then,” Luna suggested.

  Kevin nodded. There might be almost as many people there in the middle of town, but they would be moving on more, less likely to notice a kid keeping his head down. In the mall, security would probably think he was there to steal something, but out in the open, he and Luna could walk where they wanted without it being a problem.

  They headed into the heart of town, for a small square where they and their friends had hung out since they were kids. There was a smaller block of park there, with trees at each corner, and a statue in the middle that had probably once been a monument to someone very important, but had now been worn by the wind and rain until it could have been anyone. By the time they got there, Kevin was so exhausted that he started looking around for a bench to sit down on.

  “Kevin,” Luna said, “what’s wrong?”

  “I’m just tired,” Kevin said.

  Luna frowned, obviously not believing it. “Well, we could always go to Frankie’s.”

  The diner had been one of their favorite places for a long time. Maybe if he hadn’t been so exhausted, Kevin might have been worried by that, but as it was, he could do with somewhere to recover a little from the effort of the walk. He nodded.

  “I thought you managed to go trekking through the jungle,” Luna said.

  “I think things are getting worse,” Kevin said, as they made their way toward the diner. “It’s like I have to concentrate to make my body do things.”

  Even that wasn’t putting it right, but he wasn’t sure there were words for it. That was one of the hardest parts about having such a rare illness: it meant there weren’t really the words to describe everything that was happening.

  “You should go to the hospital,” Luna said, and she sounded as if she wanted to call for an ambulance right away.

  Kevin shook his head. “There’s no point. We know what’s happening to me. It’s not as though they can do much to help.”

  “That can’t be true,” Luna said. For a moment, Kevin heard her voice catch and he thought that maybe she might cry. “I know… I know they can’t cure you, but they can help with the symptoms and things, right? They can slow things down? They were doing it in the NASA place.”

  “Because they had some of the cleverest scientists in the world,” Kevin pointed out. “I don’t think they’re going to want to help now. And… if I go to the hospital now, I think it would cost too much. I don’t think Mom could really afford my treatment even before all this. Now, with the lawyers and stuff…”

  Kevin didn’t know how much a court case cost. A lot, he guessed. His treatment cost a lot too. Was that twice a lot, then? A lot squared? When he had no idea of the amounts involved, his imagination couldn’t even begin to supply the amounts.

  “Okay,” Luna said, “but we should at least get inside. Come on, Frankie’s isn’t far.”

  They went into the diner, which wasn’t busy at that time of day. There were a few kids Kevin half recognized, a couple of older guys in one corner, and the owner, a fifty-something man who seemed to spend most of his time wiping down the counter with a cloth. It was a deliberately old-fashioned kind of place, and it should have meant that Kevin’s friends didn’t like it, but it also had great ice cream.

  “I’ll go get ice cream,” Luna said, pointing to a corner booth. “You sit down.”

  She made that into an order, and Kevin did it. He needed to sit down anyway, and if it meant that Luna was buying the ice cream, that was even better. There was a TV on in the corner of the diner, and for a moment or two, Kevin thought that was okay. Then the news came on, and the pictures of the scenes around his house continued.

  Kevin did his best to ignore it, but it wasn’t easy. That the channel was still there at all was kind of surprising; maybe someone still believed, or maybe they just hadn’t gotten around to looking at something else yet. Either way, he sat there, hunched in on himself. It was hard to imagine tha
t just a few weeks ago, he and Luna had come here regularly; that everything had been normal. Now, he was sitting here, and as far as Kevin could tell he was pretty much just waiting to die.

  That was a thought he didn’t want, but it crept in when he wasn’t looking, sitting down in his mind and refusing to budge, no matter how he pushed at it. He was going to die. He’d been able to ignore that while there had still been all the stuff with the aliens, the messages, and the trip to the rainforest. Now, there was nothing to do but sit there and think about it.

  “Well,” Luna said, coming back with two glasses filled to the brim with ice cream, “you look miserable. Better cheer up, or you’re not getting ice cream.”

  Only Luna would make fun of him when he was like this. Only Luna would know that it was exactly what Kevin needed.

  “You’re just looking for an excuse to have both,” Kevin said.

  Luna smiled. “Maybe. You’re still stuck thinking about what you could have done differently?”

  Kevin nodded. “I don’t know why. I guess… I just keep hoping it will make sense.”

  “Hope is good,” Luna said. “I think it’s good you’re still listening. You shouldn’t give up, even if people don’t believe you.”

  Kevin nodded. He needed this. He needed something to hold onto, otherwise—

  “Hey, wait, you’re Kevin McKenzie, aren’t you? The boy who made up all that alien stuff? You used to go to our school.”

  Kevin looked over to find that some of the kids were looking his way. He was about to tell them that he didn’t want trouble, but Luna was already on her feet, moving toward them.

  “Kevin didn’t make anything up!”

  “Of course he made it up,” one boy said. “Who would be stupid enough to believe in aliens?”

  “You and everyone else, apparently,” Luna snapped.

  “Are you calling me stupid?”

  Kevin got up, joining her. “We don’t want any trouble.”

  “So why did you do it then?” a girl at the back demanded. “My parents were so worried about aliens coming that they were talking about selling our house and moving out into the countryside.”

  More people were staring at them now, and people had their phones out. Kevin knew he couldn’t be seen here like this. His mom would go crazy. Besides, he’d seen what large groups of people could be like.

  “We’ll just go,” Kevin said, holding up his hands. “We don’t want to cause a problem.”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” the boy who’d spoken first said. “Not until you admit what you did.”

  He stood there with his arms folded, looking like he meant it. That was a problem, because the longer they stayed there, the more people would be watching. Luna seemed to be thinking the same thing, and, being Luna, she took a more direct approach to the problem:

  She walked up to the boy in the doorway and pushed him, hard.

  “Run, Kevin!”

  She was already running, and it took Kevin a moment to realize he should be doing the same, but only a moment. As tired as he had been, he was recovered enough now to run past the boy, following Luna as she ran out into the middle of the town. He ran as fast as he could, ignoring the way his breath came in short bursts, trying to keep up as they retraced their steps, heading back through the factories and past the rusting metal. Kevin ran until he felt that his heart might explode in his chest, his lungs burning.

  When it was obvious that no one was following, he and Luna came to a halt, and to his surprise, Kevin found himself laughing.

  Luna laughed too. “That was fun.”

  “My mom is going to kill me,” Kevin pointed out, but right then, even that didn’t sound so bad. The truth was that he felt better than he had for days now. It felt like so long since he’d done something as simple as getting into trouble with Luna, running away before it could turn into anything worse.

  “Your mom will be fine with it,” Luna said.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Kevin replied, because she would be angry that he’d gone out like that, angry that he’d risked everything by going where people might see him. “When I get home, I’m going to have to…”

  He trailed off as a feeling started to rise through him. A feeling he knew far too well, because it had been there before the facility, before NASA, before all of it.

  “What is it?” Luna said. “What are you going to have to do?”

  Kevin shook his head. “Luna, I think…”

  “What?” she said.

  “I think there’s another message coming through.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Kevin stood among the factories, listening to the transmission as it started to come. He struggled to latch onto the message. That was hard at first; harder than it had been, and harder than Kevin suspected it should be.

  He started to worry. What if whatever it was in his brain that connected with the transmissions had changed, shifting with the slow progress of his illness? What if there had only been a brief window when his brain was receptive to it all, and now it was starting to pass beyond it? He tried to concentrate, focusing on the sounds and willing them to make sense.

  An image burned in his brain, numbers shining there in neat rows of coordinates. Kevin wouldn’t have recognized them as that, but he’d seen strings of them before, when he’d known to shift the telescope the first time to pick up the stream of the message.

  “Kevin?” Luna said. “Are you all right?”

  Kevin didn’t know how to answer that. The strange part was that he felt better than he’d felt in days, maybe some interaction between his illness and the message making the symptoms feel better for the moment.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I think… I think the aliens want us to look for signals in a new place.”

  It was what they’d wanted the last time he’d had a signal through straight to his brain like this, the power of it almost impossible to hold. It had been the beginning of all of this.

  “So who do we tell?” Luna asked.

  Kevin must have stared at her too long in the wake of that, because she spread her hands.

  “What? We have to tell someone,” she said.

  Kevin knew she was probably right. If there was a fresh message, people would want to know. The problem was that he wasn’t sure how they would react. He’d seen all the reporters who were still outside of his house. He’d seen the pain that it had caused his mother. Wouldn’t it be better to just keep quiet and protect her?

  “I’m not sure if anyone will believe me,” he said. “They think that I’m a fake. If I tell people, then they’ll assume that I’m just trying to get attention.”

  People wouldn’t listen to him now, whatever he said. If he came forward with another string of numbers, wouldn’t they assume that he was just trying to start it all again?

  “We could tell your mom,” Luna said. “She’d believe you, and she’d know what to do.”

  Kevin shook his head. “I’m not sure she would now, not after all the trouble this has caused. Even if she did, I don’t know if anyone would listen to her, either.”

  “Who then?” Luna asked. “We have to tell someone. A reporter, maybe?”

  That would at least get the news out into the open, but again, it didn’t feel like the right idea. If he went to the reporters, trying to explain, wouldn’t they just make fun of it? He needed to be able to prove it. There was only one place he could do that, only one place where they might be able to realign a telescope to pick up whatever new signal awaited.

  “We need to contact someone at the NASA facility,” Kevin said.

  Even as he said it, he could guess how difficult that might be. He took out his phone, trying to think of the best way to do it. It wasn’t as though he had direct numbers for any of the people who might be able to help.

  He decided to start with Dr. Levin, because at least the SETI director had seemed more sympathetic than Professor Brewster. He found a number for SETI online and called it, li
stening to it ring and finally getting through to reception.

  “Hello,” the receptionist said. “SETI Institute. How can I help you?”

  “I need to speak to Dr. Levin about an urgent matter,” Kevin said, trying to sound as grown up as he could. Maybe if he could make it sound as though he was a colleague or something, they might let him speak to her.

  “Who is this?” the receptionist asked.

  “Well… um…” Kevin looked over at Luna, who shrugged. “This is Kevin McKenzie. But I have to speak to her right away. There’s been another message, and there’s a second set of coordinates, and…”

  He heard the click as the receptionist hung up.

  “They wouldn’t even let me explain,” Kevin said. That hurt, that after so much they would hang up without even letting him say anything.

  “We need to keep trying,” Luna insisted. “Here, let me. We’ll try NASA. They’ve got the telescopes, after all.”

  She rang, and pressed some buttons. It seemed that she did a better job of sounding older too, because when she spoke, it sounded to Kevin more like her mother than it did his friend.

  “Hello, I was wondering if you could put me through to Professor Brewster? It’s quite urgent, yes. It’s Professor Sophie Langford of the University of Wisconsin. Yes, I’ll hold.”

  Kevin hadn’t known that Luna was quite that good at making things up on the spot. She thrust her phone at him, and Kevin took it, just in time for Professor Brewster’s voice to come onto the other end of the line.

  “Hello?” Professor Brewster said. “Professor… Langford, was it?”

  Kevin took a breath. “Professor Brewster, it’s me, Kevin. Don’t hang up, it’s urgent.”

  “What are you doing calling this number?” Professor Brewster demanded. “And getting through to me under false pretenses? Don’t you think you’re in enough trouble already, young man?”

  “Listen to me,” Kevin said. “I wouldn’t be calling if it weren’t important. There are things you need to know.”