by Robert Graf
“How should I know?" Alex asked, in a bewildered tone. “You going to answer?”
“I am Ann.”
“hi ann want to trade”
Trade? She couldn’t think. “Trade what?”
“pictures”
“I can’t send pictures, no graphics,” she said aloud.
“Don’t admit it, stall,” Alex cautioned.
“Pictures of what?”
“ann bye" flashed on the screen, remained for several seconds, then both screens blanked. She stared at the empty screens; was she hallucinating? "Shit, I didn't print it. Did you get everything?"
He nodded, his half-face scrunched in bafflement. "Someone’s messing with our heads."
"It's not NASA." She felt like screaming. What would Isaac say? Another miracle? "It’s not the Vatican, they'll get their EntComs tomorrow. It's as if our messages were intercepted, but the no-cloning theorem proves that's impossible."
Alex laughed. "Impossible doesn't mean much around you." All amusement vanished from his face. "What just happened?"
She tried to wrap her mind around the events, and they kept slipping away. She took the phone, scrolled through the images, tagged everything after “hello”, and copied them to her tablet’s Photo directory. "We just had a conversation," she answered.
He gazed at her, his eye wide in disbelief. "With what?"
OK smartass, got an answer? "Something or someone who has the technology to remotely tap into Clio’s entangled quantum state without collapsing it."
"You're the only person on Earth who could conceivably do it, and you say it's impossible." He paused. "NSA?"
Now there's a possibility, but she rejected it. "They don't talk to anyone, they listen. Though they'd be mighty interested." She feared that interest.
"You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
She snorted. "I nearly pissed my pants. My guess is we spoke with the fact-checker."
"You're losing it, Ann."
"Am I?
"Why doesn't it know what pizza is? That doesn't square with my anchovy versus pepperoni test."
"You’re right. So, we’ve got a fact checker, and now a zchaug, whatever that is." It did want to trade. She felt the same fear and excitement as her initial encounter with fact checking. "Let's repeat your pizza test. I'll record it on the phone and print it." She stood to get a better angle.
"Repeat it exactly?"
"Close as you can." She toggled Reset.
He sat and one-handed resent his earlier missives. “Pepperoni” passed and “anchovy” failed. And much to her disappointment, or relief, no interference from the “zchaug”. She copied the new photos to her tablet and printed the receive screen. "That's all I can take unless you have another idea."
Alex shivered. "God, no." He bumped his cast against the bed frame and winced.
"Still painful?"
"Not enough to pop any more Vicodin.”
“Some wine?”
“Now you’re talking.”
She picked up the printout, and they walked into the kitchen. She glanced out the window; it was full dark. Where had the time gone? While she opened a bottle of Pinot Noir, he grabbed glasses from the dish rack and sat down.
She sat across from him and half-filled each glass. She raised hers. "May we live in interesting times."
He tapped hers with a melodious "ting". "You got your wish."
Ann took a long sip, relishing the warmth as the wine spread through her. "I'm out of my depth. Our little episode freaked me out." She took another sip.
He snorted. "I doubted my sanity. Your Jesuit buddy any help?"
"Isaac? What would he know?” She shook her head. "No, I'm thinking more along the lines of SETI."
He frowned. "What do you want with a couch?"
Was he pulling her leg? "Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. It was big at the beginning of the century, but no results and tight budgets doomed it.”
Alex just stared at her. “You’re suggesting this ‘zchaug’ is ET?”
She pointed to the printout. “What else? It’s not some quantum weirdness. It wanted ‘to trade’.”
“Yeah, your picture for …?”
“I don't know what to do."
"It's not like you to give up."
She flushed, partly from the wine, the rest annoyance. "Damn it, I'm not giving up."
He blinked. "Hey, don't get mad at me. I'm just as spooked as you." He took a large swallow. "What would you tell this SETI? You have this one instance of 'something happening'. No one will believe you."
"Not very convincing, is it? All I really have is the screen shots.” She paused. “And you.”
Was there a SETI successor? Did the government, or the UN, or whoever have a protocol for contact? She found an archived SETI Web page, last updated in 2019. There was a link to: Declaration of Principles Concerning the Conduct of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. She scanned the page.
"Alex, look. SETI sent this to the International Academy of Astronautics." She searched and to her surprise found it. On their website under Study Groups she found Interstellar Message Construction chaired by Jill Tarter. Was she still alive? “I should talk to this Astronautics outfit, but they’ll think I’m one of those UFO wackos."
Alex shook his head. "I think not. You're known in the physics community, so they can't blow you off. NASA thinks highly of you, and the Vatican believes you even though they don't want to." He paused. "And there's the bombings and kidnappings."
She gathered her resolve. "OK, then who?" Go to the top? "What the hell, I'll try Tarter," She linked to the Study Group and opened its “Contact Us” message box.
Subject: She entered 'First Contact'. For Message: she began with a summary of the EntCom's fact checking. She copied the dialog from the screenshots but did not include the photos. She identified Toffler and Morito. Vatican? No, they hadn’t received their EntComs yet. Anyone else? Of course, Alex. She left out all references to the FBI, bombings, and kidnappings.
She turned the tablet toward Alex. "What do you think?"
He read it, then whistled tunelessly.
"What?"
“That’s gonna upset a lot of folk.”
Ann tapped Send.
◆◆◆
Thus ends the first volume of A Window On The Past Trilogy. The second volume, Dilemma, continues Ann Grey’s frustrating quest to understand her incredible discovery. But first she must survive. The intervention of the alien, Zchaug, further complicates her life.
