by Mark Wandrey
“Jake,” she said with a slight shake in her voice.
“Weren’t expecting me to call?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted, “not at all.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” she said.
“But not enough to stay?”
“No,” she said with a sigh. “Jake, I explained it all in the note.”
“A note, after all our time together?” Mindy tried to control her emotions. “You could have done what you wanted to do here, you know?”
“No, I couldn’t.” There was an almost inaudible curse on the other side. “Is that all you wanted, Jake?”
“No,” he said, “I’ve transferred half our savings into your account.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I did.” There was a pause again. “You had a call, at our…I mean my number. Someone named Skinner.” Surprise washed away Mindy’s mixed emotions.
“Leo Skinner? Doctor Leo Skinner of NASA?”
“Yeah, that’s him. He said he needed to talk to you right away.”
“Thanks for calling,” she said. “I know it probably wasn’t easy.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. She hit the hang-up button before he could say something she didn’t want to hear.
“That your fiancé?” Mindy turned and saw her friend Harold standing behind her. Her work station was just down the hall from his. Only weeks ago, they’d chatted over skype; now she was working with him again. It all felt so strangely familiar.
“He’s not my fiancé anymore,” she said coldly. “I’m sorry, Harold, I need to make a call then get some sleep.”
“Sure,” he said and smiled before heading back to his area. Mindy grabbed the little old-fashioned address book she kept in her shoulder bag and quickly found the number she was looking for. It was late in Florida—three hours later than in Seattle—but she dialed it anyway.
“Dr. Skinner’s office,” a woman answered, much to Mindy’s surprise.
“I need to talk to Dr. Skinner please,” she said.
“I’m sorry, he’s unavailable.”
“He left a message for me. This is Mindy Patoy.”
“Oh, yes, Ms. Patoy, he’s been hoping you would call. One moment please, and I’ll put you through.”
Mindy had known Dr. Leo Skinner since he’d overseen the radio astronomy department at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and she’d been an undergrad student there. Later, he’d been her PhD coach and a handy contact at NASA since.
“Mindy, is that you?” The voice was unchanged after more than 10 years. It was smooth northeastern, with just a hint of Boston. He always sounded happy.
“Yes, Leo, it’s me. I hear you wanted to talk?”
“I called your house in Portland. Your fiancé said he’d give you the message.”
“He’s not my fiancé anymore,” she said for the second time in as many minutes.
“Oh,” Leo said and coughed to cover the awkwardness. “Well, I was wondering if you still practice that hobby of yours?”
“It’s been years Leo, what do you mean?”
He chuckled. “What did you call it? Variable Perspective Astronomy?”
Now it was Mindy’s turn to laugh. “Yes, that’s what I called it.” She’d even written a paper on it when she worked for him about changing the way a star field would appear from an alien planet. She’d gotten the idea from watching Star Trek and complaining to her fellow students. One had asked, in exasperation, what the sky would look like, and she’d proceeded to find out.
“Not in years, Leo. I haven’t done much of anything in the field until recently.”
“I know about your little incident,” Leo said. Mindy suppressed a surge of anger at his calling the destruction of her career an incident. “But do you think you could do it, for real?”
“I’m pretty sure I can, but why? I doubt there’s much call for it.”
“Let me have an email address so I can send you a file,” he said. Mindy gave him one. “It will be encrypted. The code is the first day you worked with me. We’ll talk later.” He hung up.
“Well,” she said, “that was weird.” But she checked her email. It took several minutes for the file to arrive, as it was over three gigabytes in size. Just as he’d said, he’d encrypted the file. She entered the code, 04012010. The code was the date of an April Fool’s Day joke in which his class conspired to prank him. The code unlocked the file, and she saw the beginning of a movie.
“Hello,” a somewhat older Dr. Leo Skinner said, “if you are watching this, you are about to see highly classified material. Continuing to watch this presentation serves as acceptance of the U.S. Government Confidentiality Agreement. If you do not agree with this policy, you have five seconds to click the red icon.” An icon, accompanied by a countdown, appeared that said “DO NOT AGREE.”
She watched as it counted down and disappeared. “You have accepted and are now bound by a non-disclosure agreement with the United States Government. Violating this agreement can result in a fine…” and he went on to describe the dire consequences of not following the law.
“Thank you,” Leo said and continued. “On March 16th, as many as 10 devices were delivered to major cities around the world. The devices are alien in origin and appear to be portals to a planet outside our solar system.”
Twenty minutes later, Mindy sat back, her eyes wide, a stunned expression on her face. Inside the email was a simple message from Leo.
“We want you to help us figure out where this world is. Will you do it?” Mindy rubbed her face, all signs of fatigue gone, her heart racing. Could it be a highway to the stars? Was this really happening? Leo Skinner was probably the most grounded man she’d ever met in her life. He’d been angry with her when she left to work for SETI. He’d asked her why she wanted to waste a potentially successful career chasing ‘little green men.’ It was ironic that, now, he was asking her for help in figuring out where the green guys were from.
Mindy typed a one-word response to his email. “Absolutely.”
A minute later he responded, obviously having waited for her to watch the video and reply. “You will be getting a package tomorrow. I need an address.”
She typed it in and sent the reply. Nothing more followed. She shut down her computer and got up to leave. She needed a drink.
* * * * *
Chapter Six
April 21
Mindy had just arrived at the SETI office and was waiting for the Keurig to brew her tea when one of the younger assistants came trotting down the hall. He skidded to a stop when he spotted her.
“Miss Patoy?” he asked.
“Mindy is fine,” she said and nodded.
“Someone is out front to see you.”
“Thanks,” she said. The assistant ran off to tackle some other task. She wondered if she had ever been that young. Her tea finished brewing, so she added a little sugar and a splash of half-n-half, then took the mug and went to the front of the office.
It was a shabby building not far from the old Pike Place Market that probably should have been demolished years ago, but it was all SETI could afford. The old warehouse had been refitted as offices years before, and they were cheap. They’d set up shop with the trickle of funding they got from public sources, mostly internet money donated by old starry-eyed dreamers.
The only new-looking paint in the faded front office was under the now gone logo of the failed tech startup that last occupied the place. A hand-carved SETI sign hung on the wall, donated by a fan. As Mindy entered the unmanned reception area, she saw the stranger right away. She was tall and muscular, wearing a cheap but crisp suit. She had her hair carefully pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore sunglasses.
“Ms. Mindy Patoy?” the woman asked. Everything about her screamed cop to Mindy.
“That’s me. Can I help you?”
“I have instructions to deliver this,” she said and put a metallic briefcase on the glass counter.
Mindy eyed the case with curiosity.
“I’m sorry,” she said before the woman could leave, “but we get some weirdos. Can I see some identification?” The woman looked at her through the sunglasses, her expression unreadable. For a long second, Mindy thought she was going to ignore her. “I don’t want to have to call the police.” The other woman’s left eyebrow appeared above the sunglasses.
She reached into her suit jacket and pulled out a leather folio. She expertly flipped it open and held it, so Mindy could read the badge and ID card. “Special Agent Amanda Skeller, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Seattle Bureau Office.”
“Happy now?” Special Agent Skeller asked.
“Thank you,” Mindy said and took the case. The FBI agent turned and left without another word. Mindy shrugged and returned to her cubicle. The case wasn’t locked. Inside was a very expensive laptop, complete with its own strangely-complicated-looking wireless hotspot and instructions on how to create an encrypted connection. It took a special code to activate the computer, though, and she didn’t have it.
Following a hunch, she accessed her personal email again, and, sure enough, there was a message from Leo.
“You should have your package this morning. I hope it doesn’t cause too much confusion. Just remember, you can only have half the pie to yourself.”
“Clever,” Mindy mumbled. Going back to the super secure computer which was still displaying the password screen, she typed “1.5707,” or half of π.
“Accepted,” the computer informed her, and it began to boot up. There were very few programs on the computer, but she immediately noted a secure telelink program and activated it. “This program will only function with paired secure-chat headphones plugged in,” the computer informed her. Mindy dug through the case and found an unusual headphone with a tiny, almost invisible boom microphone. She fitted it over one ear and plugged it in. “Establishing link,” the program informed her.
She did a quick “First time user” setup. Once completed, the computer automatically began connecting. A second later, a window popped up and Leo Skinner’s smiling face appeared.
“Hello, Mindy, it’s been a long time!”
“Hi, Leo, yes it has. I like the beard.” He grinned and rubbed the mostly-white whiskers. “It suits you.”
“Thanks. You figured out the computer, I see.”
“Easy enough. So, now what?”
“I’m going to start sending you image files, so you can try to do that little job for us. I can only send them through this computer. I can’t emphasize how tight security is on this project.”
“I understand,” she said. Then she took a breath before saying what she’d been thinking since yesterday. “I don’t mind helping, Leo, but all this high-tech government stuff…there has to be some incentive?”
“I wondered if you’d get to that. How does $5,000 a day sound to you?” Mindy tried not to blanch, and hoped her eyes hadn’t bugged out. Then she thought for a second, and rolled the dice.
“Not as nice as $10,000 a day.”
“Damn, girl,” Leo laughed, then shrugged. “You got it. Give me an account number, and I’ll send you the first week’s pay.” A minute later files began coming through, and Leo signed off. She used her smartphone to check her bank account. There were two new transactions. One was for just under $20,000, her share of their savings Jake promised. The other, time-stamped two minutes ago for $50,000, had a U.S. Government tag.
“Holy shit,” she said and swallowed. The files sat unopened as she considered. One, just how far up did this go? And two, should she have asked for $20,000 a day? Then she remembered something else. Using her personal computer, she logged onto a website and made a purchase. SETI became the new owner of a somewhat old but still serviceable supercomputer!
Whistling, Mindy opened the first of the image files and examined it on the laptop’s extremely-high-definition screen. It was a high angle shot, taken as if you were leaning against a window and looking up as high as you could. Hundreds of stars were visible in patterns she’d never seen before.
“An alien world,” she said in wonder, still whispering, as she’d done while using the FBI computer. She felt a profound sense of dislocation and wondered if SETI was suddenly completely redundant. She saved the data on the laptop and put it back in the case, which apparently had an integrated battery pack and cordless charger. She’d work on Leo’s project on her personal time. For now, it was back to the job she’d come there to do. She needed to pick up where she’d left off on that signal from so many years ago.
* * *
It was less than ten minutes into the videoconference, and Mark Volant was already wishing he was having his teeth cleaned instead. The director would normally have sat through this level of meeting. However, he was busy today, and Volant had drawn the short straw.
Volant and Dr. George Osgood were the only two present for the meeting in the electronically-secure command trailer. Attendees from all over the country participated in the meeting via a pair of huge LCD monitors, split into dozens of images. The screen on the right held scientists, the most prominent among them Dr. Leo Skinner from NASA. On the left were government functionaries and cabinet level staff. The basic briefing had just finished when Mr. Ted Ochsenhirt, assistant to the president, spoke up.
“The president is absolutely furious that he was not briefed about this asteroid until a few hours ago.”
“Well,” Dr. Skinner spoke up, “the president has to understand that asteroids don’t just change course suddenly.”
“Yet this one did,” Ochsenhirt replied with a sneer.
“Yes, it appears this one did.”
“So why didn’t we see it coming after it changed course?” Ochsenhirt persisted.
“Because we weren’t watching it,” Osgood spoke up.
“Excuse me?” Ochsenhirt grumbled. “That seems like a lame excuse.”
“You have to understand the science,” Osgood said. “The sky is simply too big for us to watch every Earth-crosser, all the time.”
“Earth-crosser?” asked another government specialist, “What’s that?” Skinner looked at Osgood, and the two shared an unspoken sigh of hopelessness. Skinner explained.
“An Earth-crosser is an object that, during its orbit around the sun, crosses Earth’s orbit. This can happen every year in the case of some asteroids, or every few decades like Halley’s Comet. There are thousands of them we know about, and probably hundreds of thousands we don’t.”
“And how is this possible?” Ochsenhirt asked. “There are telescopes and satellites and stuff all over the world. That Hubble cost millions!”
“And stuff,” Osgood agreed. “As I said, space is big. Really…big. I think we better just leave it at that.”
“Fine,” Ochsenhirt agreed. “So, this rock is coming at us?”
“We have a high degree of certainty,” a scientist on the series of NASA screens said.
“Can’t you scientists ever be certain of something?” a four-star air force general asked.
“That’s not how science works,” Osgood said. Leo nodded.
“What about global warming?” Volant asked, and Osgood shot him a baleful look. Ochsenhirt continued, undeterred.
“What happens if it hits us?”
“It could be an extinction level event,” Leo said. “Do you concur, Dr. Osgood?”
“It’s a serious possibility,” Osgood agreed.
“I don’t follow you,” someone said.
“What do you mean?” Ochsenhirt asked.
“All life on the planet could be destroyed,” Leo said simply. “Not even bacteria would survive.” There was a long silence.
“You mean like that movie Armageddon?” someone asked.
“Yeah,” Leo said, shaking his head, “only we can’t send up two shuttles and drill on it because you idiots in DC killed our manned program funds.” He didn’t bother adding that the movie was stupid on more levels than it made sense.
; “How could a rock, even one this big, kill everything on a planet as big as Earth?”
“It’s a matter of inertial energy,” Leo explained. He saw the blank look on the bureaucrat’s face and decided more was better. “Drop a bowling ball from a second-story window onto your car, it dents the roof. Drop it from a twenty-story building?”
“It crashes through the roof onto the seat?” Ochsenhirt said.
“Probably,” Leo agreed with a little smile. “Now drop it from space, where there’s no atmosphere to keep the speed down. What happens then? This rock is coming around the sun, dropping from the outer system, picking up speed all the way. By the time it gets here it’ll be traveling more than a hundred kilometers a second, and maybe a lot more. That bowling ball hits the car it doesn’t slow down, it continues through the concrete underneath, a half mile into the ground.”
“And that’s just a bowling ball,” Osgood added. “Our LM-245 is twelve miles of rock, or worse.”
“What’s worse than rock?” someone asked.
“Nickel iron?” Leo said with a shrug. “Heavy metals? Who knows, we’ve never had the budget to explore one of these rocks. The fact is, even if it’s rock, it hits with the energy of ten thousand hydrogen bombs. Nickel iron…”
“Worse,” Ochsenhirt said. The scientists all nodded. “God have mercy.”
“Even God can’t save us if that thing hits,” Leo said.
“Prayer never hurts,” Ochsenhirt said seriously. Volant took one look at the situation and decided it was time to move onward before the conversation devolved completely.
“I think we can leave the spiritual implications of a world-killing asteroid for another day,” he said. Leo rolled his eyes but didn’t interrupt. “I’d like Mr. Ochsenhirt to direct his attention to the reports on this portal.” He waited while everyone did so. “The scientists I’ve been supervising are all in agreement it is a transportation device to another planet. We consider the timing of its arrival to be highly suspect.”
“Certainly,” Ochsenhirt agreed. “I see people have gone through, but have they returned?”