George left his husband's side and made his way to Deanna's helm. He put his hand on her shoulder and leaned over her monitor. He wasn't undermining her authority, and he knew that she was more than capable of interpreting the information on her monitor, but as NASA's former chief scientist, George felt that he may be able to offer some additional insight. After all, George had designed Encounter. He was intimately familiar with every last inch of her.
“It's definitely moving toward us,” George confirmed.
Deanna furrowed her brow. “The Chief Scientist strikes again,” she said, her tone unabashedly sarcastic. “Thanks for the information, Professor.”
George didn't take offense to Deanna's remarks. After six months of trials and hardships, joys and victories, the entire crew had become accustomed to one another's traits. Deanna's sarcasm was routine. It was her trademark.
“Natural or intelligently designed?” Elexa asked.
“Too―” George began before Deanna placed a hand gently over the hand George was resting on her shoulder. George looked into her eyes. They were soft but authoritative.
“I can do this,” Deanna said, her tone composed but adamant.
George nodded and took a step back.
Deanna peered into the monitor. “Too early to tell. It's too far away.”
“Intelligently designed,” Emily offered. “It's a vessel of some sort.”
“And you know this...how?” Deanna asked cynically.
Emily raised her hands and shrugged her shoulders. “A hunch?”
Emily was still a mystery to her crewmates, but they were familiar enough with her to know that her hunches were akin to educated guesses. Such was the power of that unfiltered mind of hers.
“That's good enough for me,” Elexa said, peering through the cockpit window in nervous anticipation. “Does your hunch tell you whether this thing is hostile or friendly?”
Emily didn't respond. She kept her gaze focused beyond the cockpit. She couldn't see it, not with her corporeal eyes, but she could feel it, and what she felt was...strange. It wasn't hostile. That much she could surmise. She supposed it could be friendly, but that term wasn't quite accurate either. The object was familiar―intimately familiar. There was a familial feeling about it, a sense of warmth, a sense of comfort. But juxtaposed with those feelings was a sense of danger, a sense of foreboding. No matter how long she kept her consciousness stretched to the unseen object in the distance, she couldn't make sense of what she was feeling, so she pulled back.
“This isn't good,” she said ominously.
David jumped to his feet and took her hand. He studied her expression. He didn't ask the question that was on his lips. He was afraid to let it go. Her expression spoke volumes, and it frightened him. Their mission had been a success. They had been on the verge of rescuing that perfect moment, but the object heading toward them in the distance was threatening to tear it away.
Richard approached Emily and placed his hand on her shoulder. “What is it?”
She shook her head. “It doesn't make any sense.”
“What?” Richard asked. “What doesn't make any sense?”
“Love, comfort, familiarity and...danger.”
Richard looked upon his surrogate daughter with the eyes of a concerned parent. He was, and always would be, a scientist, but he was, first and foremost, a family man. His crew was his family, but family took precedence over any mission. Emily had been his daughter years before she had become aware. So much had changed since she had rejoined the Community of Light, but so much remained the same. The confusion he saw in her eyes as she gaped into the distance beyond the cockpit window was the same confusion he saw in her eyes after she had become aware.
“I see it,” Emily whispered, “but I don't believe it.”
Richard and David turned their attention to the cockpit window.
“I don't see anything, Emily,” David said apprehensively.
“Neither do I,” Richard added. “Emily, what do you see?”
“You wouldn't believe me if I told you,” she whispered. “You'll just have to see it for yourself.”
David smiled in spite of the bizarre nature of the situation. “Em, with everything we've been through together over the past six months, I'm pretty sure we're ready to believe just about anything.”
Emily turned her gaze toward David. “Trust me, honey. You won't have long to wait,” she said whimsically.
“I see it!” cried Elexa.
“Told ya so,” Emily gloated with a nervous but triumphant grin. Even with an uncertain and potentially dangerous situation heading in their direction, she was able to find it within herself to subtly tease David and force a smile.
Emily, David and Richard turned their attention to the cockpit window to see a small white dot in the distance. It appeared to be growing ever so slowly against the backdrop of Earth.
“Evasive action...Captain?” Deanna requested.
“No. Not yet anyway. Emily, a little guidance?”
“It doesn't matter what you do,” Emily said solemnly. “The danger is inherent in their existence.”
“Their existence?” Richard queried.
“In fact,” Emily continued, “stay the course. We're in danger either way, but an encounter is necessary for our survival. No pun intended.”
“It's in our path, heading right for us,” Deanna challenged. “You want us to go head on with this...thing?”
“It'll slow down,” Emily replied. “They'll be just as surprised to see us as we are to see them.”
David looked pleadingly at Emily. He lifted her hand and brought it close to his chest. “Em, seriously, I love you, but now would be a good time for you to tell us everything you know.”
“You need to see it,” she said, mesmerized by the unidentified object in the distance.
“We'll believe you,” he pleaded. “Just tell us.”
“You need to see it,” she repeated.
Recognizing the futility of pleading with Emily for information, David turned his attention back to the object. It was growing closer, beginning to take form. The white dot appeared to morph, elongating. Features became visible. It was a vessel all right, not that David had any reason to doubt Emily. It was a large vessel with a long body. It was still too far away for David to get an overall impression of the mysterious vessel, but it appeared that the front end, presumably the control center, was flat and rounded, similar to a disc or saucer. The cylindrical body of the vessel extended from the rear of the semi-saucer. Surrounding the cylindrical body were four cylindrical nacelles. And surrounding the entire vessel were two warp rings.
David gasped at the realization of what was taking shape before him. He heard confused murmuring among the crew, but the sudden shock to his senses instantly drowned them out. Emily was right; it didn't make any sense, and he needed to see it to believe it. But seeing it didn't immediately convince him that what he was seeing was real. He had to be mistaken. It was still too far away.
He peeled his eyes away from the all-too-familiar vessel to gauge the reactions of his crewmates. Their awestruck expressions told him that he wasn't hallucinating.
“Is it?” David murmured.
“Full stop,” Elexa commanded.
“Aye, Captain,” Deanna responded, her voice quivering.
Encounter slowed to a crawl before coming to a complete stop.
“Well, somebody has to say it,” Deanna suggested.
George, studying the ship as it slowly closed the distance from a half mile out, said, “It's similar, but I'm not a hundred percent certain that it's...”
“Say it,” Deanna challenged.
“I'm not ready to say it...not yet.”
“If anyone should know, George, it's you,” Richard chimed in.
“Give me a sec.”
Deanna sighed. “You're waiting for it to be spelled out for you, aren't ya?”
Indeed, George was waiting for it to be spelled out for him. He was a scienti
st, and as a scientist, he needed confirmation. To say that the approaching vessel looked familiar would be a gross understatement. He knew that ship as well as he knew his surrogate family, as well as he knew his husband. At least it appeared, to the naked eye, that he knew the approaching ship. But as Emily had pointed out moments earlier, that didn't make sense. He had designed the ship, but there was only one―the prototype, and that ship was accounted for. If his eyes weren't deceiving him―and based on the reactions of his crewmates, they weren't―it was the very ship they were standing in.
Mirroring their own actions, the approaching vessel slowed to a crawl before coming to a stop. It sat perched a quarter of a mile out, its identical darkened panoramic windows seeming to peer into their own as if challenging them to an adolescent staring contest.
“Ideas?” Elexa asked softly, her voice penetrating the silence that had engulfed the cabin since the mystery vessel had come to a stop. “Theories? Suggestions? Anything?”
George leaned over Deanna's monitor. “Can you zoom in on the cockpit?”
Deanna began tapping her touchscreen monitor to pull up the external view. The mystery ship appeared on the monitor. “If you wanna take a peek inside, you're gonna be in for a bit of a letdown, but you already know that.”
George did know that. He had designed Encounter's cockpit windows to prevent anybody, or anything, from seeing inside the cockpit.
As George requested, Deanna zoomed in, the image blurring as it closed in on the cockpit.
“I think you know what I'm looking for,” George remarked soberly.
Deanna studied the blurry image. “Mm-hmm. The name tag.”
She brought the image in closer on the ship's title just below the cockpit window. The letters blurred together, forming a dark blotchy line. It reminded David of a redacted classified government document.
“Can you clean it up?” George inquired, despite knowing full well that the name of the ship would not be legible without bringing the ship in closer.
“This is cleaned up,” Deanna responded.
George turned to Elexa.
“No,” Elexa said reflexively before George had a chance to ask the question.
“No what? I didn't ask you anything.”
"You want me to bring the ship in closer, and the answer is no. It's too risky."
“Besides,” Deanna chimed in, “we all pretty much know what it's going to say.”
“Pretty much isn't good enough,” George protested. “I need to be certain. We need to be certain.”
“We are certain," Emily said assertively. George turned to face Emily. "I was certain moments before I laid these lovely corporeal eyes on it," she continued, a sly grin curling her lips, "and now we're all certain, including you, George. You don't need it spelled out for you. You need to trust your eyes and your instincts." Her eyes moved throughout the cockpit, taking in each of her crewmates. "You needed to see it for yourselves, and now you have. That ship is us. It's Encounter. From where or when, I don't know, but I don't think I need to tell you, any of you, that its very existence alongside us presents us with quite a dilemma.” She paused, letting the weight of her words sink in. “Everything we've worked so hard for is in danger of being snatched away. That perfect moment we've fought so hard for is in peril. You all know it. You've acknowledged it.” Her eyes met George's. “Haven't you?”
George nodded solemnly.
“The next step,” Emily continued, “is to figure out what we're going to do about it.”
Chapter 2
Two Weeks Earlier
Standing beneath a blanket of stars on the plains of what was once Nigeria, David couldn't help but wonder if he had been transported back in time to the very beginnings of life on Earth. His location, and the location of his four crewmates aboard Encounter just a few yards away, seemed appropriate. After all, 20th Century anthropologists believed that the first humans originated in Africa. And here they were, on the west coast of Africa, at the beginning of a new era, helping to usher it in. They had not only witnessed the arrival of life on Earth; they were going to study it, nurture it through its infancy.
Of course, it wasn't the kind of life any of them had been expecting, but perhaps it should have been. Emily had told them that the evolutionary process on Earth must begin again. Life on Earth didn't begin as intelligent life. It began with what the crew found in the small meteor they pulled from the soil about ten meters from where David was standing: microorganisms. Not quite as exciting or nerve-wracking as welcoming a flying saucer filled with intelligent life forms from a distant planet, but exciting in its own right.
A smile crossed David's face as he gazed into the darkness and contemplated Emily's words on that fateful night six months ago when she told them they were to stay back and usher in the new process. She could have been upfront with them, but that wasn't exactly Emily's style. On the surface, her omission seemed elusive, but Emily's non-corporeal state was the result of the evolutionary process, and the evolutionary process was driven, in part, by trial and error. As Emily had explained to them, each member of Encounter's crew had chosen this path for themselves. Choosing the path for themselves meant walking the path for themselves. That path meant discovering the nature of the alien visitors for themselves. David's smile widened. It occurred to him that he could have argued that, following Emily's logic, the path should have begun without any foreknowledge of alien life forms descending upon the Earth. Emily shouldn't have told them anything. He could have argued the point, but it was too late. That ship had sailed, and there was no need to be nit-picky. When it comes to the fantastic, every answer inevitably opens the door to another question.
Emily, the love of his life, epitomized the notion that every answer inevitably leads to another question. She told them where to find the rock. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. Of course, that's usually when things start to get weird. And weird they got.
He had had that very weird dream after helping Richard and George pull the meteor from the soil and crashing in his quarters. It was a very weird dream, but it was just a dream, right? The dream, like every dream, seemed so real while he was having it. But this dream was a bit different. It was weird for an entirely different reason. This dream seemed every bit as real to him after he woke up. It had been a pretty detailed dream, and unlike most dreams, the details of this dream hadn't faded from his memory. The dream was as fresh in his head as it had been when he awoke six hours earlier. He could still see the ship through the viewport. He could still feel the tension in the cockpit. He could still feel Emily's hand in his, could actually feel the warmth of her touch.
“David.”
Richard's voice pulled David from his solitary musings. He turned toward Richard. He was standing at Encounter's port side entrance, his left hand propped on the door frame as if steadying himself. A solemn expression replaced the near-giddy expression he had been wearing since he and George had pulled the meteor from the soil and carried it to Encounter the previous day.
“You found something,” David said, knowing that whatever it was, it couldn't be good.
“We have. You're gonna want to see this.”
Chapter 3
Elexa wasn't quite as cynical as her first mate, her best friend, the love of her new life, but she had a cynical streak all her own. She had been thrown into the same ridiculous situation that Deanna and the rest of Encounter's crew had been thrown into. She was bitter for having lost her husband and her two children. She had every right to be. She was rightfully bitter, angry, resentful and cynical. As she looked down at Deanna, sitting on the bed they had begun sharing in Elexa's quarters sometime during the past six months, she concluded that she was every bit as cynical as the love of her new life. She was just a heck of a lot better at hiding it.
Elexa smiled down at Deanna.
“What are you smiling at?” It was Deanna's natural inclination. She wasn't combative, but she had a biting sense of humor that caught some people off-guard,
rubbed some people the wrong way back when there were more than a few people to rub the wrong way.
“Just trying to pull that frown from your face.”
“Can you blame me?”
“No, I can't,” Elexa conceded. “I'm every bit as concerned as you are.”
Deanna smirked. “You're just a helluva lot better at handling it.”
“Well, somebody's gotta keep it together for the both of us.”
“I guess that's why you're our fearless leader.”
“And you're my sarcastic sidekick.”
“Pssh. I'm nobody's sidekick.” Deanna allowed herself a chuckle before adding, “Just so there's no confusion, we're talking about the same thing, right?”
“If you're talking about getting advice from Emily about the missing DNA strand, then yeah, we're talking about the same thing.”
“Good. And just so we're on the same page, you think it's a crock, right?”
Elexa sighed. “Listen. I'm every bit as cynical as you are. I lost a husband and two children to this Great Migration nonsense. We were told that the love we feel from the Community of Light is the love of the people we lost, but I can't hold my husband; I can't hold my kids. To top it off, Emily tells us that it's our mission to usher in a new era and that she and the Community of Light will help us, but all they've done is left us a cosmic puzzle. So yeah, I think it's a crock.”
Deanna furrowed her brow. “Why do I feel a 'but' coming on?”
“But...what choice do we have? How many directions do we have to go in? We're five people...left to pick up the pieces of the disaster Emily and her Community choose to call 'The Great Migration.' We're the only five people left on Earth, and aside from the Community of Light and this mission they've given us, we have no idea what our purpose is; we have no idea what to do with ourselves. So until we figure it all out, maybe it's best that we just go with the flow and see where it takes us. Besides―” Elexa winced as the next words left her mouth. “―what if Emily's right?”
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