The Signal

by William Young

  “I don’t know what answer I’d like more to the question. If we were hacked, that’s bad news for a lot of people, but if the signal is real, that’s uncertainty for everybody and nobody wants to deal with that,” Bardem said.

  Hibbens stood still, uncertain about the sudden turn of events. Bardem softened a bit.

  “Do you have any real information on the signal’s origination?” Bardem asked.

  “Well, we have four hours, thirteen minutes and nine seconds of total signal recorded, and judging from the data, well, it came from the middle of nowhere,” Hibbens said.

  Hibbens stood in the parking area and watched as Bardem got into his staff car and was driven away, a plume of dust rising like a rooster tail when the car met the dirt road. Hibbens pulled a cigar from his pocket and fingered it, staring into the distance. He pulled out a cigar tool, cut off the tip and lit the cigar, taking a couple of deep puffs and considering the orange tip.

  “I am so fucked,” Hibbens said.

  Chapter 25

  Peter walked into the coffee shop and ordered a mocha cappuccino at the counter before finding a table and setting up his laptop. He logged onto the Internet and began sifting through blogs and tech sites still speculating on the nature of the signal. Interest in the signal had waned in the months that had passed, and more and more of those still interested in it had decided the signal had to be fake, the work of some hacker. Most people in the scientific community had decided that the signal had to be a fake because any real signal beamed to the earth would contain some sort of simplistic code easily identified and cracked by those on the receiving end, and nobody had been able to figure out a code structure to the signal.

  Peter found this argument appealing and logical, but it still didn’t do anything to dissuade him from thinking the signal was genuine. Maybe he was looking at it from the wrong angle. If it were a code, maybe it was Sudoku instead of a crossword and he and everyone trying to crack it were doing so with the wrong tools. Peter had actually posted online that he thought maybe the signal was more like a Rubik’s Cube and needed to be twisted somehow to determine a pattern that could be identified, but that had gotten him a light amount of ridicule, since the Rubik’s Cube was an earthly invention no alien could conceivably predict we had if they had something similar.

  There was a light tap on his shoulder followed by, “Hey, Pete, mind if I join you?”

  Peter turned in his chair and saw Chloe standing behind him, smiling. “Hi, Chloe, uh, yeah, sure.”

  Peter motioned to the other chair at the table. “Are you coming or going?”

  Chloe stared blankly at him for a moment. “Coming? Going?”

  Chloe sat down and brightened. “I’m just waiting for some friends, so, I guess I came here to wait so I could go. So, both, really.”

  “Anything fun in store for your evening?” Peter asked.

  Chloe shrugged. “That depends. Clubbing can go either way, though I’m hoping for fun. What about you?”

  Peter waved his hand at his laptop. “This, I guess.”

  Chloe smiled. “And what’s ‘this’?”

  “Ahh, yeah, research for my doctoral thesis,” Peter said.

  Chloe tilted her head in faux amazed shock. “On a Friday night?”

  “Yeah.”

  Chloe leaned over the table and smiled quickly. “Why not come out with us?”

  Peter stared at her for a second, not imagining that his mouth would say the word his brain was thinking, “Clubbing?”

  “You say it like you’ve never,” Chloe said.

  “Yeah, I’ve never,” Peter said

  For a brief moment, the disconnect between the two worlds Peter and Chloe lived in was apparent to both of them, and the awkward silence affirming that fact sat in the air between them, a proof that two people could live in the same time-space but live entirely different kinds of lives. But then Chloe’s eyes brightened and she grabbed Peter’s hands.

  “Then, come on,” Chloe said. “You have to. It’ll be a blast. We’ll have a couple of cocktails; do a little dancing, stay up a little too late. It’ll be fun. You have to.”

  Peter wasn’t sure what to do with the sensation of Chloe’s hands grasping his on the table. His entire brain activity had suddenly focused intently on the pressure her hands were putting on his, and he could think of nothing else other than how good that felt. And then his mouth chose to say words.

  “I don’t think I’m dressed for it,” Peter said, half-aware of his voice, half-aware that his hands had now been held by a girl’s for almost thirty seconds, the first instance of such contact in years. “Plus, I’ve got my laptop and my coffee…”

  Peter looked at Chloe’s eyes, his brain focusing on the soft pressure of her hands on his, his mouth still talking. “And I’m pretty sure I don’t dance.”

  Chloe released his hands and sat up in her chair. “Change. I’ll make my friends wait for you. I know you live close or you wouldn’t be a regular. And, I’ll teach you to dance. That’s easy.”

  Peter paused to think this over. He was immediately pre-embarrassed at thought of him clubbing, of being taught to dance, of dancing at all, in a club, in front of people. Indeed, the thought mortified him. But, he had harbored a secret attraction to Chloe for months, and the feel of her hands in his, however brief that had been, suddenly made him think differently about the prospect. He wanted to spend time with her, only, not the kind of time she was offering. He didn’t know what to do.

  “Come on, Pete, it’ll be fun,” Chloe said.

  Chapter 26

  Peter stood near the bar, a drink in hand, and stared out of the corner of his eye at Chloe and her three friends. Never had he been in the company of four females dressed so provocatively, so sexily, and it was all he could do to try to actively pretend to ignore the situation. Peter was only marginally dressed better than in the coffee shop, having exchanged his T-shirt for a button-down oxford, but he was totally unaware that he has not dressed for the scene. Peter merely put on one of his “good” shirts; shirts for a “special” occasion like a departmental function at the school or, rarely, a situation in which he wanted to look more put-together were he able to find himself talking with a girl at a party. It had never occurred to him that he should have had clothes to wear for going to clubs, or, even, clothes to attract girls. For Peter, he had normal clothes and special clothes, and he almost never wore the latter.

  Peter observed the churning mass of dancers and felt totally out of place. Never once had there been a thought originating in his mind that he should check out such a place, and his total knowledge of these kinds of places was derived from movie scenes set in dance clubs. He couldn’t understand the appeal of immersing oneself in an environment where the music was so loud it was impossible to talk, and the crowd so thick it was impossible to walk. Not to mention the expense of even entering the building coupled with the cost of drinks. That this appealed to anyone mystified him.

  “See, its fun,” Chloe said, sidling up to him and smiling brightly.

  Peter nodded. “Yeah, it looks fun.”

  Chloe leaned in close and whisper-shouted into Peter’s ear. “Don’t worry, you’re with four chicks, you’ll look like you know what you’re doing.”

  Peter half-chuckled. “Oh, yeah, that’s what’ll it look like, I’m sure.”

  Chapter 27

  Tom Gibson stood outside on his deck with a cigar and a glass of Scotch, looking up into the night sky. The issue of the signal had never resonated with him, but he had kept up his monthly visits with The Whisky Men only because it had added some strange dimension to his life. While the others in the group had been fascinated with trying to figure out who tried to drown out a channel for the better part of an afternoon one day several months ago, Tom luxuriated in the more mundane conversations about marital life, sex, children, whiskey, and sex, the other dominant conversational topics of the group.

  He was both inspired and repelled by the realization that
Lincoln, who Tom guessed to be about sixty, still had frequent sex with his wife. That Lincoln was totally forthcoming about the generalities of his sex life semi-disturbed Tom, but the fact that Lincoln had the same exact problems after thirty-some years of marriage consoled Tom on some level, and he had come to realize that the old saw about not getting laid after you got married was true, and not just a weird joke old married men told young about-to-be married men. Nobody in the group had any insight into how that truism came to be fact, but all agreed that it was, indeed, a part of the natural order of things in the modern world.

  The glass door slid open behind him and he heard Mary walk out onto the deck.

  “You know, when we quit smoking when we got pregnant, I didn’t think you’d take up cigars, later,” Mary said.

  Tom turned. “Me either.”

  “I can’t wait until I’m done breastfeeding,” Mary said.

  Tom smiled. “Why, are you going to start smoking cigars?”

  Mary rolled her eyes and stared at the glass of Scotch in Tom’s hand. “No. I’m going to have a drink.”

  Tom shrugged. “Well, have one, the studies all say that-“

  Mary cut him off. “Yeah, you and your studies. I’m not going to drink while I’m breastfeeding.”

  “I know.”

  “So why do you encourage me all the time?” Mary asked.

  “Well, you know, the studies all say that-“

  Mary cut him off again. “I know, I know. You and your Internet-generated research. I think you want your now de-alcoholed wife to drink a couple so you can take advantage of her because she’s a cheap date now.”

  “Well…”

  “Uh-hunh,” Mary said. “So, how’s the whole ham radio thing been going? You’ve been to several meetings, are you going tomorrow?”

  Tom took a puff on his cigar and glanced up into the sky. Mary was more interested in what he did with Lincoln and The Whiskey Men than he was even though he never had much of anything to tell her about what he did with the other men. He couldn’t relay their conversations because that would be impolite to them, and aside from that, it was all just sitting around talking on radios.

  “Yeah, I think I’ll go,” Tom said. “The ham stuff is kinda lame, I think. I think they all know I think that it’s lame, but they don’t mind having me around because I bring decent Scotch.

  “I know I’m not ever going to buy a radio, though, because I could care less about talking to people in Bosnia or Uzbekistan or any of the other people they talk to when we get together.

  “But, they’re a neat bunch of guys, and they’re people I’d have never met otherwise, and I think that meeting people like them is important in some way.”

  “Important?” Mary said. “What do you mean?”

  Tom thought for a moment and pursed his lips. “Well, not important, but … they give my life a weird dimension it never would have had otherwise. I mean: ham radio, what the heck is that about in the computer age?

  “It’s weird. It’s like, I don’t know, like an anachronism or something. They’re totally out of place in the modern world. It’s almost as if they’re Civil War re-enactors. They maintain a tradition no longer useful or necessary just because of the romance of it, although, to tell the truth, I can’t see any romance in radio equipment.”

  Mary smiled. “And, yet, you’re in love with your computer.”

  Tom laughed. “Honey, I’m in love with the Web. I’d leave my computer for a better one in a heartbeat.”

  Tom and Mary exchanged knowing glances and were silent for several moments.

  “But what’s really weird is that Lincoln and the guys can’t stop talking about who sent the weird broadcast out over the airwaves a couple of months ago,” Tom said. “The first thing they do when they get there is tune through the frequencies looking for it.”

  “The one that might be from outer space?” Mary asked.

  Tom rolled his eyes. “Yeah, although it’s mostly only Internet kooks who think that’s where it came from. Lincoln doesn’t think that, though, he thinks it has to be some bad faith operator screwing with the system, so he keeps looking for it so that he can report it to the FCC or whoever so the government can find the guys. He’s very serious about how-“

  Mary cut Tom off, again. “Do you think it might have come from outer space?”

  “I don’t know; I didn’t hear it,” Tom said, considering. “But I would think that the government or some scientists would’ve figured that out by now. Lincoln wasn’t the only person to hear it, and I know from some sci-tech blogs that there are some astronomers and astrophysicists who’ve listened to it, and most of them think it was either junk radio noise created by some unexplained astronomical event, or, more likely, some computer hacker trying to make a name for himself.”

  “Wouldn’t it be neat to know if it did come from another planet?” Mary asked.

  Tom cocked his head to the side for a second. “Why’s that?” he asked, before realizing what Mary was really asking. “Oh, sure, you mean, the whole ‘we’re not alone’ and all that.”

  “Exactly,” Mary said. “Just think of the things they could tell us about life. About what it all means. Maybe they’d have some answers. We could ask them what they think about God.”

  Tom took a sip of his Scotch and tapped some cigar ash over the rail of the deck and onto the grass of the back yard.

  “God?” Tom said absently, wondering why his wife would want to ask an alien species about that. Tom and Mary were faithful churchgoers, but outside of that, Tom kept God in a box that didn’t interfere with the daily rigors of his work as an insurance salesman or his status as a husband and father. He turned to Mary.

  “God? I think we’d ask them about computers or rocket engines or the cure for the common cold, first,” Tom said, regarding his wife with curiosity. “Why would we ask them about God?”

  “Because if they believe in the same God we do, or that anybody on this planet believes in, we’d know which religion is right. We’d know what to believe in. We’d know something about His plan,” Mary said, her voice full of conviction. “God wouldn’t put intelligent life on other planets and not have them believe in Him, would He?”

  Tom thought about that for a moment, the first moment of his life he’d ever bothered to consider the interstellar aspects of a supreme being. He took a puff on his cigar and wondered if God would put Christians and Hindus and atheists on other planets; he wondered if God’s plan was to have His Son die on all of them to save each planet and provide a path to Heaven. The idea boggled the mind: would God create a universe in which thousands or billions of intelligent, sentient species were each forced to come to terms with ancient beliefs in a God, often with competing belief systems at work simultaneously, or would God create worlds with one coherent, universal belief system and pit those planet’s religious beliefs with another planet’s totally contrarian belief systems? And, would Planet A ever meet Planet B and realize they either did or did not believe in the same God?

  Tom took a deep pull from his glass of Scotch, let the peaty flavor melt over his tongue and warm his throat, and turned to Mary.

  “Honey, that’s something you’d have to ask Pastor Don after church on Sunday.”

  Chapter 28

  Shortly after his promotion to general, Hibbens’ unit began seeing an immediate influx in personnel and equipment, the likes of which no previous unit commander had ever imagined. Until a very short time ago, Hibbens had never bothered to imagine what the unit could be, how it could be shaped into something other than a feint to the budgetary process, an illusion used to deceive the alien abduction believers and UFO conspiracy theorists. That his unit was now real in some uncertain sense unsettled Hibbens, because results would be expected, results that could not be measured against any real projected outcomes.

  Hibbens was in the middle of briefing two new colonels to his unit on their mission when the realization of his promotion and his future once again took
center stage in his consciousness. Hibbens was extremely happy that his career had made him a general. He had entered the Air Force Academy almost three decades earlier with the goal of someday being a general, although his dream of being a fighter pilot had been crushed before graduation. His eyesight had steadily gotten worse during those four years, edging him out of that elite profession and forcing him into another career track.

  He had chosen to pursue intelligence, and it had put him here, in this room, twenty-some years later, briefing a pair of awestruck colonels about the possibility of an alien signal interception: alien in the extraterrestrial sense. Neither of the colonels had known this was the reason for their sudden assignment to the unit. When their jaws dropped mid-briefing, Hibbens could tell they were excited by the prospect of being on the team that determined if the origin of the signal was extraterrestrial and, he assumed, on being on the team that decoded the signal.

  But it was Hibbens’ career that was suddenly at risk. If the signal was authentic, he would be the head of a very prestigious, very secret operation with a large budget and the best personnel the Air Force could muster. If the signal were from off-world, history would remember Hibbens and his work in finding the origin of the signal and the work to decode it. If the signal was false, the work of a computer hacker trying to humiliate whoever, Hibbens knew he would quickly be shown the door to retirement and labeled an incompetent. The only consolation in that assessment was that nobody outside the Air Force would know it had been he who had been fooled.

  The seconds passed and Hibbens returned to reality, re-acquiring the attention of his two new subordinates, neither of whom had considered his brief silence anything of note.

  “Now, I’ve got to be in DC in six days for a briefing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they’re going to want to know what I think is going on, and what we’re doing about it. This means I need to know more than what we know now, which is clearly impossible, so I’m going to need some best guesses on how a ham radio frequency got hijacked and used to broadcast the noise I played you earlier.