by Rob Mclean
“Why? What’s wrong with them?” Blake asked as he stared at another trio that paraded past. They looked as if they had spent most of the day doing their make-up and hair, but ended up wearing dresses that, judging by the way they clung so tightly to their bodies, were clearly a couple of sizes too small.
“They’re a bit cheap and easy for my liking,” John said. His face screwed up with a frown as though someone had wrung the beer-mat into his glass.
“Well, Mister Hunter, you say that like it’s a bad thing,”
“Depends what you’re looking for.”
“Not looking to marry any of them, if you know what I mean.”
John snorted. “In that case, buy them lots of drinks.”
“Yeah, that’s no good. Don’t have a lot of money.” Blake shrugged.
“Yeah, pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Jarred said.
“The glamazons would have spotted it a mile off,” John said.
“Really?” Blake asked.
“Sure, there’s your T-shirt for a start.”
“Even I could tell that T-shirt was a bad idea,” Jarred said.
“It’s a cool T-shirt, man.” Blake wore a genuinely hurt expression.
“Yeah, around the campus maybe,” John said, shaking his head. “You don’t see any other guys wearing one, do you?”
“Nah, they look as if they spend all their money on clothes and other stuff,” Jarred said.
“That and a bit more,” John agreed. “And if you do blow all your money and manage to get one of them to look twice at you, you end up with a very expensive, high maintenance girlfriend, who’ll probably dump you as soon as someone richer comes along.”
“Man, you sound like you’ve got issues,” Blake said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jarred said, pushing his glasses back along his nose.
“Let’s just say, if you’re thinking long term, you’d be better off looking for a college girl,” John added.
“Yeah, I think he’s right,” Jarred said, “but after exams.”
“Maybe there won’t be an ‘after exams’ you know?” Blake’s shoulders slumped.
“You mean this alien thing?” John waved his hand skywards.
“Of course. It’s the biggest thing…” Blake’s eyes jiggled about and widened, “…ever.”
“Yeah, I wanted to ask someone about this ‘Alien Anomaly’ thing,” John said, “someone who wasn’t a news reporter with a story to sell.”
“Someone smart,” Blake said. “Someone who might know what they’re talking about?”
“But he got us instead,” Jarred said with a grin.
John had always liked Jarred’s sense of humour. Wasn’t too sure about Blake though, but he seemed smart enough. John waved to get the barmaid’s attention and called her over. She was a pert and pretty brunette with her hair up to display big, gold hoop earrings and large, dark, smouldering eyes, heavy with eyeliner and make-up.
“Josie, could you get these boys a beer please?” he pointed at the two geeks. “On me, okay?”
Josie tilted her head and gave him a quizzical look, perplexed by the boss’s unusual behaviour, but shrugged and hurried off to pour the beers anyway.
“Hey, thanks, mister,” Blake said.
John leaned in closer. “Okay, so let’s hear your take on this alien thing.”
John noticed that their whole attitude and posture changed markedly. Before, they had been timid, meek and almost nervous in an unfamiliar nightclub environment. Now, they sat up straighter, puffed out their chests. They were in their element and on a familiar topic.
“It has to be alien. It can’t be man made,” Jarred said. “You know, like a lost satellite or something.”
“Yeah, not that far out in space,” Blake agreed.
“Nor a lost space probe,” Jarred continued, counting out a second finger, “because they’re all accounted for.”
“Even the Pentagon’s black-budgeted ones,” Blake said.
“Don’t go there, man,” Jarred shook his head. “There’s no Pentagon space probes; they can’t afford it.”
“What about the Chinese, or the Russians or someone else?” John asked.
“Well, maybe,” Jarred ventured.
“It can’t be though,’ Blake frowned in disagreement. “It’s heading in the wrong direction.”
“Yeah, he’s right,” Jarred said, then, seeing John’s blank expression, continued. “The energy needed to push a space probe that far out of the gravity well of the Sun is immense. They don’t carry fuel to return; it’s usually a one-way trip outward. For a probe to be heading back in at that speed, you’d have to put in opposing energy in order to have it slow down and then turn around and not to mention giving it a speed that this alien thing has.”
“But wouldn’t the sun’s gravity do that?” John asked.
“Sure,” Blake said, “if it wasn’t going fast enough to escape the solar system in the first place, but then it would be falling towards the sun.”
“When he says falling, he means accelerating,” Jarred explained, “and the alien anomaly was supposed to be at a constant speed.”
“So it couldn’t be a natural object, for the same reason, in that it would also be falling.”
“Right, so it has to be alien,” Blake declared.
It was then that Josie returned with two beers, a Coke and a smile for John.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said John. Then he turned to the geeks, “Now there’s a nice girl for you. She’s studying arts and working here part time.” He added silently, “Unlike most girls around here, she hasn’t hooked up with every second guy.” He gave a tight nod of approval. “You might have seen her around the campus?”
“An arts student?” Blake scoffed, but the others ignored him.
“She’d be fighting the guys off all night, wouldn’t she?” Jarred stared dreamily as she walked away.
“Yes, but not many stay sober enough or are persistent enough for her to take any notice of,” John said. “Besides, any guy she meets here has already dropped a notch in her estimation. You’d be best to say ‘hi’ to her back on campus, assuming, of course, you’re sober then.”
Jarred nodded; he appeared to be mentally taking notes.
“If she’s such a catch, then why don’t you date her?” Blake asked. Beer froth hung from his fleshy upper lip. A turgid tongue swept it away.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea to mix work and play,” John said automatically as he watched her working, “but maybe if one of us moved on…” His thoughts had travelled this path before. He did like Josie. She always had a bright smile for him, but he wondered how many other guys had seen that same smile. She was no different, he told himself. With a sigh, he put the thought out of his mind. He then noticed the geeks were also staring at Josie as she served further down the bar.
“Anyway, back to the alien,” he prompted.
“Okay, so what’s our intellectual capital worth to you?” asked Blake, sensing an opportunity.
A flash of annoyance crossed John’s face before he replied. “Now, here I was being nice to a pair of queue-jumping scruffs like you and buying you a beer as well. You might ask, what’s my hospitality worth to you?”
Blake scowled quietly. Jarred, who knew his brother better, suppressed a grin, but then broke the silence.
“Well, okay, having established that it is definitely alien…” he began, looking hopefully at Blake to get over himself.
“Yeah, alright,” Blake conceded, cradling his beer. “We can also assume it’s not from our system and must be from another star system.”
“Fair enough,” John agreed. “Continue.”
“So, the real question is…,” Jarred paused for effect. John had always hated it when he did that. It made him feel so inferior to his gifted brother, but over the years, he had come to understand that Jarred didn’t do it to make him feel dumb. It was just his was of teaching.
“The real question is,�
� Blake continued, with a scornful look at John, “why is it here?”
“Right.” John decided to ignore Blake’s derision- for the moment.
“Obviously if it wanted to destroy us then it could have done so already,” said Jarred.
“He’s right,” John’s inner voice told him.
“Or it is so confident of its superiority that it doesn’t have to worry about anything we can throw at it,” Blake added.
“But it wouldn’t be signalling to us,” John said, “if it wanted to destroy us.”
“Do you think it was signalling?” asked Blake, with a touch of sarcasm creeping in. He didn’t notice John’s fist tightening.
“Oh, hey! You know what?” Jarred enthused. “I was going to tell you, but I forgot until just now. A friend’s ex-flat mate’s girlfriend has a friend at JPL, and she says that the Dawn space probe didn’t detect any transmission at all from the alien.”
“No way!” Blake’s eyes widened.
“Freakin’ crazy eh?”
“Whoa there, Einstein,” John interrupted. “English please?”
The geeks rolled their eyes in unison and Jarred explained. “There’s this space probe on its way to Ceres, a big asteroid. Naturally, the controllers turned its antennae towards the alien, probably to get a parallax fix on it, because it’s not in line with Earth and the alien thing, but they didn’t get anything.”
“Okay, so?”
“So,” Blake spoke slowly spelling out each word, “it is sending a tight beam to us and only us here on Earth.”
“And why wouldn’t it?” John asked, still a bit lost.
“Because, normally it’s more like a radiant transmission,” Blake said, spreading both of his arms wide.
“Like ripples in a pond,” Jarred added.
“So that confirms it’s not natural, and that it’s definitely intentional and very much directed at us on Earth,” Blake concluded with a swig of his beer.
They sat silently, staring into their drinks.
Around them, the buzz of conversations, punctuated by sporadic outbreaks of laughter competed with the background music and the ever-present sub-sonic, discordant bass throbbing from the dance floor below. If it weren’t for all the extra patrons, John could almost convince himself that it was just an ordinary night. Like the rest of the crowd, he could almost forget that there was a lurking threat to humanity somewhere out in the inky darkness on the edge of the solar system.
“What surprises me is how quickly the media was onto it,” John said. “I mean, it was only a few hours after the Russians discovered it that it was all over the mainstream news.”
“Man, it’s the biggest story ever; they couldn‘t keep a lid on that,” Blake said, defying anyone to disagree.
“It’s ‘cause of the net that the story got out so quick,” Jarred added. “Wouldn’t be surprised to see the Dawn probe thing go mainstream by tomorrow night.”
“So it’s directed at us,” John said trying to get the geeks back on topic. “It obviously wants our attention.”
“I think it’s got it,” Jarred agreed, tilting back his beer.
“Yeah, you’d have to be living in a cave not to have heard about it.” Blake’s eyes follow another curvaceous woman as she sauntered past.
“You would think that it wouldn’t be hostile if it was signalling us,” Jarred said, following Blake’s gaze.
John suddenly remembered something from the thousands of hours of television he had watched as a kid. Something about a tribal people; it might have been the Maori of New Zealand. They had a traditional warrior challenge where their strongest challenged the invaders’ strongest warrior. He ran it by the geeks to see what they thought.
“Yeah, well, they’re aliens,” Jarred, taking another sip. “Who says they’ll think like us?”
But Blake just laughed and declared that Mankind was history if that were the case. “I mean, like, look out you aliens; were gonna launch the Soyuz capsule at ya.”
“Yeah, that’ll scare the crap outta them for sure.” The two geeks laughed like five-year-olds as they mimed the spaceship encounter and the resultant explosions.
“Very funny boys,” John grinned. “I’d hate to see what you’re like after two beers.”
“Hey buddy, buy us another and find out?” Blake put on a cheesy grin.
Jarred smirked, but then his expression changed as an idea hit him. “Oh man! We’re assuming that they’re signalling us, but what if it’s not us they’re trying to reach?”
“Then who?” Blake asked.
“Their own people. You know, other aliens.”
“Where? Here on Earth?”
“Sure man, why not? You know alien abductions, Roswell and all that. Supposing, they have spies living amongst us, sending back information about how best to annihilate us.”
“Yeah, and now they’re telling them to get off the planet before they nuke it, or whatever it is they do.” Blake nodded in agreement.
“Good one,” Jarred said, nodding in appreciation. “I’ll put that on my blog.”
“You seem to be sure that they want to destroy us then,” John looked to both the geeks. Perhaps the crush of people in the nightclub had reached the same conclusions, but by less rigorous, more intuitive methods.
“Destroy is probably not the right word.” Jarred scratched his ginger mop of hair, “More like eliminate, or cleanse.”
“Yeah,” Blake drained his glass. “They wouldn’t want to wreck the Earth, just get rid of us.”
“Just like this short story I read once, ‘The Screw-fly Solution’ by Raccoona Sheldon,” Jarred said, pointing with his beer and spilling some of it in the process. “That was the best ever.”
“Well, they would have to eliminate all life on Earth and start again with their own,” Blake said.
“Why’s that?” asked John.
“Because their biochemistry is bound to be different than ours.”
“Different, as in incompatible?”
“Yeah, their DNA- or what they use for DNA, even supposing they use DNA- is sure to be different than ours,” explained Blake.
“If they are totally alien and not just our fore-fathers…”
“You guys lost me again,” John said. “If you want that second beer, you’ll have to do better.”
“Okay, our genetic makeup is coded in an arrangement of paired molecules called D-N-A…” Blake spoke with condescending slowness.
“I’ve heard of DNA.” John hoped that Blake got himself a practical job, as he’d be a lousy lecturer.
“Yeah, well, there are four molecules that our DNA uses for coding its information as base pairs. These four molecules are used over and over again to make up our DNA…”
“And the DNA of pretty much all life on Earth,” Jarred interjected with a pointed finger.
“Which is pretty strong evidence of evolution.”
“Or a lazy God,” Jarred countered.
“Pretty much, but the thing is that the alien DNA…”
“If it uses DNA,” Jarred put in with a grin.
“Yeah, it might easily have some other ‘alien’ way of transferring genetic information,” Blake agreed, “but even if it uses a DNA type of arrangement, it might use a totally different set of molecules for its base pairs.”
“Or it might use only two base pairs.”
“Or more likely six or eight or even more.”
“Yeah, the amount of information you could code for would increase with more base pairs.” John saw his brother glance at him quickly, presumably to see if he was keeping up with their geeky banter, but he just shrugged.
“But so would the risk of transcription errors,” Blake put his dimpled hand to his chin.
“Yeah, maybe four is the optimum trade off?”
“But an increased mutation rate would increase the speed of evolutionary development,” Blake rubbed his chin, deep in thought.
“And that’s why they’re coming here and not the other
way around,” Jarred stubbed his finger on the bar to emphasize his conclusion.
Blake nodded in agreement. “But it could also be that their home world is closer to the galactic core.”
“Yeah, older sun. More time to evolve.” Jarred saw John’s lost look and went on to explain. “Our planet is only four and a half billion years old. Theirs might be older if their star developed earlier- you know, being closer to the galactic core and forming earlier.”
“They wouldn’t need to be much older than ours to be more advanced than us,” John said.
“We might be younger, but more intelligent and developing quicker.” Jarred said it with the superior tone that John was familiar with. Jarred drained his beer and put it down in front of John. Subtlety wasn’t his strong point.
“And that’s why they would want to destroy us,” Blake said, thinking out aloud in a detached, logical voice. When he saw the others staring at him, he continued. “You know, before we develop faster than light travel and spread out into their galaxy.”
John and Jarred nodded in unison. They were momentarily quiet as that thought played out in their minds.
“Either that,” John broke the meditations, “or their home world is exhausted or polluted and they need another?”
“No way,” Blake waved the comment away like a bad smell. “There must be millions of planets out there amongst the billions of stars. There must be an alternative to taking ours.”
“There probably are…” Jarred agreed reluctantly.
“But these aliens probably eliminate all other intelligent life forms they come across as a matter of foreign policy.” Blake finished his beer and stifled a burp.
“And we have been broadcasting to the universe, shouting out with our television and radio waves for over a century now,” Jarred said, waving his hand about in a vague spiral.
“Like a lost lamb bleating in a forest full of wolves,” Blake slumped in his seat, his despair almost palpable.
“So they must live within a hundred light years of us?” John reasoned.
“Not their home world necessarily, just one of the outposts in their far-flung galactic empire,” Jarred said.
“Yeah, one of their newly conquered worlds,” continued Blake.
“So, you guys can’t see any good coming of this?” asked John.
