The First Exoplanet

by T. J. Sedgwick

  King took off his headset and walked briskly to the café where he’d said goodbye to Jenna just the day before. It seemed like a lot longer. King was mentally tired after taking in so much that was new and needed a caffeine boost. He made himself a long macchiato from the machine and stood watching the news headlines while sipping his coffee and savouring the rich, chocolaty tones of the Arabica. The news show had already covered the probe launch and was partway through a breaking news story. It involved an X-Space flight that had broken up on re-entry over southern Canada.

  “That’s pretty bad,” came the voice of Sarah Townsley, who’d just entered the staff café behind him to get a drink of her own.

  “Yeah, doesn’t happen very often. Can’t remember the last one. Must’ve been at least five years ago,” estimated King.

  “Terrorist attack apparently. A known Islamic militant was on-board. Suicide bombing they say,” she reported, having already seen the story earlier.

  “Which flight was it?” asked King, now mildly more interested now he’d heard it was terrorism.

  “Moscow to San Fran. Three-hundred and nineteen on-board,” Townsley said respectfully, head lowering, eyes cast down.

  “Terrible thing...” said King genuinely, downing the last of his coffee. “Okay, well we’ve got a debrief meeting in five. See you there, Sarah.” Thoughts of the tragedy were quickly replaced—unknown people on a route he’d never flown on.

  “Sure, see you in a minute,” Townsley replied, as King left the café fiddling with his smartwatch.

  He’d not heard from Jenna since she’d left. He appreciated she’d been busy but he hadn’t even received a token ‘I’ve arrived safely’. It was time to give her a call, but he noticed she was offline. Odd: normally Jenna was online all the time, even during flights, and when she wasn't she’d set her status to ‘Asleep’ or something else.

  Oh well, I’ll try again later, thought King’s busy mind.

  ***

  “This is the evening news on GNN with Jim Rogers and Dana Alessi...”

  “Good evening wherever you are on this day, Thursday September 8, 2061. It’s 6pm at GNN Centre in Atlanta and this is a historic day for humankind. We have breaking news from a press conference at WGA headquarters in Seattle where our science correspondent, Vanessa Bailey, is right now,” said Jim.

  The view switched to the gloriously beautiful Vanessa Bailey speaking to her own smartwatch camera. Even up close a combination of generously applied make-up and genuinely good looks made her look flawless.

  “Thanks Jim, Dana,” said Vanessa, half whispering in the crowded conference room, but too excited to keep the volume notched all the way down. She continued, “In the next minute we expect the press conference to give details of what they’ve got from the first messenger microprobe. Now, remember, these tiny probes, about the size of your thumb, are actually transmitted back using the Santa Maria probe’s revolutionary FTL drive. They carry an awful lot of data in the form of images, sensor readings and more. They’ve been codenamed ‘Gemstones’, with each messenger probe given the name of a precious stone. The first is Emerald and came back this morning as planned. We hear from our sources it all went well and that they’ve got some sensational discoveries. In about a day-and-a-half from now the second Gemstone, Topaz, will be sent back. Remember, the mission has to use this method—normal radio communications would take fifteen years to arrive from Avendano, which would be a long wait!”

  “If you’ve just joined us, we’re about to hear from Dr Alan King, Chief Scientist at the WGA in Seattle, where they’ve been assessing the first haul of probe data,” informed Dana from the newsroom.

  “While we wait,” she continued, “do we know if life—and intelligent life—has been confirmed, Vanessa? What do your sources say?”

  “Dana, I don’t want to steal Dr King’s thunder, but that is indeed what we have heard from someone close to Dr King’s team—there’s life and it’s what the source described as a ‘spacefaring civilization’,” revealed Vanessa.

  “Wow, that’s got to be the biggest scoop in history, Vanessa. It’s even more significant than the Apollo Moon landings and the Mars Vista manned mission back in 2025,” declared Dana incredulously to her colleague.

  “Okay Dana, Jim... Dr King has just come up to the podium and he’s about to speak...” said Vanessa. The camera switched to a view of King behind a glass-topped, brushed aluminium podium with the WGA Space logo emblazoned on it.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome. I will now spend the next fifteen minutes highlighting some of the Gemstone Emerald findings. There’ll be some time for Q&A at the end,” said a tired, but happy looking King. He’d changed into a new blue shirt and silver tie that he kept in the office for occasions like this. It made him feel fresher and ready to face the world. And it was a large proportion of the world’s population that was watching, waiting for the historic announcement to be made official—that Earth was not a one-off; that intelligent life existed elsewhere in the universe.

  He looked around the room, scanning the faces of correspondents and reporters from all over the planet. He then set his eyes on the single camera set up at the back. With a sense of occasion, he said the words they’d all been waiting for. “Today I can report to you without a shadow of a doubt: we are not alone.”

  The conference room erupted with the sound of a hundred eager voices asking questions, only snippets of them intelligible to King. Palms faced down, he waved his arms for the crowd to calm down and hush the cacophony. He moved close to the mic, increasing the volume of his voice measurably and requested, “Ladies and gentlemen, please let me speak. We have limited time and I’m sure you want to hear what I’ve got to tell you.”

  The free-for-all died down at his request. Immediately King resumed, this time activating the video slide show on the wall behind him.

  He went through the findings to the fascination of all, even the numerous security guards and aides, who normally sat there looking bored during such press events. King knew that he had technically shared everything with the public—in theory anyway. He also knew that, on the orders of the WGA military-dominated establishment, some details and the sheer magnitude of the aliens’ space-presence was suppressed. There were already the first rumblings of concern about what this should all mean if the aliens turned out to be hostile. That was the next of the big unanswered questions, many of which remained.

  What was not in any doubt was that getting first contact right was vital. Trade and peaceful cooperation could be a massive boon for humanity and aliens alike if the relationship started positively. Discontent had resurfaced behind the scenes about the fundamentals of leaving that sensitive operation to an AI probe. The first contact message was standard—it was the whether and the when that were left to the AI. Ultimately, unless humans were sent there or they could make the EQP – Entangled Quantum Particle – comms device operational there was little choice. Besides, it was almost too late now, concluded King in his mind as he waited for the second unintelligible question frenzy to die down. King knew that just one more Gemstone would return with a more detailed assessment before first contact would most likely be initiated. They had built in some flexibility, however. The AI may, in the case where it were fired upon by hostile forces, jump back to Earth even before all five Gemstones’ probes were sent back with their reports.

  “Now we have some time for your questions before I have to re-join the team and continue looking at the data,” said King. He looked out into the crowd, deciding which of the raised hands to select first.

  The questions were all turning out to be quite predictable and King batted them away, answering as fully and comprehensively as his brief allowed him.

  “Sanjeev Gupta, Indian Technology Journal. Do you think the aliens are hostile?” asked a young, moustached reporter in a plain, white, collarless shirt near the front.

  “We have no evidence of violence so far, but it’ll be assessed and the AI will decide,” sa
id King matter-of-factly. With nothing more to say, he took the next question.

  “Gareth Davis, BCC News. Why haven't the aliens detected the probe? I understand that the gravity spike from its jump into the system may have been detectable.”

  “What you’ve read is correct, but it’s very momentary and they’d really need to be looking for it in the right place to detect it. That’s assuming they have gravimetric sensing capability, which they may well have. So we feel the cloaking field and stealth measures, as well as keeping on passive sensors only, are working well,” answered King. “Time for one more question before I must get back to work with my team. Yes,” he said, pointing to an exceptionally good-looking brunette woman mid-way back on his left.

  “Vanessa Bailey, GNN. Are we safe here fifteen light years away if they do turn out to be hostile, Dr King?”

  The one thing they’d all been worried about and the one question he’d wanted to avoid. King, along with everyone else, suspected that the aliens had no access to FTL technology; although no one knew for sure. They’d decided, as a working assumption after the SETI revelations from Yau Min Chang, that the aliens would have been aware of humanity’s presence and location. But as far as they knew – and again, it was a working assumption – the aliens had not tried to visit Sol. The corollary of this, King and the team had decided, would be that the aliens did not have FTL technology.

  “Even though their space-presence seems at least as far along as ours,” replied King, stretching the truth a little, “we do not believe they have FTL technology. I say this as we feel they would have sent a mission here already if they did,” he said, keen to put an end to this and get ready to leave.

  “Sorry, Dr King,” Vanessa called out, “but you didn’t answer my question. It wasn't about whether they have FTL or not, although that is relevant. I was asking if we’d be safe should they be hostile.”

  “Sure. Okay, apologies.” King was feeling stressed at his failure to sidestep the question and be picked up on it. He continued, “I guess what I’m saying is that, even if they were hostile they can’t get here very easily without FTL. If they tried to capture Santa Maria and then perhaps reverse-engineer or use her FTL drive, well, there are countermeasures in the AI to deal with that. Believe me, it has been considered. At the first sign of trouble, Santa Maria will jump back to Earth. The AI has even been programmed to spot a hostile intent-to-capture. Finally, if evasion from capture should fail she can simply jump out of there no matter where she is. The FTL drive works irrespective of location.”

  “And if she’s fired upon and disabled?” asked the nimble-minded Vanessa.

  “Then the AI is programmed to self-destruct the probe. Believe me, we’ve spent years going through these scenarios,” King concluded.

  “Thank you,” said Vanessa Bailey, still looking pensive, but pleased she’d baited King into giving more details than she’d expected.

  King left the stage, feeling like he needed a breather and another coffee. He didn’t want to sound so defensive, but Vanessa Bailey had put him on the spot and he’d felt obliged to respond. No harm done, it was the truth, thought King as he left the press conference.

  Vanessa Bailey handed back to the GNN newsroom in Atlanta. “You heard it here on GNN: there is now irrefutable evidence of civilization in the Avendano system. Now we await messenger probe two on Saturday. Now we go back to the newsroom. Jim, Dana…”

  “Momentous times we live in. Thank you, Vanessa,” said Jim, continuing with the evening news from the studio. “And we should just note that Yau Min Chang – the SETI scientist who I interviewed in March this year – passed away peacefully in his hospice bed in San Francisco, losing his battle with the brain tumour that claimed his life. He made an important contribution to our understanding of radio signals from Avendano, part of which has now been solved as we heard from Dr King. And we have been told by a family member that Yau Min was conscious until the early afternoon. He had been given special early access to the findings from inside Dr King’s team. He died just hours after the confirmation of alien life in the Avendano system. Our thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family.”

  ***

  Dr Alan King didn’t arrive home until 10 pm that night. The apartment he’d shared with his partner Jenna for the last year felt empty without her and had remained untouched since he’d left early that morning. The open-plan living room lights detected him and switched on, bringing the first sense of life to the uninhabited space. The place felt lonely and so very quiet without Jenna around. He had tried to call her again in the cab home, but to no avail. She was still offline and it was starting to worry him. King made his way to the bathroom. He needed a long, hot shower to unwind and think. It’d been a long day and his mind was still buzzing with all they’d discovered. And many questions remained that, if left unchecked, he’d think about through the night. He tried to draw a line under thoughts of work and think about something else instead. But every time he did, his mind drew back to Jenna and why she hadn’t contacted him. He thought solemnly that perhaps her brother was hanging on or had lost his fight. A ring on the entry phone disturbed his train of thought. “Who the hell is that at ten o’clock on a Thursday night?” he grumbled, making his way over to the video entry phone by the apartment's front door. Then he saw the uniformed policeman on the display and his heart sank. He knew instantly from the downcast look on the man’s face that this was about Jenna.

  It felt unreal as the policeman and his female colleague broke the news of Jenna’s death. King couldn’t take it in. His mind was numb. He didn't know what to do or think or say. The police officers left their cards and a flyer with details of counselling. They respectfully made their way out, leaving him alone with just his memories, his grief and a sense of disbelief. After a long moment, he put his head in his hands and began to weep. He continued to weep uncontrollably at the loss of the only woman he’d ever really loved.

  Chapter Ten

  September 9, 2061 SVR Headquarters, Yasenevo District, Moscow, Russia

  “Now we feel we’ve been proved right in wanting to plant the virus on board Santa Maria, sir. The Westerners have withheld key data from us. Yes, they told us more than they’ve released to the public of course, but we paid for unfettered access to raw data,” snapped SVR Cyberwarfare Director Bekov to Minister of State Security Demenok.

  “Example, Sergei?” asked Demenok calmly.

  “A prime example, sir, is what we believe to be an orbital shipyard around Gaia and the enormous ship the aliens seem to be building. Please take a look at this photo, sir.”

  Sergei brought up the photo on the large viewscreen set into his office wall. A half-completed spaceship that the AI had designated a ‘Destroyer (Type 1)’ sat at right angles to a long, grey cuboidal structure two thirds as long as the destroyer itself with a long, thin trussed jetty protruding from the cuboid alongside the ship. The front half of the destroyer was complete and covered in whatever the aliens had used for its skin—some sort of metal plating by the look of it. The ship was three-hundred metres long—about the length of three football fields. It was sixty metres across, with the front third of the destroyer curving down and inwards towards a rounded nose. The rear part of the destroyer was a semi-complete skeleton of framework, partially installed decks and large side ribs running the length of the ship. There was another trussed jetty next to the semi-completed destroyer, this one empty. Then next to the empty jetty was another, this one with what looked like a completed destroyer alongside. The front third of the destroyer curved down and inwards and was identical to the semi-completed ship in the first construction dock. The aft two thirds was a simple, round-edged cuboid with what appeared to be four wide-angle conical engine nozzles at the back end. Dotted all over the destroyer were hemispherically curved bumps. The AI interpreted these as weapons blisters; although there was no evidence that they contained weapons.

  “This was left out of the WGA report to us, but we compared it to
our surreptitiously acquired version and found the discrepancy. There’s also the extent of the aliens’ space presence. Many of the larger and potentially military structures and ships have been edited out,” Bekov explained, animatedly. He brought up further images that they had obtained solely via their virus-instructed microbursts from the Emerald microprobe.

  “But why would the Westerners withhold this from us?” asked Demenok

  “They still don’t trust us, sir. This is what we feared when they insisted on the right to leave out information on grounds of ‘strategic or national interest’,” Bekov said.

  “What grounds of strategic or national interest are there that justify withholding the extent of the space-presence and militarisation? Surely if these aliens presented a threat we’d be on the same side, wouldn't we?” Demenok asked.

  “Sir, they don’t trust us to keep the information secret. We mustn’t underestimate the power a potential alien threat could have in destabilising the balance of power—a balance of power they have benefited most from. Secondly, I am not so sure that we would be one united front against hostile aliens. We know what the Westerners are like. We have history, bad blood. The aliens are a clean slate—they are just as likely to be potential allies as foes. We have no evidence one way or the other yet. But one thing’s for sure: if the Westerners have information that we don’t have then they can play things to their advantage, whether it’s alliances, trade, technology, territory or whatever. If they hold all the cards, we play second fiddle,” he replied. Then, breaking out into a mischievous smile, he continued, “Except we won’t so long as our virus keeps doing its job and we get raw, unadulterated information.”