by M. Alan Marr
The crew slowly moves forward. They cautiously step around the navigation table, marveling at the holographic image of the New Zealand topography.
In the back of the ship, Chaz whispers in Dev’s ear. “He didn’t tell them.”
Dev whispers back, “What do we do?”
Steve hangs back by the aft stairs. He can’t hear what is being whispered, but he does see Dev nodding his head. Steve feels awful he let them down. That is, until Dev looks at him and nods kindly. Steve cautiously approaches and is about to apologize when Chaz leans toward him. “Don’t worry, we’ve got this.”
“Yes, sir,” Steve says, despondently.
Chaz motions for Steve to follow him forward, leaving Dev at the workstation, where he begins inputting a programming sequence. There is a slight power up sound throughout the ship, which the rest of the group notices as they settle into the forward seating area. All eyes are now on Chaz and Steve.
Chaz opens the conversation. “So, I guess you are wondering what all this is about?” He adds, “What has Steve told you so far?”
Deer in the headlights.
Matt looks at the speechless group and rolls his eyes. “Steve said that Dev invented a zero-gravity system that’s not ready to be seen in public.”
Jen adds, “He said that’s why we had to meet here. Because there aren’t a lot of people around.”
Chaz looks at Steve. “Anything else?”
“No, sir, that’s about the gist of it,” Steve replies in normal tones. He adds, “They were less than enthusiastic about going on a mile-long hike in the New Zealand countryside.”
“Ah, I see.”
“I also mentioned that Dev’s work is the reason we all had to sign the confidentiality agreements.”
Chaz realizes the situation can still be salvaged. “Okay.” He looks at the group. “Well, then, any questions?”
“You’re kidding, right?” Jen scoffs.
“I have a few hundred,” Matt says. “How do you produce an anti-gravity field, for starters?”
Dev joins the group at the front. He’s all smiles and claps his hands together in anticipation.
“Maybe you should take that one,” Chaz says to Dev.
“Be happy to,” Dev says cheerfully. “Gravity, my friends, is all around us.”
“Duh,” Jen says under her breath.
Dev continues, “As visible light is the aggregation of photons, gravity is an aggregate of gravitons. And, like all quantum-level particles, gravitons have a specific set of properties that make them unique. In their quantum state, gravitons exist within a very specific set of dynamics, spinning at a certain period and frequency, collectively creating the attractive force known as gravity.”
“They’re not steady-state?” Matt says, with a certain amount of intellectual skepticism.
“Not at all,” Dev replies with certainty. “Think of molecules of water; they can exist individually, or amass into a droplet, or be spread thinly into a fog. Keep adding to it and you eventually create a pool, or even interact with other forces to create a wave. Gravitons have similar fluidic behaviors. That’s why you can have gravitational fluxes, waves, or even subtle differences in gravity across large bodies.” He adds, “Plus, a lot of outside factors influence local gravity, like composition of mass, altitude, velocity, and so forth.”
“Then how’s it work?” Matt says.
“Basically, if you isolate gravitons and accelerate them in a counter-rotational spin, their energies invert, and a reciprocal field is produced.”
“Is the field dangerous?” Jen says. “Now that we’ve all been exposed to it.”
“No,” Dev says. “Gravitons are zero-point energy particles; kind of like neutrinos in that sense, although their properties are completely different. Get enough of them in sync and spinning in the proper direction, you produce a field capable of repelling local gravitational bonds, thereby lifting an object or vehicle like this one. Better yet, gravitons tend to have sort of a cascade effect on each other.”
“What does that mean?” Jen says.
“Domino effect.” Matt replies.
“Exactly. In a closed loop system it means that once gravitons begin inverting their energies, the other ones tend to follow suit naturally. Then it’s just a matter of how much energy you put into the system.”
“So,” Harrison says, “what exactly is this thing?”
A pleasant tone is heard from the computers.
“Excellent question, Harrison,” Dev says with a smile. “And the answer you seek is right out the windows.”
“What windows?” Jen says, looking around the sealed room.
Dev initiates an icon on his Ti-Phone, and the wall displays switch off, leaving the cabin mostly dark. Jen directs her eyes upward. “Why did the lights just go out?”
The hull unlocks and opens up all around them. It’s still night outside, and the view is confusing to the group. Not for long . . . Mouths open. Eyes widen. There is some muttering. A few move off of the couch and put their hands to the windows. They watch in complete astonishment as the sun breaks across the dark horizon, revealing the stunning panorama of Earth below. The control deck fills with light and warmth as the ship soars fully into daylight. They see the Earth as never before.
Matt looks at Dev in awe. “Are we in orbit?”
“Indeed we are,” Dev replies with a confident smile.
“How the hell did you do this?” Harrison wonders aloud, looking back at Dev.
“Simple physics,” Dev replies.
“I took physics,” Harrison says blankly, then looks back outside. “I don’t remember covering this.”
“There’s . . . actually more to the story than what Steve told you,” Dev says.
The whole group turns their attention from the view to their employers, then to Steve, who seems to be standing off by himself again, definitely feeling everyone’s eyes on him.
“Maybe you guys should sit back down,” Chaz advises. “The view isn’t going anywhere.” He looks at Dev and adds, “Are we still climbing?”
“Yeah,” Dev replies. “Four hundred miles. Well above the crossing altitude of the ISS.”
The group listens to this casual, but highly unusual, conversation. Harrison, Annette, Franz, and Milo cautiously reassemble on the couch. Jen doesn’t sit. Matt doesn’t either; rather, he stands with his arms folded and is shaking his head as he stares out the windows at the Earth below.
“Matthew?” Dev says.
Matt turns around and voices what he knows to be true. “This technology doesn’t exist.”
“Yes, it does,” Dev replies.
“Not here it doesn’t,” Matt says right back. Dev doesn’t say a word.
Harrison narrows his eyes at Matt, then looks at Dev and starts to speak before making the connection. “Then what—Oh, you’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me.”
Jen swiftly places her hands on her hips. “I knew this job was too good to be true!”
“Hey,” Steve calls to Jen, a bit offended, “they hired you because you lost your airplane!”
“Yeah, but hired me into what?” she accuses, then motions to Dev and Chaz. “To be abducted by aliens?”
“Aliens?” Harrison says. “I thought it meant he’s from the future.”
“I’m not from the future,” Dev says.
“See?” Jen retorts. “Alien abduction.”
Jen’s outburst introducing the words alien and abduction causes a mild panic.
“Okay, okay, calm down,” Steve says, holding out his hands. “There’s no need for that.”
Harrison looks at Dev. “Are we being abducted?”
Annette grabs Harrison’s leg.
“No!” Dev answers over the din. “Please, just let me explain.”
Matt shouts, “Will you bitches shut up! I want to hear this!”
“Sorry, Mattsy,” Jen yells, “I guess I’m not smart enough to ask the technical questions!”
“Listen,” Ma
tt says to Jen with quiet fury, “if you don’t pipe down, I’m going to take those last-season lesbian shoes of yours and stuff them right down your throat. Now, shut up.”
Jen actually backs off and says nothing.
Franz leans toward Milo. “Girl’s got attitude.” Milo nods.
“I do not!” Jen yells.
“I was talking about Matt,” Franz fires back.
“Guys,” Dev says, “hear me out. Steve, sit down.”
Steve sits on the couch with his crew. Dev looks at the group. “I’m from Trieste.”
“In Italy?” Milo says.
“Uh, no,” Dev says. “Let me rephrase that. I come from a world called Trieste. It’s a planet in the constellation Corona Borealis.”
The group eyes Dev up and down, then slowly direct their attention to Chaz.
“What about Chaz?” Harrison says, cautiously.
“He’s from the Bay Area,” Dev quickly replies.
“Well, what the hell are you doing here, then?” Jen says. “And whose body did you steal?”
Dev rolls his eyes, then continues. “A very long time ago, people from Trieste set up an agricultural community on a fertile new world in a constellation called Oasis. That world is right outside.”
“You mean Earth.” Harrison says.
“Yes. We had outposts in what is present-day Mexico, Peru, China, India, Egypt, and a few others. All those mysteries of the ages you guys have heard about are, well, not at all mysterious to us.”
Matt looks at Dev. “Mexico—Corona Borealis—did you shanghai that satellite?”
“Yeah.” Crimes are not at all what Dev wants to deal with right now. “But I put it back.”
“What?” Jen says.
“I’ll tell you later,” Matt says and giggles at the prospect.
Annette turns to Dev. “You mean all those people-from-outer-space stories are true?”
“Some of them,” Dev replies. “Cave drawings of ancient astronauts, those are true. Hillbillies getting abducted by gray big-eyed aliens, are not. At least, I don’t think they are.”
“I don’t understand,” Franz says. “How do you look just like one of us if you’re from a whole other planet?”
“Yeah,” Harrison says, “how is it possible for you to look like a human being?”
“Because I am Human,” Dev says. “We all come from the same place.”
“I come from Cleveland,” Annette says innocently.
Dev and Chaz stifle a smile. Steve has to look away and bite his lip.
Jen gives Annette a very irritated look. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“I know it’s hard to imagine,” Dev says, “but before we arrived here, there were no Humans on Earth.”
“What do you mean?” Jen says.
“There were primates, yes, but we were the ones who introduced Humanity into Earth’s ecosystem.”
Jen’s jaw drops.
“What about evolution?” Matt says.
“That’s exactly what I said when I first found out,” says Chaz, who sits down on one of the two cubes in front of the seating area.
“Evolution happened, of course,” Dev says. “But Humans didn’t evolve here the way you think.”
“What about Australopithecus and Cro-Magnon man?” Matt says.
Dev winces and shakes his head. “There were some genetic anomalies back then. . . some interspecies breeding at one point . . . but that’s really not how Human evolution actually happened.”
“Then what gives?” Harrison says. “Why are you here?”
“About every thirty years we send an observer to check up on Earth. I am . . . the Observer.”
“Observing what?” Jen says in an accusatory tone.
“Everything,” Dev replies. “We’re interested in your advances in technology, medicine, social mores, education; Human society as a whole.”
“Our technology?” Matt says. “Why? This stuff is obviously more advanced than anything we’ve got.”
Dev explains, “Technology is an indicator of achievement and intent, Matt. Our observation intervals correlate with mathematical models of societal advance.”
“I don’t understand,” Annette says.
“Our last mission here was in 1985. The fax machine was big news. Today, you have the Internet and iPhones. You have a hadron collider unlocking the secrets of the universe. Never before in your history have you been so near to our capabilities. Believe it or not, your iPhones rival the Interlink devices we use in the Crown.”
Jen shakes her head. “I can’t get past the whole Origin of Species bit.”
“It’s a long story, Jen.”
Jen is not deterred. “You seem to have a captive audience here.”
Dev gives in. “All right.” He sits down on the other cube. “Six thousand years ago, several hundred thousand settlers came to Earth. The dinosaurs had just been annihilated by an asteroid a few years earlier and left, in their passing, a lush, fertile world. A world free from the pollution and overpopulation that existed in the Crown at the time. Those settlers were the first Humans to ever inhabit Earth.”
Harrison shakes his head. “But, that whole asteroid wiping out the dinosaurs thing happened millions of years ago.”
“Sixty-five million years, yeah, I know. Only it didn’t.”
Chaz interjects, “This is going to blow your mind.”
Dev continues. “Your scientists used carbon dating to estimate when the impact occurred. Carbon dating is very accurate. However, what they failed to realize was that the asteroid itself was sixty-five million years old, but that’s not when it hit the planet. That ‘hard’ evidence was then factored into an inaccurate evolutionary time line, and a misunderstanding of continental drift.”
“What about continental drift?” Matt says.
“When the asteroid hit,” Dev explains, “it drove so deep into the planet, it liquefied the mantle. The shockwave fractured the principal landmass. The continents broke apart and moved along the liquefied mantle. Eventually the mantle cooled and the continents settled in their current positions. Continents, like glaciers, naturally move over time due to centrifugal force of the planet’s rotation and orbit. Your current technology can track that, very accurately. Your scientists took the current drift data and backtracked, splicing in evolutionary data to make it all, well, make sense.”
“We got that wrong too?”
“It’s not that they’re wrong, it’s just that they’re starting from a faulty premise. That and they’re trying to connect evolutionary lines that aren’t really related. Their evidence of primate evolution is fine, but trying to fit Humans into the equation is why it doesn’t quite add up in the end.”
“You’re the missing link,” Matt says.
“Kind of,” Dev replies, “but not really. Humans on Earth didn’t evolve from indigenous creatures.”
“So you guys started the whole thing down there?” Franz says.
“We did. But the extreme distance between Earth and the Crown caused problems our forebears could not anticipate.”
“What kind of problems?” Harrison says.
Dev explains further. “The bulk of the population back then were agricultural workers who eventually demanded complete autonomy from the Crown. They came to Earth to start over. They became disenchanted to the point of hostilities and ultimately drove off the Governors, as they were known at the time.”
Matt interjects. “When you say they drove off the governors, what do you mean by that? Drove them off where? Where did they go?”
“Literally, off the planet,” Dev says. “They relocated to the transports in orbit and tried to resolve the situation from a distance. Didn’t work. That’s when the real troubles started. Technology of the time was highly complex, and without the Governors, there was no one to maintain or repair any of it.”
“Why was it so complex? I don’t understand,” Jen says.
“You have a laptop computer,” Dev says. “You can operate i
t easily. The first IBM computer weighed thirty tons and filled entire rooms with hardware. Would you be as comfortable operating that computer?”
“Oh . . . well, probably not.”
“For that matter, if your laptop fails, are you able to make repairs?”
“No.”
“Exactly. A settlement in India was totally destroyed after the residents attempted to operate the power station. That calamity prompted the Governors to neutralize all remaining ground-based power systems. That left everyone on Earth living off the land. At that point, the Governors had no choice but to return to the Crown.”
“Why?”
“Because several of the ground-based systems transmitted power to the ships in orbit. Beyond that, they only had so much in terms of supplies, food, and water.”
“Wow.”
“It gets much worse,” Dev says. “After the Governors left, there were no more doctors on Earth. Pathogens spread unabated, wiping out entire regions. We didn’t know this had happened. A couple of generations later we returned to Earth only to find a population of what you would call cavemen. No one on Earth had any knowledge of us or could even comprehend where we came from. So, we left. Again. We watched for centuries as Earth residents would rise and fall. We tried intervening at certain points in your history, but virtually everything we taught them was used belligerently.”
“Used how?” Harrison interjects.
“Used for warfare. Ultimately, the Admiralty decided to let Earth residents grow at their own pace. The sentiment being you would eventually solve the mysteries of the cosmos and realize you are not alone.”
“How’s that working?” Jen says with snark.
“You tell me, Jen. Right now, you are the only Earth residents who know the absolute truth.”
Matt is confused. “Why are we so behind, then?”
“You’re actually not that far behind at this point,” Dev says optimistically. “I mean, space travel, yes, you guys are still in the Dark Ages. Given the setbacks Earth residents have endured, you’re making remarkable progress. But Earth is a mess.”
“Tell me about it, Sister,” Matt says, finally sitting down on the couch.
“What do you mean?” Harrison says. “What’d we do wrong?”
Dev shakes his head. “Dictatorships, slavery, genocide, Nazis. The current Congress of the United States. Warlords, arms dealers, drug dealers, the gun lobby. Pick one.” He adds, “Your technology is on the verge of greatness, but socially, your population has a long way to go.”