“Take a look at this,” said Teller. “It will explain everything.”
Teller sat down in front of one of the computers set up in front of the research trailer and brought up a Google image search for pioneer plaque.
“What we have here,” began Anderson, pointing at the anomaly and unable to contain himself, “is a probe, probably a Von Neumann probe.”
“Precisely,” said Teller.
“OK, back it up a little,” said Mason.
Teller pointed at the image of an engraved golden plaque on the screen before them. The image of a man and a woman, both naked, was etched in front of the rough outline of the Pioneer space probe. To one side, a series of lines with dots and dashes all converged on a single point, the location of the Sun. Above that, were two circles while below was a crude depiction of the planets in the solar system, with the path the Pioneer spacecraft had flown as it left Earth and swung by Jupiter on its way out into deep space.
Teller composed himself, wanting to speak clearly and not end up tying his tongue in knots.
“When we became capable of interplanetary space flight the first thing we did was to send out a probe, something to explore the solar system on our behalf. But that's not all we did. On both the Pioneer probes and the Voyager probes we included messages, token gestures really, but messages intended for an alien intelligence. And with those messages we included a key, something that any technologically advanced civilization would be able to decipher.”
“I don't see what this has to do with the anomaly,” said Mason, rather impatiently.
“You will,” replied Bates.
Anderson smiled, grinning from ear to ear.
“OK, look at this image. Look at what we sent out as a message to any aliens passing by,” said Teller.
Mason looked, but from the blank look on his face it was clear he didn't see anything significant.
“The key,” Teller continued, “is these two small circles at the top. To us, they're the least significant aspect of the plaque. But, in reality, they're the most important part of the whole message because they're the key to understanding all the measurements in all these other diagrams. And what key did we use?”
“Hydrogen,” said Mason, as it began to dawn on him.
“Exactly,” replied Teller. “We used the transition state of an electron in orbit around a single proton, an excited hydrogen atom. We used hydrogen as our starting point to communicate with any extraterrestrial intelligence. We used something every alien civilization would recognize because it is the most common element in the universe, because it's the most simple element in the universe, and because it represents a common point of understanding between us and them.”
“And so the anomaly,” Mason began.
“The anomaly is using the same principle to communicate with us.”
“I don't understand,” said Cathy. She'd followed the argument so far, but there was a world of difference between a golden plaque and a massive sphere distorting gravity.
“I'm a teacher, a grade school teacher,” said Teller. “At times, I come across kids that can't read when they first come to school, so I start teaching them from the most basic of books. A is for Apple, and that kind of stuff. It has to be something easy to understand, a primer. But from there the child will develop progressively as they learn more. And one day, they'll be able to read Shakespeare. In the same way, the anomaly is communicating with us using a primer, the most basic book that describes the universe around us, the periodic table of elements. It's using the ABCs of the universe to talk with us.”
“Whoa,” said Mason. “You're saying it's alive.”
“Not alive,” replied Teller. “At least, I don't think so, not in the sense we would use of organic life. But there is intelligence. It spoke to us in the simplest language it could, saying, one proton, one electron. By releasing the balloon, we responded with helium, the next element in the periodic table, so it responded with lithium, the third distinct element.”
“So it's tit-for-tat,” said Mason, trying to get his head around the concept.
“Essentially, yes,” said Teller. “What's the next element? Isn't it one of the noble gases?”
“No,” replied one of the scientists standing by them. “It's a while before we start hitting the nobles. The next element would be beryllium. If we respond to lithium with beryllium the anomaly should respond with boron.”
“Ah, yes,” said Teller, scratching his head as he tried to remember the early sequence in the periodic table.
“So you don't think this thing is alive?” asked Mason, repeating his earlier question in a different manner. “Why not?”
“Well, robotic probes are capable of going so much further than a manned space craft. They're much simpler and lighter, so they can reach further. And, really, there's not that much need for physically being present, not with advanced machinery like this, especially given the phenomenal distances and the amount of time involved in traveling from one star system to the next, not to mention the risks associated with that. So they'd avoid a lot of headaches by sending a probe, something like an advanced version of Pioneer or Voyager.”
“Makes sense to me,” added Bates. Anderson nodded in agreement.
“You're getting all this, right?” Mason asked, looking at Finch.
“Oh, yeah.”
“So that,” said Mason, pointing behind himself at the soft glowing sphere at the center of the anomaly, “that's not something to be worried about?”
“Not at all,” replied Dr Anderson. “It's just the lithium reacting with the moisture in the air, and it's small, it's contained. It's roughly the size of a basketball.”
“We've got to get more elements together,” said Dr Bates.
“I'm on it,” one of the NASA scientists said, disappearing into the trailer and jumping on the phone.
“You said it was a probe?” added Mason, turning back toward Teller.
“Yes, sir.”
“So what is it probing? What does it want?”
“I don't know,” replied Teller.
“Guess,” said Mason. It was an order, not a question.
“Well, at a guess, it's going to start off by establishing a baseline with us. It's going to keep working up the periodic table until we can no longer reply.”
“Why can't we reply?” asked Mason.
“Well, once you get into the heavy elements there are gaps. We can produce most elements in a reactor core or a particle accelerator, but some of them have such short half-lives we'd never be able to stabilize them long enough to get them to the anomaly in any kind of reasonable volume. And then there's a whole bunch of elements we've never seen. They're theoretically possible, but we haven't been able to produce them. So the probe will pretty quickly come to understand our limitations, which makes sense, from its point of view.”
“How?” asked Mason.
He was asking a lot of open-ended questions, thought Teller, but this was good. Even if it was still largely speculative, at least they were starting to make some progress, exploring the possibilities.
“Probes like this are probably sent everywhere,” added Bates, expanding on the principle of a Von Neumann probe. “Their makers would understand that they would inevitably intersect with other civilizations at various stages of their development. This could have arrived during the Iron Age, or the Bronze Age, or during the Age of Enlightenment, before we had reached a level of technical innovation where we could interact with it.”
“Yeah,” added Anderson, seeing where Bates was going with this. “So it would have to have a lot of patience. It would probably be content to stay in its initial turn-your-world-upside-down novelty stage for several millennia as it waited for the inhabitants to reach the point where they stopped worshiping it as some kind of deity and started talking with it. The anomaly is probably programmed to wait patiently until the host species can isolate hydrogen and helium as distinct elements and start an intelligent conversation.”
“And we're still quite young,” said Bates, picking up where Anderson left off. “From the point of view of an interstellar civilization, we've only just taken baby steps into orbit. We've walked on our moon, but everything else we've done within our solar system has been robotic, carried out at arm's length, at the very limits of our technology.”
“Precisely,” said Teller, excited about how all these points were coming together into a coherent concept. “So the anomaly is trying to figure out exactly how much we know. It wants to know where we are at in terms of progress. It's asking as many questions of us as we are of it.”
“And what happens then?” asked Mason. “What happens when it finds out our limitations?”
There was silence for a few seconds.
“Well, once it knows,” began Teller, thinking about it deeply. “When we get to the point where we can no longer complete elements in the periodic table, it will understand precisely how advanced we are. And it will work with us according to what it thinks we can understand.”
Mason was silent, thinking about what was being said. Anderson and Bates nodded in agreement.
“You've got to remember,” said Teller. “This really is a two-way conversation. As we learn about the anomaly, it also learns about us. This is a meeting of two civilizations separated by tens of thousands, if not millions of years of technological advancement. We just don't have any parallel. It's not like Columbus discovering the American Indians. The inequality between us is such that it would be more like Jane Goodall working with chimpanzees in the wild for the first time, only we're the chimps. I suspect it's learning more about us than we're learning about it.”
And the furrow on his brow showed that concept worried Mason.
“Fuck!” cried Mason. “How the hell did all this fall in my lap?”
He held his hands up to his face, running his fingers over his temples and up through his hair.
“All right,” he began, “this is no longer a scientific investigation. This is now a military operation.”
“What?” cried Anderson.
“You can't do this,” said Bates.
Mason was already on the radio calling for troops to secure the inner area.
“What are you doing?” demanded Anderson, yelling at Mason, the veins in his neck bulging. “This is not right.”
Teller was silent. Susan was scared. She hugged Teller's waist while he ran his hands softly through her hair, trying to reassure her.
Cathy and Finch backed slowly away, trying to be inconspicuous. They weren't trying to run, they just wanted enough distance to be able to talk.
Cathy whispered to Finch. “I thought this already was a military operation.”
“Apparently not,” replied Finch. “I don't like where this is going.”
“Be sure to make copies,” she began, not wanting to say any more and inadvertently tip their hand.
Troops began running in and around the trailer.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Bates. “This is possibly the most significant interaction in the history of mankind and you want to start us off on a war footing.”
“I'm not starting anything,” replied Mason. “But if Teller is right and that thing figures out our weaknesses and exploits them, we will be defenseless. We need to learn more about it before it figures out anything else about us.”
“There's no reason to assume hostile intent,” said Bates.
“You don't get it,” replied Anderson, fuming with anger. “Teller is right. This is not a meeting of equals. This is not some diplomatic mission between different countries or different cultures. The differences between us and them are so vast as to be incalculable. I mean, look at it. The damn thing can defy the laws of gravity. Hell, we don't even know what gravity is.”
Mason looked intently at Anderson, listening carefully to his argument.
Teller tried to make sense out of what was happening. He could see Mason wasn't ignoring the scientific concerns, but his gut instinct clearly told him they'd already gone too far. Mason was, after all, appointed to support a political position, and not scientific inquiry. Mason was throwing the brakes before the train ran off out of control.
“Oh,” Anderson continued, “Newton gave us some vague notions about the strength of gravity being the inverse square of the distance between two masses, but that's like saying two plus two equals four. Einstein took the concept further to suggest gravity is a consequence and not a force. But the reality is, if the universe behaved the way we think it should, according to our understanding of gravity, the damn thing would fly apart. Entire galaxies exist in defiance of what little we know about gravity, and this thing toys with it, the anomaly flaunts its ability to control gravity like it was child's play.”
Anderson was in full flight. Mason was going to hear him out if it was the last thing he did.
“The anomaly has such a mastery of gravity that it can simulate our own gravity within a precisely defined area. Not only that, but it completely negates and defies the normal gravitational attraction of an entire goddamn planet at the same time. That's a double-whammy. That's a level of technological innovation we cannot even dream of attaining. And you think it's a threat? If it was a threat, there's not a damn thing we could do about it. For us, it would be like an Amazonian tribe taking on an aircraft carrier with a bunch of canoes. If it wanted to attack us, to exploit us, it could do so in a heartbeat and there's nothing we could do about it. Not a goddamn thing. You're not thinking this through.”
“He's right,” said Teller, impressed with the argument and having nothing else to add.
Mason turned to a Marine captain who had come up beside him, saying, “No one goes anywhere, does anything or talks to anyone without my express permission. You will provide food and bedding and detain all personnel on-site until I have met with the National Security Council.”
He bent down next to his niece, putting on a fake smile as he said, “Looks like you get to have a sleep-over tonight with the scientists. I'll call your Mom and see if that's all right with her. OK?”
Susan wasn't too sure what to think, but she trusted her uncle so she nodded in reply. Anderson and Bates continued to protest but Mason walked away.
Without saying a word, Mason held out his hand to Finch. Finch popped open the camera and dropped a still-warm recordable HD disc into his hand.
Teller could guess what was going to happen next. Mason was taking this to the President.
Chapter 07: United Nations
The next day, the President of the United States of America sat at the front of the UN General Assembly building with the Vice President on his right and James Mason, the National Security Director on his left. Teller, Bates and Anderson sat to one side at a second table with Robert Gaul, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.
From the seating arrangement, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that science was taking a back seat to politics. Teller, Bates and Anderson swapped hand written notes with each other, reflecting on what they thought as they looked out across the sea of delegates from over two hundred member states and territories. Teller felt distinctly out of place, but he had the outermost seat, and figured the pecking order was quite appropriate in his case. If he'd had his way, he'd have watched the whole debate from back at the NASA trailer.
Initially, there had been some resistance to meeting in the General Assembly building as the top corner at the rear was missing, dragged off into a slow orbit by the anomaly. The actual segment wasn't that large, only about thirty feet or so in length and less than fifteen feet wide, but it kept the anomaly rooted firmly in the minds of the delegates.
Structurally, the building was sound, but the sight of the sun streaming in through a hole torn in the side of the assembly hall was unnerving. Once a day, when the anomaly aligned, the corner looked almost normal, but most of the time the wind swirled through the gap, defeating the air conditioning.
Several diplomatic representatives initi
ally refused to attend the assembly, notably the Chinese and the Germans, but after a flurry of late night phone calls from the State Department, everyone was in attendance.
Dr Yani-Villiers, the Secretary-General for the United Nations addressed the audience.
“The events of the past few days are unprecedented in human history. For the first time, we have verifiable evidence that we are not alone in this vast universe. That the creation we call our own is shared with other sentient, intelligent beings.”
“The appearance of the anomaly has confirmed our greatest hopes while unmasking some of our deepest fears. Our world will never be the same again. We have awakened, as if from a deep slumber, one in which we only ever focused on ourselves, to find ourselves as part of a greater universal calling, one in which intelligence reaches out to find companions. There are many questions, few answers. Today, we have not arrived at a destination, we are undertaking the first steps of an epic journey. And it must be one of peace and understanding.”
Teller was genuinely surprised by the depth of the Secretary-General's comments. They captured his hopes, his dreams. But he wasn't naive to the reality of international politics and knew there would be competing agendas muddying the waters.
The Secretary-General rounded out his comments and introduced the President of the United States.
“My friends,” the President began. “We are living through the most profound of historic events. The significance of contact with an alien intelligence is singularly unique and without parallel in human history. It represents a profound turning point for Homo sapiens as a species. We are no longer the only known sentient species. There is much we can learn, much we want to learn, but through all of this, we stand to learn the most about ourselves.”
It was a good point, thought Teller, and one he hoped was not lost on the audience.
“Already, the interest in the anomaly is overwhelming. We are working to provide scientists around the world with a raw, unfiltered, transparent access to the results of our scientific investigation.”
And that was as far as the President got through what was supposed to be a carefully crafted, twenty minute speech. The floor of the General Assembly erupted in protest with delegates from all quarters crying out to be heard. The Secretary-General called for order. As the unrest abated, the Secretary-General addressed the US President.
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