And so, for the ten longest minutes in human history, they had waited.
Suddenly, the pod passed a loud hissing sound, the domed lid spun about half a rotation around its axis and popped open. From the narrow opening, a tentacle emerged, holding a transparent box, slowly expanding about fifty meters towards the crowd. Then, it stopped. The observers could decipher a snake-like small tentacle separating from the main tentacle and forming a ring that held a flat golden object the size of a pizza dish. The deafening silence was broken by someone in the audience yelling of the top of his lungs:
“Voyager!”
The person was immediately apprehended by the nearest coastguard officers, the event received little attention, completely overshadowed by what was going on next.
Music flowed.
The most vibrant piece of classical music, which hardly anyone recognized as Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto, enveloped the coast. One person, however, made the connection between the “Voyager” exclamation and the classical music played by the invaders. That person was my ancestor, Dr. Otis Solarin, a professor of space history.
“They come in peace!” he yelled as loud as he could from the crowd, but the music swallowed his words. He attempted to get through the crowd to whoever was in charge of the coastguard operation. Again, the coastguard was not impressed. Dr. Solarin was apprehended just as quickly as the other enthusiast by the two solidly built coastguards, who dragged the kicking old man from the beach to the military vehicle for further detention.
Leaving the beach, Dr. Solarin heard the gun shots behind.
Then he heard a round of water splashes. He quickly counted - eleven.
***
I discovered Solarin’s book in my grandpa’s library when I was about fourteen years old. At first, I thought that it was a piece of fiction, like one of those alternative histories. In that manuscript, the First Contact account was told in many ways similarly, but it had significant discrepancies. The official version was that the Unkari provoked the coastguard to open fire. We were taught that both aliens and humans had weapons pointed at each other. It was from Solarin’s manuscript that I found out the fact that instead of weapons, the Unkari had presented us with our own late twentieth-century Voyager’s golden record that our ancestors had sent into space looking for extraterrestrial life. Dr. Solarin blamed the government for the most epic diplomatic fuck-up of all time - for opening fire on aliens who actually came with a friendly mission.
When the coastguard opened fire, the Unkari transporters went back under water, leaving behind the record enclosed in a transparent case, where in seventeen Earth languages it was written: “Human lost, Unkari returned.” No matter how much the marines tried to find the aliens in the Pacific, they had vanished without a trace, as if none of that ever happened.
This of course led a significant group of people, who called themselves “The Green Men Circus,” to claim that the whole event was staged by the government. The Green Men Circus adepts had to eat their tin foil hats about three months after the First Contact failure. Nineteen Unkari vessels out of nowhere appeared at Titan’s orbit. According to the official government narrative, NASA was observing these ships for a while when they entered the solar system.
According to the Solarin’s manuscript, NASA has video footage from a satellite directed at Titan. On that footage, one second there was nothing around Titan, and then the ships started popping up from thin air, one by one, assuming a circular formation around the moon. Solarin also says that on that day, the NASA director and the president of Earth Prime mysteriously disappeared from the public eye, and the footage was hushed. About a week passed, but the ships did not move an inch or show any signs of activity. That was when the president finally came out of his hiding. Coincidentally, later that day the ships began transmitting a message.
The aliens claimed Jupiter’s moon Titan to be the official embassy of the Unkari in human space. Publicly, the government hailed it as a major diplomatic victory. According to Dr. Solarin’s account, politicians and the military were caught off guard and had no idea what to do - other than try to prevent mass hysteria. Although the military and the civilians put on a brave face, they still announced a Level 5 security alert, reserved for things like nuclear threats. It certainly corroborated Solarin’s narrative. Meanwhile, months passed, but nothing happened. Our satellites captured no activity on Titan. The ships were securely parked in Titan’s orbit, and nobody seemed to descend to the surface.
When the riots of E.T. lovers and haters alike were taken under control, the Earth Nations transmitted a formal invitation to open diplomatic talks. The Unkari were invited to arrive with a small delegation to Reykjavik, for negotiations. Everybody wanted to know if there were Unkari ships hidden in the ocean, but the Unkari themselves were not in a hurry to reveal any of their secrets. The diplomatic relations with the Unkari lasted for about a year and were characterized by a particular bureaucratic sluggishness, equally perpetuated by both sides. Months were spent approving detailed agendas before any bilateral meeting took place.
Humanity at large was kept in the dark, only to receive public assurances that the diplomatic process was slow, but positive. Only a handful of scholars were allowed access to the Unkari camp in Reykjavik for cultural exchange, and what they revealed to the public was heavily red-taped. Dr. Solarin, however, got lucky and was invited to join the science delegation as a historian and anthropologist. The last title, Solarin joked, was mostly credited to him because he wrote a book on portrayal of aliens in fictional narratives. Although Solarin was an expert on made-up aliens, somehow it allowed the government to maintain appearances and keep Solarin’s mouth shut about the Voyager’s record. A year later, the Earth Nations announced a press conference on the account of the Unkari negotiations. That was when everyone found out that the Unkari requested to expand their settlements to the Milky Way galaxy in return for protection from other hostile species. Supposedly the Unkari did not reveal any details about those species, emphasizing that such information was a tradable commodity in the negotiations, although they cautioned the Earth Nations against sending any further messages into deep space.
The head of the Earth Nations announced that the parties did not reach a mutually satisfying agreement, and as a result the Unkari left the solar system and supposedly returned to their home galaxy, Sagittarius Dwarf. Later that year, that particular administration lost the elections, bringing to office an ultraconservative party that ran on species isolationism and military expansion. And so began a new chapter in human history - the era of space colonization.
***
Roughly 600 years after the Arecibo message was sent into space, and 300 years after the First Contact, humanity lives in the shadow of the great unknown harbored by the universe in its dark wrinkles of space-time. As it turned out, practical space colonization required a lot more effort than anyone imagined. Even the best proxy-Earth prospects required significant terra formation steps. That was why our ancestors opted for the orbital stations model. They were versatile and mobile, and they allowed humans to colonize the nearby systems without waiting for the terra-forming processes to be completed.
Today, in 2587, humans have twelve operational Orbital Colonies around the Earth Prime, six Cycler stations orbiting the sun between the Earth and Mars orbits, four Orbital Colonies around Mars, three around Ganymede, and two around Europa. Mars is currently at the stage II of the terra formation. The first phase had to do with establishing an artificial magnetosphere. The present stage is concerned with saturating the Martian atmosphere with the greenhouse gasses and introducing photosynthetic algae to produce oxygen. Although in popular culture Mars is still nicknamed a “red planet,” in reality it is becoming more of a navy blue planet, because of the type of the vegetation that took off in that environment. Its photosynthesis absorbs different light waves, creating that signature navy-blue pigment, instead of green. However sul
len of a look they create, these plants led to the early stages of fertile soil formation.
Outside of the solar system, humans colonized five nearby systems, although the terra-formation of those planets is in a rudimentary stage. We have sent probes and small manned missions in hundreds of directions across the Milky Way, and among them are the ever-expanding small military outposts, keeping an eye on the ominous neighboring galaxy.
In all this time, we have not met any other species more complex than a space worm, and we have not heard from the Unkari ever since. We have learned a lot about space, planetary formation, origin of species, and alternative biochemistries, but for all practical purposes, we are still alone. Our existential questions are not answered.
***
“River, are you ok?” I thought, telepathically communicating it to Ebony, who was locked up some place separately from me, but not too far away, because her range of NVC communication was limited to several hundred meters.
“I’m fine I guess. They want to prosecute us, Mazula. We are screwed!”
I received a cloud of panic transmitted with that message.
“Hang on, we will figure something out.”
Ebony did not respond.
“Ebony, are you injured?”
“I am not in pain, if that’s what you mean. But I can’t see. They say my optic nerve is damaged.”
“What are the odds.”
***
About an hour later, She returned.
“It is time for you to face Unkari justice,” she said.
17
ISTANBUL
I couldn’t see. I was hostage to an alien species, taken to receive a death sentence.
Two guards held me by my arms on both sides, and I could hear She (the name drove me nuts!) walking in front of me. I heard the doors sliding open and closed as we walked. Our footsteps were absorbed by a cushiony, track-like surface.
“How long have you been with the Unkari?” I asked her. She did not respond. “Come on, you are going to execute me, aren’t you? The least you can do is to satisfy my curiosity.”
“I could. But then, why would I?” She replied dispassionately.
“Why? What do you mean “why”? You say you are a human, right? Well, we have at least that much in common. How did you get here? What did they promise you to make you defect?”
“You think we have a lot in common? Let me tell you, you could not insult me more. You humans are arrogant and dense. You are like babies with the fire power to destroy an entire galaxy. Now, why would I want to have anything in common with you?”
“Maybe so, but not everyone is this way. Ensign River, for example. Her race is pacifist.”
“And yet, here she is, a soldier and a murderer of two Unkari soldiers.”
“Yeah, I see how it might look like that. But let me tell you, the Unkari are not saints either. They wanted to move in our space, we refused. And what did they do? They left, harbored resentment against humanity for 300 years, and plotted blitzkrieg.”
“You think you know something, don’t you.” There was no question mark at the end of that one, only bone-dry bitterness.
“Then explain it to me! I know only what I was told, but maybe there is another side to the story.”
“There is always another side of the story, don’t you think?”
“True. But whose story is closer to the truth? For all I know, you and I may be speaking the same language, but we are far from understanding each other.”
She was quiet. We stopped walking.
“Come on, you don’t want to kill me without full remorse, do you? Isn’t that the purpose of the Unkari trial?”
“You may have a point there,” She finally agreed. “Alright. Let me talk to the Leader.”
“Leader? The Unkari pilot said he was taking us to the Leader.”
“Be quiet!”
I zipped up, while She stepped aside.
“The Leader agrees that your understanding may contribute to your remorse.”
“See, you might get a promotion out of it!”
“Get what?”
“Never mind. Ok, I am ready for the learning curve.”
***
Later I was crying, kneeling on a beach of plastic sand facing a methane ocean with thick slow-motion waves, as if made of unset resin. I cried watching the red marble of the alien sun slowly rolling to the horizon. The Unkari evening was approaching, and I was left alone to digest what had happened. The beach was deserted, but there was no point in running. The reason why I was in such distress was that I had precisely three choices ahead of me, and all three led to my certain death. The difference between them was in how fast my death would come, and how many more humans, besides me, would have to die. I am getting ahead of the events.
I better go back and tell everything exactly how it was.
***
She directed me to a transporter, which lightly took off in an unknown direction.
“What are you going to show me?”
“You will see it for yourself.”
“I’m not really blind, am I?”
“We’ll get to that as well. Meanwhile I need to fill in your gaps on human-Unkari relations.” I was sitting in a chair of some sort, enveloped in darkness, and strapped with a safety force field, imagining She across from me (at least that’s where her voice came from). She sounded like a young woman with an unfamiliar English accent, probably influenced by the Unkari language. I suspected that She’d been with the Unkari for a long time, maybe her entire life. From the sound of her voice, She didn’t strike me as someone who’d get early “worry lines.”
“First, tell me how much you know,” She said.
“Well, I know maybe a fraction more compared to any other human who studied the history of the First Contact. There are a few wrinkles in the official narrative that I know not to be true. The major one is about the Voyager’s Golden Record.”
“How did you find out about it?”
“My family keeps the unpublished memoir of my ancestor, Dr. Solarin. He was among the Monrovia eye witnesses.”
“Solarin is your relative?”
That was the first time when I registered an emotion in her voice.
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, that explains your ability to oscillate … No, no. Forget about it. It doesn’t matter.”
“My ability to do what?”
“I told you, forget it! Why do you think the Voyager record is important?”
“It may or may not be important. But it may imply that the initial intent of the Unkari was peaceful.”
“Your guess is right. The Unkari came to warn humans. Sending strategic information into space without any idea as to who may be coming across it … well, it is dangerous. Humans are not ready to match any extraterrestrial civilization at war.”
“Even the Unkari?”
“Especially the Unkari.”
“Ok, if they are so powerful, why did they ‘play’ diplomacy with us?”
“They did not ‘play.’ The Unkari are patient and just. They wanted to give humans a chance.” Meanwhile the transporter stopped, and we exited to what seemed to be a city, filled with foreign noises and chatter. “Tilt your head back and keep your eyes wide open,” She commanded. I complied. Sharp pain immediately kicked in, as if I was hit simultaneously in both eyes. I twitched in pain and grabbed my eyes with my palms. “It will get better in a minute.” I heard her reassurance. “I activated your optic nerve.”
“Oh my God!!!” I was yelping in pain. “This is intense! Why did you do it??”
“I needed to prevent you from using your equipment. Obstructing your vision seemed appropriate. It’s just nano-saline eye drops, no big deal.”
I had to sit down on the ground because the experience made me
lightheaded. That was when I removed my palms from my face and saw shapes. Shapes at first, then - more clearly. My vision was returning. In a few minutes, I could make sense of my surroundings. We were obviously in an advanced city that at first glance reminded me of Earth Prime architecture. Tall buildings framed the skyline, and the streets were crowded with… people! Humans!
“What is this place?” I was in awe and in shock simultaneously.
“They are humans, obviously.”
“You need to start explaining it all right now.”
That was when I finally turned my head to the woman who called herself She.
Tall, with a heap of fiery red hair, She wore a slick black uniform revealing a well-trained physique. I couldn’t decide if She was attractive. The word that came to my mind was “blank”. Light red eyebrows, red eyelashes, extremely pale skin definitely untouched by natural sunlight, thin shapely lips that framed her small mouth - all in all, a striking appearance, but far from a heartthrob. Or maybe she just wasn’t my type. But then, my captors were generally not my type anyway. “Welcome to Istanbul.” She said. “I know you have many questions, but there is no one who can provide you with better answers than Otis Solarin himself.”
My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.
“Oh you must be kidding me,” I said flatly. “The man has been dead for 300 years now!”
“You may not be too far from the truth, Mazula. By the way, you may remove your headgear. This human reservation has perfect terrestrial climate control.”
18
329 YEARS AWAKE
This Istanbul was nothing like the historic Istanbul I’d read about. A hodgepodge of terrestrial and alien features, it had modern architecture with many human elements: windows, balconies, skyscrapers, and doors; but it was shaped in clusters, like termite hills, with sharp peaks representing separate buildings. These individual peaks were connected by catwalks and parking zones for the air-gliding vehicles that moved in dozens of strict horizontal air lanes. Looking up to the sky, I saw a lattice of vehicles moving in orderly lanes, arranged without any visible demarcations. I immediately thought about termites travelling in strict routes that only they could understand.
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