Edge of Revelation

by David John West

  “Lieutenant-General Daniel Tucci is here, sir,” the aide announced in a clear tenor.

  The last time someone announced me like that I was teeing up at Hilton Head in the Air Force charitable golf invitational, Dan thought as he entered the Oval Office, even yellower than normal as the golden morning light burst in from the tall windows out to the Truman Terrace, lighting the President from behind. The President’s face was shadowed to nut brown but the early backlight gave him a diffuse halo of glowing golden hair. Dan was grateful he always carried a blue suit and AIA necktie as he had to wear what he had carried on his UK trip. They were similarly dressed, the President also in his customary blue suit, white shirt and solid red tie.

  The President stood to welcome Dan. “Good morning, General,” he said, dispensing with the qualified ranking, thereby raising Dan a couple of stars, conversationally at least. “Come in, come in.” Dan was conscious that the President was a big man in real life and his regard was clear and shrewd. How much of that was nature and how much training was moot; this President was very familiar with business, real and show. Whatever his reputation, Dan would not be underestimating this man. When it came to the disparity in their physical size, Dan was accustomed to working with bigger men in the military, junior and senior, and he would not be overawed.

  “Good morning, Mr President,” Dan replied, shaking the proffered hand. The greeting is genial enough, Dan noted.

  “Come and sit over here,” said the President moving to one of the two upright armchairs beyond the couches in the middle of the long office. The chairs were set at forty-five degrees looking towards the desk and the tall windows at the windowed end of the Oval Office: the view famous in all the media shots of Oval Office meetings. Dan took the other armchair. It was quite upright but comfortably upholstered in a fine grey-and-yellow stripe with polished mahogany arms. “Thank you for coming so quickly,” the President continued. He had only issued the executive order the prior evening and he was aware that Dan Tucci had been in Europe at the time.

  “My pleasure, Mr President. I have to say it’s not the kind of thing that happens every day, but you have to be ready for anything in my line of work.”

  “Quite so, Dan. Call I call you Dan?” the President added before carrying on without a reply.

  He can call me anything he likes I guess, mused Dan to himself.

  “Dan, Dan, you won’t know this but I have been following your work closely since I took office. I don’t tell people but one of the best things I looked forward to on getting this job was opening the files on the Area 51 story and seeing for myself what really happened there. You know all about that?”

  “Yes of course, Mr President, that’s my job.”

  “Indeed. So it’s a little hobby of mine because, you know, if there is any truth in all this alien stuff than that’s just about the biggest deal there is.” The President looked sidelong at Dan through narrowed eyes. Dan sat silent; no question had been asked. Sit and wait for the next question.

  “So I pull together intel from a bunch of sources and get the analysis analysed some more. Correlated with news feeds, cross agency reports. Analysis paralysis till the summary makes sense at my level. I know Harold Z Martens at Evrisoft. We used to work together. He is an old friend. He offered some of their best brains and database technology to help out, putting it all together. It’s amazing what they can do with computers these days. The upshot is I get this little report that just tells me if something is coming together that I need to know about.” The President waved the few pages of large-print A4 he had carried with him from his desk.“For the first time since I have been collecting it this analysis says there is a big chance that something is going on right now, Dan. Take you, for instance. Your reports are always frequent and interesting. Just recently your reports slowed up and got real dry, uninformative. Then there was all that business over in the UK, big UFO news, big as anything that’s ever happened over here. Then I hear you are over there out of the blue, no trace of your flight plans, tickets, border controls and I ask myself, How can this be? So I thought it time we met in person and you can tell me what the hell is going on.”

  Dan was thinking hard. He was very aware of the penetrating analysis the US Intelligence agencies could put together but this much perception this fast was a surprise. Using Evrisoft facilities on top of the military could explain all that. They were the biggest software company in the world and who knew what their skunk works could do with relational analysis?

  “You are right, Mr President. A lot is happening right now as we speak. I just haven’t had time yet to get it all down in report form. In fact I am still not sure whether I believe all the events so far, let alone understand the whole picture.”

  “The thing I am most interested in, as an enthusiast if you like, the very first thing I want to know, Dan, is have you got first-hand evidence that aliens are here? Have you actually met any?”

  Dan thought carefully. “That is a very good question.”

  “Don’t bullshit a bullshitter now, Dan,” interjected the President quickly, not appreciating that response to his question.

  Dan had to laugh, the natural reaction looking reassuringly authentic. “No, sir, I didn’t mean it in that way. It is a good question because that’s the main thing I am struggling with amongst all the crazy stuff that’s going on. I can’t say I have met an alien, but I sure have travelled on what looked like an alien spaceship. That’s how I got from San Antonio to Cambridge, England at such speed and without any tracking. They flew me there.”

  “Well if they flew you there then you must have met them, seen them at the very least?”

  “Yes and no, Mr President. I travelled with them. Talked with them like I am talking with you now. They operated a craft so advanced it’s beyond any technology we have outside Hollywood movies. But they were human beings, born here on planet Earth, specifically in England and Italy to be exact. But they are not human beings like you and me; they are born here but they say their spirits are from another planet. They are Star People like in the old native Indian American legends.”

  “Kind of superheroes, then?”

  “I didn’t see any superpowers, they are flesh and blood as far as I could see, but with their technology I really would not want to pick a fight with them. They seem friendlily disposed towards us and I reckon that’s a very good thing.”

  “There is one big problem for me in all this,” the President said. “In my job I have to look after the people of the USA. You say this is going on in the UK, which is the next best place I suppose, but these aliens should be working with us. I can’t be comfortable as long as this is going on outside our borders, not under our control.”

  “If it is what it seems to be I think it is outside anybody’s control,” Dan replied, maybe a trifle too quickly. “What I mean is that the drama of our first contact with alien beings is real close and they know how to do it, say they do it all the time. There are very many races, human races out in space, and they are about to welcome us to join them. We have to manage that process the best way we can. If all goes well it could be the best thing in human history. Scientific advancement, journeys to the stars, all we ever imagined. If it goes badly wrong though and these aliens turn hostile our analysis says things can get difficult for the survival of the people already here on Earth. At least early signs are that these Star People are civilised and not our enemies. Though they say they are not alone in coming here and their enemies are also at work here on Earth.”

  “Well you are going to sit right there and tell me in detail what happened the last few days and we can decide what to do about it. But one thing has always been true. We managed to get the benefits right here in the US of A of alien technologies that we knew about for the whole of the last century. We need to make sure that happens again. If there is going to be a bonanza of new technologies through these Star People’s arrival then
it’s got to be coming to us. We can’t let foreign powers get an advantage over us technically and that’s what concerns me right now.”

  Dan had a sinking feeling that this President would not be able to get past purely nationalistic issues in the face of an overwhelming planetary-level event but he went on to describe the revelations of his last few days in great detail nonetheless. The President listened carefully, fascinated. This was the biggest opportunity of his life. He prided himself on making the most of opportunities presented to him throughout the chequered career that had led to the steps of the White House itself. He was President of the United States after all. His rivals at home or abroad could not be allowed to steal technology riches that naturally belonged to him and his country.

  NINETEEN

  The planning for the most momentous meeting in human history on planet Earth took place on a rainy Tuesday afternoon in the Cambridge University rooms of an ailing Professor of Cosmology and two undergraduates at a routinely scheduled teaching supervision. Professor Kitteridge had dreamed of this moment his entire life and was relieved beyond measure that he had survived long enough to be a part of it. Now he hungered further to live long enough to see the event take its course as he had been led to expect.

  “So are we all set to send out the message?” Professor Kitteridge asked almost reverently of the two undergraduates sitting opposite him across the coffee table with its antique china cups brimming with English breakfast tea.

  Charlotte was excited about the momentous occasion but for different reasons. Unlike the Professor and Christopher, who still believed in their joint mission mostly as an act of faith in her and the other Gayans they had met, Charlotte was perfectly at ease with the notion of travelling across the galaxy that teemed with human life. She had worked with the peoples of planet Earth down the many generations over thousands of years to reach this very moment. Her race, Gaya of Dawn, routinely worked quietly with new cultures on emerging planets but the moment of accession of a new race was sufficiently rare as to be celebrated beyond the imagining of the naive new arrivals. “I do believe so,” Charlotte answered the Professor’s question, keen to reassure her two earthly colleagues. Christopher was sitting quietly, mind racing with too many questions now that the moment was upon them. “I believe Christopher has the preparations all in order. The critical experiment is to send out the Voyagervi message to star areas of interest. The message will be sent in a directed way by short burst laser to see if there is a civilisation in those areas capable of receiving and responding. This takes the original Voyager mission launch message and puts it into code on a laser pulse which is much faster but retains the precise targeting capability of the original mission.”

  Christopher was goaded into adding in more detail. “We are using the same content as the original Voyager information coded into the most powerful laser beam invented with a peak power of 2,000 trillion watts. Each message only takes a tiny fraction of a second but we can encode the whole Voyager message and a homing location to our email addresses. We will send such messages to all the interesting star clusters in the night sky over the course of the next two weeks then wait for replies.

  “The real target of course is the Pleiades star cluster where we expect our friends from Gaya to pick up the message once it starts towards them, because they are expecting it and can intercept it in our own solar system.” Christopher looked meaningfully at Charlotte who simply smiled and nodded. “We will send the same message to everywhere else we can think of but we don’t expect a return from them because they hopefully won’t be looking for it locally.”

  “So that is critical when it comes to the Hyades, which is next door to the Pleiades, as that’s where your enemies live on planet Spargan,” Professor Kitteridge said seeking confirmation.

  “Yes we need to send the message to the Hyades as cover to make it appear that we are sending it to all the interesting stars rather than just Gaya, which would be hard to explain if – sorry when – a reply is received,” Christopher said. “Even if the high-energy laser travels faster than light through the vacuum of space than it’s still 150 light years to the Hyades so if they are not aware of it we can expect them to reply some hundred and fifty years or more later than the Gayans.”

  Professor Kitteridge noted the surreal similarity between this meeting and a normal teaching supervision. How many times had he held similar conversations that were pure conjecture on the likelihood of contact with alien intelligence, yet here he was discussing actual contact with one of his students and this young woman who claimed to be an alien soul albeit residing in an earthly body. Was he even now the subject of some extraordinary fraud? Even if he was then the worst that he could see was that these laser messages would fire off into space and no reply would be forthcoming, a similar result to every other search for extraterrestrial intelligence in the history of science. But what if this one time it actually did work? “And Charlotte, you say that the message for Gaya will be picked up adjacent to our own solar system and then replied to?”

  “That’s right, Professor. If it takes eight light minutes to reach us from the Sun then our monitors in dark matter will have it within thirty minutes, well before Spargar should hear the actual message.”

  “Then the real fun begins,” mused Professor Kitteridge, his eyes peering upwards, lost in the meniscus of his heavy glasses lenses, thinking more to himself, “assuming what you say is to be believed. Forgive me for that thought Charlotte but, well, ahem, it’s still hard for me to believe that Peter Pan and Wendy are for real and sitting with me in my little room here today. But I guess it’s more like Wendy Pan and Peter in the case of you and Christopher,” he corrected his own thinking. “Since you have the magical powers and Christopher is the normal boy. Then when the reply comes I must be ready to publish the news and handle the publicity. Now that will be a real tester!”

  *

  Shortly afterwards Daniel called in on Professor Kitteridge with his other worldly medications. Daniel was shocked to see the Professor’s appearance. He was sporting a livid bruise across his forehead and another one on the back of his right hand that disappeared ominously in a red black stain under the cuffs of his checked shirt.

  “Are you all right, Professor? What happened?”

  Professor Kitteridge smiled sheepishly, “I thought I would not take my medicine and see how I felt,” he said. “Then I tried to move and fell against the chest of drawers.”

  “You are supposed to take the medicine daily, Professor. If you leave it longer then it’s gone and won’t be working.”

  “That’s the whole point. I was trying to see where I was without your medicine. Now I know. I am like a babe only much more fragile as you can see. The truth here is that you are keeping me alive – maybe using me for your own purposes – useful until we make first contact?”

  “Hmm, I wouldn’t put it like that, Professor. Yes, we need you as the figurehead for our arrival. Yes, we sought you out as the perfect contact for our mission, but the truth is you were seeking us out as well. That’s why we chose you. You have spent your whole life building a cosmology department capable of hosting an alien visit. Then beyond that you built computer systems analysing all around you to see if you were attracting alien interest. I think we found each other in actual fact.”

  “There is truth in what you say,” Professor Kitteridge agreed ruefully. “Just that I feel old and frail, fully aware that I am only still here because you are keeping me going.”

  “That remains your choice, Professor. It is true we need you to manage the actual meeting with your people when the Gayans formally arrive. It’s also true that we would typically pass through a failing body as a matter of course well before reaching the stage you are at now. That’s not the culture here, though, where humans have no real idea of the process of passing to a new life in a managed way, so there’s no incentive to do it. There can hardly ever have been a better re
ason to hold on to life as your reason right now!”

  “I am taking all that on trust, Daniel. I can do your job – no, our job – over the next few months but then I want the cosmic experience you have promised. I need to believe that I can travel the universe after I pass through the vale. My whole life as a scientist I closed my mind to any thought of an afterlife. Like Epicurus I believed that when people died the breath that gave them life was exhaled and their life disappeared into the air. Now I dare to believe there is new life and purpose beyond death, and that hope is terrifying in itself, because it might still not be true if you are deceiving an old man.”

  “I can promise you that your soul will be managed like our own when you choose to pass through. Like others that have been our primary contacts before you, you will join with us after your life here is done. You will take some well-earned rest and see sights you could not even imagine before you choose your next life. It will all be up to your own informed choice. And I think you will see the proof of this as part of our arrival while you are still alive to give you absolute confidence in your future.”

  “Thank you, Daniel. I have no other choice but to trust you, though of course that is what I want to hear. Now let’s concentrate on our day job!”

  TWENTY

  First contact messages from new human races across the galaxy are a cause for great joy in Gayan culture. Tentative, low technology messages were sent out by new cultures when they achieved some kind of broadcasting capability into space, wondering whether alien life would pick up the message and respond, answering the greatest mystery of all – are we alone in the universe? Occasionally these messages were sent inadvertently by a society not understanding their broadcasts could be swept up by Gayan and other advanced races harvesting any such sign of budding races from new planets. In theory messages that were accidentally received should not be responded to with first contact, but in practice an inadvertent message technically advanced enough to be recognised meant that a new human race had reached a level of maturity requiring assistance by one of the great empires that spanned the galaxy. In Spargar culture such messages were the insignificant bleats of planets ready for annexation to be brought under the control of the Conclave of the Omeyns and their great computing network, the Mind, which managed the Empire for the Omeyns. Gaya treated such messages entirely differently; they saw them as requests for partnership born out of hope, the planetary equivalent of a newborn infant opening its eyes to the light and crying out for attention.