Real life, July 26
...
...
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Okay.
Let's start in the docking bay. My bag was slung over my shoulder and I was saying goodbye to Curic, Tetsuo, and Ashley. Ion was on duty, so I was the only human in the docking bay. Possibly the only human in Human Ring, and about to leave.
"This time," said Tetsuo, like he was delivering a commencement address, "its productivity has been tremendous. The two of us have greatly expanded humanity's knowledge of the post-contact Ip Shkoy civilization."
"Yeah," I said, "I'm not a hundred percent convinced that's a good thing."
"But what I said was technically true. And I think the Goyim philosopher Hushxnau said it best: 'Truth is good.'"
"There's got to be someone who said it better than that."
"I brought you a souvenir," said Curic.
"Thanks," I said, "but Tetsuo gave me so much Ip Shkoy crap, there's no room in my bag. I had to leave all my extra clothes here."
"Stick it in the overhead compartment," said Curic. "It's important." She lifted a large piece of burnished metal from her fanny pack and passed it to me two-handed.
"Oof," I said. It was a grid of tightly nestled metal gears suspended atop a mechanism of rods, cranks, and knobs. The gears had five or six faces, each with a symbol engraved on it. It looked like something Charles Babbage would invent to handicap the ponies.
"This is a mechanical game," said Curic, "from the planet Gliese 777Ad."
"Where's that?"
"It orbits Gliese 777A."
"That's where it is," said Ashley, like she had checked.
"It's a replica, of course," said Curic. "The original was eight times larger, but metal is a little scarce around here, and it probably wouldn't fit in the shuttle anyway."
"This looks like gold," I said. I set it down on the shuttle floor with a clunk.
"It is. An alloy of gold and copper."
I jump-fell away from the machine. "Are you nuts? I couldn't bring a carrot up here without having it cavity searched. How am I going to get a damn gold ingot through Customs?"
"It didn't occur to me," said Curic. "I'll make you a replacement of pure copper." Curic picked up the machine and held it to her belly.
"Who had that much gold?" That's the single most valuable thing I've ever seen. I could get her to drop-ship that to me, I'd never need money again. (Yes, go to the bank and deposit thirty pounds of gold. That's a great plan.)
"Gold is as common on Gliese 777Ad as lead is on Earth," said Curic. "Luck of the draw."
No one needs to see the whole thing. Pull out those little rods, sell them three at a time. I looked at Tetsuo and Ashley so I wouldn't be looking at the machine. "Who's on 777Ad? Why don't they show up in the game database?"
"This is where I was born," said Curic. "On a contact mission in the 1960s, your reference frame. A lot of people reproduced near the end, when it looked like we'd be returning to Constellation space.
"The gears are samsara knots. What you would call cellular automata. You set their initial state—with tweezers, for the replica—and then turn the crank to run the algorithm." She turned it to demonstrate. The gears spun in little bursts, coming to rest on one face, then another.
"Ah," I said, "it's like Conway's Life."
"That's a cruel thing to say!"
"That's the name of a game," I said.
"Oh."
"It's beautiful," I said, "but why are you giving it to me?"
"We went there," said Curic, looking down at the machine she was cradling. "In your nineteenth century, my ancestors were part of a contact mission to the 777 system. We found a radioactive rock on one of 777Ad's moons, a rock that shouldn't have been there. On 777Ad itself, we found some technology like this. We found their cities. And we found them, the people who made these entertainments. But they were all dead."
"Fossilized?" I said.
"Not fossilized, no," said Ashley, as though her professional pride were at stake. "They were mummified."
"There was a virus," said Curic, "that tore apart their equivalent of DNA. It was probably engineered. Four thousand years ago, it killed everything on the planet, except for some isolated life near volcanic deep-sea vents. Anything that might have decomposed a body was also dead."
I didn't want the golden game anymore.
"You can imagine what it looked like when we landed," Curic continued. "As archaeology, it was perfect. Everything very well preserved. No living natives to complicate your reading of history. As a contact mission, it was an utter failure. Probably the worst in six hundred million years."
"It was not a failure," said Tetsuo, as though this were well-covered ground.
"Yeah, not your fault," I said. "They were dead when you got there. Sounds like a classic Plan A."
"It was an easy failure. No decisions to make, no culpability. Something like this happens... most of the time. Almost every time. But we had never come to a planet only a few years after the entire biosphere had died out."
"Four thousand years."
"That's not very long, Ariel!" said Curic. "This is context! Tens of thousands of people on this contact mission were born at 777Ad. We grew up outside the Constellation and we don't fit in with the rest of society, so we volunteered to come here. And here we found you, right on the other edge of the fossilization line.
"When we make our choices, we're thinking about the people who made this game. We're deciding to stand with you or to run away from you."
"Um," said Tetsuo, to break the silence. "Well, I just have a book about games that I translated for you." He handed it to me—more Ip Shkoy crap. "And a list of things I'd like you to bring up from Earth, the next time you come."
Tetsuo crouched, pressed his forehead against mine, and whispered. "Listen. Not everyone joins a contact mission because they feel guilty. I was born in Constellation space, and you're a lot more interesting than civilized people. So..." He made a complicated sweeping gesture with his forehands that did in fact convey: "Don't worry too much about Curic."
I looked at Tetsuo's list. "Why do you want me to bring olive oil?"
Tetsuo stood back up on his hindarms. "I saw advertisements for it," he said. "It looks delicious."
I stepped into the shuttle. "This was the trip of my life," I said. "I'll see you again soon." The lid of the shuttle closed and I shut my eyes and fell to Earth.
It wasn't nearly as bad going back down as it was going up. Mainly because I knew to close my eyes. I'm sure I was missing some magnificent view of Earth getting closer and closer, but if I want that kind of experience, I can just zoom in on a map.
Waiting for me at the spaceport like unwelcome relatives were BEA Agents Krakowski and Fowler. Since I saw them last, they'd gone native: They wore cowboy hats, like Texas Rangers. Black Stetsons with string ties.
"Hey, it's m'favorite asset!" said Krakowski.
"Um, hi..."
"Some desk pilot back in Washington told us it was a waste of time to give an exit visa to someone investigating million-year-old video games," said Krakowski. He chortled. "A waste of time!"
"Then you showed us Ev luie Aka's Ultimate Yada Yada," said Fowler. "Bam!" He clapped me on the back. Krakowski picked up my duffel and Fowler steered me towards one of the increasingly permanent-looking temporary buildings that had sprouted up around the landing site.
"Now they've got people scrambling to find out everything they can about every previous contact attempt," said Krakowski. "You and me, we're going places."
"You don't fuck with the field agents!" said Fowler, pumping his fist in the air.
"Guys, I'm feeling a sense of dread that only increases with every step I take in your presence."
"Occupational hazard, Blum," said Krakowski. "This will be one sweet debriefing. We'll get you through Customs real quick." We walked towards a brand-new metal trailer.
Krakowski tilted up the brim of his Stetson and whispere
d in my ear. "Am I resetting your jury duty clock, buddy?" he said.
"No," I whispered. "No one mentioned Slow People."
"Well, keep listening," said Krakowski, and backed out of my personal space. But then Fowler wanted in on the whispering action.
"Hey, Blum," he said. "The CBP lady, who does Customs."
"Yeah?"
"She's got great tits."
"Customs" meant "taking my stuff." Under the unblinking gaze of the CBP lady, Fowler and Krakowski stole my Constellation spacesuit.
"Hey, that's my spacesuit!" I said as they wrapped it in plastic and boxed it. "It was all bespoke and shit."
"So they can make you another one," said Krakowski.
"Yeah, you don't need it down here," said Fowler.
"I was going to go diving in it," I said.
"You can keep the next one," said Krakowski. "Where's your grav kicker? The zero-gee transit device?"
"Curic took it back," I said, "before I left. Said something about governments confiscating them for use as crowd control weapons."
"Oh, that Curic," said Krakowski playfully. "Anything else? More electronics, souvenirs?"
"Buncha Ip Shkoy crafts, and a book," I said. Fowler reached into my bag and picked out the book Tetsuo had translated for me. He showed it to Krakowski.
"Exert Dominion Over Friends Using Gaming Tactics Unmatchable Unless Your Friends Also Own This Book," Krakowski read. He flipped through it, peered at Tetsuo's shopping list. "Go ahead and keep this."
"Sign for the spacesuit," said Fowler. The CBP lady handed me her clipboard. The reimbursement rate for a Constellation spacesuit is three hundred dollars. It's taxable income.
Now debriefing time. Krakowski and Fowler's office was a trailer next door to the stealing-your-stuff trailer. Muted televisions perched on one wall, scrolling closed captions upwards like incense fumes.
The agents pulled off their hats. "All right, Blum." said Krakowski. He sat across a desk from me. "First off, you're not a fuckin spy."
"Pardon me?"
"Nobody's on your ass for actionable intelligence. You're part of a civilian cultural exchange and there are people who would kill for the experience you just had. So stop acting so damn persecuted."
"Curic called me a spy," I said.
"Well, you're not. Spies get paid." Fowler filled a conical cup with water from a water cooler and handed it to Krakowski, who handed it to me. "That in mind, let's start with general impressions. What's it like up there? Any problems?"
"You haven't been?"
"Who says we can go up?" said Krakowski with a tone that was close enough to irony for government work. "We're just the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Affairs."
Fowler stood behind Krakowski and mouthed "Pa-per-work" while making a scribbling motion.
"Well, the beds are terrible," I said. "And the Repertoire food is also bad, no thanks to you guys and your wanton carrot destruction."
"That's the TSA!" said Krakowski, like, don't pin that on me!
"And every other species has a nice home-planet environment in their Ring, but we've got the fucking post office, because they listened to you while they were building our home in the stars!"
Agent Krakowski stuck his elbow on the desk and used two fingers to prop up his forehead. "Ariel," he said. "I used to be an analyst, at Homeland Security, yeah? And I took this job. This job driving around, collecting eyewitness reports, managing exit visas, babysitting. I took whatever job I could get at the BEA, because I knew that this career path was the closest I'd ever get to being in Starfleet.
"I want this contact mission to be the best thing that ever happened to the human race. I do not want this country or this species to stop existing because somebody made a mistake I could have prevented, or made an assumption I should have checked. So when you come down from the space station with your pissant complaints about the interior decoration... well, I get a little annoyed."
"He gets annoyed," said Fowler, who'd mistaken Krakowski's rant for the opening salvo of a good-cop bad-cop routine.
"I'm sorry," I said. "It just feels like we fundamentally don't understand each other. It really worries me."
"Are you talking about us and the Constellation?" said Krakowski. "Or you and me?"
Behind Krakowski was Fowler and behind Fowler something caught my eye on the television. "What's that on TV?" I asked.
Fowler shrugged. "TV stuff," he said, without turning around.
"Those are Constellation spacesuits, on Earth. The sky's blue. Did I miss something when I was in Ring City?"
That got them to look. All three televisions on the back wall showed handicam footage of ETs and large robots standing on an ice sheet in the dead light of an Antarctic noon. The camera swung back to show a group of humans in cold-weather gear, towering above a gesticulating Farang with frost collecting on his/her fur.
TWO CUBIC KILOMETERS AT A
TIME,
said the closed captions.
WE TAG ITS COORDINATES. WE
SLIDE THE PORT OVER IT.
"Turn it up," said Krakowski.
"How much are you going to remove?" A human voice spoke over heavy wind and was echoed in the closed captions.
"As much of it as we can," said George Clooney choppily. The Farang didn't speak English; he/she was using a vocalizer. "It's a delicate balance, you understand."
Cut back to the CNN newsroom. "...In what some people are calling an extraterrestrial plot to steal Earth's ice caps. New footage from the international Polar Climate Study expedition..."
"Sweet Jayzus!" said Fowler. "Just like Ultimate Lift-Off predicted. They'll dig us up, just like they dug up the moon."
"No!" I said. "Fuck on toast. Why would anyone steal seawater?"
"I heard there was an engine that runs on seawater," said Fowler, "but the government covered it up."
"You're the effing government!"
"Earth would look like a big gas station to them," said Fowler. "Just like in Triple Point." Krakowski was gritting his teeth.
Charlene Siph—the fixer, Tetsuo had called her—was talking in split-screen on one of the muted televisions, the handicam footage looping next to her. I'd seen her look of disgust before, on Ashley's face, whenever Tetsuo pulls out his Ip Shkoy courtship techniques.
"Can we please apply any of the knowledge we've obtained up to this point?" I said. "Curic just tried to give me thirty pounds of gold! Because she forgot gold is valuable!"
Krakowski's BlackBerry beeped. He pulled it out of his belt holster.
"Oh-kay," he said in exasperation. "We've gone to Code Falcon, have a nice day." Fowler stiffened and leapt to his feet. Krakowski tossed the BlackBerry onto the table, then immediately picked it back up and slipped it back in its holster.
"What's Code Falcon?" I asked.
"You're not cleared," said Krakowski. "That's why we use codes. But here's a tip: Let's get the hell away from the landing site."
* * *
Chapter 16: False Daylight
Real life, July 26, continued
I sat in the back of the government-issue sedan. Story of my life: me in the back seat with no one to make out with. BEA Agent Fowler sat in the driver's seat, revving the biodiesel engine like he wanted to NASCAR this fucker. BEA Agent Krakowski was still in the debriefing trailer.
The car smelled like french fries. I pulled out my phone and called Jenny, cooling her heels fifty yards away in the spaceport waiting room.
"Are you done?" she asked.
"Get out of here," I said. "The spooks are spooked. They're evacuating me. Tell everyone in there to get out."
"The only people in here are the TSA dudes," said Jenny. "If I tell them to abandon their checkpoint, they'll summarily execute me. Is this about the Antarctica thing?"
"It's pretty damn likely," I said.
Fowler twisted to face me. "Get off the phone, Blum," he said. "This is still a secured area."
"Shit," I said. I put the phone in my pocket b
ut didn't hang up.
Fowler leaned forward, trying to see through the smudged windshield into the trailer. "He's probably screwing around with the document safe," he said.
A distant whine harmonized with the sedan's engine. A reentry sort of whine. "Well, shit," said Fowler, "here it comes. If we die, it's because Krakowski had to put those damn xenobiology reports back in the safe."
"Are we going to die?"
"I. Don't. Know. Blum. We're finally standing up to the Constellation on something big. So maybe instead of dropping a civilian shuttle every forty-five minutes, they've decided to drop some hardware. Armored personnel carriers, or big-ass rocks."
"Have you ever seen a Constellation APC? Or a soldier? Or a cop? Because I just got back from a week with the fucking space hippies."
"'Scuse me," said Fowler. He ran into the BEA trailer, leaving the key in the ignition. I leaned forward and shut his door. I could see a shape in the sky. It was a shuttle, like the shuttle I'd just come down in. The shuttle landed. It was empty.
"It's just a shuttle!" I yelled at the trailer, as if they could hear me. I took the phone out of my pocket. "Jenny, you still there?"
"I'm on the bike. Getting out of here, as per your request."
"Do you know anything about the Antarctica situation?" I said. "These guys won't say anything but code names."
Jenny puffed. "Well, according to the ever-reliable television, there's this group called 'Save Humanity'."
"It's 'Save the Humans'," I said. "That's Curic's overlay."
"Yeah, no kidding. Apparently some of them decided to move the ice caps to the moon where they wouldn't melt. Step two, we find out about this. Step three..."
"We all go apeshit. Sorry, they're coming back." Phone back in pocket.
"Jayzus Christ," said Fowler, getting in and slamming the door. "We don't control our own airspace anymore." The shuttle took off, empty. "It's like living in a third world country."
Krakowski got in the passenger side. "Let's go downtown for a few hours," he said. Fowler started the first two points of what would prove to be a five-point turn.
"Do we have to, like, right now?" I said. My bike was locked up in the parking lot. "They just had their chance to drop an APC on us, and they blew it. It's the same shuttle I came in on."
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