He leaned back in his chair to watch her step over the daisies in the garden and amble down the driveway, wondering if he would ever see the ceramic mug she was carrying again. It was the red one. He liked that mug.
Inspired, he changed the green highlights of the presentation to red. Satisfied, he packed up his tablet, placed his dishes in the dishwasher, and rejected the call from the same 818 number calling his phone.
Jane had left the car radio on the national news station, which was currently discussing new images and telemetry from the alien space base. Mark half-listened as they discussed the various theories about why they were here and trying to figure out what noise Jane was talking about. The hosts asked the call-in guest whether this meant the aliens were taking over the solar system and what that meant for first contact. He tried moving the automatic gear selectors to hear if that made any weird noises.
The guest doubted that was the case and speculated they were likely expanding operations. That led the host to ask a series of questions about invasions, takeovers, and terraforming.
Maybe the noise is from the steering? He checked his surroundings, and sped up a little to give some space from the black SUV behind him. You’re a long way from home, he thought, noting the California plates.
Mark seesawed the steering wheel, causing the car to swerve in his lane, but he couldn’t detect any unusual noises. Shrugging, he switched the radio to his playlist, tried to find his mojo for the presentation, and ignored another call from the 818 number.
The black SUV sped past him. Sorry, buddy.
Settling into the rhythm of a particularly inspiring track, he thought about the presentation for his neural interface device. It was the closest thing to telekinesis he could think of. He imagined being able to control giant robots with his mind.
Although inspired by technology being developed by a leading company that was dominating the news and markets with its other developments, Mark knew his take on the concept would be better. The fact that Deshi, a friend who worked at said company, had been able to smuggle out some early designs didn’t hurt either. With the financial backing, his idea could be on the market faster than the other company’s. Besides, his concept just looked nicer. But he might not be the one to choose the colors.
He slammed on the brakes as the SUV came to an abrupt stop in front of him, his tires screeching over any funny noise the car may have been making.
Mark let his tablet float, spinning its lazy circles, as he tried to press the last of his breakfast smoothie out of the tube and into his mouth. What he wouldn’t do for some real eggs, he thought. Outside the window was a lot of nothing against a backdrop of all the stars at once. He had to think of it as looking up into the night sky, lest he be overcome with the falling sensation again.
He didn’t like being in space.
It seemed like a good idea at first. Exciting, he thought. Now he just wanted gravity and real eggs. He was starting to get used to the lavatory.
Mostly.
Regardless, it was too late. Mark was stuck up here intermittently looking into the black void of space and the green and blue ball of home as it passed into view. His term on the station should only be another month, if all went well. He would be able to go home roughly around the time he and his crew worked out the kinks of his Kinetic Neural Interface Tracker and the crew of the still under construction Vanguard was ready to launch from the station. Neither of these things were near completion.
The hope was the KNIT would provide a unique means to make contact with the aliens. As far as anyone knew, no one else had this technology. At least, that was the idea.
He wanted to go home.
Mostly, he missed Jane. He worried about the car and the noise no one but her seemed to think existed. He did not worry about men in large, black SUVs accosting her in the middle of the highway. That was reserved for him, he had been assured.
Mark tapped his tablet, stopping its spin, and checked the time. Jane would be getting off work in a bit, but it would still be a couple of hours before she was home. He would call her then. There was more than enough work to keep him busy and his mind off the hard vacuum just outside.
Satisfied he had gotten the last of the food, he jammed the spent tube into the refuse bag and grabbed his floating tablet. He peeked through the open hatch of his quarters before exiting. He had learned early on to check for traffic. That had been an unfortunate moment. With the coast clear, he floated his way out and kicked off towards the far end of the hall to the lab.
And nearly collided with Lieutenant Avery Smith as he flew out of his cabin. Mark’s tablet sailed into the far wall as he snatched at a handhold. Mark couldn’t tell from his angle, but he was sure Avery would have felt the air whoosh past his face as Mark’s feet were carried by his momentum.
“Whoa, buddy,” Mark said. “Didn’t your mom tell you to check both ways before crossing the street?”
Levering himself back into the same orientation as Avery, Mark finally saw the man’s eyes. They were wide and his face was flushed. Mark didn’t think it had anything to do with nearly taking his nose off.
“Yo, what’s going on?”
“Not sure yet,” Avery said, shaking his head, clearly much surer than he said. “But it looks like the aliens have just launched something big at us.”
Mark stared for a moment. He had heard the words and understood them, but there seemed to be a part of his brain that refused to accept the input.
“What do you mean?” Mark asked, aware of the stupidity of the question.
He just shook his head. “Just come on,” Avery said before launching himself down the adjacent hallway.
Mark swallowed hard, collected his tablet, which appeared no worse for wear after its impact into the wall, then followed Avery to the command module.
It was crowded inside with at least half the station’s crew, including Station Commander Baker, who was speaking.
“Here’s what we know: At 1521 hours, ground control detected a sizable energy burst consistent with the braking propulsion the aliens used upon their arrival. What they’ve just shown us is what appears to be accelerating out of their area.”
She tapped the monitor to show the radio signature and rendering of a large cylinder.
Commander Baker waved down a hand and continued, “Its signature puts it at nine hundred and eighty-seven meters long and early trajectory puts it on a possible collision course with Earth. But we won’t know that for sure for a couple more days; probably a week if we can’t get enough cooperation from other governments.”
Mark ignored the litany of questions and discussion that followed. He was disinterested in the speculation and, in some cases, the dissociation from reality.
Baker’s voice cut through the discord.
“As of this moment, all voice and visual communication is on lockdown until the news is released. All text communication will be held and reviewed before being sent. Not a word of this gets out to the public. Those are the orders.”
Mark left the meeting. He did not care to argue one way or another about the public’s right to know or whether they could divert the thing. It was academic, and they had no say in that. He considered trying to send a coded message to Jane, but knew that would be silly. Anyone reading the message would figure it out before Jane realized there was a message. By then, there might not be a planet to worry about anyway.
He floated to his lab to check on the next iteration of his prototype, hardly paying attention as he floated through the hall and typed out a vague message to Jane.
Hey, love. Miss you lots. Can’t talk tonight. Got roped into some testing with the thing. Will write later when I can. Lots of Love, Mark.
He felt a little gross for the lie, but what else could he do?
The additive manufacturing printer had nearly completed the next iteration of his KNIT. Then he would be able to run some tests. He could have easily done this from the surface and just sent the schematics to the station f
or printing. He’d manage to poach Deshi for his dream team, but they got to work from the surface like normal people. They were making most of the progress from the comfort of gravity and real eggs. The problem was the device was tricky to use and required significant training and calibration. Someone needed to be up here to assemble the crew’s final devices, and that someone was him. Once the shuttle launched itself into the asteroid belt, his work would be done and he could make any further refinements from his couch. For the moment, though, he was the only person on the station who had any luck making the KNIT function in any meaningful way.
He was checking the progress and error logs for anomalies in the print job when he heard the commander swear from at least two compartments over. His was not the only head to peek out a hatch and stare down the hall, then at the other heads peeking out and staring.
“Oh,” a head spoke as it looked back at something in their lab.
“What?” another asked.
“It’s already on the news…”
Mark missed the rest of whatever was said as he ducked back into his lab and called up the newsfeed on his tablet. Extinction Level Event Imminent, the first headline read.
“Well, that’s not super,” he said to no one in particular. He poked his head out into the hall again. “Does that mean the communication ban is lifted?”
It was a couple of days later before Mark was finally able to have a call with Jane.
“The good news is that I think I might be able to get the car to make that noise,” she said. “Also, I am pretty pleased that earth isn’t going to be obliterated by a giant rock.”
It only took a couple days to track the object and realize it was going to sail by harmlessly as it used earth’s gravity to accelerate and redirect it to the sun. The path was clearly meant to slingshot it out of the solar system, back to the alien’s origins. There had been no attempt on a communication ban this time, and it was in the news cycles barely minutes after confirmation of the trajectory.
“Don’t tell me you were out in the car while there was rioting!”
In the wake of imminent doom, more than a few people had lost their collective minds. It had not been one of humanity’s finer moments of stoicism.
She waved a hand in noncommittal ambivalence. “It’s fine,” she said. “No one was going crazy around here. Anyway, when are you coming home?”
That was his best news for the day.
“I think I have convinced the commander that I don’t actually need to be up here to train people how to use the KNIT. If all goes well, I can take the next shuttle down in a month.”
“That’s great,” she said, smiling.
“Okay, my clock is running out, and I have to get back to work,” he said, glancing at his allotted time for the video call. “Miss you like crazy and love you lots.”
She blew him a kiss as they ended the call, the screen reverting to its logo. He sat back and closed his eyes to imagine his home again. He allowed himself only a moment to dream before placing the KNIT on his head and trying to make his small testing robot jump.
Several hours later and not one robot jump, he was interrupted by a knock at his door.
He looked over his shoulder to see the Mission Commander hovering just outside the lab.
“Good morning, Commander Baker,” Mark said, measuring her expression to see if she was serious or stressed today. Today was a stressed day. He tensed a fraction.
“Mark,” she nodded her greeting.
He braced for whatever was coming next. It wasn’t good, whatever it was. Baker’s brow was drawn so tightly, it was nearly touching. He tensed further.
“There’s been a…” she paused, evidently searching for the right word, “development.”
“What does that mean?” He was too tense to replace the air he had used to speak. He felt anxious and lightheaded.
“There’s no easy way to say this.”
His heart launched itself up from his ribcage and lodged itself firmly in his chest.
“Jane?” He had visions of her fiery death as the noise from the car turned out to be a catastrophic engine failure while she was trying to outrun rioters.
“What?” Baker shook her head, confused. “Oh, your wife. No. She’s fine, I assume.”
He breathed a little.
“No, Deshi has gone to the Chinese.”
Mark failed to compute the words in the order Baker had spoken them.
“What?”
“Deshi caught a plane to China yesterday morning. He took a copy of your work with him.”
Well, that was a confusing set of emotions. Deshi, his longtime friend and trusted engineer on the team, had betrayed him.
“We can assume the Chinese will be pouring sizable resources into getting the interface to work,” Baker said.
Mark was starting to feel tingly in the fingertips as the dread started radiating.
“Obviously, we’re going to have to expedite our schedule and launch sooner. Given they don’t have a shuttle ready and in space yet, we can at least get a jump on them.”
He tried to do the math in his fuzzy head.
“How soon are you going to launch?” he asked.
“We are launching in three weeks.”
Try as he might, the math wasn’t connecting. They were just beginning to see the results they were hoping to see, but even at this pace, they wouldn’t get a full connection for at least a month, and he said as much.
“We know,” Baker said.
Mark did not like where this was going.
Only because he had known where to look could he see the small void where no stars shone. Well, at least he imagined he could see that spot. That was where the Platform was. He couldn’t see the trail of drones that were making the round trips from the neighboring asteroids. Nor could he see the asteroids either. It all looked the same.
He liked to pretend he could see the aliens swarming the area in their machines that were doing the work. They weren’t difficult to detect. Apparently, there was no attempt to mask their propulsion heat as they zipped between their chosen rock and the platform that seemed to be processing the material into the large cylinders.
For the past five months, like clockwork, the aliens had been launching their payload of material at the sun. The payload would slingshot out of the solar system and presumably make a trip home. They were expecting another launch six hours from now, and the cylinder would pass within only a couple hundred thousand kilometers from them.
He snatched his tablet from the air and resumed his message to Jane.
“We’ll be in braking range soon. I am told I really should use the limited gravity time to push the exercise more.” He grinned into the camera, “I will be sure to do that.”
He would do whatever he could to not do that.
“I’ve started using my lab time to begin probing the alien’s ships.” He wasn’t sure if that would be censored out. “Nothing yet. We know they’re out there, but we’re not getting any signal from them. Pretty slick, actually.”
He stared blankly at the camera for a minute, thinking.
“What else…” He tapped his chin, “Oh! It looks like Deshi is about six weeks behind us. They’re burning a lot more fuel to get here. I am looking forward to chatting with Deshi when he’s in range. If they let us, of course.”
He had more than enough time to get over the sting of Deshi leaving his team. He probably would have done the same had he been in Deshi’s position. He was aboard the shuttle and about as far from home as any human had ever been.
Mark drifted to the window, thinking about what they were about to fly into. So far, the aliens had ignored everything they had tried, and they had tried everything short of nukes. As far as anyone knew, they were entirely deaf to their ability to communicate. Fermi paradox or not, the ants were making an awful racket.
A beep from the floating tablet reminded him he was still recording. Pushing off the wall, he floated back to the tablet, caught it as h
e passed, and landed on the far wall.
“That’s it for now, my darling. Miss you like crazy.” He signed off and pressed the send button. He spared another moment to wonder how much would be censored. It didn’t seem like it would be worth the effort anymore. There weren’t too many secrets, despite everyone’s efforts. They were visible to everyone looking, and their mission was obvious.
His room’s lights went from pale white to bright orange, and his comms pinged for a ship-wide announcement.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” Commander Baker’s voice was flat through the speakers. “Strap in. Braking maneuver in one-five minutes. Go pee now.”
Mark did exactly that and then strapped himself into his seat. It wasn’t going to be a challenging maneuver, from what he understood. And once the engines had fired and the initial change in momentum was stable, he would be able to go about his business in slightly more gravity than they had now, which was no gravity at all. Strapping in was merely a precaution so no one went sailing into something solid or very fragile.
He stowed his tablet and waited for the engines to burn or whatever. When they finally did, it was little more than a slight pressure pushing him into his seat. However, he forgot to stow some of his clothing in their compartment, and they found their way with alarming speed to his face. He giggled and was glad it was only his underwear that assaulted him.
The lights stayed orange, but he was clear to work from his seat. Placing the KNIT on his head, he connected to his little test robot. As a warm up, Mark launched it through a series of jumps and somersaults. He got a disproportionate amount of pleasure from controlling the small machine and had to be careful to not waste too much time with his remote-controlled toy.
With a sigh, he started working through another set of likely signal ranges, hoping to hear anything from the aliens. He was going through the same set of frequencies others in the crew were using, only with a different interface. It was a bit of an organized shotgun approach.
Space Bound: A Dragon Soul Press Anthology Page 16
