Extinction 6

by Hosein Kouros-Mehr

  “Are you listening to the President’s speech?”

  Manos glances at the hologram. “Yeah, I heard the first part of it. What’s the news?”

  “The War. President Hughes is building the case for action against New China. I’m hearing rumors of a major policy shift coming soon—we’re taking the offensive against the enemy, and that’s why I’m calling. Have you executed the Google plan?”

  “Yes. The first milestone is complete. The Google shareholders approved the tariffs last week without a hiccup from their CEO.”

  “Bethany Andrews?”

  “Yes. She fought hard but GoldRock prevailed easily as we always do.”

  “Why did she oppose it? Is she a spy?”

  “Probably. Her failed policies have certainly helped China and Russia.”

  Gareth looks down. “I made a note of that.” He glances at Manos. “When can you execute the next milestone?”

  “We should have a new business model soon. Google’s profits will soar and our enemies will be crushed.”

  Gareth grins. “Perfect. Listen, the President plans a press conference next week to announce war measures against China. He will mention the Google plan in his speech.”

  Manos nods. “Got it. Should we go live after the broadcast?”

  “Yes. Get the updates ready. I’ll call you a day ahead of the President’s address.”

  “Sounds good. We’ll wait for your green light before we launch.”

  “Excellent! Great job, Manos. It’s always a pleasure to work with GoldRock.”

  “It’s an honor to help my country.” Manos sips some champagne. “Gareth, we’ll need payment for the milestone we achieved.”

  “Of course. It’s $100M, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I offer a discounted military vehicle?”

  Manos laughs. “I prefer cash this time.”

  “You didn’t enjoy the Falcon 12 rocket?”

  “I’ve been up to space a few times, but it gets old fast.”

  “I see.”

  “The Falcon is sitting in my hangar gathering dust. I’m thinking of selling it.”

  “How about an F18 or an Osprey?”

  Manos shakes his head. “Nope. Currency is king.”

  “Of course, Manos. I will wire payment to GoldRock later today.”

  Manos removes his smartglasses and puffs the cigar. “Thank you. Your business is appreciated.”

  5.

  “THE BABY’S kicking. Give me your hand.”

  Anil sits on the bed and palms his wife’s pregnant belly. He feels a soft thud on his fingers. “My sweet daughter. Did she wake you last night?”

  “She did,” Prisha says. “She has so much energy.”

  A rumble rocks the studio apartment, the sounds of ocean waves coming from the window. In the living area, water leaks from the balcony door and gathers in a pool soaking the rug.

  Anil’s voice softens. “I have to confess something.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t like the name Samira.”

  “Why? It was your mother’s name.”

  He sighs. “It brings back memories of the Flood. It’s too painful for me.”

  Prisha turns away. “We can’t agree on a baby name. It’s so frustrating.”

  “It’s my fault.” Anil places his ear on his wife’s belly. “Baby, what are you doing in there?” He feels a movement and hears his wife’s stomach rumble. “You’re hungry, Prisha.”

  She shakes her head. “I’m fine. I can wait until Ration 2.”

  “I have a surprise for you.” He stands and walks to a canister lying where a refrigerator once stood. Storage boxes sit in the kitchen sink. He pours water from the container and reaches in a cupboard for a plate of food, then darts back to the bed. “Here you go. Just for you!”

  Prisha seems wary. “Where did you get this?”

  “Just eat it.”

  She grabs a fork and tastes an artificial corn puree. “Anil, this is your Ration 1. You saved it for me, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe I did.”

  “You have to eat, too.”

  “I wasn’t hungry this morning. And besides, you’re eating for two.”

  Prisha grabs his hand. “We can’t live this, Anil. I have to find work. We need more money.”

  “We’ll be fine. Just be happy that JPL gave you unpaid leave. You’ll go back to work as soon as the baby is born.”

  “I’m not happy that you’re starving yourself for me.”

  “The doctor said you shouldn’t work with your high blood pressure. Don’t worry, I can support us.”

  She points to the soaking rug. “What about that?”

  Anil takes a towel and wipes the pool of water streaming from the balcony. He rolls open the curtain and sunlight bathes the room. The vast ocean stretches into the distance, the sea level just a few feet below their second-floor apartment.

  A tidal surge crashes into the building and shakes its foundation. He opens the patio door and hangs the wet towel from a hook. The sounds of splashing waves fill the apartment as seawater drips into the patio. He looks out warily.

  The ocean is rising.

  Panic consumes him.

  We need to leave this apartment.

  “I’m worried,” Prisha says.

  Anil closes the balcony door. “Everything is fine, dear.”

  She throws her hands in the air. “One day we’ll wake up under water!”

  “No, we won’t. We’ll move to another apartment soon.”

  “How can we afford that? The units upstairs are more expensive.”

  She’s right. We won’t survive another rent hike. “We can manage it. I’m waiting for the leasing office to call.”

  “They don’t care about us.”

  “They know what they’re doing. We’ll relocate in the next few weeks.”

  She starts to sob. “What kind of world are we bringing our baby into? She won’t have running water or heat. Education is unaffordable. Life wasn’t this hard when we were kids.”

  “Times are hard, but you can’t live in fear. We have to be positive.”

  “I worry every day.”

  “Why? There’s no point in torturing yourself.”

  Tears flood her eyes. “Life is too hard.”

  He embraces his wife and kisses her. “When times are tough, you fight back. If you do nothing, it only gets worse.”

  “I can’t fight anymore. I’m tired.”

  “I know, babe. It’s my battle for you and our baby. I’ll take care of us. Don’t worry.”

  His stomach growls in hunger.

  How will we survive?

  Panicked, he gets up and grabs his briefcase. “I have work to do.” He sits at a desk and turns on his laptop, an aging device from an earlier time.

  Work is my only distraction.

  The display switches on. He logs onto his portal and opens Project Titan, reviewing an engineering sketch for the reactor prototype. He reruns his previous calculations and confirms the accuracy of the schematics.

  Looking for something to do, he sends an email to his boss. “Fei, I’m just following up on my assignment. Is there anything else I can do? I’m eager to help.”

  Anil stares at his messages, his legs shaking in frustration. He waits for a reply.

  I need more work to do. Can I find a second job?

  A memo arrives from a company administrator. “Beginning this week, Google employees who leave the country will lose access to the work portal. Additionally, changes to our operating system will take effect later in the week. Details to follow.”

  Anil deletes the note and browses the inbox. He notices the CIA correspondence that Austin had forwarded to him four days earlier. “Dr. Sanders, per our earlier conversation, please find the secure data. We need your response within five days. Best, Gareth Allen.”

  Anil turns to his wife. “Prisha, what do you know about Barnard’s Star?”

  “It’s one o
f our nearest stars. I believe it’s a red dwarf. Why do you ask?”

  “Apparently, there’s a radio signal coming from there.”

  Her eyes widen. “You mean from an intelligent species?”

  He shrugs. “I’m not sure. We intercepted an encrypted communication and I hacked it with Foxtail. It turned out to be an old American rock song.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. What are you talking about?”

  He logs onto the JPL portal and live streams the broadcast, which looks like random noise on the laptop screen. He loads a map of the Milky Way. “Take a look. There’s the signal, right in the middle of Barnard’s Star. And look what happens when I decode it.”

  He turns up the volume. “Go, go, Go Johnny Go, Go, Go, Johnny, Go, Go, Go, Johnny B. Goode.” The song plays continuously on a loop.

  Prisha’s eyes narrow. She takes the laptop and logs onto another website. “I wonder if SETI is aware of this.”

  “SETI?”

  “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. They monitor the universe for radio signals like this.” She scans the site for several minutes. “Interesting.”

  “What is it?”

  “They didn’t pick it up because of the encryption. How did you find the signal?”

  “The CIA sent it to us. They couldn’t hack the code.”

  Her jaw drops. “You know what this means? We’re listening to the first message from another race. This is incredible. It’s front-page news!”

  He chuckles. “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Prisha. We don’t know what they’re trying to say.”

  “I have to tell my friends about this. They’ll help us solve it.”

  He frowns and shakes his head. “Absolutely not! You can’t do that. We have to keep it confidential or we’ll be in big trouble. Do you understand? This is the CIA we’re dealing with.”

  “Okay, fine.” She stares at the screen. “What does it mean? Johnny B. Goode?”

  “I don’t know.” He taps his fingers and contemplates. “Is there evidence of life near that star?”

  “Funny, I wrote a paper about Barnard’s in college. Let me load it.” She accesses her cloud. “I found it. Here it is:

  “At 7-12 billion years of age, Barnard’s Star is among the oldest stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, considerably older than our 4.5 billion-year-old sun. Solar flares indicate that it is still active despite its old age. It is the fourth nearest star to our planet…”

  She scans her document looking for useful information. “Barnard’s Star weighs one-tenth the mass of the sun…periodic changes to its brightness indicate it rotates once every 130 days.” She pauses as she reads the next line. “Perturbations in its proper motion suggests that it may be orbited by small terrestrial planets.”

  Anil jolts upright. “Planets?”

  She looks at him and then continues. “In 1973, Alan Bond proposed Project Daedalus, a mission to construct an unmanned interstellar spacecraft to reach the star. Fueled by a nuclear rocket, the craft would reach it in fifty years’ time.”

  Anil rubs his chin. “There must be an advanced species there. And it’s so close to Earth!”

  “They want to tell us something.”

  “But what? Why did they send us an old rock song?”

  “The more important question is how did they get a hold of it? They must have had contact with our civilization in the past.”

  Anil replays the decrypted message. “Go, go, Go Johnny Go, Go, Go, Johnny, Go, Go, Go, Johnny B. Goode.”

  “When was the track made?” she asks.

  He runs a web search and reads the result aloud. “’Johnny B. Goode’ is a 1958 rock-and-roll song written and recorded by Chuck Berry. It was ranked seventh on Rolling Stone’s list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”

  Prisha stares in thought. “Who’s Chuck Berry?”

  Anil runs another query. “Chuck Berry was an American singer, songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. He was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

  “Give me the laptop.” She logs back onto JPL and stares at Barnard’s Star in the space viewer. “Somehow this song from 1958 made its way out into the Milky Way, but how?”

  “Try searching for ‘Johnny B. Goode AND Milky Way.’”

  She queries the terms and her eyes widen when she scans the top search result. “Oh my God, check this out—Chuck Berry Immortalized on Voyager Space Mission.” She opens the article dated March 20, 2017, and her chin drops. “Chuck Berry, the father of rock and roll, passed from this world on Saturday at 90 years old, but thanks to NASA, his music lives on in space. A recording of Chuck Berry’s ‘Johnny B. Goode’ was included on a golden disc sent to space with the Voyager mission.”

  Anil laughs. “You’re kidding me. What’s Voyager?”

  “You don’t remember from grade school? In the 1970s, NASA launched two spacecraft to explore the solar system—Voyager 1 and 2. A couple years after launch, Voyager 1 flew by Jupiter and photographed the Great Red Spot for the first time. It discovered volcanic activity on its moon Io and active geology on Europa. Then it flew by Saturn and discovered the atomic composition of its rings. It detected an atmosphere on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.”

  “It accomplished all of that on its own?”

  “Yes.”

  Anil takes the laptop and runs a search. “In 2013, Voyager 1 left the solar system and entered interstellar space at a velocity of 38,000 miles per hour.” He looks up at her. “That means it’s still flying out there. Where is it now?”

  She nods. “Let’s figure that out. We can determine its location in the galaxy based on its velocity and time of launch.” She opens a calculator and runs the math. “Based on my calculations, Voyager 1 is 30 billion miles from Earth.”

  “And how far is Barnard’s?”

  “Well, it’s six light-years away. Each light year is six trillion miles, which makes it 36 trillion miles from us.”

  Anil leans back. “So Voyager 1 is nowhere near that star?”

  “Nope.”

  They stare at each other for a few minutes, not sure what to do next. Prisha logs back onto JPL and browses dozens of sources, looking for information on Barnard’s Star. She tracks a link to the Keck Telescope on the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii, one of the darkest environments in the world. She scans the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, a cluster of 66 radio telescopes in Chile. A futile hour of searching passes.

  “I give up,” she says to him. “I’m tired. We can work on this later.”

  As she puts away the laptop, Anil grabs her arm. “Wait a minute. Aren’t there transmissions coming from Voyager 1?”

  Her eyes narrow. “Yes. It’s been communicating with Earth since 1977.”

  “What was the last signal?”

  “More importantly, when was the last one?” She searches for the “Deep Space Network” and opens its portal, reading its welcome page aloud. “The DSN is a worldwide network of US spacecraft transmissions that supports NASA’s interplanetary missions.”

  “There’s a website for that?” Anil asks. “What do you see?”

  She logs in with her JPL login. “Look at this. Here’s a list of all American space probes, the last one from 2042. Wow, here’s Voyager 1…”

  Anil leans over and stares. A link takes them to a photograph of Voyager 1 from 1977. He studies the spacecraft’s design—a 12-foot circular radio antenna with tripod legs and gold-plated instruments peeking from its apex. “It looks so basic.”

  “What do you expect? They were primitive back then.”

  “When was its last communication?”

  She clicks on “raw data” and sifts through a list of files. “It looks like the last contact was in 2060, just a routine signal.”

  “That was six years ago!”

  They stare at each other. Prisha runs her fingers through her hair. “So let me get this straight. Voyager 1 is flying through space with a record album containi
ng ‘Johnny B. Goode.’ The last time it communicated with us was six years ago. Now the song is being sent from Barnard’s Star six light-years away?”

  Anil locks eyes with her. “You think there’s a connection?”

  “Maybe someone found Voyager 1.”

  “Intelligent beings?”

  They sit silently.

  Prisha gestures. “There must be an advanced civilization near Barnard’s Star. Are they trying to contact us?”

  “What if six years ago, an extraterrestrial species discovered Voyager 1 and its golden disc. They cast a message to us and it’s taken six years for that signal to arrive here on Earth.”

  “But why?”

  He rubs his temples in frustration. The answers do not arrive. He goes back and streams the live transmission from Barnard’s Star. “Go, go, Go Johnny Go, Go, Go, Johnny, Go, Go, Go, Johnny B. Goode.” The track repeats on a loop every ninety seconds.

  Prisha rubs her belly. “If someone out there discovered the golden disc, why did they pick this song? And why is it repeating?”

  “Maybe it’s an acknowledgment that they found Voyager 1?”

  “That’s a strange thing to send across the galaxy.”

  “You think there’s more to the message?”

  Prisha nods. “Yes. There has to be.”

  Anil’s eyes widen. “Maybe they embedded something in the song?”

  “You think so? How can you prove it?”

  “I have an idea.” He opens an audio analyzer software and loads the radio signal. As “Johnny B. Goode” plays, the sound converts to spikes and waves on the screen.

  Prisha shakes her head. “That looks like random noise. How can you possibly work with that?”

  Anil stares at the data and sees a pattern with each repetition of the track. He hits “record” and saves the waveform as it plays.

  Prisha points. “I wonder how that compares to the actual ‘Johnny B. Goode’?”

  “Good question.” He downloads the original version and loads it into the audio analyzer, converting the music into lines and waves. He places the images of the songs next to each other.

  “They look the same,” she says.

  “By eye they do. Let’s see if the A.I. thinks so.” He runs an analysis. “I can subtract one wave from the other. If they’re identical, the result should be a flat line.” He loads the files into the tool and runs a function. The waves suddenly disappear and three spikes show up on the screen.