“Sure, I already did. They sent me an application starter kit.”
Here’s what really happened while Gilbert was away visiting his parents; Simon, representing all mankind, passed the second intelligence test by decoding the communication signal layer just as he said he did. Decoding the communication layer is actually meant to be fairly straightforward since the hard part is usually detecting the signal in the first place. The basic thought is that if a civilization has the technology to detect the signal and communicate back, then it should be invited to the party, provided it meets certain requirements. The entire process is very similar to applying for a bank loan, but instead of running a check on your credit history, it runs a check on your actual history. A big focus is on a civilization’s aggressiveness, but there are over a thousand other cultural parameters taken into consideration. It uses all this to derive what is known as the Congeniality Index. The higher the CI, the better that world will fit in.
Once Simon figured out the math, developed the code for the interface and responded with “Hello, my name is Simon,” an automated process put itself in gear and began evaluating mankind. Undetectable probes zeroed in on Earth, picking up all terrestrial communications and tapping into the internet, as well as a lot of very secret intranets. The whole of human knowledge, history and culture was being analyzed. Unbeknownst to them, the human race was being weighed and measured.
Now you would think that this would be a lengthy process, what with the probes and all, but this is an established operation and it is driven by a technology that moves at millions of times the speed of light so it was only hours later that Simon received a response.
The response read, “Hello, Simon. Thank you for contacting us. We invite you to visit us and have sent you the manufacturing instructions for a teleportation portal. As you will see, it can be constructed and powered from readily available material. We estimate it will take you approximately four weeks to complete it. The destination is preset and will send you directly to our facility. We look forward to meeting you. No further communications are necessary.”
The Earth and mankind had been deemed acceptable.
Gilbert reread the message for the umpteenth time. “Do you realize what this message means?” he asked.
“Oh sure,” said Simon. “They’re here, maybe not in person, but they’ve learned enough to communicate directly in English and with fairly good grammar. So either they got here and learned everything there is to learn super fast or they’ve been here all along waiting for someone to contact them. Either way, we’re in the hot seat.”
“What do you think we should do?” asked Gilbert. “Should we contact the government?”
“I’ve seen enough TV shows to know that in situations like these you never contact the government. They send out a super secret agency guy who takes everything you got and then makes it seem like you either disappeared or got hit by a truck or something where the body can’t be recognized. Then they keep you on ice in case they need you later. As soon as they don’t think you can give them any new information, you’re gone.”
“I never realized you watched so much TV,” said Gilbert. “Well, you did mention one important thing and that was ice, though I don’t want to be kept on it. Instead, I suggest we put some in a couple of glasses and surround it with alcohol to aid our thinking.”
“I was just waiting for you,” said Simon. “You know I hate to think alone.”
So it was just over an hour later that our boys convinced themselves to at least look at the teleport plans before making a decision to contact anyone; whether it be the government, the press or their colleagues. Gilbert didn’t want to admit it, but he’d seen those same TV shows.
Looking over the plans quickly turned into making a list of the necessary materials and in no time at all that turned into developing a detailed project plan. Before they knew what hit them, they had taken a leave of absence from their jobs and began working fulltime with Simon writing the code and Gilbert assembling the teleport station.
One night, after dinner, Gilbert brought up a topic that both of them had been avoiding, “Hey Simon, do you have any idea how any of this stuff we’re building actually teleports a person through space faster than the speed of light?”
“Nope, not one bit. Every so often I think I get a glimmer of understanding, but then I look at the next piece of the puzzle and it’s like what the heck are we doing.”
“Okay, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me. Makes you feel a bit apprehensive, doesn’t it? I mean, sooner or later one of us will have to get onto that thing and wave bye-bye while the other watches. And this thing generates enough power to fry someone all nice and toasty. Makes me just a tad nervous, getting in that thing with no idea of what makes it go.”
“Thousands of people travel on planes every day with absolutely no understanding of jet engines or the physics around lift or anything else that make them fly without any problem at all.”
“True,” said Gilbert, “but many of those people take a valium before they board.”
“My point still stands. You don’t have to know how a thing works to use it. Millions of people use microwave ovens every day with absolutely no idea how they work other than it has something to do with microwaves and they only know that because it’s in the name. If they had been named Super-Speedy ovens, most people wouldn’t even know about the microwaves.”
“I’m not arguing your point,” said Gilbert. “I’m just trying to understand how it applies to our situation. Are you suggesting that we hire someone to hypnotize us into thinking we’re getting on a plane or heating up pizza instead of attempting to teleport across the universe?”
“Of course not,” said Simon. “I’m just saying that we shouldn’t be so worried just because it’s not our design and we don’t fully understand how it works.”
“Don’t fully understand it? Look, near as I can tell, we’re going to put ourselves inside a homemade, time varying, electro-magnetic quantum accelerator and blast ourselves into oblivion. I’m a little bit more than worried.”
“I can understand that,” said Simon. “We just need to take certain precautions.”
Now teleportation is in fact a fairly safe way of traveling. It allows practically instantaneous travel all over the universe, provided you have a reservation. Here’s how it works; think of an open map with a starting point, a destination and some distance in-between. Now fold up the map so the start and finish points are on top of each other, say the magic word and presto, you’re there. Now in reality, instead of a magic word there’s a space-time generator that takes the pristine logic of our universe, pours it into a meat grinder and combines points A and B while you pass through. Easy for you and me, tough on the universe. Fortunately the universe has been around for a while and it can take the abuse.
So a few weeks later, when the teleport station was completed and a few basic tests had been run, Simon brought home a guinea pig. A note was affixed to the guinea pig’s collar, power was applied and the guinea pig vanished. A few minutes later, it reappeared.
The original note had read, “Testing the apparatus, please return the animal to us as an indication of a successful transfer.”
The return note on the guinea pig simply read, “Come on in, the water’s fine.”
“Now I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse,” Gilbert said about the return message.
“I think it’s a very calculated response, just the right amount of nonchalance to put us at ease,” said Simon.
“So you think it’s some kind of trap?”
“No, I just think that every step of this is part of a well thought out plan. On their side, I mean.”
“How’s the guinea pig?” asked Gilbert.
“Seems fine,” said Simon. “No physical or mental side effects. He doesn’t even seem to have noticed that anything out of the ordinary has happened.”
“Good for him,” said Gilbert. “I, on the other hand, could
use some reassurance.” The boys poured themselves some reassurance and continued their conversation. “Look, we’ve reached that big fork in the road, we have to decide whether we continue on our own or make a call,” Gilbert said, trying his hardest to sound like the voice of reason, but failing miserably. No scientist ever wants to turn over his work to someone else.
Simon thought about it and responded, “Let’s be honest with ourselves, not only do we have the intelligence to continue on, we’ve spent the last ten years of our lives analyzing each episode of Star Trek and Doctor Who and every other sci-fi show in preparation for just this opportunity. We can’t wimp out now. It’s fate. Or maybe destiny, I can’t keep those two straight.”
“You mean fate,” said Gilbert. “People don’t have a choice with fate. You can choose your destiny. I’m starting to think it was all just dumb luck and now we’re tangled up in it.”
“Synchronicity, man,” said Simon. “That’s what it’s all about.”
“Call it whatever you want, it doesn’t matter, we’re screwed.”
“So we’re going?”
“One of us,” said Gilbert. “The other stays put as backup.”
“Okay, who goes?” asked Simon.
“There’s only one way to decide, since we’re riding the fate train.” So after Gilbert won the coin toss, cut the high card and threw box cars, Simon agreed that he should be the one to go.
“Can’t argue with fate,” he said.
“No, you can’t,” said Gilbert, not wanting to correct Simon since it must have been destiny that gave him the foresight to carry that two-headed coin, stack the deck and palm the loaded dice.
3.
It was a short time later that Gilbert stepped onto the teleport, nodded to Simon and said, “Energize.”
Gilbert disappeared in a quick fizzle leaving Simon to wonder if he had just sent his friend on the trip of a lifetime or killed him dead. Simon thought about it a moment longer and decided either way, he sent his friend off on a trip of a lifetime.
Gilbert and Simon had speculated on the duration and comfort experienced during the teleport. Based on the elapsed time of the guinea pig’s journey, it seemed likely to expect the trip to take only a few minutes, if that. Since the guinea pig was returned with a note, they also surmised that someone or something was at the other end waiting for them. They also assumed that since the guinea pig was returned, Gilbert would be able to return. The agreement was that Gilbert would return or send a message as soon as he could.
It was with these expectations that Gilbert stepped onto the teleport. He knew that in the next minute or so he would be conversing with someone not of Earth. He just wasn’t sure if it would be St. Peter or E.T.
The trip was in fact so close to instantaneous that Gilbert barely had any sensation of movement. One second he was in the lab looking at Simon and the next he was sitting on a sofa in what looked to be a somewhat stark, but nicely kept room.
“I’ll be there in a second,” a voice said.
Gilbert evaluated his surroundings. Is this the way this room always looked or was it done up special to put him at ease? The voice spoke in a very colloquial tone without any accent, hard to believe it may have only recently learned English. Try as he might, Gilbert found it hard to imagine that voice coming from something non-human, but he was preparing himself for the worst. It was almost anticlimactic when a very normal looking man entered the room a few minutes later.
“Hello,” he said, extending his hand. “You must be Simon. My name is Jon. A pleasure to meet you.”
“Actually, I’m Gilbert,” said Gilbert as he stood and took the outstretched hand, “I’m an associate of Simon’s and the pleasure is mine, I assure you. Where are we, Jon?”
“Oh, quite far from where you were a few seconds ago,” said Jon. “A different galaxy entirely, I believe. Does that bother you?”
“No, not really,” said Gilbert. “Should it?”
“Well, some people it does and some people it doesn’t. Most get used to it.”
“Where are you from, Jon?”
“Not Earth, Gilbert, but someplace like it.”
“Are you human?”
“Close enough. I’m sure if you compared all 25,000 genes in our respective DNA strands, you may find a few differences here and there, but nothing all that significant.”
“What is this place?” asked Gilbert looking around at his surroundings.
“Ah, this is the Initial Contact Center and, as the name implies, this is where we monitor and manage the integration of newly discovered worlds, such as yours.”
“What exactly do you mean by managing the integration?”
Jon’s face went entirely blank of expression and he yelled out, “We are the Borg, resistance is futile!”
“What!”
“Ha! Just kidding, I really had you going there for a minute, didn’t I? You should have seen your face, I’ll show you the video later, believe me, you’ll laugh.” Jon motioned to the sofa and he and Gilbert sat down. “Managing the integration is kind of like the first few dates with a new girl. You chat it up a bit to get a feel for each other and then you make some decisions on how far you want to take the relationship.”
“And what happens if you decide the relationship won’t work out?”
“No need to think about that,” said Jon. “You’ve already made it to first base. The only question is if and when we go all the way.”
“And ‘going all the way’ means what?”
“Same here as it does there. Applied to our little situation, full disclosure with Earth’s governments on what’s what and who’s who in the universe. But don’t worry, I think that’s still a bit further down the road.”
“Why’s that?” asked Gilbert.
“Earth is in a volatile phase that will likely take it a couple hundred years to work through. And since there’s no need for us to make our presence known, we’ll just let it play out and loop back in a few centuries.”
“So you don’t intervene and help out newly found planets?”
“No, we don’t. I’m afraid we’re not set up for that type of involvement.”
“Excuse me?”
“You need to think of it in larger terms,” said Jon. “Oh sure, Earth would get a lot out of the exchange, but what do we get out of it? No offense, but the planets that contact us are what we consider underdeveloped and they don’t have anything to offer that we haven’t seen before. Think of it as an adaptation of Star Trek’s Prime Directive, but instead of non-interference based on respect for other civilizations, we just don’t want to put ourselves out.”
“I can’t help but think that that’s a very irresponsible position. And how do you know so much about Star Trek?”
“Think about it, one of the best ways to understand how a civilization will respond to extraterrestrial contact is to peruse their literature on the subject. I’m sorry that you think we’re an irresponsible people, but put yourself in our place, a multitude of planets with billions of people each, all needing to be babysat because we plopped ourselves down in the middle and waved ‘hi.’ That’s an immense undertaking.”
“I suppose so. Well, at least there are people such as yourself that feel strongly enough about us so-called underdeveloped civilizations to watch out for us and monitor us here at this facility.”
“Yeah, well, as to that, most of this operation is automated and doesn’t require a lot of supervision.”
“So how many people are here now?” asked Gilbert.
“Just me.”
“Wow, okay, well at least you’re here, doing your job, a job that must give you a great deal of personal satisfaction, knowing that what you do may help billions of people.”
“About that, I don’t really work here so much as it’s a court ordered community service stint I have to do to avoid some really serious prison time.”
“What?” said Gilbert, as he tried to get a grip on the situation.
“Ca
n you hang on a second?” said Jon. “I’ve got a call coming in that I really have to take.”
So while Gilbert sat on that comfortable sofa in that stark, but tastefully decorated room, trying to convince himself that this was just some type of test or joke or combination test-joke, and that he and the Earth weren’t about to get royally screwed, Jon moved out of earshot to take his call.
“Hello,” said Jon in a somewhat singsong voice.
“Hello, Jon. It’s Macnair,” said a much more serious tone.
“Macnair, wow, great to hear from you. How have you been? How’d you get this number?
“Wasn’t easy, old buddy, but you know I’ve still got a few contacts here and there.”
Now Jon tried very hard not to show it, but he was very concerned that Macnair was able to track him down. If Jon had known more about Macnair, he wouldn’t have been so surprised. You see, Macnair saying that he still has a few contacts is like the Amazon rain forest saying it still has a few trees. Macnair being able to contact him was just the first step in arranging a face to face meeting and that was something that Jon didn’t want to happen. Macnair is what could only be described as an intergalactic mob boss, one that currently finds himself in a tight spot and that’s the worst kind. He is being indicted on various charges, most of which stem from a single testimony given in exchange for an extremely reduced sentence.
“Now look, Macnair, you’re the one that took advantage of me. I didn’t want any of this to happen, but you involved me in your schemes and that was that. It surprised you that I was smart enough to get out with my butt intact? Didn’t realize exactly who you were dealing with, did you?”
“I know now, Jon boy, and I’m not going to forget. You’ve caused me some trouble, you have.”
“Look, the deed is done, all the evidence has been collected. Coming after me won’t change anything.”
“I know, but it’s the principle of the thing, you see. They knew I’d be coming after you. Why do you think they put you where they did? It’s as impossible for you to get out as it is for me to get in, but don’t worry, I’m working on it.”
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