A gust of wind swirled around them. Cathy tugged at his arm, gesturing toward the dictionary as the pages turned in the wind. Teller looked down, another word had a large asterisk next to it, the word Now.
Adverb: At the present time or moment
Teller's heart leaped in his throat.
“Do you trust this thing?” he asked.
Cathy didn't hesitate. “Yes.”
“I don't know if I do, but we have no choice,” he replied soberly.
Grabbing hold of the lounge, Teller struggled to his feet. The gash on his leg ached. The searing pain caused him to grimace, slowing his motion. The bullet wound caused his shoulder to throb. Cathy helped him stand.
“What are we going to do?” she asked.
“Something really stupid,” replied Teller, making his way around the side of the lounge, keeping his eyes on Phelps. “But I think I finally know why this thing is empty.”
“Why?” asked Cathy, taking his arm over her shoulder and helping him as he limped.
“Because it's waiting to be filled by us.”
One of the terrorists saw them standing and called out. Phelps turned.
“Run,” cried Teller, as he pushed his body forward, half limping toward the anomaly, pumping his legs as hard as he could. The swirling mass rose up before them, bulging out and towering hundreds of feet over them. Teller could hear Phelps yelling. Gunshots rang out, but it didn't matter. In just a few feet they'd run into the soft blue of an alien world. But the pressure inside was thousands of times greater than that at sea-level on Earth. Either way, they were dead. For Teller, the risk was worth it. The anomaly was trying to communicate something to them, something about trust. He only hoped this is what it meant.
___
The wall of compressed air that reverberated out from the terrorist detonation took everyone by surprise. Cameras recording the event showed a visible blast wave spreading out from the point of the explosion, crushing everything in its path. The research trailer crumpled like an empty coke can, as it was tossed aside and crushed against the UN General Assembly building. Although the chemical reaction unleashed in that nanosecond caused the rapid expansion of a variety of gases, most notably nitrogen and carbon dioxide, the flash at the heart of the blast appeared as a burst of flame, one that seemed to rival the intensity of the sun. In less than a second, the pressure wave spread out over two thousand feet, thumping barriers and cars, knocking them backwards. Windows shattered on the surrounding buildings. Pebbles and specks of gravel shot out like shrapnel, raking the cars and building facades, radiating out from the blast. Fragments of the lounge suite were launched hundreds of feet in the air.
In addition to the terrorists and the hostages, the blast killed several soldiers and a police officer caught in the open. The blast barriers proved woefully inadequate, collapsing and crashing into those they sought to protect. The thump of the explosion threw everyone back. Several cars were overturned and left lying on their side.
The noise was deafening, leaving the survivors stunned.
The trees lining 1st Avenue flexed, being thrown forward by the ferocity of the outbound pressure wave. The partial vacuum that formed in that instant collapsed as the pressure dissipated outward, and the trees were flung back in toward the heart of the blast with the inrush of equalizing pressure. A dark mushroom cloud rose into the air, folding in on itself as it billowed into the darkening sky.
From the video footage it was clear the anomaly was gone. Whereas the alien structure had once towered over the area as a smooth, curving sphere set in contrast to the sharp, hard angles of the surrounding buildings, now the street was empty. In its place a thick haze of smoke and dust hung in the air.
Finch was one of the first to rush headlong, foolishly into the street. He ran madly forward from the police line, while most others were still recovering from the blast. Finch staggered like a drunken man fighting to stay upright, his arms flaying out beside him as he fought to keep his balance. Blood ran from his ears and nose. For once, he didn't have a camera on his shoulder. With heavy steps, he dragged himself forward, weaving as he pushed through the smoke. His lone figure cut a stark silhouette against the muddy, gray haze. He fell a couple of times but got back to his feet and pushed on toward the spot where the anomaly once stood, the spot where Teller and Cathy had been before the blast. Around the area, voices called out in pain, crying out for help. The medical and police teams that had been held in reserve on East 48th street began moving through the outer cordon, creeping forward slowly as they tended to the wounded.
Finch fell to his knees and sat there, his head bowed toward the ground. His shoulders slouched. His arms lay limp by his side. For someone who had spent a lifetime behind the camera lens, this was the first time he'd become the subject. Those network cameras that survived the blast zoomed in on him, catching his stoic figure from various angles. The blur of helicopter spotlights cutting through the smoke gave an eerie, almost dreamlike quality to the images, making the loss surreal.
A medic came running up to him, looking to tend to his wounds. A few minutes later, the distinct silhouette of Director James Mason appeared beside him, standing tall, his shoulders back, his hand resting on Finch's shoulder. Finch was crying, that much was clear, even from the grainy video.
“I ...”
“I know,” said Mason, holding out his hand and helping him to his feet. For all his bravado, it was obvious Finch was devastated by the loss of Teller and Cathy, particularly Cathy, given their love/hate professional relationship. Finch had a reputation for not caring, for being bullish and brash, but he was shaking in the aftermath of the blast.
“She was a good kid,” he said, looking Mason in the eye. For his part, Mason was tight-lipped.
“You saw how she tried to get Anderson to safety,” Finch continued. “She was like that, always thinking about others. Not like me. She had some real class. She deserved better than this.”
Mason swallowed a lump in his throat.
“And Teller,” Finch continued, struggling with his words. “Neither of them deserved this.”
“No one did,” replied Mason.
Finch sobbed.
It was over.
Mankind's first interaction with an intelligent celestial being had come to an abrupt and violent end. Finch was distraught. What had shown such promise, what had held such potential, had been destroyed. The hopes and dreams of those who dared had been dashed. Even those that raged against the appearance of the alien intelligence were left hollow and empty, without an object for their anger. It seemed everyone had lost, but no one more so than Finch.
Chapter 19: Life
Teller had his eyes closed tight. He grimaced, expecting to be crushed within the anomaly, but somehow he had survived. He could feel rough concrete beneath the fingers of his right hand. His left arm was still draped over Cathy's shoulder. They were lying on the road.
“What happened?” Cathy asked.
Teller could feel the warmth of the sunlight on his face. He opened his eyes and saw the concrete stretching away into the distance, with buildings lining the road. He was confused.
Cathy got to her feet, looking dazed. She stood there, turning slowly, looking around them.
“Where are we?”
At first, Teller thought it was Cathy that had spoken, but these were his words. He felt as though he was trapped in a dream. He had no idea what was real and what wasn't.
Teller got to his knees and slowly stood up.
They were standing on the edge of the intersection. To one side stood the traffic lights that had once turned upside down. The sections of buildings that had been torn loose by the anomaly were back in place, the glass in the windows was intact.
He turned. Flags fluttered in the breeze in front of the United Nations building. There was no disconnect, no gaps or cracks. The intersection looked as it had a week before. There were no NASA trailers set to one side under the shade of the trees, no police line set u
p in the distance, no portable generators, no makeshift tents, no barricades.
“Where is everyone?” Cathy asked. “Was all this just a dream?”
Teller walked away from her, not for any reason other than to convince himself this was real, that he was standing in the middle of an abandoned New York intersection next to the United Nations.
A coke can lay in the gutter next to a fast food wrapper. Teller remembered marveling at how the crushed, empty can had defied gravity, staying inert as the concrete slab had rotated through the air over the course of a day. Back then, it had been hard to believe the coke can wasn’t stuck in place with glue. Without thinking too much about it, he kicked the can. There was something about connecting with reality, the feel of his shoe making contact with the can and the noisy flight of the can as it ricocheted off the gutter and skidded along the road. To his surprise, the can curled upwards in flight before peeling to one side and sliding back toward him.
“Hah,” he cried.
Cathy seemed to sense it too. She jogged over to join him as he walked over and picked up the can.
“Do that again,” Cathy said.
“Spoken like a true scientist,” he replied.
Teller walked toward the invisible boundary surrounding them, marking what had once been the circumference of the concrete slab within the anomaly. Although the view before him suggested there was nothing in his way, he understood this was an illusion, that they were on the inside of the anomaly looking out, but what they were seeing was a construct of the intersection as it had been on the day the anomaly arrived. He turned slightly, throwing the can at an angle so it skidded around the inside of the gigantic sphere that exposed the presence of the anomaly. The can rolled awkwardly along the invisible surface before falling back to the concrete some thirty feet away.
“Teller,” Cathy cried with alarm, and Teller's eyes widened, his mind racing at the thought he'd missed some critical point. “Look at your arm!”
She was right. He'd been wounded in one shoulder, had a bullet tear open the other bicep and had another bullet graze his thigh. Moments before, he'd struggled to walk and couldn't have picked up the coke can let alone thrown it, but there was no sign of his injuries.
Teller was speechless. He stood there as Cathy rubbed her hands gently over his shoulder. Blood still marred the torn material, staining his shirt. Her fingers played with the bullet hole, touching softly at his skin beneath.
“How does that work?”
“I ... I don't know.”
With those three words, Teller felt liberated. He'd tried so hard to understand. He'd tried so hard to resolve all he was seeing with the anomaly and make sense of the interaction, but he'd finally conceded that this interaction was alien to him, unfamiliar and full of unknowns. It felt good to let his mental guard down with Cathy. It was OK not to know. It was healthy to realize he didn't have all the answers.
“Do you think this is real?” she asked. “I mean, this is New York. If this was real, there would be cars driving around, people bustling by on the sidewalks. It's like we're on a movie set or something, waiting for the director to shout, Action.”
“Action!” Teller called out.
Cathy smiled, shaking her head.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do,” he replied. “And I think you're right. This isn't real.”
“So, it's a dream then?” she asked.
“Not a dream, at least I don't think so. I mean, honestly, I have no idea, but my arms feel normal. Somehow, this thing, this anomaly has healed them. I think that's real. But what we're seeing ... I don't know. Maybe it's something familiar, something to put us at ease, to help us relax.”
“OK, Mr Alien Dude,” Cathy called out, looking up at the sky. “If you're listening, I have one word for you: Tahiti. If you want people to relax, put them on a beach in Tahiti.”
Teller laughed.
“I'm not sure it works quite like that,” he said.
“So how does it work?” Cathy asked.
“I don't know, but maybe you're right. Maybe we need to ask something intelligent of the anomaly.”
“Like what?”
“Like, show us where you came from?”
Teller wasn't sure if he blinked or not, but suddenly there were stars bursting through a pitch black night.
They were standing on the edge of a canyon, looking at a galaxy stretching across the sky. Instead of the few thousand stars visible from Earth there were millions of stars caught in a spiral, seemingly frozen in place as they swirled around a glowing, bulbous galactic core. They were orbiting the core incredibly slowly over the course of hundreds of millions of years. Jets of superheated gas streamed out of the poles of the warm, yellowish galactic core, curving overhead, reaching lengths several times the width of the galaxy.
“They're from a satellite galaxy,” Teller said, explaining what he was seeing to Cathy. “We have these too. Miniature galaxies like the Magellanic Cloud orbiting the Milky Way, although miniature is a relative term. They're miniature in terms of their size compared to the Milky Way and yet they still hold hundreds of thousands to millions of stars. Sometimes they're the remnants of ancient collisions between galaxies, caught in the oscillating process of passing back and forth through the main galaxy. Other times, they're in orbit around the galaxy in much the same way as a planet orbits a star. In this case, I'd say the creators of the anomaly originated from a host planet that orbits a star in an orbiting satellite galaxy.”
“It's beautiful,” Cathy said. “I don't know if you'd ever tire of seeing that in the night sky.”
She was holding his hand. Standing there beside her, Teller wasn't sure if she was holding his hand or if he was holding hers. He had no idea when they'd first touched or who had initiated such a personal act, but it was wonderfully human. In that moment, Teller saw the contrast between them, noting how they complemented each other. The galaxy was a beautiful sight, but he couldn't have said that, it took Cathy to say it before he could see the galaxy in that light. Teller squeezed her hand, affirming her sentiments.
“Yes, it is.” he replied, reveling in the simplicity of those few words.
Cathy sighed.
The landscape before them was barren. There was no grass, no trees, no signs of life as they knew it, but Teller was aware that on Earth even the most barren of dry, frozen desert landscapes harbored an abundance of microbial life despite appearances.
“We're not actually here, right?” Cathy asked, crouching down and watching as sand ran between her fingers.
“No. What we're seeing is hundreds of millions of light years from Earth. I think this is another projection, a kind of virtual reality that appeals to all of our senses, not just sight.”
Teller turned over a rock with his foot, half expecting some alien insect to scurry from beneath. In the soft light, the underside of the rock looked the same as the surface. From what little he could tell, there wasn't even any moisture clinging to the rock.
Various black silhouettes marked rocks and boulders scattered across the terrain. A broad, gentle rise stretched out to one side, reminding Teller of the eroded meteor craters on Mars.
The canyon before them looked impossibly deep, something akin to the Grand Canyon on Earth. Dark shadows hid the valley floor, but the meandering nature of the canyon walls left Teller wondering if this too was the result of water erosion over tens of millions of years.
As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, the heavens above seemed to brighten, leaving Teller in awe of the spiral galaxy above. It was no wonder the creators of the anomaly had been a star-faring species, having watched that sky for countless generations, they must have been as inspired as the ocean-going explorers on Earth were to explore new territories.
The stars were surprisingly crisp, and as there were no clouds in the sky, Teller got the impression this must have been a cold, dry and possibly high-altitude desert on their planet, ideal for astronomical observations and not unl
ike the Atacama desert in Chile. He wondered about the rest of the planet. There had to be lowlands and oceans. He wondered about the chemical composition of the atmosphere, the strength of gravity, and where macro-life abounded. Far from the planets of science fiction, where only one environment pervaded an entire planet, like the fictional ice planet Hoth or the desert planet Tatooine, he wondered about the diversity of ecologies found here. Were there jungles? River deltas teeming with life? Rolling plains? Dense forest canopies? Rugged mountain ranges? Ice-laden polar regions?
A soft glow emanated from behind them. Cathy noticed it first, turning away from the spectacular view before them. Teller followed her motion, reluctantly pulling himself away from the grandeur of this far flung galaxy shining down on such a mysterious world.
“It seems our host has arrived,” Cathy said.
Teller was well aware they were still within the spherical structure of the anomaly, and yet the concrete slab within the intersection had covered a huge area, giving them plenty of room to move around within their artificial view of this alien world.
A pinprick of light appeared about thirty feet above the uneven terrain, roughly where they'd first seen the lithium glowing within the anomaly in what seemed like another lifetime. Teller and Cathy walked over and stood beneath this tiny star.
“Nervous?” she asked.
“In a good way.”
They stood close to the brilliant light. Teller found he couldn't stare straight at the miniature star. It wasn't blinding like the sun, but it had the intensity of a stage spotlight, making it uncomfortable to look at. When the light vanished, it took his eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness and recognize that something was standing there facing them.
Cathy tightened her grip on his hand, whispering, “Nervous yet?”
“A little,” Teller replied, lying. His heart was thumping in his chest. At a rational level, he knew this creature meant no harm, that through some sophisticated feat of nanotechnology it had repaired the tissue damage from his gunshot wounds, but emotionally, this was a monster lurking in the dark. He was trying to come to grips with the grotesque alien before him, looking to distinguish limbs from trunk, or a head rising slightly above the torso, when the creature shrank and a familiar view appeared of a man.
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