Voyager

by Carl Rackman

  “Sure, Helen. Anything.”

  “Brad, this isn’t going to last.”

  Brad had been coming to this perfect place for weeks now, but her words brought the first breath of wind he’d felt here – not a pleasant breeze, but a momentary gust. It felt like an omen.

  His discomfort suddenly increased. The wind came and went, noisily blowing in and out of his hearing like a bellows. There was a raw pain in his throat. An insistent beeping began to distract him. Even though he wanted to hear Helen, her voice became indistinct. A deep anxiety, bordering on fear, began to gnaw at his stomach. Helen’s weight was increasing, making it hard to breathe.

  She smiled and touched his face again. “You know you aren’t really here, don’t you? Neither of us are really here.”

  Brad felt an extraordinary pain run through him. He dared not move. He felt a hot tear drop from his eye and run into his ear as he lay staring at her beautiful face.

  “I can’t leave. I love you, Helen. I want to stay here…”

  “I love you, too, Brad. But you have to go.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again Helen was gone. Instead, the lithe form of Breecker lay pressed up against him, cradling his face in her hands and looking at him with a playful smile. Her weight was unbearable.

  He abruptly felt a crushing pain in his head.

  Breecker began to swirl away from him in a whirlpool of light. Her smiling face and sparkling eyes dwindled to obscurity as a blinding white light drowned out his vision.

  Brad felt he was choking. All he could hear were sirens and alarms. His eyes fluttered open but the otherworldly brightness made him screw them shut again. He was gagging. Suddenly he felt hands on him and a pulling sensation in his throat. Abruptly he could breathe again, but he wanted to cough. He had a stabbing pain in his head but instead, a sharp prick in his arm caught his attention. Urgent voices echoed all around him.

  Gradually the pain and noises faded and he only felt tired. He dreamed of Breecker tenderly caressing the open wound in his head. She kissed him gently as he slipped into the blackness of sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Saturday, 22nd October 2016

  Bethesda Naval Hospital

  Nurse Makayla repeated her routine of opening the curtains and clicking on the TV. The Fox News coverage focused on the presidential campaign hotting up in the final two weeks before the election. Their spotlight was on the candidate whom they’d endorsed throughout the campaign. Their support had been lukewarm at first, but gathered intensity as the other contenders dropped out one by one.

  The other big story was Voyager. Incredible photos from the probe had been leaked to the media in the past week, and the channel’s narrative was that visitors from outer space were surely on their way.

  Brad sat up in bed blinking in the light. His head still pounded, but the medication had taken the edge off. He felt physically weak, but was immensely relieved to find he still had his mind and senses. There was no feeling in the fingertips of his left hand and he couldn’t recall some words – he’d completely blanked the word for ‘pen’ even though he remembered ‘television’, ‘catheter’ and even ‘banana’.

  He no longer dreamed with the intensity he’d encountered during his coma. He remembered a case he’d worked on in the FBI’s Serious Crimes Division. A drug dealer informant in New York took a shotgun blast to the face. He was placed in an induced coma for several weeks while surgeons painstakingly tried to reconstruct his features. More than a month passed before the drugs were withdrawn and the man woke for the first time. He only had twenty-five per cent of his vision, most of his teeth were prosthetic, and there was so much alloy replacement in his face and jaw that he would never be able to walk through airport security unmolested again. But at least the dealer had survived. He’d had to learn to speak again and remained in protective custody for many more weeks before Brad had been able to interview him.

  The strange thing was that the dealer had little recollection of the attack, but in the meantime was convinced he’d made a full recovery and returned with some of his crew to wreak terrible revenge on his assailants. He’d described the rivals’ premises, names and features with uncanny detail, and expressed gleeful satisfaction at their fate. He told Brad and his FBI partner where to find the bodies if they wanted proof. It took several interrogation sessions to fully disabuse him of the idea. It appeared so real to him that only the repeated presentation of his ‘victims’ running around alive and well on surveillance photos finally convinced him otherwise. Brad mused that the mind was an untapped well of human experience. Considering he’d taken a bullet in the head from point blank range, he was feeling pretty good.

  The news he watched wasn’t as good. A media science ‘expert’ – or rather, pseudoscientific crank in a cheap suit – was being patronised by a stunning interviewer with long legs and shiny teeth, the unmistakable Dana Kominsky, a conservative news anchor and national celebrity. They sat in a glossy studio while superimposed graphics of three other interviewees occupied equal slices of the large screen behind. The balding, slightly sweaty man in the studio was eager to please while being visibly overawed by his opposite number.

  Brad immediately thought back to sitting in the car with Diane Breecker on the way back from Newark Airport. He’d also been eager to please the alpha female. He was momentarily confused by the pleasurable feeling it evoked within him.

  “Well, Dana, there is no way the visitors could conceivably miss us. As everyone knows, both Voyagers carried the famous Golden Record aboard—”

  He deferred immediately as she seamlessly interrupted. “The Golden Record – that would be the gold disc containing recorded information from Earth?”

  The screen flicked to a graphic showing the solid gold record and plaque engraved with pictures of human figures, their breasts and genitals pixelated for the benefit of the viewing public.

  “Yes, Dana, and it also contains carefully constructed co-ordinates of Earth’s location. If they were able to manipulate the spacecraft to take the photos and send us a radio signal, it implies they understood the contents of the disc and could interpret the directions correctly. They will have no problem finding us.”

  “Tell us about the hand, Harvey. Is it even possible the visitors could be human?”

  The screen cut to a slow zoom of photographs from the Voyager probe. One showed a bright light silhouetting a humanoid hand. In fact, it was human in every respect.

  Brad was impressed, chilled at the sight.

  The balding man pouted and said, “It’s highly improbable they could have evolved in parallel to humans on Earth. But it does suggest the evolution of human forms represents nature’s shortcut to higher forms of life in biological terms. Given that the universe is made of the same carbon- and hydrogen-based building blocks, it’s not improbable that biological forms would look similar to our own if the evolutionary conditions were also similar. But we must be prepared to accept, even though the visitors may be human-like, they may think and perceive very differently to ourselves. Just because their appendages look similar to our own, it doesn’t mean their entire biology is the same.”

  “Harvey Bridges, thank you. If I may turn now to Professor Martin Weeks…”

  The new interviewee was a solid academic in his mid-forties with salt-and-pepper hair and eager eyes.

  Dana segued to the new focus of her attention. “Professor Weeks, you are Head of Anthropological Studies at MIT…”

  The interview droned on in predictable fashion. The various characters batted ideas around from the rational to the fantastic. There was even a science-fiction writer who specialised in alien invasion stories to cement the parody of balanced reporting the channel pretended to favour.

  Brad was about to turn his attention back to the hovering Nurse Makayla when a new voice caught his attention.

  “I must begin by expressing my complete scepticism regarding the theory the other participants are supporting
, with the possible exception of Professor Weeks—” The voice was interrupted by a clamour of protest from the other panellists.

  Brad saw the caption Ed Turner, Chief Scientist, Voyager Program beneath a serious-looking but much older man in an open-necked Caltech polo shirt.

  “Please – if I may – it is so far nothing but conjecture whether the signals were transmitted from anywhere other than Earth and bounced back from Voyager One.”

  “But NASA has admitted the signals came from Voyager, which is billions of miles away. How could they have originated from Earth?” Dana Kominsky flexed her anchorwoman muscles to bring the discussion back on message. But she was merely adding fuel to the older man’s fire; he was in no mood to back down.

  “Clearly the signal was received from Voyager. But that does not mean it originated in outer space. It is a very simple probe by today’s standards. It would be a relatively easy task for anyone on Earth, with the right equipment, to access Voyager’s telemetry. It takes over seventeen hours for a signal to reach Voyager, and our frequencies, radio and receiver configuration – in fact, everything you’d need to succeed in this – are all available in some detail in the public domain. A third party could have planted that recording during the several month gap between data downlinks—”

  Dana was becoming impatient. The conversation was now too scientific. People would be switching over to ESPN. The news needed more aliens.

  “The images have been analysed by some of the most respected experts in the field. They have all agreed there is no sign of tampering and that the same conditions could not have been accurately replicated on Earth.”

  Turner retaliated. “Were any of those the same experts who said the images we actually shot on the moon were unrealistic?”

  Dana leaned back triumphantly. Turner was officially toast. He’d resorted to NASA’s Big Lie in a vain attempt to disprove the new reality.

  “Thank you, Dr Turner. Harvey, any final thoughts?” she said looking straight at Bridges, the studio crank, giving him the floor.

  The balding man straightened and looked earnestly at the mesmerising presenter. “Well, Dana, the Apollo photos are well proven to be suspect, yet the photos from Voyager are beyond reproach. There is no doubt in the scientific fraternity that these are genuine.” His tone assumed an extra level of smugness under Dana’s encouraging gaze “It would be a gross assumption at this stage to argue the photos are fake or that their origin could be on Earth. It’s just not scientific to state that with certainty.”

  Turner was practically exploding with indignation in his panel screen behind them, but his mic had already been cut.

  Dana turned back to the camera as it zoomed in on her flawless face framed by magnificently coiffed hair glowing under the lights. Her sparkling eyes looked sincerely into the camera. Nobody would have disbelieved a word dropped from her glossy lips.

  “So there you have it – our experts, like most of the experts around the world, agree that the pictures point to an imminent visit from outer space. In the next half-hour, we will ask representatives from both Presidential candidates’ camps their plans for the arrival of these mysterious alien visitors, which may not occur for many years to come. We’ll be back right after this break.”

  Brad was fascinated. This was really happening. Yet he felt unnerved by the news channel’s reluctance to seriously entertain any challenges to their preferred narrative.

  Suddenly, his damaged brain transported him back to the raid in Brooklyn.

  They’re not people.

  His spine almost went into spasm from the electric shot of fear that pulsed down it. It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be.

  Even Nurse Makayla had paused to watch the last exchange. Brad watched her busying herself around his bed.

  He spoke in a raspy voice. He hadn’t used it in the past six weeks. “Do you believe in aliens, Nurse Makayla?”

  “What I believe, Mr Barnes, is you need to eat some more. You damn wastin’ away.” Turning to her service trolley, she retrieved the saline and medication bags still feeding the various tubes in Brad’s arms.

  “Thank you for looking after me, Makayla.”

  She stopped and cocked her head slightly. The TV was still showing adverts in the background.

  “You’re a good nurse, Makayla. Thank you.”

  “You’re a good patient, Mr Barnes.”

  “I want to feed myself today.”

  She looked at him doubtfully. “You just tryin’ to chat me up, huh? I’ll hear what Dr Katie says about that, Mr Barnes.”

  “Please?”

  She smiled, her mouth full of white teeth. “Like I said. But you sure are coming on fast. We’ll see, Mr Barnes.” She left him to the TV.

  Brad thought again about aliens. The broken necks of three agents, and the battered man taped to the floor. Two seconds. That’s what the survivor said. Could normal men do that?

  The chills still tingled over his head and back. He needed to get back to work. It was early days, but he was going to walk out of here. Before Thanksgiving. That was his mental target.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Monday, 9th January 2017

  FBI Field Office, New York City

  SAC Ferguson arrived in his office at Federal Plaza. His Counterintelligence Unit was now the spearhead as the Bureau drove hard to find the culprits of this purported alien hoax, which was being fanned into flames across the nation by the eager but reckless efforts of the media. The official government line said this was very much a terrestrial problem. The machinery of government was focused on tracking and eliminating the source of the original data transmission, even though the trail was months old. Washington needed proof – something it could trumpet around the world to stop the hysteria. Whatever the perpetrators had intended by provoking the ‘Visitormania’, as it was being called, it was succeeding in destabilising a sizeable demographic of America at a critical time of transition.

  Ferguson’s greatest unease was reserved for the new President-Elect. He was alarmingly candid about his beliefs in the coming visitors and threatened further destabilisation of an already uneasy public.

  Ferguson’s main fear was whether the incoming Commander–in-Chief would divert much-needed resources away from searching for the hoaxers in favour of his vain fantasies about becoming the first President to welcome alien visitors. Ferguson was appalled that this was a significant boast of his victory speeches. He brazenly declared he would personally ensure the aliens would ‘do business’ with the United States as leader of the world; he would be the spokesperson for humanity when they arrived.

  Ferguson was looking at a lengthy PDF report from NASA. The scientist, Callie Woolf, had provided amazing background information from the night the pictures first came through. Although the original images were destroyed in a suspicious fire at JPL, the woman was a crucial contributor during the analysis of the British copies she had unwittingly saved. Considering all she had been through, it was quite a feat. The only disquieting aspect was that after weeks of intensive analysis they hadn’t nailed any definitive proof the photos were actually fakes.

  His intercom buzzed.

  “Sir, there’s a Special Agent Barnes here to see you.”

  “Bradley Barnes?”

  There was a brief pause. “Yes, sir. You have a ten o’clock with Agents Berkoff and Savage—”

  “Cancel it. Clear my morning, Dolores. Send Barnes straight in.”

  The door opened haltingly as Barnes struggled inside.

  Ferguson was about to leap from his desk to help, but he saw Barnes’ face set in determination appearing around the door. He still used a crutch to walk, but otherwise he was moving stiffly but independently.

  Barnes slid through the gap and closed the door behind him with a pneumatic sigh. He stood triumphantly in front of Ferguson as though daring him to doubt. He wasn’t even nearly back to his old self, but Ferguson couldn’t fail to be impressed.

  “My God, it’s great to se
e you, Brad!”

  “Good to be back, sir. Am I still working for Counterintelligence?”

  Barnes still had some significant medical hurdles to conquer before he could officially return to the Bureau, but Ferguson was in no mood to deny him.

  “Hell, yes you are, Barnes. Welcome back, son. I wasn’t expecting you for another month.”

  “Sir, I was going to go out of my mind at home. I need to work. Specifically, I need to work on Voyager. I’ve had it with reading reports. I need to move the investigation on. It’ll do me good.”

  Ferguson was torn for a moment. Barnes looked a state and was breathing heavily from the exertion of opening a door. But the kid had balls of brass and deserved a shot.

  “Okay, sit down, Agent Barnes. If you’ve been reading Savage’s reports, I’ll take it you’re up to speed.”

  Brad moved stiffly to the seat in front of Ferguson’s desk and sat down, still breathing heavily.

  “Son, if you need to take a break, you just let me know. This could take a while—”

  Brad looked pained at the suggestion. “Sir, please.”

  Ferguson took the hint. “Okay, Barnes, the big problem right now is the photos. The Roswell nuts are all back in force claiming we’ve always known about it. The public is already fractured down long-strained fault lines. The slightest whiff of government subterfuge could spark nationwide rioting, or worse. We live in a post-truth culture, Brad; it’s not important whether or not something is true – all that matters is whether enough people believe it.

  “We’re at a very fragile point. The slightest thing could spark off the whole powder keg. That’s why so much of the Bureau’s effort is directed into cutting off any attempts by these cyber-attackers to discredit the outgoing Administration and destabilise the public beyond the point of no return.”

  Brad nodded.

  Ferguson noticed Barnes’ hair was growing back pretty well, except over the deep white furrow in his scalp running from his right temple to the crown of his head. “We’ve had a joint FBI and JPL task force working on the images we obtained from the British. Dr Woolf, the woman you rescued from the house in Queens, is assisting.”