My express car arrived promptly after dinner, my watch alerting me to its presence. We hugged, and Mario wished me luck for the next morning's meeting. As I approached the car, the door and back swung open. I tossed my bag into the boot and climbed inside.
I'd never used one of these high-speed hire cars before. Inside, it was luxurious with plenty of legroom, a large LED screen for television or work and a small cupboard containing snacks and refrigerated drinks.
Janet had pre-programmed the coordinates for the front door of my London hotel so all I needed to do was belt up and say, 'Go.'
The car pulled smoothly out of the driveway and drove at the autonomous speed limits, braking gently well in advance for bends and to give a comfortable ride.
On more major roads, we were soon travelling at an average seventy. After reaching the A30, which comprised a lot of fenced dual-carriageway, my express car stayed at about one hundred and forty miles per hour, only reducing speed occasionally to allow manual-driven cars, of which there were fewer each year, to make way for it. It was, of course, communicating with all nearby autonomous vehicles to ensure they moved over to let it past.
Surprisingly quickly we joined the M5 motorway near Exeter. The outer motorway lane is exclusively for autonomous vehicles and we accelerated to over two hundred. The suspension and clever acceleration and de-acceleration used on the curves made it a smooth experience. Even road surface problems vanished at this speed, the car's suspension and aerodynamic shape gluing it to the surface even at close to a third of the speed of sound.
In a little under two hours I’d covered the three hundred miles to the capital, and it came sleekly to a halt at the hotel at nine fifty-five pm.
I slept fitfully. Sections of my forthcoming presentation kept running through my mind. I had a nightmare that I'd forgotten my reflexlet and actually got up to check it was in my briefcase. Not a good night at all.
The next morning, I arrived at Number Ten and was greeted by the prime minister's private secretary who took me to a nearby auditorium where I unfolded my reflexlet, plugged a one-centimetre cube processor into it and added the SDXC card which held the images I required.
Checking there was no one in the room, I slipped the thimball onto my finger and practiced changing images, so I knew everything worked and was in the right order.
I hadn't expected to be in such a large hall. I’d thought we'd use one of the meeting rooms in Number Ten itself. This space was in an adjoining building and was a substantial auditorium, a veritable theatre.
I attached a sekuroid to the reflexlet. These ingenious devices would not allow it, or anything plugged into it, to be moved without first giving a verbal warning and secondly, causing a screaming alarm to sound continuously until the movement ceased.
Sekuroids had been incredibly useful in stopping casual theft and housebreaking in Britain in recent years. There was even a mobile version which recognised who was carrying it, thus defeating pickpockets. All modern mobile phones carried one. They had an additional function which tracked your position in relation to the sekuroid which prevented you accidentally leaving anything it was monitoring in a train, café, or other location. It had revolutionised consumer peace of mind and caused an almost complete halt to petty crime.
Outside the auditorium was a lounge area where I’d been told to wait once I’d set up.
A minute or two later, Gerald Aston from ESA walked in.
'Gerald. What a surprise. How lovely to see you,' I said as we feigned cheek kissing.
'Yes, must drop down to Cornwall and see the set-up sometime.'
'Oh, please do. What are you doing here? Thought I was going to be doing this for the Cabinet and some top civil servants.'
'Ah, my job is to keep you company until the meeting is assembled. Come through here. We can get a coffee.'
I followed him into a dining area where we were served our beverages.
'Nice of them to not leave me alone to panic over the presentation,' I said, and laughed nervously. 'Why are you really here? They can't have flown you in just to keep me company.'
'All of us in the know are here, if possible. Over thirty of us from ESA.'
'Really? Thirty, just from ESA! Good God, I thought I was just briefing the cabinet.' I couldn't believe the invitation had gone this far.
'The Science Minister made it pretty clear we should be here. What have you got?'
'Ha-ha. That's for me to know and you to guess at!'
He joined in with my amusement. We’d always got on well during my time on the ISS and it was good to catch up. Gerald had been on ESA duty when Yuri and I realised AD1 was alien, so he’d been the third to know about the discovery.
I was becoming anxious about the size of my audience.
Shortly before ten, the prime minister’s secretary popped his head around the door, 'I'll come and get you shortly, Dame Evelyn. Mr Aston, can you come with me now?'
'I'll catch up with you later if I can,' I told Gerald and sat on my own. This was obviously to be a much larger group than I’d been anticipating and my nervousness was growing with each passing minute.
Fortunately, my wait was only two or three minutes and the parliamentary secretary took me through a different corridor which brought me out onto the stage area. He clipped a throat mike to my collar. A quick check reassured me my equipment hadn't been touched. When I glanced upwards, the size of my audience staggered me. No wonder I needed a microphone.
I was ushered to a stage chair and the private secretary said, 'The Prime Minister will be here momentarily.'
In front of me, a sea of faces. Between one and two hundred intently looking towards me. I gave an acknowledging nod to those I recognised and spotted Yuri in the third row, giving him a tentative wave.
I had had no idea the news of our discovery of AD1 had spread to so many. There was a general hubbub of conversation in the room which died when the Prime Minister came in via the stage entrance and walked over to me. I stood, and he shook my hand.
'Larger group than I expected here, sir,' I said quietly.
He spoke softly, 'Yes, I said you’d convinced me of the importance of doing this properly. I've ensured virtually everyone in the know is present. I told them to drop everything to attend. Now you have the opportunity to put us all in the picture, in the way you suggested. We are also filming it to be sent to the King, President Drake, the European heads of state, President Gorelov and Prime Minister Yamoto as well as others who were unable to attend.'
'Gosh, I'm not sure such a gem of information will help my nerves, sir.' I was now seriously worried about the possibility of screwing up.
'You'll be fine, Evelyn. I wouldn't have let you do this if I hadn't been one hundred per cent certain it was the right thing to do.'
'Thank you, sir,' I said, allowing my heart rate to continue its attempt to slowly come back to normal.
'I intend to say a few words, then introduce you. Ready, Evelyn?'
'I'll do my best,' I said, still with nerves at breaking point.
'And I know your best will be more than fine,' he said quietly as he shook my hand again. He seemed to have a real trust in me. I hoped his confidence in my ability wasn't misplaced.
Mr Clarke turned to face the audience and waited for silence which arrived swiftly. He surprised me by calling me Dame Evelyn during his glowing introduction, the first time I'd been called Dame in public. I was still uncomfortable with my title. He smiled at me, gave a small wave for me to take over, and made his way down the stage steps to take his place among the rest of the Cabinet and the leaders of opposition parties in the front row. Had there ever been such a prestigious audience in British history?
I stood and, determined not to allow nerves to get the better of me, walked slowly to the centre of the stage, cleared my throat, and tapped the collar microphone to switch it on.
'Good morning.' I took a deep breath. 'I thought being blasted into orbit on a So
yuz was scary, but looking at this audience is even more daunting,' I said to break the ice and it pleased me to hear some laughs and chuckles.
After a short introduction, which explained the discovery of AD1 and what we were working on at Goonhilly, I began in the same way I had in my office the previous day by showing the orbital shot of the alien planet.
There were mumbles from the auditorium and I continued my presentation, although cutting some of the theatrics which Tim and I felt were a little too demeaning, especially for this prestigious audience.
When it got to the later stage, I asked for a show of hands of who couldn't stand spiders, then snakes. I was delighted to notice Gerald Aston put his hand up as having a snake phobia. It allowed me to ask him the question I had put to Janet in my office the previous day. It worked like a dream and at the end there was nothing but praise for how I had manipulated the audience to get the positive outcome we all needed.
After thirty minutes of fascinating questions, most of which were unanswerable, I was taken into the Prime Minister's office with the Home Secretary and Minister for Science, and tea was served. They were all so relaxed in this environment and made me feel at home, as if I were among friends rather than the government elite. These were, after all, only people, like me. It was their status which caused the nervous apprehension about being in their company.
About midday, I was offered lunch by the Minister for Science but needed to get back to Goonhilly as there was so much to do. I called an express car.
Autonomous cars had revolutionised travel in the UK. Congestion had almost vanished and, where it was still a problem, it was owing to manual-drive vehicles still requiring traffic lights to control junctions and low speed limits to allow for human beings' less than perfect reaction speeds.
Yes, there had been a few accidents as the technology developed. Yes, there had been isolated cases of cars being hacked, but in mitigation for the odd problems, the road fatalities in the UK had fallen from nearly two thousand in 2020 to four hundred in 2034. Only six of those fatalities were caused by an autonomous vehicle's error.
I was back in my office, after a three-hundred-mile journey in the middle of a weekday in only two hours and fifteen minutes and having drafted and sent several emails en route. The journey would’ve taken over five hours, maybe six or more on congested days twenty years previously and all the stress and worry had been removed from road travel. Even faster journeys were promised when manual-drive vehicles were finally phased out, but there were strong lobbying and anti-robot groups who would have to be assuaged. However, they’d been losing ground rapidly since 2030. The safety record spoke for itself, and those who wanted to drive for fun would likely soon be confined to race tracks.
When I opened my office computer, I found the video file from the auditorium had already arrived. I got Janet to book me a call with Reg in the Cluster for four o'clock and sent him the file, suggesting he drop whatever he and the other scientists were doing to watch it.
I repeated the message to the ISS. Houston was several hours behind us, so they’d be seeing it shortly too.
I then sat quietly and watched it to satisfy myself that I hadn’t made too many mistakes.
No new images had been found but Dr John Sweet and one of his hackers, David Weston, had asked for a meeting. I called them in.
'Good afternoon, Doctor Slater,' said John as he and David entered the room. 'How’d the presentation go?'
'Brilliant, John, thank you. Sit down. What’ve you got for me?'
'David, tell Doctor Slater what you think.'
'Doctor Slater, Jack Morgan and I have now spent a considerable time analysing the data which has come from the cylinders which contain no images and nothing remotely like language. These are the ones with the data which seems to change each time we look at it. We have an explanation,' he said.
'I'm all ears,' I replied.
'We think it’s a mind.'
'Sorry?' I asked.
'A mind. The contents of a brain.'
'Sorry, still not with you. You mean memory?'
'No, not memory. The mind itself. It’s easier if I show you,' he said, waving an SDXC card at me.
'Go on, I'm intrigued,' and I directed him to the 8K screen.
He stood up, an ungainly youth with a shock of uncontrollable hair, ambled to the television, and slid the card into the slot. He put on his thimball and after a few flicks it recognised him as the user.
'This, Doctor Slater, is the pattern of data we get if we try to read a human mind.'
The screen showed a graphic moving from left to right across the screen like a voice print, but more evenly spread.
'Notice how the peaks and troughs are even, and how consistent the vibrations are. They continue without much variance at all. Now watch what happens in about ten seconds.' We waited and watched the image change.
'Notice how the peaks and troughs gradually die down and shorten. There is much less activity, but it is still continuous.'
'Yes.'
'What we've been watching is an awake human mind which then fell asleep. We decided to convert the data from AD1 into graphic and this second sequence is the result.'
Another pattern appeared on the screen, almost identical to the sleeping human brainwaves.
'This,' said David, 'is the data from the cylinders which contain no images or language. It goes on like this for, so far, six petabytes of data.'
'That is six thousand terabytes, Doctor Slater,' interjected John. I nodded.
David continued, 'I think we are seeing one of the creature's sleeping brain functions.'
'But why shouldn't it be simply storage data but of a type we’ve not yet identified?' I asked.
'Doctor Slater, you yourself have said we are a pretty clever group of geek dudes and we think we’re among the best hackers in the world. The fact we can't identify this as any form of computer storage data means it probably isn't computer storage data. When we checked it against brainwave data, it was pretty clear to us that brainwave data is what we’re seeing. We can examine this stuff until we're blue in the face and we’ll never be able to read it in the accepted meaning of the word.'
I sat back and watched the data streaming across my monitor.
'Not only that, and this is crucial,' he continued, 'we had Doctor Naughton send the data from the same cylinder a second and third time, the output always changes. That, in our opinion, means that it cannot possibly be storage. It must be an actual mind and it’s still in the cylinders and still producing activity.'
‘What? It’s still alive?’ I exclaimed.
‘Maybe, but in a coma,’ said David.
'Do you concur, John?' I asked.
'I have carefully examined David and Jack's work and analysis and, yes, I concur with their opinion.'
'Which means?'
‘It means AD1 might still be alive in the cylinders,’ said David.
‘Alive but not conscious?’
‘Still functioning.’
‘So why has it not communicated with us.’
‘Jack reckons it’s so badly damaged that, as David says, it’s in a coma,’ said John.
‘What do we do, then?’ I asked.
'We no longer apply resources to these cylinders and concentrate our work on the others, which do have some chance of being interpreted. In fact, David is fairly sure we are obtaining computer data and programming in the other cylinders and we are confident we will understand it eventually. This data, however, is insoluble,' said John.
'I see.'
'Doctor Slater, permission to speak speculatively?' asked David.
'Please do.'
'I think this is part of one of the alien’s minds. AD1 was meant to present itself to us as one of them, to talk to us and interact with us, but the damage has destroyed its capability permanently.'
'What? Like a robot?'
'No, more like a disembodied alien mind. I suspect
this was one of them. He/she/it couldn't journey for centuries to get to us, nor wait around the hundred million years it has taken for us to evolve, so it put its brain into this egg thing and sent it as an emissary.' He sat quietly while I digested what he had said.
'So, this thing, AD1, is one of the aliens in electronic form?'
'Yes, but damaged beyond repair. In effect, the mind has hibernated and is incapable of waking. All we’re seeing is part of its stored brain capability and some data it brought along with it. It explains why there is no Rosetta Stone for us to discover. We weren’t meant to have to work out the data for ourselves. We were meant to have it explained to us by the alien.'
'I understand.'
There was little more I could do or say. I asked them to spend more time on it and to get Tim to liaise with a brainwave expert for a second opinion on the possibility David's theory was correct.
What worried me was, if this were true, then doors were closing for us. We were likely to be left with an enigma we were incapable of solving. Inwardly, I cursed the meteor which had damaged AD1.
No sooner had John and David left my office than my monitor alerted me to an urgent incoming message from the International Space Station.
'Doctor Slater, Valeria Misalova here. I need to speak to you.' Valeria had arrived with two of the scientists who were currently working in the Cluster. She was now also taking a stint as the ISS station commander.
I flicked my thimball and her face appeared on the screen. It was pale and drawn.
'Valeria, what's up?'
'Evelyn. We've had an explosion in the Cluster. Hans is dead and Göran seriously injured.'
19 Wonderfuel!
'What about Reg and Martin?' I asked, concerned about the other two scientists who might have been in the Cluster during the explosion.
'Both okay. Minor decompression injuries. The explosion was in the laboratory. It killed Hans. Shrapnel pierced the outer wall on the living quarters side of the laboratory and caused the injuries to Göran, Reg, and Martin. Martin was least affected, dealt with the puncture, and pulled Göran into the Scaffy Wagon with Reg's help.
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