“Well, you know that little trailer code that UT’s been using kind of like a date stamp ...?”
Again Ken hesitated. Charles found himself growing both a little curious and slightly annoyed. “Spit it out, Ken.”
In response, Ken leaned forward and offered his tablet. “Um, it might be easier, Doctor Foster, if you just take a look at this and, you know, form your own opinion first.”
Charles accepted the tablet and read the information on the screen. A crease formed between his eyebrows as he tried to make sense of it. He thumbed the screen a few times, reading more before saying, “At first glance, Ken, I’d wager our paranormal translator’s made his first mistake since he joined us. This data is contradictory. It doesn’t make sense.”
“That was my first guess, too,” Ken acknowledged. “But take a look at the footnotes back on the first page.” He watched, his eyes gleaming with anticipation, as Charles did so. “Do you see what I’m talking about?”
Charles sat forward in his chair, the tablet gripped with both hands. His heart was beating faster, his face flushing with professional excitement as it hadn’t in a few years. “That’s ... that’s got to be speculation. I mean—”
Ken nodded. “Yeah. But he seems pretty sure, Doctor Foster. And Sam’s never made a mistake yet, you know? With a track record like his— I mean, as near as we can tell, he’s been one-hundred percent across the board.” He shrugged. “So, what do you think?”
Charles remained still for a moment longer, then shoved his chair back and rose to his feet, his eyes never wavering from the tablet as he thumbed the screen forward and back. He couldn’t hide his eager grin as he said, “I think I need to talk to Sam. Right now.”
PCA
When he noticed he was in danger of leaving Ken behind, Charles made a conscious effort to keep his pace cool and even, to keep a stranglehold on his enthusiasm. First and foremost, UT really might be wrong — a first, but stranger things had happened for certain. But he also wanted to maintain a semblance of professional decorum; after receiving hundreds of extraterrestrial signals from dozens of different sources, half of his staff was even more inured to the exhilaration of new data than he was.
But this ... this could be different, very different. If Sam was right ...
Opening the doors to the transcription pool, Charles scanned the room to see who else was present. A couple of the other interns were across the room, hard at work on the new transceiver algorithm UT had suggested and Charles had commissioned. Zeek was smoking a cigarette out on the patio and talking on his cell phone. The others, as Charles had hoped, did not yet appear to be back from lunch — by lucky coincidence, Charles had given them approval to take an extra hour today for Matthew’s birthday.
Until they nailed this down, Charles wanted to keep things as quiet as possible. Just to be sure.
As they approached Sam, Charles steeled himself for what he was likely to see: Sam had his professional-grade headphones on, which meant he was translating a transmission right now, which meant his eyes were going to have that creepy look that Charles found so unnerving.
“Good afternoon, Sam,” he said as he reached his destination, speaking up so that Sam would be able to hear him.
Sam Bassett — who Charles had always thought looked like a fair-skinned, hazel-eyed version of the actor Stanley Tucci — glanced up from his monitor ... but his eyes weren’t “hazel” right now, not while he was using his paranormal ability. When he was working, the hazel of Sam’s irises and the white of his sclera inverted.
Charles bit the inside of his cheek and refused to flinch.
Sam flicked only a brief glance at his boss before closing his white-on-hazel eyes as he removed his headphones. Setting them on the desk beside his keyboard, he opened his eyes to reveal they were once more completely normal — the Universal Translator had closed them, but now they belonged to Sam Bassett.
“Good afternoon, Doctor Foster.” He also nodded to Ken, who nodded back with a big goofy grin. “I’m guessing you’re here about the latest transmission from the Arthians?”
“Yes,” Charles said. “I’m— well, I’m intrigued, to say the least, about the conclusions you’ve drawn.”
Sam smiled. “I’ll bet.”
Charles grabbed a nearby chair and rolled it over to sit alongside Sam’s worktable. Ken stepped over to his own desk and leaned against it, not even pretending to do other work as he watched to see how this was going to play out. “Before I get too excited, why don’t you take me through this from the beginning, step by step. I want to understand how you reached the conclusions you did. Because if you’re right, UT ...”
Sam nodded. “I know,” he agreed, still smiling. “Okay, first let me pull up one of the Arthian transmissions from last month.” He turned back to his computer and searched for the appropriate folder. “I’ve gotten so far behind on their transmissions, I’ve started spot-checking them and making note of their approximate age—”
“From their ‘date stamp,’ correct?”
“Yes, all the Arthian transmissions — except for the one, but I’ll get to that in a minute — have an ending footnote, sort of like an auto-signature at the end of an email. I’ve seen the same thing on a few of the others, like the Daluvanians.”
Charles stifled the urge to rush Sam on the parts he already knew; experience had taught him to let Sam talk things through at his own pace.
“It’s based off the center of the Milky Way,” Sam continued, “spreading outward at a speed-of-light ratio to indicate ... well, the best way to express it verbally escapes me, and I know you guys would prefer a mathematical equation anyway. But still, thank God for my paranormal talent,” he said without an ounce of ego, “because without having their galactic knowledge as reference, I don’t think mankind ever would’ve been able to translate and understand it well enough to use it.”
Charles chuckled. “You should’ve seen what a train wreck our translation efforts were before you joined us, Sam.”
Sam gave a humble bow of his head, then perked up when he found what he was looking for. “Okay, take this transmission for example ...”
Sam clicked his mouse, and a scratchy but audible voice played from his speakers. As always, Charles marveled at how much the language sounded like Russian — not speaking the language himself, if someone had played it for him and told him that it was Russian, he would’ve believed them.
“Based on degradation, bandwidth, background spill, background wash, and the date stamp,” Sam explained, “I’m putting this one just a few weeks after the previous Arthian transmission. There’s still a lot of speculation and circumstantial extrapolation involved, but all of those factors put together suggest that this signal originated approximately two-thousand-seven-hundred light-years from here.”
Charles smiled like a little kid glimpsing his first sight of Santa Claus. “The voice we’re hearing is from twenty-seven-hundred years ago.” My, my ... maybe I haven’t lost that old sense of wonder after all.
“Conventional wisdom and the laws of physics as we understand them dictate that conclusion, yes. But that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
Ken jumped in, commenting, “Radio signals travel at the speed of light in the vacuum of space.”
“Right,” Sam pointed at Ken, “a law of physics that we’ve accepted from the beginning. And because of the shear number of signals we’ve been receiving for five years, we’ve had a lot of other things on our minds, so why question such a basic axiom?”
Charles remained silent, feeling that excitement growing.
“I’ve noted a few discrepancies here and there since I joined SETI, but they were all relatively small, so I figured we’d iron them out at a later date. Take this for instance ...” He scrolled halfway up the page, highlighting another Arthian transmission. “This signal was picked up about six weeks earlier, and yet the computer estimates the point of origin as four light-years further away. But it’s definitely Arthian in ori
gin, so if it had come from the exact same planet or planetary system, we shouldn’t be hearing it for another four years—”
“Which means that the Arthians are spread out over at least four light-years,” Charles jumped in. “Which means they’re capable of interstellar travel.” His eyes widened at the prospect.
“Kick ass!” from Ken.
Sam continued, “But one thing we’ve had to continually do from the very beginning is slow a lot of these signals down, way down. Not all of them — for instance, the very first one that you picked up, Doctor Foster, didn’t need it — but the majority of them have. The key assumption has been that our intergalactic neighbors have been using software and hardware far more advanced than ours, so much faster that it’d be like comparing the processing speed of today’s computers to an Apple IIe from way back when. One of the professors who toured through here last year even argued that this might be why we’d never heard anything prior to the White Flash, that our old equipment and computers were just too slow to understand what they were hearing and that the White Flash was a red herring.”
Charles dismissed that with a wave of his hand, but did not interrupt.
“Then ...” Sam paused for emphasis. “... we received another set of transmissions from the Arthians last night, and now I think we might’ve been wrong all along.”
Sam turned back to his computer just long enough to highlight another transmission near the bottom of the list. Ken grinned in expectation of Sam’s getting to the crux of their discovery.
“There were three transmissions, all so close together that the computer assumed they were interrelated. They’re not. I believe the timing was just a coincidence.” He drew a deep breath, then continued, “These transmissions have led me to two conclusions, only one of which I shared with Ken this morning.”
“Dude!” Ken blurted, offended.
Sam offered a crooked smile. “What we talked about was important enough, don’t you think, Ken?” He returned his focus to Charles and leaned in. “I don’t think some of these transmissions we’ve been hearing are nearly as old as we’ve been assuming. I think these people — many of these peoples, but definitely the Arthians — have faster-than-light communication.”
Sam paused to let that sink in.
Charles struggled to remain objective, to remain impartial. “I think Albert Einstein just rolled over in his grave.” Sam chuckled at that, as did Ken. “Nothing travels faster than the speed of light.”
Sam shrugged, and replied, “With respect to Einstein, he didn’t have all the information.”
“Clearly,” Ken jumped in. “But you still haven’t explained that! If they’re using some kind of FTL communication, how the hell are our radio dishes picking it up?”
“Signal spill,” Sam answered. “Hasn’t it bothered either of you how clear these signals are? I mean, sure, we have to clean them up a bit, but some of these transmissions come through clearer than my cell phone does.”
Charles nodded. “Yes, I’ll give you that one. Thousands of light-years — tens of thousands in some cases — and yet ...”
“Right,” Sam stated. “ ‘And yet.’ That’s what I think has been happening, at least over the past five years. Something has changed. If the White Flash could rewrite the DNA of human beings, who says it hasn’t changed the fabric of the universe itself, too? I think this faster-than-light communication of theirs is ‘leaking’ radio transmissions that we are now able to pick up, slow down, and understand. The irony is that if, for whatever reason, they were deliberately trying to keep us out of the galactic loop, they probably have no idea that we can hear them now. If they have FTL communication, why would they bother checking for radio spill?”
Charles straightened. “An interesting theory, Sam. But if your paranormal ability is linguist in nature, I’m not sure how that qualifies—”
Sam flicked a finger at the highlighted line on his screen. “That Arthian transmission originated just eleven-hundred light-years from here.”
“You’re positive, Sam?” Charles demanded. “You’re absolutely, one-hundred percent certain that it is another Arthian transmission?”
Sam nodded. “I’d swear it in any court of law. Even if I didn’t know the language, the different races we’ve picked up all have their own ‘style,’ like the difference in people’s handwriting. That signal is spoken in the Taalu language, and was transmitted using Taalu technology. It’s them, Doctor Foster. It’s a hell of a lot closer than the majority of the others. And the date-stamp puts it at just thirty-seven years newer than the transmission I just played for you earlier.”
Charles finally allowed himself to express the exuberance he’d been holding back. “And if they traveled sixteen-hundred light-years in just thirty-seven years’ time ...”
“Then they must be able to travel faster than the speed of light. Which makes the idea that they might be able to communicate faster than light a much easier pill to swallow, huh?”
“You could say that.”
“Hot damn,” Ken broke in, “Roddenberry called it! But what if they traveled that distance over a long period of time? I mean, if they had generational ships or cryogenic ships or something, they could have traveled the distance at sub-light speeds. Maybe the transmissions are as old as we first calculated, but the Arthians are just, like, really spread out, a big galactic empire.”
Charles shook his head. “No, we’re talking a distance of sixteen-hundred light-years, Ken. The time it would take to cover that distance at sub-light speeds, even if they were able to push close enough to light-speed to use time dilation to their advantage ...” He shook his head again. “No, Sam’s right. They must have faster-than-light travel — whether it’s warp speed, worm holes, jump gates, it really doesn’t matter. And they almost certainly have faster-than-light communication. And that means we’ve been wrong about how old some of these messages are.” He guffawed once. “Jesus, we’re going to have to completely rewrite the software for this. Factor in just how much we have to slow down the transmissions, factor in Sam’s date-stamp, factor in ... it makes my head hurt just thinking about it.
“I’ll call a staff meeting for tomorrow morning. There’s going to be resistance to this, Sam, a lot of resistance. That’s just how these things are. But I want the SETI team here updated on this right away. Then we’ll work our way outward, one step at a time.”
“I understand,” Sam said.
Ken clapped his hands once and spread them wide. “Okay, am I the only one here who’s dying to know about that other conclusion of yours? The one that you kept secret from me. Come on, dude. Give!”
For the first time, Sam showed obvious tension, appearing reluctant to continue. Charles raised an eyebrow.
“Doctor Foster,” Sam lowered his voice, “it might be for the best if we kept this, um ... just between the two of us. For now.”
“Hey!” Ken protested.
Choosing to err on the side of caution, Charles said, “Ken, why don’t you go grab yourself another Red Bull ...”
“But—”
“Ken.”
Downhearted, Ken shot Sam a dirty look as he sulked away.
Charles turned back to Sam. “Okay, UT, you’ve got my attention.”
Sam peered over to where the other interns were working, then rolled his chair a few inches closer to Charles, leaning forward and lowering his voice even further. Intrigued, Charles mirrored him.
“It’s about that third transmission,” Sam said. “The last one that came through with the others.”
“What about it?”
“It appears ... that it originated just seventy light-years from here.”
Charles’ jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, why didn’t you mention this before, in front of Ken? Doesn’t this further your theory?”
“Oh, it does,” Sam agreed, though he still seemed unhappy about it. “Very much so.”
“Then what
’s the problem?”
“Two things. First, I’m not entirely certain about it; neither is the computer. This final transmission is a little different from the others. They’re speaking the Taalu language, and it carries the Taalu ‘handwriting’ I talked about, but between the bandwidth and the date-stamp ... it’s like they were trying to keep quiet, to whisper, so to speak.”
Charles knew all about bandwidths, but ... “What was wrong with the date-stamp?”
“It was sort of abbreviated. Like if someone wrote the date as ‘oh-seven-forty’ instead of ‘July, Nineteen-Forty.’ ” He shrugged. “That’s just an analogy, but ... I think they were trying to broadcast covertly or something. Or hell, maybe it was just, I don’t know, a ship-to-ship transmission instead of planet-to-planet. If I’m right about their not knowing we can hear them ...”
“Okay,” Charles admitted, “that’s a little curious. What’s the other problem?”
Sam glanced at the interns one more time before answering. “The proximity between the Arthian’s usual point of origin and the newer ones ... Doctor Foster, they’re not just generally closer, not just spreading out like the ‘empire’ Ken mentioned. They’re getting directly closer. I mean, I cross-checked it with the astronomy database, to be sure.” He looked Charles straight in the eye. “It’s an almost perfectly straight line, Doctor Foster. That’s why the three messages happened to arrive so close together even though they originated so far apart. And that last one — the close one, the quiet one — specifically mentions a yellow sun. That could be a coincidence, sure, there are a lot of yellow suns out there. But I don’t think so.” He released a tight breath. “Charles, they aren’t just getting closer ... I think they might be coming here.”
All at once, Charles understood why Sam the Universal Translator had kept this to himself at first. This was huge. The Taalu — their “cousins,” the Arthians — might be coming to Earth.
As a member of SETI and a lifelong dreamer, it was the most exciting news he could have possibly imagined.
But as a husband, a father, and a man living in a world that had already gone crazy five years ago with the Paranormal Effect ... it scared him.
Paranormals (Book 2): We Are Not Alone Page 2
