Steve smiled. “At least you haven’t lost your sense of humor, babe,” he remarked, placing his arm gently around her neck and pulling her body in toward his.
Sheri’s mobile phone rang, she picked it up and a small golf-ball-sized hologram of an African-American man appeared on the phone.
“Ms. Johnson, terribly sorry to disturb you, but this is Dan Devon from Obama Elementary. Not to alarm you, but I just thought you should know something.”
“Yes,” she said, her heart stopping in her chest.
“Your ex-husband tried to make contact with Chloe today.”
She felt her body turn to ice.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“What happened?” Sheri asked.
“He tried to get through the security system at the school. Fortunately, he was caught by guards and he’s been taken to the local sheriff’s office. I’m guessing that his wristband computer malfunctioned, as it didn’t alert the police.”
“It didn’t malfunction, he sabotaged it,” she spat out, noticing that the phone was shaking in her hand, “but thank you so much for letting me know. What are they planning to do with him?”
“The sergeant I spoke with is planning to reprogram his wristband.”
Sheri let out a deep sigh. She looked at Steve and shook her head. “I guess I’d better get to the police station and make sure they upgrade the software on it. I don’t want this happening again any time soon. It could buy me another month or two until he figures it out. Hopefully we’ll have been to court by then.”
“Okay, I guess we’ll see you at about five to collect Chloe?”
She hesitated for a moment. “No, she needs me. I think I’ll come for her now.”
Sheri hung up and the hologram instantly evaporated.
“I’ve got to go,” she told Steve while gathering up her things. “Sorry to dump you in this at such a crucial time, but Chloe comes first.”
“I understand, do what you have to do, and I’ll see you tonight?”
She kissed Steve on the cheek. “Okay, don’t work too hard, let the military guys do some of the donkey work! God knows they’re getting paid to do it.”
Sheri left the room, leaving behind a kaleidoscope of swirling colors and bizarre pitches and tones. There was a lot to digest, but all she wanted to do right now was to hold her child. She was more than happy to let Steve run the show.
* * * *
September 13, 0230
Steve Winslow was exhausted. This was his sixteenth straight hour of being glued to his computer console. At this time of the night, all the day staff had long left the facility and it was just him and a few uniforms manning the center, with the exception of a couple of marines who stood guard at the exits. The air in the room was cool, a slight hum emanating from the air-conditioning. He rubbed his tired eyes and tried to refocus. He was undoubtedly sleep-deprived and longed for a warm bed, but how could he contemplate sleeping when there was so much work to be done. Earlier, after collecting Chloe, Sheri had rung him and insisted that he go home, but he just couldn’t seem to drag his eyes away from the monitors. Someday, if he moved in with her, he would need to be more considerate.
He could sense that the information on his console was trying to tell him something, and that perhaps the randomness of it all had a pattern buried somewhere deep within the arbitrary noise. There was a lot of information to begin deciphering, but where to start?
One of the uniforms approached him. He was a short, skinny man who appeared to be drowning inside his ill-fitting uniform.
“Still here, boss? Shouldn’t you be at home with that gorgeous missus of yours?”
“Yes, Sergeant, I should, but I just can’t seem to pull myself away from this screen.”
Steve stared at the holographic monitor and a thousand random numbers of different fonts flashed across it.
“Well, boss, I’m off to get a coffee. It’s my scheduled break. It’s going to be a long night. I’ve still got another five hours left of my shift. Care for one?”
“No thanks, Sergeant, you enjoy.”
The man disappeared around the corner, leaving Steve alone in the room, apart from the door guards and a few other uniformed grunts who were busy enjoying a good laugh about something obscene in a virtual magazine roughly thirty feet away.
Steve stared at the flickering numbers appearing and disappearing in a random arrangement on the computer screen. The numbers displayed were decoded events by the Stromlo computer that had screened them out by size. In simple terms, the large-fonted numbers on the screen supposedly represented highly energized information, such as nuclear reactions and the enormous energy released by the Big Bang, while smaller numbers represented gravity, magnetism and quieter forms of energy, although there was no way to be certain of this. After all, they were sailing in completely uncharted territory. The screen buzzed with mostly large-fonted numbers, while every now and again a smaller-fonted number would randomly flash within the chaos. Steve wondered if these smaller digits were telling him something about gravity in the early universe, perhaps even the formation of the laws of physics. It was far too early to even guess at that, but he still wondered about it.
As he scrolled across the screen, he decided to start by filtering out the large-fonted digits. There were too many of them and instinctually they didn’t seem quite as interesting as the smaller ones.
“Computer, eliminate all digits with fonts over fourteen.”
“Compliance,” spoke the computer in an elegant female British accent.
Steve wondered why the computers all spoke the Queen’s English, seeing as most of the world’s computers were based in the Americas. Ever since Microsoft collapsed in 2025 and Apple took over as the dominant system, all the computers suddenly began to speak with a British accent.
Steve’s screen suddenly became a lot less cluttered. All the large-fonted digits had disappeared, and he was left with a screen crowded only with smaller-fonted digits. Nevertheless it was still too busy.
“Computer, eliminate all digits with fonts over three.”
“Compliance.”
The screen was now a lot more manageable. There was almost some space visible between the figures, but still there was no pattern emerging. As he concentrated on the smaller fonts he detected something unusual. Even though the very small-fonted numbers were hidden beneath a sea of larger-fonted ones, he could not help but notice a stream of tiny-fonted numbers rolling about in the background, appearing briefly every few moments, like a buoy bobbing up and down above a wave in a turbulent ocean. He barked into the computer as he felt his heart begin to speed up, realizing that he was on to something.
“Computer, eliminate all digits with fonts above one.”
“That, Steve, will make the digits too small for the human eye to discern from each other,” remarked the computer.
“Just do it and then magnify the fonted numbers less than one by a factor of ten.”
“Compliance.”
“Now remove all the digits with a font below 0.7.”
“Compliance.”
The screen went dark, and then the tiny digits in the background expanded to fill the void. There weren’t as many of them, perhaps a few thousand randomly flickering on and off.
Steve stared at them for a few seconds before asking the computer to perform yet another task.
“Remove all the digits with a font above 0.8.”
“Compliance.”
The screen was now much tidier and it was easier to visualize the digits randomly flicking on and off. Steve stopped, removed his glasses and focused his eyes intently on the screen. He stared for a few seconds before he felt the blood draining away from his face, his heart almost exploding in his chest. He broke out in a sweat and then picked up the phone hastily, his hand trembling.
“Sheri Johnson,” he barked out.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Sheri was dreaming again and her father was sitting in his usual chair outside on the patio. He was re
ading a novel and smiling at her as she swam in the crystal shimmering blue water of the family pool. He was wearing a yellow baseball cap and puffing away on his pipe while watching her as she completed her swim and clambered out of the pool. It was a fabulous summer’s day, the sky a brilliantly clear blue.
“Come on over here, petal, you look cold.”
She casually shuffled over to him. She was twelve. As she got closer, he stood up and held the bath towel up for her. She was just a few feet away from him, when the air got colder and thicker, and the sky darkened. She looked up and saw the heavens above her glowing with greens and purples, and wondered why she was witnessing the aurora borealis. It was a magnificent sight to behold, and yet it unnerved her terribly. Turning around, facing away from him, she felt the warm, soft material being draped around her shoulders. She spun around to face him.
“Thanks, Daddy, the water is very cool today.”
“I know,” he answered calmly, removing his baseball cap to reveal a large deep hole in the temple of his skull.
She screamed and forcibly stirred herself to consciousness. As she opened her eyes she saw her phone flashing and a hologram of Steve appearing above it. Relieved to be awake from the nightmare, but slightly annoyed at being rung by Steve in the middle of the night, she answered.
“Steve, do you know what time it is?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, babe, I know it’s late, but—”
“Are you still at work?” she interrupted, sounding almost angry.
“Yes, but—”
“Hang on just a sec.” She sat up and switched on the light then dimmed the phone’s speaker, concerned that it might wake up Chloe.
“Okay you can talk now, what is it?”
“I found something, and you’re not going to believe it. I have to show you, it’s not something I can explain to you over the phone.”
“Are you kidding me? It’s after three am, Steve.”
“Babe, you really have got to see this.” His voice was filled with excitement, and Steve rarely got excited. She paused and glanced again at the clock. “Okay, I’ll be there in twenty.”
* * * *
Twenty-three minutes later Sheri was sitting next to Steve at his console. She caught a glimpse of her face reflected off the glass desk and almost didn’t recognize herself. With dark rings under her eyes, and without makeup and her usual impeccable attire, she looked like a stranger.
“What’s this all about, Steve?” she asked. “It had better be good! I had to get the neighbors to mind Chloe. I said it was an emergency, and their dog nearly bit my hand off.”
“You won’t be disappointed, I promise.” He reached for her hand, squeezing it tightly. “Okay, well you know how Stromlo has sorted all the energy quanta into different-sized fonts?”
She rolled her eyes at him. “Yeah, I know. Remember I did some of the programming.”
“Yeah of course, sorry, I’ll get to the point. I’ve filtered out all fonts, that is, all energies above 0.8 and all energies or fonts below 0.7. This leaves us with energies or fonts comparable with the magnitude of energies we use today on a day-to-day basis, like electricity.”
“Yes and you found a truckload of them. So what? We know that lesser forms of energy were probably around at the time of the Big Bang.” There was a hint of irritation in her voice as she felt a wave of nausea wash over her. Since she was a toddler, she’d always been ratty when she was tired. She needed her seven hours of sleep to function.
“It’s not the fact that they’re there,” Steve said. “Take a look for yourself.”
Steve asked the computer to do what he had done earlier and the screen once again went dark, and then the smaller-fonted digits were magnified once more so that they were visible to the naked eye.
Sheri’s eyes widened, and then her jaw dropped.
“Is that for … um … real?” she asked, feeling her throat going dry.
“I checked it over and over again. It’s not a contaminant, it’s not from here. I even checked with Drew at Stromlo to confirm, and he has the same numbers over in Oz.”
“What do the numbers encode for again?” she asked.
“One is terahertz, two is gigahertz, three is megahertz, four is kilohertz, five is hertz, et cetera.”
“That’s what I thought.” Sheri’s eyes were glued to the holographic console. She knew, like anyone with a basic knowledge of physics, that humans usually transmit radio frequencies in the megahertz range. She stared at the console. Every number of that particular font read three.
CHAPTER NINE
“It’s incredible, can we filter that out and see what the spread is like for those frequencies?” asked Sheri.
“I’m one step ahead of you. I’ve graphed all the frequencies coming through in the megahertz range. Take a look.”
The computer screen changed from a sea of number threes blinking intermittently to a graph which had a spread of numbers on the x axis, but showed a distinct spike at the 1530 megahertz frequency.
Steve pointed to it. “There it is, just as Carl Sagan predicted fifty years ago, a single frequency spike against the background noise of space, right smack bang in the middle of the waterhole.”
Sheri’s face paled. She ran her tongue slowly across her thick upper lip before she feverishly began punching numbers into the holographic console. “What do you mean by the waterhole? Sorry, I’m not familiar with that term.”
Steve’s eyes were sparkling. “The waterhole is the band of radio frequencies between 1420 megahertz and 1640 megahertz. It’s also the band between the hydrogen line and the strongest hydroxyl spectral line, notable because it’s a quiet region between two important frequencies.” He stopped briefly to study Sheri’s response. She nodded her head slightly as if she were digesting the information. “It was theorized that this would be a good band to communicate with extra-terrestrial intelligences. SETI was looking there for years.”
Steve paused, allowing Sheri to absorb it all. Even without makeup and her chestnut-colored hair tied back in a ponytail behind her, she was still the most beautiful woman he’d known. Her green eyes, with just a hint of blue around the edges, were the window to an intelligence and kindness that he had never known before. She seemed to be mesmerized by the dancing frequency spike in front of her, but glanced up at him wondering why he’d stopped. “And?” she asked.
“The term was actually coined by Bernard Oliver last century. He noted that the combination of hydrogen and hydroxyl yields water—the ‘water’ part of the name; the ‘hole’ part refers to the sudden drop in radio noise within this band. The term has also been used as a pun as it was theorized that extra-terrestrial species would use this band as a commonly recognized communication channel, a watering hole being a common place to meet and talk.” He paused again, this time staring her directly in the eye. “So, honey, it looks as if ET has finally called home.” Steve could barely contain his excitement, the adrenaline soaring through his bony body.
Sheri was typing away, her attention focused on her monitor. “Not yet he ain’t, Mr. Sagan. I’m running through the checklist to make sure it’s not coming from us.”
“It can’t be from us, it’s coming from thirteen billion light years away,” he cried.
“But that doesn’t make any sense. How can there be an intelligent civilization using radio waves right at the beginning of time itself?” She shook her head and wiped the sleep from her eyes. “It’s simply not possible, Steve.”
“I don’t care if it’s not possible. It’s there!”
CHAPTER TEN
Denny Smith cursed and then reached for the phone, while Jess Kelly rolled over, seemingly trying to ignore the noise.
“Whoever this is, this better be good,” he growled at the deep male voice on the other end.
“Sorry, sir, this is Major Graham Kennedy calling from the Pentagon, sir. I have some important news that I thought you’d want to know about immediately.”
“Hang on a se
cond, let me activate the secure line.”
Denny sat up and plugged what looked like a small flashlight into the phone. A green light began to flicker on the handset. “Okay, what is it, Major?”
“Sir, you know the EMB project that NASA launched yesterday?”
“Yes of course I do, you idiot. I’m in charge of the military aspect of the operation. Unfortunately I missed the debrief last night from NASA. I had urgent business here in DC.” Urgent business to Denny consisted of meeting Jess for dinner and then screwing her silly.
“Well, sir, our personnel on site have just picked something up from within the compound, something of considerable interest.”
“I’m listening, Major.” He despised people who didn’t get to the point.
“It seems that one of the civilian scientists, a Doctor Steve Winslow, has deciphered something. A signal of some kind.”
“What do you mean ‘of some kind’? I’m not in the mood for riddles at seven o clock in the morning. Get to the damn point, Major!”
“A signal from … well, a signal from another world, sir.”
“Are you yanking my chain, Major?”
“No, sir, I think you should come and check it out for yourself.”
He glanced over at Jess, who was snoring like a ship’s foghorn. He wasn’t sure he wanted her hearing about this new development. “You’d better have your facts straight. I’ll be there ASAP. Charter me a plane from DC to LAX, and then I want you to seal off the facility completely. No one’s to enter or leave, effective immediately.”
“What about the civilian scientists, sir?”
“Are you stupid or just a mere imbecile, Kennedy? No one means no one!”
The Waterhole Page 3