The Fermi Paradox

by Mark Harrison

  John looked around the room. The NASA guys looked hopeless, like they’d run out of options, like they didn’t want to believe what they were thinking.

  Chris turned to Rosa Ali, a petite woman with thick rimmed glasses, who was holding a tablet in her hands. She nodded. Chris sat down and gave the floor to Rosa. John took another sip of his coffee. It was almost empty. He would need more soon.

  “To get to the point, Dr. Slate, we need you to look over our math.” Rosa looked down at her tablet and opened up a map of the solar system. Her tablet’s screen was shared on a large screen at the front of the room.

  Rosa zoomed out, revealing the Oort cloud. As she did so, the planets of the solar system disappeared. All that remained was a tiny dot in the center. That was the sun. It was a blip on the map at this scale. Whatever the objects were in the Oort cloud, they were very far away.

  “This is where the objects were when we discovered them on the Einstein Deep Space Telescope.” Rosa hit a button.

  A tiny red blob appeared at the edge of the Oort cloud’s bubble.

  “This is a visual representation of the objects,” Rosa said. “You’ll notice that the objects are about 5000 AUs away.”

  “Yeah,” said John. “So what? Doesn’t that make them about two-hundred years away? Whatever they are, they won’t be here anytime soon.”

  Rosa turned and looked at Chris.

  “That’s the problem,” Rosa said. “They’re not moving like comets. This is where the objects were as of last night. Before we decided to call you.”

  She hit another button on her tablet. The Oort Cloud and red blob disappeared. The map of the solar system appeared again. This time with the Kuiper Belt surrounding it. The Kuiper Belt was like the Oort Cloud but much smaller and much closer to the sun. Like the Oort Cloud, it was comprised of small, icy bodies.

  “The objects are now about thirty AUs away. This is what we don’t understand,” she said. “We’ve crunched the numbers. We’ve run them over and over again. Those objects, those things, whatever they are, they just travelled 5000 AUs in 2 days.”

  “Jesus,” John said.

  “I see we’ve now got your attention,” Chris said. “Listen, John. We want you to go over this with our analyst team. You’re more qualified than anyone we’ve got. We want to see if you can spot something we can’t. We must be missing something. While you do that, we’re going to head back to our control center and see if we can find out why most of the Earth’s satellites just malfunctioned. I’d go with you, John, but I know you probably wouldn’t want that either.”

  Chris was right about that. John looked at the red blob representing the objects. They were nestled just outside the Kuiper Belt now. Nothing could travel that fast. Nothing natural.

  8 Sandra Connor

  Sept 23, 2051, The Smokey Mountains, North Carolina

  “It’s okay, Bobby. Everything is going to be okay.”

  Sandra cradled Bobby in her arms. It was still dark, but it was almost morning. She could see the faint glimmer of sun on the horizon. It would be up in an hour or so.

  She shuddered in the cold, unable to believe her little girl had been out alone in the forest for an entire night. How had she let this happen?

  She looked down at her phone, checking to see if she could connect with the national park drones. It still wasn’t connecting. Damnit. She hadn’t had contact since last night. She looked down at Bobby. He was shivering.

  Come on, Sandra. Think!

  They had been walking all night through the woods. Claire was no where to be found. Nothing. Not a shoe. Not a marking. Hadn’t she taught her daughter anything about survival? When you get lost, leaving a trail was survival tip 101. Although, maybe she didn’t have time to think. Maybe something chased her. Sandra didn’t want to think about that.

  During the night, Bobby and Sandra had witnessed an incredible light show. She couldn’t remember the last time she saw a meteor shower like it. It looked like hundreds of stars were falling from the sky. Part of her thought it was beautiful. Another part of her thought it was terrifying. As they walked through the woods, Sandra turned away from the falling stars. She didn’t want to think about them. She just wanted to find her daughter.

  “Mom, is Claire going to be alright?” Bobby asked.

  This was a lot for the young boy to go through. Perhaps her parents were right. Maybe she shouldn’t have taken her two children hunting. If only Keith had been there. He’d have known what to do. Sandra bit her lip. She couldn’t think of Keith now. She had to be strong for Bobby. She couldn’t let her son see her cry.

  “Claire’s going to be fine,” Sandra said, rubbing Bobby’s head. “We’re going to find her today. I know it.”

  The two of them got up and gathered their things. They had stopped their search for only a few hours. Bobby needed a rest and Sandra had to make a call to the park ranger office. She needed help. What the park ranger said to her on the phone made her even more desperate with worry.

  “We won’t be able to find her today,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The drones aren’t working. Our entire fleet is down. We’ve got no eyes in the sky.”

  “What?” When Sandra heard that the entire National Park drone fleet was down, she started to panic. What the hell was happening? “How?” she asked.

  “We don’t know. We’ve heard it has something to do with a worldwide satellite issue. Without the GPS connection, we can’t fly those things until they work it out.”

  “Shit.”

  “We’re basically stuck using our land-based towers to communicate. Anything that requires any type of global positioning won’t work.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Keep looking for her,” said the park ranger. “I know it’s not the answer you want to hear. But it’s basically all I’ve got. We’ve got some ground crews out there. Maybe one or two. I’ll send word to them to keep their eyes open. I’ll let you know if they spot anything.”

  After the call, Sandra pulled out the paper map of the national park she stored in her backpack. Her kids thought she was crazy when she bought it from a park convenience store. Paper maps were more like novelty items these days. They certainly weren’t bought for practical reasons. Sandra disagreed.

  She bought it because she worried about everything. Keith had taught her to always be prepared. You never knew when shit was going to hit the fan, he’d say. Technology is a friend until it isn’t. If it has circuits and wires, it can break. He was an astronaut with NASA, yet he was always prepared for a technological breakdown. He carried paper maps with him everywhere he went. When Sandra started dating him, she thought he was crazy. Now she understood what he was talking about.

  She unraveled the map. She had been tracking their location on it with a red marker. She had scoured it for logical locations someone who was lost would go if something went wrong. There was a small creek that ran through the plain. Sandra knew Claire had made it to the plain. If Claire was smart, she’d stick to the creek. That was basically all they had. Bobby and Sandra followed the creek and had been crisscrossing it, hoping to find some trace of Claire. Something that would let them know they were on the right path. So far they’d found nothing. Sandra was starting to think maybe they should turn around. She would go to the Park office and get a formal report started. They’d organize a manhunt, but it wouldn’t be fast. They were miles from the nearest town and she knew the Park itself only had a small staff, augmented by dozens of drones.

  There was one more thing she wanted to check before heading back. To the north-west of the creek, there were some old cabins. It seemed unlikely, but maybe Claire had made her way up there. Sandra couldn’t leave any stone unturned.

  “Come on, Bobby.”

  The young boy turned and looked at his mom. He had a tired look in his puffy eyes.

  As they made their way to the cabins, Sandra thought of her husband, and what he’d think of her losing their dau
ghter in a menacing forest.

  Early morning light cascaded through the tops of the trees and a thick humidity was starting to settle in. It was going to be hot. Bobby turned to his mother. “Does anyone live in these things anymore?”

  “Nobody lives here, Bobby,” Sandra said. “These buildings are used by hunters during the winter. A place where they can keep warm and stay safe.”

  “But nobody hunts anything anymore? Isn’t that what you said.”

  “Not many people hunt anymore,” Sandra said to her son. “But some do. We do. Isn’t that right?”

  There were six wooden cabins. They all looked worn down. The wood at the base of each one was black and rotten. Four had busted in roofs and all had at least one broken window. Nobody had been there in a very long time. They approached the cabins with tired but determined steps. “Claire!” Sandra shouted. “Claire, are you here?”

  Bobby followed suit, mimicking every plea his mother made. He was doing his best to keep up and to help.

  They heard a snap.

  Sandra turned around to see what it was. Bobby tumbled over, turning around too quickly. His mother bent down to help him up. When she looked back to where she thought the snap had come from, she saw nothing. As she helped Bobby up, he flung out his arm and shouted, “There!”

  Turning around, she saw what Bobby was pointing at. On the opposite side of one of the dilapidated cabins was a pink and white running shoe. It was Claire’s.

  Both Bobby and Sandra ran to the shoe. Sandra picked it up and looked around. “Claire!” she shouted.

  She looked around. The shoe was scuffed, dirty. She screamed for her daughter once more.

  That was when she saw it.

  From behind the cabin, maybe a hundred yards away from her, was a massive bear. Its head was scarred and skinless. It was missing one eye. It was angry. And hungry.

  Sandra pushed Bobby behind her and instinctively grabbed the crossbow from behind her back.

  The bear roared, then took careful measured steps toward them.

  Sandra turned to Bobby, “Bobby, remember that thing I told you?”

  The young boy was shaking. He could hardly speak. “About not running from bears?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “Forget it. When I say the word, Bobby, I want you to run. Run inside the cabin and close the door behind. Don’t look back. Don’t come out to check on me. Stay in there.”

  Sandra watched him take in everything she said, waited for him to acknowledge that he understood. His eyes darted back and fourth. His whole body was trembling. He looked at his mother and shook his head. He understood.

  “Good boy,” Sandra said. “Now, when I say ‘Go,’ you have to run into the cabin. I’m going to shoot the bear with my crossbow and head toward those trees over there.”

  Sandra pointed to a large pine about fifteen yards away from them. It looked climbable. Bobby’s eyes were watering, he nodded.

  As Sandra spoke, the bear stood up on its hind legs. She looked at its gaunt face. It looked as if half its snout was missing, like it was cut off. In a certain light, it wouldn’t even look like a bear. This creature had been through hell. It was a survivor. She knew it was not scared. It was hungry.

  She kept Bobby behind her and watched the bear. She carefully loaded a tranquilizer dart into her crossbow.

  “Mom!”

  From an opposite cabin, Sandra saw Claire’s face poking through a broken window.

  Despite the danger she was in, Sandra’s heart flooded with relief. She’d found her.

  Claire looked tired, like she hadn’t slept the whole night. Her face was dirty. But she was there.

  “Mom!” Claire shouted.

  The bear fell from its hind legs and turned toward Sandra. It was time to act.

  Sandra tapped Bobby on the back, then whispered, “Now, Bobby. Now!”

  He got the hint. He ran wildly toward the nearest cabin, flung open the door, then slammed it shut behind him.

  At the same time, Sandra fired her crossbow. The dart flew toward the bear and struck its shoulder. It let out a devastating howl, then started coming for Sandra.

  She grabbed another dart from her backpack and started to load it. The bear, overcome with rage, was running toward her.

  Sandra stopped loading and ran for the trees. If she was going to die, she at least wanted to give her kids a chance to live.

  9 Oleksii Borachev

  Sept 23, 2051, Honolulu, Hawaii

  Honolulu International Airport was complete chaos. Oleksii had never seen anything like it. Thousands of tourists were sitting on their luggage, arguing with airline employees, or frantically calling their hotels to see if they could get their rooms back until the airports reopened.

  When the satellites fell, all commercial flights were immediately grounded. Without satellites, the sky was too unsafe for travel. Air travel had been cancelled before. The world had dealt with a variety of terror attacks in the early century that closed the skies. In later decades, natural disasters of increasing ferocity caused similar disruptions.

  But the meteor shower the night before had been unnerving in a new way. People didn’t know what to make of it.

  When Oleksii called SpaceForce command, they already knew the severity of the problem. He had as many questions for them as they had for him.

  “What’s going on, Oleksii!?” General Tarkin asked.

  “I have no idea,” responded Oleksii. “I have no clue. It’s as if someone physically messed with the motherboards of the satellites.”

  “It’s impossible that they were physically attacked,” the general responded. “Oleksii, we need answers. If you don’t figure this out soon, we’ll be sending you back to Russia and you know what that means.”

  The threat rang hallow in Oleksii’s ears. He knew that wasn’t how the Americans operated. But he didn’t appreciate the tone. He was the best of the best and he wanted to be respected as a full member of the team.

  “I can’t solve every goddamn problem for your bankrupt branch of the military!” he said.

  General Tarkin changed his tone. They both calmed down. Everyone was just tense, distraught that essentially every satellite in the sky, Russian, American, Chinese, private, whoever they belonged to, had fallen.

  Tarkin told Oleksii to go to the airport, there would be a military jet waiting for him.

  Only military traffic was cleared to fly.

  They were going to fly him to SpaceForce command in Las Vegas. They needed him to go over everything and find out what the hell was going on.

  Oleksii walked through the chaos of Honolulu’s international terminal and followed the instructions SpaceForce command had given him.

  Airport security brought him to a restricted area reserved for military personnel. From there he was brought out onto the tarmac where he boarded a new C-17 on a ramp at the rear of the aircraft. The SpaceForce symbol was painted on its fuselage.

  He took a seat and waited. The only other person to board the aircraft, apart from the pilots, was a Commander Douglas Stein of SpaceForce central command.

  Douglas nodded to Oleksii and took the seat facing him. He didn’t introduce himself until after takeoff. He had to shout over the noise of the engines.

  “We’ve never met. I’m Commander Stein. I oversee the communications division.”

  “I know who you are,” Oleksii said, his voice straining to talk over the noise.

  Stein handed Oleksii a folder containing intercepts received from Russian and Chinese military communications. “They know about as much as we do,” he said.

  Douglas was dressed in a black leather jacket, aviator glasses and looked like he may have been sixty years old. Opening up the document, Oleksii scanned the intercepts. They were translated into English.

  He read the Russian one first:

  ‘Massive satellite disruption.

  Unheralded attack on all communication, research, and GPS satellites.


  No confirmation that it is American or Chinese.

  Terrorist attack unlikely.”

  Then Oleksii read the Chinese intercept:

  “Satellite disruption reported on massive scale.

  Origin unknown.

  Motherboard malfunction.”

  Putting the documents down, Oleksii turned to Douglas. “So they know about as much as we do?”

  “Nobody knows a god damned thing,” Douglas responded.

  “We don’t have any ideas?”

  “Well, at first we thought it was terrorists. Maybe a group of highly skilled digital hackers. But it’s not that.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’ll see when we get to Vegas.”

  Douglas turned away from Oleksii and reclined his seat back. He was going to get some shuteye. Oleksii wanted to sleep, but he couldn’t settle his mind. Either everything he knew about satellite security was wrong, or something very strange had happened in the sky above them.

  10 Rick Frost

  Sept 23, 2051, Deadwood, South Dakota

  Rick woke up in the mid-afternoon. It had been a late night. Domino, his dog, was licking his face.

  It took him hours to drag the metal orb back to his truck and load it up. The thing weighed a ton. His truck dipped from the weight of it.

  He was hoping to get some shuteye on the drive back home, but he didn’t. The self-driving function on his truck wasn’t working. It couldn’t connect the GPS. Rick didn’t give it much thought. He liked driving. The feel of the wheels on the ground. Being in control. He was tired, but he was sober.

  He left the metal orb in the back of his truck and parked it in the barn. He could unload the heavy son of a bitch in the morning.

  Then, he would do some research and figure out who it belonged to. There would be some info somewhere about a missing piece of technology. Whoever made it must have known it had fallen from the sky. They’d send word to the online forums that tracked such things, hoping to get the attention of someone who’d heard something. This kind of thing happened all the time.