by Olga Werby
“You’re assuming that aliens only care about terrestrial planets,” Phoebe said.
“These seem to.” Matteo glanced at Sophie’s bio-indicators; she was warming up nicely. “The nanobots are here on Earth, which means they were looking for planets similar to ours.”
“Perhaps that was only because we were here. These aliens figured out that Earth had a potentially intelligent species, so they sent representatives to meet us. Scouts.”
“That doesn’t seem likely,” Matteo said. “Setting aside for the moment the fact that the nanobots are doing real damage to us, we’ve only started showing a real potential for intelligence and technology about three thousand years ago. And that’s if we assume the Egyptian pyramids were seen from space. More likely, our first signs of intelligence would have been our radio and TV signals. Then we’re talking just about the last two hundred years really.”
“So? The aliens noticed the strange signals and sent a probe to investigate,” Phoebe said.
“Except the Mimas probe is thousands of years old based on the ice strata analysis, according to Alice.”
“Okay. Then let’s say they saw the pyramids. Or who knows? Maybe they saw signs even earlier.”
“Maybe,” said Matteo. “But it’s more likely that they didn’t. Which means they spotted a planet that was teeming with life, but without obvious intelligent life. And in that case, we must assume these nanobots weren’t sent to contact us, because the senders weren’t even aware that there was anyone here to contact.”
They sat for a while in silence. Aside from some gentle hum from the machinery and heaters, the lab was quiet. Perhaps too quiet.
“She’ll wake up soon,” Phoebe noted. Sophie’s vitals were growing stronger.
Matteo was still working through their conversation. “The Mimas probe sent out its signal a year ago,” he said. “Why only then?”
“Perhaps that’s when the aliens finally noticed us,” Phoebe said.
“Is that bad or good?”
Phoebe didn’t answer.
Chapter Ten
News of the nanobot attack on Earth and the colonies came right after Alice finished an emergency excision surgery for Ben’s D-tats. Ben had a sudden allergic reaction—something caused the nanobots in his blood to swarm the site of his implant. Fortunately, he had only one basic cyberhumatics on his lower left arm, and it wasn’t too difficult to remove.
The news from Earth was hazy at first, with precious few details about outcomes and damage. Major Liut immediately ordered everyone on board to have their D-tats removed. That meant all the researchers—aside from Alice and Vars, of course, and now Ben. Surprisingly…and fortunately, none of the military crew chosen for this mission had any. And it turned out that Major Liut had his removed back on Earth prior to taking off for Saturn, as Vars had suspected. Still, Alice had a lot of surgeries ahead of her.
The surgeries were scheduled out over fourteen days—one procedure every other day or so to ensure that Alice wasn’t too exhausted by the job—but eventually Alice managed to remove all cyberhumatics from every member of their science team...except for Ebi and Ibe. The twins’ implants were so complex that Alice didn’t think it was possible to strip them away without doing life-threatening damage. As a result, the siblings were placed under constant surveillance. It didn’t seem fair—they hadn’t done anything wrong—but humanity was under attack, and who said life was fair?
“Did he really spy on us that time in the redwoods?” Vars asked. She and Alice were having lunch together after a long morning in the medlab.
“You mean Terry?”
“I saw his D-tats back at EPSA headquarters. He had a fancy, military-type set. How did he know to remove them? And why weren’t we told?”
“Your dad told us,” Alice said. She sounded tired, perhaps too tired for this conversation.
“My dad told you,” Vars said. “But how did Major Liut know?”
“Please, just call him Terry,” Alice said. “It’s not worth the aggravation not to.” She rubbed her head.
Vars knew it had been a very long two weeks for Alice. It hadn’t been easy on Vars, either. As the only other scientist who didn’t need the excision surgery, she had assisted Alice with all the procedures. Liut...Terry didn’t allow any of the military crew to help, citing tight scheduling or some such. Vars would bet he was worried about exposing his people to aggressive nanobots.
“Not a single military crew member had D-tats. It’s proof they knew something that we didn’t!” Vars pressed. Tired as she was, she didn’t have the energy to keep her emotions under control, and with Alice she felt like she didn’t need to hide so much. She stopped fretting about surveillance onboard the ship too—they had bigger things to worry about. They needed to work as a team. “We don’t have equal access to information!” she protested again. Without that, how could they make sound decisions together?
“Are you really surprised?” Alice said. “Somehow they knew.”
And here it was—us versus them...the wrong us versus them. It should have been humans versus aliens. And perhaps not even that. Vars rubbed her eyes—she had so much convincing to do.
“That’s probably why we had so little trouble convincing them not to give you the implants before the mission,” Alice continued.
“If that’s the case, then why not have everyone—”
“Vars, we’ve already talked about this,” Alice said. “Requiring everyone to undergo removal surgery back on Earth would have pushed out our departure. There clearly wasn’t time. Ian’s team had to go, and all of his people had implants...except us.”
There was nothing to say to that. “What do you think will happen to Ebi and Ibe?” Vars asked.
She couldn’t say she had developed a rapport with the twins, but it bugged her that Ebi and Ibe no longer had freedom of the ship. Even when they attended the science meetings, there were two burly crewmen stationed just behind their seats, as if to catch them in a traitorous act. It was crazy. And what about those tight schedules that Liut used as an excuse to avoid help with surgeries? Still, there was no evidence that the nanobots did anything more than attach themselves to the D-tats. And sure, that was bad, but did it give Liut the permission to take away the twins’ freedom? Vars didn’t think so. Unless Liut wasn’t telling them something. Unless something else had happened back on Earth…or on Luna or Mars.
There were rumors that back on Earth some people developed so much additional cyberhumatics growth that they looked almost encased in nanobot exoskeletons. But even that didn’t make Ebi and Ibe a danger to others...not yet.
“The twins will just have to wait until we get to a full medlab facility on Mars,” Alice said. That was the closest location, and it was far behind them now. They were way past the orbit of Jupiter. “I’m hopeful that in the meantime, they’ll be fine. There’s so little freedom on a spaceship anyway, that practically, Terry’s restrictions on their movements mean very little. Frankly, I’m more worried about Ian. The loss of arm control will impair his ability to function. It’s bad now, but once we get to Mimas? There is no way that I can clear him for an EVA on the surface. He’ll fight me on this. And it gives Terry the upper hand, so to speak.”
None of the surgeries had been free of complications. There were numerous complaints about loss of sensation, painful scar tissue, and disfigurement. But Ian’s arm suffered a lot of neurological damage. He would require extensive reconstruction surgery after they returned home. Except the standard treatment in such cases was to implant cyberhumatics to restore function while supporting the healing of tissues. So perhaps Ian was stuck with a bum arm for a while.
“You did great,” Vars said. “The scars and most of the cosmetic issues can be addressed when we get back.”
“I know.” Alice gave her a weak smile. She didn’t look convinced.
“Have you by chance
heard anything from my dad?” Vars asked.
“No. Total blackout. I’m not getting anything from the Vaults or the wardens.”
“Something crazy must have happened back there. I don’t understand why the mission control isn’t giving us all the information available. We need everything they’ve got if we’re going to figure what these Mims want from us.” She didn’t believe that Liut was stupid enough to keep things from the scientists. What would be the point in that?
“But you’ve been thinking about it, Vars, right?”
A soft noise came from just outside the door. Alice looked questioningly at Vars.
“Yes,” Vars said, both answering the question and confirming that she believed someone was listening in on their conversation. Not that it mattered. They were all on the same mission, on the same team. And to succeed, they needed to act like it.
Ian assembled his science team in the ship’s cafeteria, their all-hands-on-board meeting room. Most had bandages and synthetic skin on their arms and in some cases their necks and jaws as well. All looked like they’d lost weight.
“We’ve had a rough few weeks,” Ian said. “But we have to get back to work. We’re about to begin deceleration maneuvers. In only two weeks, we will enter into orbit around Saturn and then Mimas.”
There was a sense of unease in the room. The news blackout from home cast a dark spell over the team. They had started out on a voyage of friendship and greetings to a new civilization; now they found themselves in the middle of what seemed to be a prelude to an invasion.
“So let’s get back to what we know,” Ian continued. “Vars?”
Vars had became the de facto leader of these team discussions, at least on the background research part. “What do the aliens want?” she asked the room. It finally dawned on everyone that in a first contact situation, it would be the sociologists and anthropologists, diplomats and lawyers that would take the lead. Those in the “hard sciences” didn’t have enough grounding to extrapolate interspecies communication or alien motivations even to begin these negotiations.
“I want to start with listing resources,” Vars said. She had given this a lot of thought and needed to get everyone on the same page. “We’ve already discussed that space travel requires advanced technology—”
“So do the nanobots,” Ebi said. It was obvious that she had been scratching her arms and neck—the skin around her D-tats was red, raw, and angry. Vars felt bad for the girl; aside from prescribing some inflammation creams and some cold compresses, there wasn’t anything Alice could do to help her or her brother, not out here.
“Yes,” Vars said. “Nanobots require advanced tech as well. So we have three direct pieces of evidence that the Mims possess high-tech development: the nanobots, the artifact, and the fact that both are in our Solar System and thus managed to travel interstellar distances.”
“And we know that both come from the same technological base,” said Ian.
“We assume that, but we don’t know it,” Trish pointed out. “Though I think it’s a fair assumption,” she quickly added.
“We’ve already discussed time as a necessary resource,” Vars said, “but I’d like to break it down in more detail, without putting a human spin on it.” She had her notes on her personal tablet, like everyone else in the room now. “Time needs to be assessed at multiple scales. First, there needs to be enough time for life to develop. Then complex life, followed by intelligent life—by no means a given at any point. And only then can a highly advanced civilization arise—not a necessary outcome, but a necessary condition in this case.”
“Obviously, we are constrained by the age of the universe and the distribution of heavy elements,” Trish said. Vars was pleased that the woman had taken her suggestion so seriously and started with the basic givens. “So if the universe is just about fourteen billion years old—and to keep it simple, let’s just say the Milky Way is about the same age—then we still need to roll through several star lifetimes to fuse enough heavy elements and release them via supernovas into the interstellar space for the formation of complex life.”
“There is no organic chemistry without carbon,” Ian said, nodding.
“Our sun is just over four and a half billion years old.” Ben picked up on time line derivation analysis. “We have an abundance of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and so on. The first stars after the Big Bang would have been mostly hydrogen, some deuterium, a bit of helium...” Trish shook her head and Ben moved on to his main point. “Since Mims are using heavy elements in ways that resemble ours, we have to assume that their star system is not very much older than ours. I’d put the earliest date at about six billion years. Of course, their system could also be younger than ours. There’s no reason to think their evolutionary path was as long as our own.”
“Yes,” Vars agreed. “Life on Earth had several setbacks. If not for the asteroid that hit the Yucatan Peninsula sixty-five million years ago, the descendants of dinosaurs could be sitting here instead of us, arguing why the Mims’ nanobots are attaching to their cybernetic implants. We owe our ascent as a species to the Chicxulub impact.”
“So we’ve now established a lower bound…kinda,” said Ibe with a smirk. On the wall viewer beside him, he was pulling up artists’ renditions of the dinosaurs’ last days in all of their glory and with all of the gory details.
“Thank you for the visuals,” Vars said. “The amazing thing about life on Earth is how fast it came to be. Fossil records demonstrate signs of life as early as a few million years after the planet’s formation.”
“Are you saying that’s strange?” Evi said. “For this is our area of expertise.” She motioned to the group of six scientists, including Ian, who sat on her side of the room.
“Are you saying it’s normal?” Vars countered. The speed of life emergence was a hot topic of debate in her community. But Evi and her colleagues were the obvious experts at this gathering.
“We don’t have anything to compare it to,” Evi said. “The life we found on Mars is just spores that found a way to drift from Earth—”
Saydi, another member of the exobiology team, cut in. “Or that could be the other way around. We could have evolved from Martian spores.”
Evi brushed the remark aside. “The point is that everything living or life-building that we’ve discovered in our solar system so far had a single point of origin. We’ve all developed from a single spark of life.”
“But only Earth managed to get beyond single-cell life forms,” Alice pointed out. “And since life on Earth has been documented as far back as four billion years ago, it makes sense that Earth is the source of all life in our star system.”
“All good points,” Ian said, stepping in, “but it’s not an argument we will resolve here today. I want to hear what Vars has to say. I believe you were talking about time?” Even impaired and on medications, Ian was better at controlling this group. Vars exhaled but went on; she wanted everyone to get on the same page. It was the only way to move forward...together, as a team.
“Yes. Let’s assume that an almost immediate rise of life is typical in a planetary system capable of supporting it,” Vars said. “Then we are talking about life that could have started around six billion years ago, right?”
“Approximately,” said Ben.
“Approximately,” Vars agreed. “A common ancestor of all modern humans lived in Africa, approximately two and a half million years ago, by conservative estimates.” With Africa all but wiped out in the Keres Triplets Event, there was no longer a possibility of furthering research in that area, not until radiation levels were back to safe levels...in a few million years...if humans lived that long. “Homo sapiens diverged from Homo Neaderthalensis some seven hundred thousand years ago.” No one challenged her on this; she was back in her territory now. “Language, as we think of it,” Vars continued, “was probably widespread by fifty thousand years ago, a
lthough it was very different from what we use now. Ten thousand years ago, humans started to grow their own food and domesticate various plant and animal species, including themselves.”
“Humans domesticated humans?” Ben asked.
“That’s one way of thinking about it,” Vars said. “Like other domesticated animals, modern humans are products of arrested development—our heads stay huge, we take a very long time to mature, we need decades to learn the foundation of knowledge that would make us productive citizens. I could go on, but I would like to stay focused on the timescales.”
“Please,” said Ian. He looked impatient...and he wasn’t alone.
“Our biggest technological spurt,” Vars went on, “occurred only in the last three hundred years.” Ben opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with a look. “And I know you can point to examples from previous centuries. But we are painting with very large brush strokes. The point I’m making is that—”
“If Mims were one of the original life forms in our galaxy, they could have almost two billion years on us,” Ibe said, jumping right to the conclusion as usual.
“That’s one possible timescale,” Vars agreed.
“Okay,” said Ben. “So we can look at the star systems within some reasonable distance from our solar system and see which are likely candidates for life.”
“Distance is time,” said Ibe and Ebi, almost simultaneously.
Ian ignored them. “I know you guys have already made a potential list of candidates,” he said.
“Yes,” said Ron, “but to narrow it down, we were hoping for something more useful from Vars than a two-billion-year head start.” Ron hardly ever talked, so Vars turned to take a good look at the man. In his late fifties, he was the oldest member of the JPL team. His head was shaved now. Ron was balding before, as Vars recalled, but still wore his hair in a ponytail back on Earth. But long hair was a pain in space, so he must have shaved it all off for practical reasons—he wasn’t vain, at least not about his appearance. He was tall and spindly, folding in on himself, perching rather than sitting next to the end of the table. Ron always looked as if he was getting ready to leave. Both of his arms were bandaged, and Vars remembered how badly his right arm ended up being perforated during the excision surgery. Like Ian, Ron too must be in quite a bit of pain. Yet the man hid it well.
