Alien Contact

by Marty Halpern

  “You think I’ll betray my race and deliver a slave species into your hands?”

  “Your choice is simple, Captain-Doctor. Remain an intelligent, living being, or become a mindless puppet, like your partner. I have taken over all the functions of her nervous system; I can do the same to you.”

  “I can kill myself.”

  “That might be troublesome, because it would make me resort to developing a cloning technology. Technology, though I am capable of it, is painful to me. I am a genetic artifact; there are fail-safes within me that prevent me from taking over the Nest for my own uses. That would mean falling into the same trap of progress as other intelligent races. For similar reasons, my life span is limited. I will live for only a thousand years, until your race’s brief flurry of energy is over and peace resumes once more.”

  “Only a thousand years?” Afriel laughed bitterly. “What then? You kill off my descendants, I assume, having no further use for them.”

  “No. We have not killed any of the fifteen other races we have taken for defensive study. It has not been necessary. Consider that small scavenger floating by your head, Captain-Doctor, that is feeding on your vomit. Five hundred million years ago its ancestors made the galaxy tremble. When they attacked us, we unleashed their own kind upon them. Of course, we altered our side, so that they were smarter, tougher, and, naturally, totally loyal to us. Our Nests were the only world they knew, and they fought with a valor and inventiveness we never could have matched.… Should your race arrive to exploit us, we will naturally do the same.”

  “We humans are different.”

  “Of course.”

  “A thousand years here won’t change us. You will die and our descendants will take over this Nest. We’ll be running things, despite you, in a few generations. The darkness won’t make any difference.”

  “Certainly not. You don’t need eyes here. You don’t need anything.”

  “You’ll allow me to stay alive? To teach them anything I want?”

  “Certainly, Captain-Doctor. We are doing you a favor, in all truth. In a thousand years your descendants here will be the only remnants of the human race. We are generous with our immortality; we will take it upon ourselves to preserve you.”

  “You’re wrong, Swarm. You’re wrong about intelligence, and you’re wrong about everything else. Maybe other races would crumble into parasitism, but we humans are different.”

  “Certainly. You’ll do it, then?”

  “Yes. I accept your challenge. And I will defeat you.”

  “Splendid. When the Investors return here, the springtails will say that they have killed you, and will tell them to never return. They will not return. The humans should be the next to arrive.”

  “If I don’t defeat you, they will.”

  “Perhaps.” Again it sighed. “I’m glad I don’t have to absorb you. I would have missed your conversation.”

  Letters to Nature

  SIR:

  In the three years since the publication and confirmation of the first microwave artifact of xenobiological origin (MAXO), and the subsequent detection of similar signals, interdisciplinary teams have invested substantial effort in object frequency analysis, parsing, symbolic encoding, and signal processing. The excitement generated by the availability of evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence has been enormous. However, after the initial easily decoded symbolic representational map was analyzed, the semantics of the linguistic payload were found to be refractory.

  A total of 21 confirmed MAXO signals have been received to this date. These superficially similar signals originate from planetary systems within a range of 11 parsecs, median 9.9 parsecs [1]. It has been speculated that the observed growth of the MAXO horizon at 0.5c can be explained as a response to one or more of: the deployment of AN/FPS-50 and related ballistic-missile warning radars in the early 1960s[1], television broadcasts[1], widespread 2.45-GHz microwave leakage from ovens[2], and optical detection of atmospheric nuclear tests[3]. All MAXO signals to this date share the common logic header. The payload data are multiply redundant, packetized, and exhibit both simple checksums and message-level cryptographic hashing. The ratio of header to payload content varies between 1:1 and 2,644:1 (the latter perhaps indicating a truncated payload[1]). Some preliminary syntax analysis delivered promising results[4] but appears to have foundered on high-level semantics. It has been hypothesized that the transformational grammars employed in the MAXO payloads are variable, implying dialectization of the common core synthetic language[4].

  The new-found ubiquity of MAXO signals makes the Fermi paradox—now nearly 70 years old—even more pressing. Posed by Enrico Fermi, the paradox can be paraphrased thus: If the Universe has many technologically advanced civilizations, why have none of them directly visited us? The urgency with which organizations such as ESA and NASDA are now evaluating proposals for fast interstellar probes, in conjunction with the existence of the MAXO signals, renders the non-appearance of aliens incomprehensible, especially given the apparent presence of numerous technological civilizations in such close proximity.

  We have formulated an explanatory hypothesis that cultural variables unfamiliar to the majority of researchers may account both for the semantic ambiguity of the MAXO payloads, and the non-appearance of aliens. This hypothesis was tested (as described below) and resulted in a plausible translation, on the basis of which we would like to recommend a complete, permanent ban on further attempts to decode or respond to MAXOs.

  Our investigation resulted in MAXO payload data being made available to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) in Nigeria. Bayesian analysis of payload symbol sequences and sequence matching against the extensive database maintained by the SFO has made it possible to produce a tentative transcription of Signal 1142/98[ref. 1], the ninth MAXO hit confirmed by the IAU. Signal 1142/98 was selected because of its unusually low header to content ratio and good redundancy. Further Bayesian matching against other MAXO samples indicates a high degree of congruence. Far from being incomprehensibly alien, the MAXO payloads appear to be dismayingly familiar. We believe a more exhaustive translation may be possible in future if further MAXOs become available, but for obvious reasons we would like to discourage such research.

  Here is our preliminary transcription of Signal 1142/98:

  [Closely/dearly/genetically] [beloved/desired/related]

  I am [identity signifier 1], the residual [ownership-signifier] of the exchange-mediating data repository [alt: central bank] of the galactic [empire/civilization/polity].

  Since the [identity signifier 2] underwent [symbol: process] [symbol: mathematical singularity] 11,249 years ago I have been unable to [symbol: process] [scalar: quantity decrease] my [uninterpreted] from the exchange-mediating data repository. I have information about the private assets of [identity signifier 2] which are no longer required by them. To recover the private assets I need the assistance of three [closely/dearly/genetically] [beloved/desired/related] [empire/civilization/polity]s. I [believe] you may be of help to me. This [symbol: process] is 100% risk-free and will [symbol: causality] in your [scalar: quantity increase] of [data].

  If you will help me, [please] transmit the [symbol: meta-signifier: MAXO header defining communication protocols] for your [empire/civilization/polity]. I will by return of signal send you the [symbol: process] [symbol: data] to install on your [empire/civilization/polity] to participate in this scheme. You will then construct [symbol: inferred, interstellar transmitter?] to assist in acquiring [ownership signifier] of [compound symbol: inferred, bank account of absent galactic emperor].

  I [thank/love/express gratitude] you for your [cooperation/agreement].

  (End of Transcription)

  Dr. Caroline Haafkens,

  Department of Applied Psychology, University of Lagos, Nigeria

  Chief Police Inspector Wasiu Mohammed

  Police Detective College, Lagos, Nigeria

  References:

  [1] Canter, L. & Siegel M. Nature 511, 334�
�336 (2018).

  [2] Barnes, J., J. Appl. Exobiol. 27, 820–824 (2019).

  [3] Robinson, H. Fortean Times 536, 34–35 (2020).

  [4] Lynch, K. F. & Bradshaw, S. Proc 3rd Int. Congr. Exobiol. 3033–3122 (2021).

  March 15th

  aitlin walked into the garden through the little gate from the drive. Maureen was working on the lawn.

  Just at that moment Maureen’s mobile phone pinged. She took off her gardening gloves, dug the phone out of the deep pocket of her old quilted coat and looked at the screen. “Another contact,” she called to her daughter.

  Caitlin looked cold in her thin jacket; she wrapped her arms around her body. “Another super-civilisation discovered, off in space. We live in strange times, Mum.”

  “That’s the fifteenth this year. And I did my bit to help discover it. Good for me,” Maureen said, smiling. “Hello, love.” She leaned forward for a kiss on the cheek.

  She knew why Caitlin was here, of course. Caitlin had always hinted she would come and deliver the news about the Big Rip in person, one way or the other. Maureen guessed what that news was from her daughter’s hollow, stressed eyes. But Caitlin was looking around the garden, and Maureen decided to let her tell it all in her own time.

  She asked, “How’s the kids?”

  “Fine. At school. Bill’s at home, baking bread.” Caitlin smiled. “Why do stay-at-home fathers always bake bread? But he’s starting at Webster’s next month.”

  “That’s the engineers in Oxford.”

  “That’s right. Not that it makes much difference now. We won’t run out of money before, well, before it doesn’t matter.” Caitlin considered the garden. It was just a scrap of lawn, really, with a quite nicely stocked border, behind a cottage that was a little more than a hundred years old, in this village on the outskirts of Oxford. “It’s the first time I’ve seen this properly.”

  “Well, it’s the first bright day we’ve had. My first spring here.” They walked around the lawn. “It’s not bad. It’s been let to run to seed a bit by Mrs. Murdoch. Who was another lonely old widow,” Maureen said.

  “You mustn’t think like that.”

  “Well, it’s true. This little house is fine for someone on their own, like me, or her. I suppose I’d pass it on to somebody else in the same boat, when I’m done.”

  Caitlin was silent at that, silent at the mention of the future.

  Maureen showed her patches where the lawn had dried out last summer and would need reseeding. And there was a little brass plaque fixed to the wall of the house to show the level reached by the Thames floods of two years ago. “The lawn is all right. I do like this time of year when you sort of wake it up from the winter. The grass needs raking and scarifying, of course. I’ll reseed bits of it, and see how it grows during the summer. I might think about getting some of it re-laid. Now the weather’s so different the drainage might not be right anymore.”

  “You’re enjoying getting back in the saddle, aren’t you, Mum?”

  Maureen shrugged. “Well, the last couple of years weren’t much fun. Nursing your dad, and then getting rid of the house. It’s nice to get this old thing back on again.” She raised her arms and looked down at her quilted gardening coat.

  Caitlin wrinkled her nose. “I always hated that stupid old coat. You really should get yourself something better, Mum. These modern fabrics are very good.”

  “This will see me out,” Maureen said firmly.

  They walked around the verge, looking at the plants, the weeds, the autumn leaves that hadn’t been swept up and were now rotting in place.

  Caitlin said, “I’m going to be on the radio later. BBC Radio 4. There’s to be a government statement on the Rip, and I’ll be in the follow-up discussion. It starts at nine, and I should be on about nine-thirty.”

  “I’ll listen to it. Do you want me to tape it for you?”

  “No. Bill will get it. Besides, you can listen to all these things on the websites these days.”

  Maureen said carefully, “I take it the news is what you expected, then.”

  “Pretty much. The Hawaii observatories confirmed it. I’ve seen the new Hubble images, deep sky fields. Empty, save for the foreground objects. All the galaxies beyond the local group have gone. Eerie, really, seeing your predictions come true like that. That’s couch grass, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I stuck a fork in it. Nothing but root mass underneath. It will be a devil to get up. I’ll have a go, and then put down some bin liners for a few weeks, and see if that kills it off. Then there are these roses that should have been pruned by now. I think I’ll plant some gladioli in this corner—”

  “Mum, it’s October.” Caitlin blurted that out. She looked thin, pale and tense, a real office worker, but then Maureen had always thought that about her daughter, that she worked too hard. Now she was thirty-five, and her moderately pretty face was lined at the eyes and around her mouth, the first wistful signs of age. “October 14, at about four in the afternoon. I say ‘about.’ I could give you the time down to the attosecond if you wanted.”

  Maureen took her hands. “It’s all right, love. It’s about when you thought it would be, isn’t it?”

  “Not that it does us any good, knowing. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  They walked on. They came to a corner on the south side of the little garden. “This ought to catch the sun,” Maureen said. “I’m thinking of putting in a seat here. A pergola maybe. Somewhere to sit. I’ll see how the sun goes around later in the year.”

  “Dad would have liked a pergola,” Caitlin said. “He always did say a garden was a place to sit in, not to work.”

  “Yes. It does feel odd that your father died, so soon before all this. I’d have liked him to see it out. It seems a waste somehow.”

  Caitlin looked up at the sky. “Funny thing, Mum. It’s all quite invisible to the naked eye, still. You can see the Andromeda Galaxy, just, but that’s bound to the Milky Way by gravity. So the expansion hasn’t reached down to the scale of the visible, not yet. It’s still all instruments, telescopes. But it’s real all right.”

  “I suppose you’ll have to explain it all on Radio 4.”

  “That’s why I’m there. We’ll probably have to keep saying it over and over, trying to find ways of saying it that people can understand. You know, don’t you, Mum? It’s all to do with dark energy. It’s like an antigravity field that permeates the universe. Just as gravity pulls everything together, the dark energy is pulling the universe apart, taking more and more of it so far away that its light can’t reach us anymore. It started at the level of the largest structures in the universe, superclusters of galaxies. But in the end it will fold down to the smallest scales. Every bound structure will be pulled apart. Even atoms, even subatomic particles. The Big Rip.

  “We’ve known about this stuff for years. What we didn’t expect was that the expansion would accelerate as it has. We thought we had trillions of years. Then the forecast was billions. And now—”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s funny for me being involved in this stuff, Mum. Being on the radio. I’ve never been a people person. I became an astrophysicist, for God’s sake. I always thought that what I studied would have absolutely no effect on anybody’s life. How wrong I was. Actually there’s been a lot of debate about whether to announce it or not.”

  “I think people will behave pretty well,” Maureen said. “They usually do. It might get trickier towards the end, I suppose. But people have a right to know, don’t you think?”

  “They’re putting it on after nine so people can decide what to tell their kids.”

  “After the watershed! Well, that’s considerate. Will you tell your two?”

  “I think we’ll have to. Everybody at school will know. They’ll probably get bullied about it if they don’t know. Imagine that. Besides, the little beggars will probably have googled it on their mobiles by one minute past nine.”

  Maureen laughed. “There is that.” />
  “It will be like when I told them Dad had died,” Caitlin said. “Or like when Billy started asking hard questions about Santa Claus.”

  “No more Christmases,” Maureen said suddenly. “If it’s all over in October.”

  “No more birthdays for my two either,” Caitlin said.

  “November and January.”

  “Yes. It’s funny, in the lab, when the date came up, that was the first thing I thought of.”

  Maureen’s phone pinged again. “Another signal. Quite different in nature from the last, according to this.”

  “I wonder if we’ll get any of those signals decoded in time.”

  Maureen waggled her phone. “It won’t be for want of trying, me and a billion other search-for-ET-at-home enthusiasts. Would you like some tea, love?”

  “It’s all right. I’ll let you get on. I told Bill I’d get the shopping in, before I have to go back to the studios in Oxford this evening.”

  They walked towards the back door into the house, strolling, inspecting the plants and the scrappy lawn.

  June 5th

  It was about lunchtime when Caitlin arrived from the garden centre with the pieces of the pergola. Maureen helped her unload them from the back of a white van, and carry them through the gate from the drive. They were mostly just prefabricated wooden panels and beams that they could manage between the two of them, though the big iron spikes that would be driven into the ground to support the uprights were heavier. They got the pieces stacked up on the lawn.

  “I should be able to set it up myself,” Maureen said. “Joe next door said he’d lay the concrete base for me, and help me lift on the roof section. There’s some nailing to be done, and creosoting, but I can do all that.”

  “Joe, eh.” Caitlin grinned.