Ephemeral Species Book One - The Dawning

by Patrick Smith

The Ephemeral Species

  Book One - The Dawning

  Patrick Smith

  The Ephemeral Species Book One - The Dawning

  patrick@patricksmithbooks.com

  Copyright 2014 Patrick Smith

  Cover art: One minute exposure photo by Patrick Smith. Two people sitting on the ruins of Sutro Baths, San Francsico.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher.

 

  In the near future...

  Chapter 1

  "Good morning. My name is Nisha Chandra and you're taking Intro to Astrobiology, 101. I'm happy to be here at Caltech's newly expanded Beckman Auditorium. I'm excited to see so many of you interested in extraterrestrial life."

  This was her first lecture as a professor. She took a deep breath and linked the presentation in her Eyepiece device to the view screen behind her. Her anxiety grew as she surveyed the large crowd. She felt most comfortable safely tucked behind a computer screen examining data, making her world renowned discoveries.

  "I'll start with the latest news. My team at JPL here in Pasadena recently discovered evidence of ancient water based multicellular life on Mars. Six meters beneath the surface of a crater, a series of layers exist which are similar to those we find here on Earth in ancient sea beds."

  "What did you find?" a student in front said.

  She walked to the edge of the stage and smiled.

  "A few days ago, the Mars geology team dug down six meters beneath the surface of the crater on the screen. We discovered thousands of small objects. They appear similar to the 3.5 billion year old bacterial micro-fossils in Australia, only they're bigger. We've dated the Martian objects to be 3.9-4 billion years old."

  "Do you have any pictures of the fossils?" a student in back said.

  "Yes! Here they are."

  The students collectively gasped as the photos were displayed on the big screen.

  "We'll post more photos of them to the JPL website. If you think of alternative theories to explain these objects, let us know. I believe primitive life flourished on Mars four billion years ago. Conditions on Mars were much more hospitable than now. The planet had an oxygen rich atmosphere a billion years before Earth did. Much of its atmosphere was stripped away due to a loss of its magnetic field and for other reasons. Today, pockets of life might still exist far underground. I'm excited about this possibility! I wake up every day hoping to find alien life somewhere. Nothing would make me happier than to examine extraterrestrial life with my own eyes, or at least in photos and data. Soon we might know for sure."

  She surveyed the fresh faces in the audience. These weren't the average kids who inhabited the local mall. They came here from around the world because Caltech had a legacy of great people making state of the art discoveries. The school had the highest percentage of Nobel Laureates on the teaching staff of any university in the world.

  For a fraction of a second, the muffled sounds of a crowd of people arose behind her. Her heart raced. She glanced back, but noticed nobody onstage. A few students chuckled.

  "Sorry about the distraction. The aliens in the cage behind me are getting restless! I'll bring 'em out later."

  The students laughed. She didn't know if they were laughing with her or at her. She ignored her elevated heart-rate and continued her lecture.

  "Okay, raise your hands if you think life existed on Mars."

  All 300 students raised their hands. She raised an eyebrow. How often does an entire class of students agree on anything?

  "Do you think life exists on Mars now?"

  Again, all the students raised their hands.

  "Everyone? Really?"

  She scanned the audience for signs of a prank but detected none. Caltech had a tradition of masterful pranks. As a new professor, she knew she could be the next victim. She didn't want to lose control of the class.

  "How many of you think intelligent life currently exists in our galaxy at our level or above?"

  Once again, everyone raised their hands.

  "Okay, what's going on here? In a class this big, there's always disagreement."

  She could hear a pin drop. She smiled and glanced up to the ceiling as she often did when she found humor in something.

  "Okay, I'll play along. So, how many of you think we've been visited by extraterrestrials in the past?"

  Every hand rose in the air. She thought it must be a prank, but she didn't know what to do, so she continued.

  "Do alien beings live on Earth right now?" she said.

  As she expected, everyone indicated the affirmative. Nisha laughed quietly and tried to contain herself.

  "Do you think so?"

  A student in back shouted out, "Yeah they're in the cage behind you, remember?"

  The students laughed. She smiled and glanced behind her, pretending to look at the imaginary cage. She blinked to activate her Eyepiece, which displayed the names of each student seated before her in real time via facial recognition. The eyepiece assistant whispered in her ear, "Mr. Kepler spoke." She smiled confidently, but wiped some perspiration off her forehead.

  "Yes they're in the cage Mr. Kepler!"

  She tried to buy a little time to deal with the prank when they returned slightly louder this time. They weren't normal human voices. She turned around again. The voices originated inside her mind somehow. She hid her hands behind her back, to hide her nervousness.

  "Don't keep us in suspense. Bring them out!" Mr. Kepler said.

  The class erupted in laughter.

  The voices stopped. Nisha walked to the lectern and took a drink of water. She tried to compose herself and ignore the goose bumps on her arms. She assumed it was a sophisticated prank and she didn't want to fall prey to it.

  "Okay, did anyone hear those voices?"

  The entire class raised their hands. She smiled, but her heart raced. She paused to take another drink of water.

  "Okay wise guys, what did the voices sound like?"

  The students whispered to each other, thinking they were now the subject of a prank.

  "The voices sounded like the guy who does those intros for sci-fi movie trailers," Mr. Kepler said. "You know, like ? 'they came from a galaxy far, far away to enslave humankind as food!'"

  Again the students laughed.

  "Okay class, okay," Nisha said.

  She also laughed but her breathing became shallow. She couldn't get a handle on the origin of the voices. She took another drink of water. She began to think that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to take this job.

  "I'm going to take a poll," she said.

  The class quieted down. Nisha smiled, continuing to hide her shaking hands. Her logical mind wanted to get to the bottom of this obvious prank. She played her share of pranks in her day.

  "How many people heard voices just now?" she repeated.

  Everyone raised their hands. Nisha shook her head.

  "Okay, I want everyone to close their eyes. I want to find out exactly what they sounded like to you. Keep them closed. This includes you Mr. Kepler!"

  Once all eyes were closed, she began the questioning.

  "Did the voices sound human?"

  Nobody raised their hand.

  "Okay, open your eyes," she said.

  The class opened their eyes. Many giggled, unsure of what to think of this.
r />   "Close them again."

  They slowly did so.

  "Did the voices sound like the noises you make when you click the roof of your mouth with your tongue?"

  About 75 people raised their hands. The class opened their eyes and laughed. Some made clicking noises.

  "Close them!" she said. "Did they sound high pitched, like they were small creatures?"

  About 100 students raised their hands. They opened their eyes, smiling and talking as they did.

  "Eyes closed," she said. "Did they speak English?"

  Half the class raised their hands. People opened their eyes and continued laughing and talking.

  "The voices weren't English, but they sounded a bit like Klingon!" Mr. Kepler said.

  The laughter continued.

  "All right, let's proceed," she said.

  They closed their eyes again.

  "Did you hear millions of muffled voices which sounded like they passed through some electronic filter?"

  This time, only three students raised their hands. A shiver went down Nisha's spine. She tried to ignore the heavy feeling of sensing the inexplicable. She thought there must be a logical explanation.

  "Okay, open your eyes," she said.

  Everyone focused on the three people with their hands raised. Nobody said a word.

  "Tell us what you experienced."

  One student said, "I heard them the first time when you turned around, and louder the second time like you. They weren't speaking in any language I know. The sounds were muffled and electronic with static. The voices were like a large crowd heard at a great distance. The sound originated in my head, not in my ears. I can't explain the experience more than that. Now I'm sweating."

  The other two students kept their hands raised and agreed with the first one. Nisha kept a straight face.

  "That's exactly what I heard," she said.

  She paused and kept her poker face on. She rubbed her hands together to relieve the numbness in them. A student in front giggled. The class nodded their heads in approval. Someone clapped slowly, alone at first. They all broke out in applause.

  "Good one professor," Mr. Kepler said. "You had us going!"

  Nisha smiled and had the three students sit down. She decided to carry on with the lecture. However, she knew something big happened. She never experienced anything like this in her life. Those three students also understood. They exchanged knowing glances. She continued her lecture, with her popularity and authority intact. She felt her heart beating strongly in her chest. Her chest felt heavy and breathing was difficult, but she carried on as though all was well.

  "Does anyone know of Fermi's paradox?" she said, expecting at least a few hands to go up.

  Nearly everyone raised their hands.

  "Are you serious?" she said.

  This time the students were serious and they nodded their heads.

  "Well since most of you are familiar, I'll give a brief overview to those who aren't. Physicist Enrico Fermi and others wondered why we've never found evidence of extraterrestrial life, despite the seemingly high probability its existence."

  "That's because you're hiding them from us in the cage behind you," Mr. Kepler said.

  Some students chuckled quietly.

  "He brings up a good point," Nisha said. "Some governmental organization might hide evidence. But I don't believe in conspiracy theories. Possibly we haven't yet developed the technology to detect them. I'm not sure. Maybe alien species hide themselves from detection to avoid being discovered."

  Nisha wrote on her pad, the contents of which were displayed on the big screen behind her.

  "The Drake equation allows us to make a guess as to how many extraterrestrial civilizations might exist in our galaxy. I'll present my own, somewhat different version of his equation. Let's do the numbers!"

  She wrote:

  "Number of stars in the galaxy: 200 billion.

  Estimated number of planets per star: Two on average.

  Number of planets in the galaxy: 400 billion.

  Number of Earth-sized planets in the habitable zone: 50 billion."

  "Aliens must be everywhere!" Mr. Kepler said.

  "Possibly, but there's more to think about," Nisha said.

  She wiped the perspiration from her forehead and continued.

  "Out of those 50 billion possible Earths, some have no magnetic field so they won't be able to keep hydrogen and water in their atmosphere. Therefore, they're dry like Mars or hot like Venus. I'll make a guess. My guess is one in ten Earths with moderate temperatures have a magnetic field with enough water to support life."

  "That's still five billion Earths," a student in front said.

  "Yes, but many stars are red dwarfs. They live longer than our Sun, but many of them blast their planets with flares which can cause mass extinctions. I'll cut the number of hospitable Earths to around 1 billion."

  "That's still a lot," Mr. Kepler said.

  "Yes a billion is a lot, let's examine the other limitations. How often would life emerge on these hospitable Earths?"

  "I'll guess on one in ten Earths?" A student said.

  "Your guess is as good as mine. We have no way of knowing. We'll take your estimate, though it could be 1,000 times higher or lower. This is the weakest link in our hypothetical chain. So now we estimate 100 million Earths exist where life might form. Plus or minus three factors of ten."

  Nisha scanned her audience. Most were interested and a few were messaging friends in their eyepieces. She had trouble writing on her pad, the words appeared jagged. She felt dizzy and hoped she could make it to the end of the class without collapsing. She took another deep breath.

  "Let's say 100 million habitable Earth-like planets exist in this galaxy that formed at least primitive life at one time or another. Our question is how many Earths have intelligent life at this moment?"

  She received answers ranging from zero to a few million.

  "I'd base my theory on Earth, which is the only planet we know of where intelligent life evolved."

  "You lost me professor," Mr. Kepler said as he smiled.

  The class snickered. Nisha shook her head.

  "Okay wise guy. For the sake of speculation, let's pretend there's at least intelligent life on Earth here in this classroom."

  "Agreed," Mr. Kepler said.

  The class smiled and nodded their approval.

  "Okay, the age of the Earth is 4.5 billion years. Intelligent humans, similar in appearance to us, roamed the Earth for at least 50,000 years. So for approximately 1/100,000th of the lifespan of the Earth, intelligent life has existed here. If you chose a random time to visit the Earth, there's only a one in 100,000 chance you would discover intelligent life at the cave man level!"

  "Some modern people aren't at the cave man level yet," Mr. Kepler said.

  The students snickered again. A bit of perspiration drained into her eyes, prompting her to wipe them clean.

  "Very funny Mr. Kepler, now let me continue. Therefore, out of those 100 million Earths we might visit; intelligent life might exist right now on 1 out of every 100,000 of them, which is only 1,000 planets in our galaxy. This assumes all planets with basic life evolve intelligent life like on Earth."

  "That's a big assumption," a student in the middle of class said.

  "I agree. Imagine if the dinosaurs never went extinct. They would probably still be here and humans would never have evolved. Dinosaurs didn't evolve much for over 100 million years and might have kept going for a hundred million more. We can't assume intelligent life will automatically evolve from basic animal life. Animals evolved for hundreds of millions of years and none of them evolved intelligence until recently. Earth was lucky. Therefore, it's difficult to use the Earth as a standard model for calculating the probability of extraterrestrial life. How lucky is the Earth?"

  "Very," Mr. Kepler said.

  "I think you're right. Even after the dinosaurs died, humans didn't come around for over 60 million years. We almost got w
iped out 70,000 years ago and at other times. We weren't guaranteed. Intelligence isn't guaranteed. The evolution of Homo sapiens is a long shot, even here on this friendly planet. My guess is that out of those 1,000 hospitable Earths where life had the time to form, only a few Earths exist in this galaxy with intelligent life at this moment."

  The students paid attention.

  "That's depressing, only a few?" Mr. Kepler said.

  "Yes. Now, still other factors should be considered. Most stars are older than the Earth. Therefore, many of those Earth-like planets are older. I'll raise my estimate and say 10 to 1,000 intelligent civilizations exist in this galaxy. Nobody knows. Most would be more advanced than us. Considering the immense amount of time available to colonize the galaxy, a single species with a 10 million year head start on us, could easily colonize the entire galaxy by now without faster than light travel. That's a mere instant compared to the multi-billion year lifespan of this galaxy."

  The students whispered to each other.

  "So where is everybody?" Mr. Kepler said.

  The students nodded their heads. Nisha took another gulp of water and breathed deeply.

  "That's exactly what Fermi's paradox is all about. With all the possibilities, where is everybody? Perhaps there is a Great Filter which makes intelligent cultures go extinct. We don't even see evidence of AI out there, which could spread faster than organically based life. Drake designed his equation in 1951 to make a guess as to how many planets in our galaxy might harbor life. We didn't understand much about planetary systems except for our own. However, we've found many Earth-like planets because we can detect bio signature gasses on planets which might indicate life. The Seager equation, named after the famed planetary scientist Sara Seager, allows us to estimate the odds of intelligent life existing on a planet right now. The Earth has been sending out bio signature signals for over a billion years. Intelligent life has been present for approximately 1/20,000th of that time. Those are two variables in the equation. Why has nobody visited us, given all we know? Why have we detected no life out there? It's possible there's no intelligent life in this galaxy except for us."

  Nisha continued her lecture until the end of the period. The class walked out of the auditorium into the hot and dry September air, continuing to discuss the lecture. Nisha called the three students to the stage to discuss the incident. They huddled close to each other, gripped with fear.

  "I don't understand what happened," one student said. "I've never experienced voices in my head. Am I going crazy?"

  "No," Nisha said. "If you're going crazy, then the other three of us went crazy at exactly the same time as you. I doubt we're going crazy."

  Nisha got an incoming message in her Eyepiece. She read the message from her 15 year old daughter, Priya.

  "Listen to this message you guys," she said.

  "Mommy, weird voices came into my head just now. My heart is racing. I told some friends at school and they laughed at me. Sophie heard the voices but Ami wasn't affected even though she's the genius."

  Nisha displayed Priya's message on the big screen behind her.

  "Perhaps we aren't going crazy!" she said.

  The three students took deep breaths of relief before realizing that sanity meant something real happened.

  "I'll let you know what I find out about this," Nisha said. "You guys get to your next class and we'll talk tomorrow. I'm sure there's some rational explanation."

  The students left, walking close to each other and whispering. They behaved like old friends despite this being the day they met.

  Nisha messaged back to Priya, "Hi Pree, I heard them too. So did a few of my students. You aren't going crazy. I'll pick you up on the way home if you would like. We'll talk when we get home. Love ya! Xo!!"

  Priya messaged, "Okay, I'll be walking home on my usual route. If I miss you I'll go straight home."

  Nisha sent a message to her husband Quinn. He received the message while working on a sculpture in his artist's studio in the back yard.

  "Did you experience any voices in your head just now?" she messaged.

  She waited for a second and he replied.

  "You're funny Neesh. I think you've had your head in those star charts a little too long! It's okay though, I still love you."

  She shook her head, smiled and glanced at the ceiling for a second. Then the smile evaporated as she began to consider the possibilities.

  "Quinn, I'm serious. Voices entered my mind, and they also did to three of my students. Priya messaged me. She and Sophie heard the voices too, all at the same time as we did! What about you?"

  She stared into her Eyepiece, awaiting his reply. She was unaware of someone waiting for her nearby.

  "Sorry Neesh, I'm joking around. The voices I normally hear in my mind were temporarily silent. Let's talk when you get home. I need to finish this part of the sculpture before it dries."

  "OK, cu at home. xo!" she said.

  She turned around and became aware of Mr. Kepler.

  "Are you okay?" he said.

  She hid her hands behind her back and tried to compose herself.

  "Oh. Um, yes I messaged my daughter. The voices came to her too."

  He laughed.

  "That's what I wanted to talk about with you. Your prank may go down as one of the best ever at Caltech. You had everyone fooled! I gotta go, but congratulations and I'll be here tomorrow."

  "Thanks but.?"

  He raced out the door before she could say anything.

  Nisha left the auditorium and walked into a faculty lounge where a dozen professors were debating the old string theory. She wanted to find out if anyone else noticed anything. However, nobody mentioned hearing voices. She said nothing and walked out to teach her next class. Nothing unusual happened for the rest of the day, though she overheard a few students discussing the voices. Nisha mentioned the unusual events to nobody.

  At 3pm Nisha walked to her car for her short drive home. The day seemed like any other. As she drove, she flipped through the news stations on the wi-fiberlink radio but the unusual voices weren't mentioned.

  She burst through the front door and ran straight into Quinn's studio in the back yard. A rounded human-like shape in clay stood in the middle of the floor.

  He stopped working as she walked through the door.

  "Neesh? Are you okay? You're shaking."

  "Quinn, I barely survived the drive home. I almost hit someone."

  He walked over and gave her a big hug.

  "You're sweating. Sit down and tell me what happened."

  She couldn't sit.

  "During my lecture, the voices were behind me. At first I ignored them. Then I got distracted. I turned around and nothing was there. The students thought it was a joke, but it wasn't. A few minutes later the voices returned. They weren't like normal voices in my ears though. It's similar to when I'm silently thinking. Thousands or millions of voices filled my mind. Three students out of 300 in my class heard the voices. I'm estimating 1% of the general population is aware of them. I need to go online and find out who else experienced them. Nobody mentioned weird voices on the radio on the way home."

  "I never thought I'd see the day when you're talking of things you can't prove, and I'm the one waiting for the facts! Usually it's the other way around."

  "I never thought this day would come either. But the voices were real. I experienced them as plainly as my own thoughts right now. You must believe me!"

  He took her in his arms and whispered, "I believe you Neesh. It'll be okay."

  "Thanks Quinn!"

  Nisha ran into the house and straight to her computer. Her Twitter page remained open from early in the morning. She preferred her traditional computer app to her Twitter Eyepiece app. She browsed through a stream of comments from people she followed. For a while, she read no mentions of weird voices. Several pages down the list, Nisha read a tweet from an astronomer friend at the La Silla Paranal observatory in Chile.

  The tweet read,
"While performing some exoplanet calculations, I heard the sound of a million voices in my mind. Anyone else? #WeirdVoices."

  A shiver traveled down her spine and made her toes tingle. She stared at the tweet, wiggling her toes as Priya walked in the front door. Nisha awakened from her trance when Priya entered the room.

  "Pree, get over here. Check this out!" she said, pulling Priya onto the chair beside her.

  She wanted to show Priya the tweet. Priya stared at the ground.

  "Pree, are you worried about the voices?"

  "Mommy, I nearly got hit by a car on the walk home because of the distracting voices inside my head. I listened to millions of them. My heart is racing again, like it's going to explode out of my chest."

  Nisha put her arms around her.

  "I can feel your heart racing. Mine was too, on the way home. I almost blacked out. That car might have been me."

  "Oh my God, that was you!"

  Nisha's face turned pale as she realized what almost happened.

  "Sorry Pree. It's been a bad day."

  "It could have been worse."

  "Yeah."

  Nisha stared at her computer and couldn't say anything for several seconds. She sighed deeply.

  "I don't think we're the only ones who heard the voices. Check out this tweet from Chile!"

  Priya read the tweet.

  "I feel sick to my stomach. What are they?"

  "I'm not sure yet," Nisha said. "Let me do a search right now on the hash tag #WeirdVoices. Do you want something for your upset stomach?"

  "I'm okay. I want to know what this is."

  Nisha searched for #WeirdVoices. Soon dozens and then hundreds of entries scrolled down the screen. They were from all over at least half of the planet. She read the first two.

  "I heard #WeirdVoices. I went to the bathroom and got sick. Nobody believes me."

  "Anyone know about #WeirdVoices in my head? They weren't like human voices."

  Nisha and Priya scrolled through hundreds of tweets all saying the same thing. Some sarcastic comments appeared too.

  "Mommy, they're real, what's happening?"

  Priya's frightened reaction surprised Nisha. Priya was the strong one no matter what. She hadn't shown her vulnerable side in a long time. Nisha found it comforting and it brought back fond memories of Priya's childhood. She put her arm around Priya's shoulder, rubbing it reassuringly.

  "I'm not sure yet. The tweets originate from about half of the world. They're from North and South America, across the Pacific, and over to Asia near Japan. I see no tweets about the voices from Europe, central Asia, or Africa. This is odd."

  They huddled close to each other as Quinn came in from the back yard.

  "Are you guys okay? What are you looking at?" he said.

  Nisha glanced up and coughed to clear her throat.

  "We're not okay, but we're not going crazy. Check out these tweets."

  Quinn glanced over their shoulders. One tweet after another describing the strange voices scrolled down the page, at the rate of about two per second.

  "Wow, is this happening all over the world?"

  "No, they only seem to be happening on this side of the world," Nisha said. "That's the odd property of these voices. If the voices happen again and are only received on a particular part of the planet, I'll be able to start to trace an origin."

  Quinn began to ask another question when the school bus stopped in front of the house.

  "Sanjay is home. What should we tell him?"

  "I'm not sure yet," Nisha said. "We'll talk about this at dinner."

  They got up to fix dinner and set the table as Sanjay walked in the door.

  "Sanj, how did your day go?" Priya said.

  Sanjay glanced around and couldn't seem to focus.

  "Are you upset?"

  "What a weird day. At first everything seemed fine and then one of my classmates began crying. She said voices were in her head. She calmed down and then the voices came again. The teacher told us they took her away to the psychologist. I think she went crazy. I've never seen a crazy person before."

  "We heard them," Nisha said. "Many others did too. We all might be going crazy at once, but the evidence is against that supposition. Oh Pree, I forgot to ask how your genetics report turned out today. Did you present it?"

  "Yeah Mommy, I made my first presentation before the voices came. I'll do my second one later. I want to be a geneticist when I grow up."

  "I think genetics is a perfect career for you."

  "It's exciting because soon we'll be able to fix all diseases by rewriting the genetic code in the same way we code computer programs. I'll be able to find out why Sanjay has autism. Maybe I can fix it!"

  "Leave me alone. I like who I am," Sanjay said. "It's mild autism anyway. I'm normal. There's nothing wrong with me."

  He stood up and stomped off to his room, throwing his books to the floor.

  "What's wrong with him?" Priya said.

  "Pree, he doesn't think anything is wrong with him. People get used to who they are, regardless if they're different from others. He knows of no other way to be. If you magically transformed him into what you think is an improved person, he'd probably want you to transform him back. You need to learn to accept people for who they are."

  "Yeah, I guess you're right, but I'd like to be transformed into a genius like Ami. A super genius! I still want to cure autism Mommy. I know how the kids bully him. I'd wanna take those kids and-"

  "Okay Priya calm down!" Quinn said.

  "Da-ad, you don't know what happens in school. They pick on him every day. The teachers don't notice and they do nothing. I wish I had superhuman powers so I could kick their-"

  "Pree, you need to relax and ?"

  He looked across the table. They sat there expressionless.

  "Guys?"

  They appeared preoccupied and glanced behind themselves simultaneously.

  "Hello? Earth to anyone?" Quinn said.

  "Mommy, the voices are back."

  "Yeah Pree, they're back."

  "What do they want? I'm sweating. I want to rip them out of my brain."

  "I don't know what they want, but I'm going to find out."

  Nisha glanced across the table at Quinn.

  "The voices came again just now. Did you experience anything?"

  "No Neesh, what did they sound like?" Quinn said.

  "Hold on."

  Nisha did a quick tweet to her 250,000 followers.

  "The #WeirdVoices are back, did you hear them?"

  The Replies came quickly.

  "@NishaAstro Yes, in Phoenix!"

  "@NishaAstro I live in Dallas ? loud and clear."

  "Sorry, I had to send out the tweet quickly. I wonder where in the world the voices were this time. The sound reminded me of a crowd roaring at a baseball game after a player hits a home run. Something big happened. The voices calmed down. Now they're gone. A soft static sound filtered over the top of the voices."

  "Could you tell what any of them were saying?" Quinn said.

  "No. The voices don't sound like any language I know. It's full of static so I can't tell for sure. Pree, do you agree?"

  "Yeah, I can't figure out what they're saying."

  Priya's hands trembled. Her fork rattled against her dinner plate.

  "Sorry about that."

  An incoming message appeared in Priya's Eyepiece. She dropped her fork on the ground.

  "Ugh, that startled me!"

  She read the message with great intensity.

  "What do you see?" Quinn said.

  "It's Sophie Daddy. The voices came to her too."

  Priya messaged Sophie.

  "Me 2. I'm shaking. cu tomorrow. Did Ami hear the voices?"

  "No, she didn't." Sophie messaged back.

  Nisha stood up from the table and motioned to Priya to follow. An unreasonable fear twisted her guts into a knot, but she didn't want to make Priya even more frightened.

  "Let's go back to my c
omputer and watch what's happening! I'm sweating again, but this is exciting."

  "Wait for me!" Quinn said as they left the room.

  "Wow," Nisha said. "There's a flood of tweets from here on the west coast of North America, around to central Asia, but none from Europe or Africa. Only a few tweets originate from the east coast compared to eight hours ago. That's a different configuration than the last time."

  Nisha manipulated Google Virtual Earth on her screen with the Twitter data overlay and began to notice a pattern. Uneasiness settled over her as she spun the world around.

  "The Earth has rotated about 1/3 of a turn in the eight hours since the last voices were detected. And the tweets shifted 1/3 of the way around the Earth. I think the voices are coming from somewhere off of the Earth! It's as if the voices 'set' on the east coast like a sunset and 'rose' in central Asia like a sunrise. In a few hours, I think they'll set here too."

  "Mommy, you're freaking me out," Priya said.

  Nisha tried not to upset her, though she feared the worst. She didn't think Priya had the maturity to handle these events. However, she always insisted on openness and transparency. She wiped her sweaty palms on her shirt and put her arm around Priya who sat tightly against her.

  "It's okay Pree, isn't this mystery exciting? Isn't this what science is all about? Discovering the answers to mysteries? If the voices return in a few hours, we might not detect them here because we're on the opposite side of the Earth from where they originate. When I spin the globe, 'Earth' seems like a funny name for this planet. Its surface is mostly water, not earth as in soil."

  "This mystery is too exciting. I feel like throwing up," Priya said.

  Nisha squeezed her.

  "It'll be okay."

  Nisha tweeted, "I'm noticing a pattern in tweets regarding the #WeirdVoices. Will keep you updated."

  She added another tweet to start a discussion with her astronomer friends around the world.

  "If you speculate on the #WeirdVoices, post them here! #astronomy."

  They watched the tweets for a few hours as the stream slowed down. People speculated.

  "I think the #WeirdVoices are from outer space! #astronomy."

  "Think of a more original meme next time losers! Bogus #WeirdVoices #astronomy."

  "The #WeirdVoices are real! #astronomy."

  "This #WeirdVoices thing is a farce! #GetaLife @NishaAstro."

  "@NishaAstro I used to respect you as a legitimate scientist."

  An hour later, Priya and Quinn sat close by as Nisha worked on a large sample of Twitter location data. She created an overlay map on Google Earth showing the #WeirdVoices tweets recorded after the two occurrences of the voices.

  "Guys, you may not believe this," Nisha said. "The Earth has rotated, but the angle of origin of the voices didn't move. Let me show you."

  She rotated Google Earth. The tweets moved across the Earth, but stayed in place in relation to the stars. The effect was similar to the pattern of sunlight striking the Earth staying in place as the Earth rotates.

  "I'll need a few more data points to be sure but?"

  "But what Neesh?" Quinn said.

  Nisha held up a finger.

  "Wait a minute."

  She turned to the computer and tweeted, "From Twitter data, #WeirdVoices coming from direction of Saturn! #astronomy."

  "Saturn?" Priya said.

  "Yes Pree. They're not necessarily from the planet itself, but surely from that general direction. The distance might be closer or much further away. I don't know."

  This created an explosion of tweets, many of them skeptical.

  Midnight came and went. They stayed wide awake but school awaited Nisha and Priya in the morning. Quinn had an art installation due early. They decided to go to sleep. Priya slept in their room in a sleeping bag.