Jury Duty (First Contact)

by Peter Cawdron

“Have you seen anything else like this?”

  “We’ve got burned-out motors all over the workshop. Does that count?”

  Jazz says, “Could this be related to the blackout?”

  “Maybe,” Adrianna says. “Magnets don’t normally affect people, but there have been experiments where they change the way the brain works.”

  “What kind of experiments?” Bear asks, intrigued.

  “Magnets have been used to treat depression. Magnetic fields can induce nausea. They can leave people feeling confused and disoriented.”

  Jazz and Bear look at each other.

  Adrianna says, “There have even been cases where they shut down one part of the brain but not another.”

  Nick asks, “What part of the brain?”

  “If I remember correctly, there was one study where they used a magnet to shut down speech. The person could sing lines from a song, but they couldn’t say them until the magnet was switched off.”

  “What? Why?” Bear asks.

  “We think of our brains as a single organ,” Adrianna says, “but the brain is insanely complex. It’s a conglomeration of different parts. Shut down one section, and another works perfectly fine.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Jazz says.

  “If we go down there,” Bear says. “We have to be careful. Next time, we might not be so lucky. Next time, they might up the power. They could fry our brain cells.”

  Harris and Phelps go pale. Nick snaps them out of it, saying, “Thanks, guys. That was helpful, really helpful.” He hands the screwdriver back to Harris. The two men pack up their equipment and leave.

  Adrianna says, “I don’t think we’ll see the same response from them again.”

  “Why?” Mikhail asks, looking sideways at her.

  “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.”

  “You’re gonna have to explain that one,” Bear says.

  “We need to put ourselves in their shoes,” Adrianna says. “We’ve got to think like them.”

  Jazz says, “They’re not predictable.”

  “Everyone’s predictable,” Adrianna replies. “We’ve got to recognize we’re dealing with an intelligent species down there, and it’s going to have needs. It’s going to have priorities.”

  “Go on,” Mikhail says.

  “Think about us. Our most basic needs are air, water, and food—in that order. Only after these are met do you get to things like having a home, or a job. And after that things like friends and family.”

  “Down here,” Jazz says, “it’s air, warmth, water, and only then food. I’d say shelter is more important than water.”

  “You see?” Adrianna says. “That’s precisely my point. We have a hierarchy of needs. And it’s variable. It depends on circumstance. What good is gold bullion if you’re freezing to death?”

  “And you think this explains their reaction?” Mikhail asks.

  “It has to. Everyone is motivated by something. Understand their hierarchy of needs, and you’ll understand their next move.”

  “I like that,” Mikhail says. “And the blackout?”

  “Self-defense,” Adrianna says. “Notice there’s been no follow up. No additional attacks. We are not under siege. This was a one-time event.”

  “They feel safe,” Jazz says.

  “For now.”

  “What do they want?” Mikhail asks.

  “Put yourself in their shoes,” Adrianna replies. “You’re trapped under a mile of ice. What do you want?”

  “To get out.”

  Adrianna nods.

  Bear says, “Oh, that’s bad.”

  “No shit,” Jazz says.

  Mikhail scrawls something on his notepad, not saying what he’s thinking, but he seems to agree with the sentiment bouncing around the table. From where Nick is, he can see Mikhail’s making a list of things to follow up on.

  “How do they see us?” Jazz asks.

  “Good question,” Adrianna replies, raising her index finger as she pauses, thinking about her reply. “I suspect they’re still trying to figure us out. Whoever or whatever is down there, they’ve been dormant for a helluva long time. Suddenly, we’re knocking on the door. They wake to see a bunch of strange creatures tunneling through the ice toward them.”

  “So are we the good guys or the bad guys?” Jazz asks.

  “That’s what they want to know,” Adrianna says. “Whatever happened down there, we got too close. We made them nervous as hell and they said, Back off!”

  Jazz takes a deep breath. Her chest rises. She puffs up her cheeks and exhales slowly, saying, “This is not good.”

  “Okay,” Bear says. “We shut everything down. We wait out the winter and hand this shit-storm over to the UN in summer.”

  “You think they’re gonna wait that long?” Mikhail asks.

  Jazz taps the table. “And in the meantime every one of our people down there dies.”

  Bear says, “We can’t let these things escape.”

  “We may not have a choice,” Adrianna says. “I mean, we’re in control—for now. How long is that going to last?”

  Jazz says, “I’m not leaving our people down there to die.”

  “You’re going beneath the ice?” Mikhail asks.

  “We go in quiet,” Jazz says. “We leave that thing alone. We get our people. We get out.”

  Bear buries his head in his hands. He does not like this.

  Adrianna says, “Then I’m coming too.”

  “No way, doc. This is now a military op.”

  “With an army of two?” Adrianna says. “You need an edge down there. Bombs and bullets ain’t gonna cut it. You need someone with a scientific understanding of what’s unfolding.”

  Jazz doesn’t look impressed.

  Nick says, “I’m coming too.”

  “Oh, hell no,” Jazz replies. “You’re on the jury. You’re too valuable.”

  Nick laughs. He cocks his head sideways, raising an eyebrow as he says, “Me? Seriously? Come on. What am I going to do up here? Play Candy Crush?”

  “We need a pack mule,” Bear says.

  Jazz is adamant. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “A diverse team gives us the best odds for survival.”

  “Shut up, Bear.”

  “With a couple of Sherpas, we can travel light,” he replies, ignoring her.

  Jazz asks, “Have either of you ever gone abseiling or rappelled down a cliff?”

  Adrianna raises her hand to shoulder height. Nick nods. Neither of them reply.

  “For fuck’s sake.” Jazz is frustrated. The ire in her voice and the anger on her face suggests they have no idea what they’re dealing with. She sighs, shaking her head in disbelief.

  Nick says, “I’ll carry your equipment—your ammo.”

  Jazz replies, saying, “You know you could die down there, right?”

  “I could die up here.”

  Mikhail says. “Four is better than two.”

  “I cannot believe I’m agreeing to this,” Jazz says. She brings up a computer interface.

  “Father, what are the human losses?”

  “Twenty military staff. Thirty-two scientists. Five technicians. Two jurors.”

  “And survivors?”

  “Two military staff. Forty-one scientists. Twelve technicians. Nine jurors, seven of whom are trapped in the L4 conference room. At this point, there are only three functional jurors.”

  “Father, I need whatever imagery you can give me from the last 48 hours.”

  A series of thumbnail images are projected onto the screen at the far end of the room. There are several pages of photos containing fisheye-views of corridors, stairs, elevators, labs, and doors. They’re sorted by timestamp.

  Adrianna says, “Stop,” as Jazz flicks between screens. “There!” She points. “The timestamp puts that about fifteen minutes before the blackout. That’s someone from the sample retrieval team heading toward the airlock.”

  “Airlock?” Nick says, seeing nothing more th
an a boot disappearing behind a doorframe at the end of the corridor.

  “Yes. There’s a cavern surrounding the craft. It’s partially submerged in a subterranean lake. We’ve taken samples from the water. All pretty standard stuff. Microbes with distinct genetic profiles. They’ve been trapped down here for millions of years, from long before the craft crashed. Their genes have diverged from those topside, but they’re still clearly related.”

  “Is there anything else down there?” Jazz asks, rolling the computer mouse across the table to Adrianna, giving her control.

  “Tube worms. Shrimp. Plankton. Squid. Several species of nudibranch.”

  “Nudes?” Bear asks, surprised.

  “Not like that,” Adrianna says, bringing up another set of images. “They’re mollusks without a shell. Soft-bodied creatures like this.”

  On the screen, snake-like animals undulate through the water.

  “Are those aliens?” Bear asks.

  Adrianna laughs. “No.”

  “They look like aliens to me,” Nick says, noting their squiggly curves and unusual antennae.

  “We’ve sequenced their genes. They’re terrestrial.”

  “Even that one?” Nick asks, pointing at a nudibranch that looks like an undersea porcupine made from Jell-O.

  “Not alien,” Adrianna says. “Those tips contain toxins, but they won’t kill you. And he’s tiny, barely the size of your pinky.”

  “What does it look like?” Jazz asks, changing the topic. By it, she means the alien spacecraft.

  “You haven’t seen it?” Adrianna asks, surprised.

  Jazz shakes her head.

  “You’d better show them,” Mikhail says.

  Adrianna brings up another folder and enlarges a photo. Temporary lights have been set up on tripods within an ice cave. Thick, heavily insulated cables lead back toward a generator. Spotlights reflect off the thin, silver edge of a spacecraft half-buried in blue ice, half-submerged in a subsurface lake. Dark water laps at a narrow, rocky ledge extending around the cavern.

  Jazz, Bear, and Nick get to their feet and walk to the screen. Each of them says a single word, expressing their shared sentiment.

  “Oh”

  “My”

  “God.”

  Adrianna brings up another set of images showing close-up pictures of the thin strip of the spacecraft reaching from the ice to the water. The interstellar vessel has settled on an angle of roughly thirty degrees.

  “They told us it was crushed beyond recognition,” Jazz says.

  “It was.”

  “What do you mean—was?” Nick asks, turning to her in alarm.

  “They’re fixing it.”

  “They?” Bear says.

  Adrianna nods.

  “Since when?” he asks.

  “Since we broke through into the chamber.”

  Bear states the obvious. “So we woke them?”

  “Yep,” Adrianna replies. “I figured you’d want to know what you’re dealing with.”

  “Damn straight,” Jazz says.

  “Is anyone in there?” Nick asks, tapping the screen. “I mean, how could anyone be alive down there after all this time?”

  “That’s what we were trying to figure out,” Adrianna says. “The working assumption is the crew are dead but there’s some kind of artificial intelligence running the show.”

  “Assumption?” Bear asks. “I didn’t think science worked on assumptions.”

  “It doesn’t. This is new territory for us. We have to test our ideas.”

  Jazz says, “And testing your ideas caused the blackout?”

  Adrianna screws up her face, pulling her lips tight. She nods but can’t bring herself to say yes.

  Bear says, “Well, they’re working fast. That thing looks like it crashed yesterday, not hundreds of thousands of years ago.”

  Jazz says, “It doesn’t look like it crashed at all.”

  “It looks like the ice formed around it,” Nick says, astonished by what he’s seeing.

  Adrianna brings up another photo. “There are spare parts lying on the ground.”

  “Looks like junk,” Nick says, pointing at the scraps. Curved panels and metal rods litter the ice near the craft.

  “Best we understand it, they’re using nanotech to repair their spacecraft in place.”

  “But?” Jazz asks.

  “But it’s stuck fast. There’s too much ice on top of it.”

  She brings up an image of a woman standing beside the craft in an orange hazmat suit.

  “That’s me.”

  Nick takes a second look. Adrianna’s standing beneath the rim of the spacecraft, next to a chunk of fallen ice. Her suit is inflated, making her arms and legs look rotund. Her nose and mouth are hidden behind a black gas mask, even though the suit includes a plastic visor covering her head.

  “You’ve been down there?” Jazz says, turning toward her in astonishment.

  “Oh, yeah. Several times.”

  “You are definitely coming with us.”

  Adrianna switches back to the original screen of thumbnails. “The airlock is at the end of that corridor. It’s the boot that gives it away. We only wore those thick black boots when we were in hazmat suits. That’s how I know they must have been going into the chamber.”

  “So the research team was in the cavern when all this went down?” Jazz says.

  “Yes.”

  “Do we have any video?”

  “Not from the blackout. These are the only images Father could recover.”

  “How did Father survive?” Nick asks. He’s expecting Adrianna to answer when a voice sounds from the speakers in the ceiling.

  “I’m designed to survive a nuclear blast. My periphery devices were disabled, but not my core functions.”

  “Father,” Jazz says. “What is the state of the containment lab?”

  “Containment has been breached. All levels are affected by water damage. The elevator is stuck on level three. Level four is entirely submerged.”

  “Can you start the pumps?”

  “Negative. Executive functions have not been restored within the lower bases.”

  “This is L4 from earlier today,” Adrianna says, bringing up recent imagery. “This is where the airlock is located.”

  A body floats face down in a submerged corridor. Ice grows from the walls, choking the walkway. Lights glow from behind the glass in a door.

  Adrianna raises her hand to her mouth. She wasn’t ready for what she sees.

  “This is not good,” Jazz says.

  “No shit,” Bear says.

  “And this is where the jurors are?” Jazz asks.

  “And they’re still alive?” Nick asks.

  Mikhail says, “Ah, all the rooms are hermetically sealed. They weren’t designed to be watertight, but they have independent vents. The idea was to contain any contaminants in case of a breach.”

  “Father,” Jazz says. “Can we manually restart the pumps?”

  An electronic voice replies. “Unknown.”

  “Well, that’s great,” Bear says. “That’s just fucking great.”

  Jazz says, “So we won’t know if we can start those things until we get down there.”

  Bear says, “We’re going to need tools, spare parts, hazmat suits, wetsuits, and oxygen cylinders, not to mention a fuck-ton of ammo.”

  “Well,” Jazz says, looking at Nick. “It’s a good job we’ve got ourselves a mule. All right, we’re going to take a six-hour rest period. I recommend you bunk down here. There’s no sense going back outside.” She gets to her feet and dims the lights, saying, “Get some sleep. It’s going to be a long day.”

  Day?

  Nick rubs the grit from his eyes. He’s insanely tired. It’s already been a long day. In the back of his mind, he’s vaguely aware Adrianna told him the time when she gave him the toiletries kit in the lecture hall, but that seems like a lifetime ago.

  “What time is it?” he asks.

  “Eleve
n in the morning.”

  “Damn.”

  Adrianna doesn’t have to be told twice. She scrunches up her coat and uses it as a pillow, lying beneath the now darkened screen. Nick finds a spot near a floor vent and curls up. The carpet is thin but surprisingly comfortable. Within seconds, he’s asleep.

  On Belay

  Spotlights illuminate the darkness. Snow and ice tear across the plateau, coming in sideways in the gale-force winds.

  Even with his hood pulled almost to the point it’s closed, it’s hard for Nick to breathe in the intense cold. His cheeks feel as though they’re frozen. His lungs are on fire. Six hours of sleep felt like six minutes. Staggering back out into a brutal antarctic winter is cruel. The tempest rattles his body, slamming into his jacket and threatening to topple him. Ice crunches beneath his boots. Everything beyond the fur lining of his hood is a blur.

  Jazz leads the way to the maintenance building. She’s doubled over, reducing her profile to the storm. The pack on her back sways with wind gusts.

  Nick keeps his gloved hands on the guide wire, pushing his safety carabiner ahead of him. Snow races past low to the ground, hiding his boots from sight. Each step saps his strength. He’s carrying four oxygen cylinders strapped to his pack. The weight is unbearable, and yet somehow, he staggers on. Occasionally, he stops, resting his arms on his knees to relieve a little of the weight for a moment. Within seconds, Bear is tapping his hip, yelling over the storm, wanting him to move on.

  Fifty yards feels like fifty miles. The lights visible through the gloom never get any closer. Nick struggles, fighting against the tempest.

  A gloved hand appears in front of the narrow opening in his hood. Nick looks up. Jazz is standing before him. Her eyes are hidden behind goggles. Wind buffets the fur surrounding her face. Her cheeks are rosy red. She’s standing beside an open door. Light spills out from within the maintenance building.

  Nick takes her hand. She says something, but he can’t hear her over the roar of the storm.

  He straightens, stepping out of the wind. Fluorescent lights flicker overhead. Nick staggers into the ready room and collapses on a wooden bench. The pack slips from his back. Metal oxygen cylinders clink together. He’s past caring. Although the external door is open and the temperature is well below zero, he feels warm by comparison. Vapor rises like steam from his breath.