by Al Macy
The next reporter appeared. “How did you finally find him?”
Marbecka ruffled her feathers. “The creature—he calls himself Jake, by the way—fashioned some large, distinctive patterns in the grass in a meadow. We noticed them in the images from a routine surveying flight. They may have been a religious ritual, but we suspect he was trying to attract our attention.”
“It took you long enough. Why was that?”
Marbecka’s crest popped up then down. “Because of a clerical error for which I take responsibility, we failed to notice the patterns until someone reviewed the older survey films.” Nobody’s perfect.
The next reporter had a gray beak and an obviously artificial wing. “Can you speak to the issue of why he was the only one we could transport here? What I’ve heard does not make sense.”
Marbecka bobbed her head, signaling agreement. “This creature and one other are the only ones who had ventured into deep space—beyond the moon’s orbit. That’s the sole reason we were able to lock onto him.” She brought her right wing forward and held up her hand. “Yes, I know. Having only two space travelers out of the millions that might exist on their planet sounds unreasonable.”
“And the other one?”
“We could not lock onto the other space traveler. It is either deep underground or dead. Also, recall that the track from this other creature suggests it came from outside the star system. We share no ancestors with it.”
“What about—”
“Excuse me. I should mention that, based on Jake’s nest, he brought two other creatures with him. We think he was touching these animals at the time, so they were transported with him.”
“Where are these others?”
“One other, a female, is dead. We found her body in an excavation. The third, also deceased, is of a different species. It may have had a symbiotic relationship with Jake.”
“Could the two Jake creatures have reproduced?”
“We do not know. Please be patient. We have just begun the investigation.”
“What about other universes?” The reporter stretched one wing.
“We have no new information about them.”
While the chief engineer, perched near the paratransitter, fielded questions about the laboratory and the apparatus, Marbecka watched the receding moon. The voices faded away.
They had understood quantum mechanics and the existence of parallel universes for over four million years but had only recently developed the constructs that might allow interaction with one of them. She shifted her wings. The successful paratransit would revive her crumbling reputation. The next steps were critical. Time was running out.
She examined her Ballis-Prize ring again, and her crest popped up when she heard her name spoken.
“Dr. Marbecka, will we be able to use the creature to accomplish our goal?”
She tried to stay calm. Her wings quivered. “I do not know.”
* * *
Soon after the press conference ended, Marbecka’s spacecraft landed on Earth, near the mountaintop lab complex where the alien had been taken. She flew to the medical wing, arriving in time to watch the veterinarians begin on “Jake.” What a strange name. They had assured her they were aware of the risks of anesthetizing such an exotic creature.
Exobiologist Exerb scrubbed in and advised them based on his claws-on examination of the skeleton of the creature’s dead companion.
A full-body hologram of Jake floated next to the operating table. The head surgeon rotated it so that it matched Jake’s orientation and zoomed in on the injured leg. He magnified it further until the display showed the entry point of the arrow.
When the surgeon gestured, the body of the arrow disappeared from the hologram, and the camera’s point of view passed into the virtual tunnel that remained. Sliding along inside the leg, the surgeon examined the damage at each point, noting locations that would need special attention.
The arrow hadn’t hit any bones, nerves, or arteries. The doctors cut the real-world arrow shaft and slid it out while simultaneously sliding in a matching cylinder coated with nanobots. The live, magnified scan showed them swarming into the injured areas and repairing the damage. Some flowed out again, while others remained, acting as stitches, holding tissue together. They would eventually decompose and be absorbed into the leg.
After a thorough full-body investigation and several biopsies, the docs installed an implant deep in his brain. A researcher then ran a standard linguistics scan. Marbecka examined the resulting hologram. Interesting. The areas of his cortex involved with language were similar in location compared with those in celanos, but much less strongly represented. That might be a problem.
After a satisfied grinding of her beak, Marbecka flew across to her own building and joined the party in the multipurpose room, already in full swing.
A clattering cheer greeted her. Her crest popped up although she shouldn’t have been surprised. Jobex handed her the party drug infuser, which recognized her implant and prepared an appropriate dose.
She pushed it away. “No, thanks. I need to be ready in case any emergency with the alien arises.” She shook her head with excitement, and several of her colleagues responded with shakes of their own.
Her communicator’s tone sounded—a call from Polsnar, the flock leader. She fluttered out into the hall and took it. The hologram appeared in front of her.
“Congratulations, Dr. Marbecka, I knew you could do it.” Although his words suggested approval, Marbecka caught the tail flare and the forward posture. Signs of confrontation. He’d been her biggest detractor.
“Thank you, sir. As I told you, we had called off the search, but a technician found an error and went over the old—”
“Yes, yes. That’s no problem. I wish you luck with the language.” The flock leader ended the call.
Back in the conference room, her colleagues were watching the holos showing the first contact with the alien. Their crests bobbed when the gretzers surrounded the alien, pointing their weapons at him. Some smoothed their feathers, making themselves thin with fear, and one flew up to the ceiling. So hard to overcome one’s instinctual fear of predators.
Jobex paused the video. He was feeling his juice. “Six of them! I knew the gretzers were still around.”
Exerb advanced the video to the point at which Jake had first felt the bump behind him. “Watch his actions here. I don’t think he’s ever experienced a force field.” They’d seen it a few times, but it got an especially big laugh, given the drugs and the party atmosphere.
“And look here,” someone said. “Why does he hold his arms up in the air like that?”
Marbecka watched the party from the back row, perched on one leg. I can relax now, right? She had hard work ahead of her, but maybe she’d take a half-dose from the infuser. Wouldn’t that surprise her coworkers?
By the end of the gathering, they were all chanting their new favorite nonsense poem, “Please check around your seat for any personal belongings you may have brought on board with you, and please use caution when opening the overhead bins.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I woke refreshed, sitting in a soft chair. While the chair had obviously been tailored to fit my body, its semi-reclined position made it uncomfortable. Good effort, though, for someone who had never seen a human’s chair.
I took a deep breath and smiled. Was my joy a residual effect of the anesthetic, or was I just giddy at being back in a civilized world? No more mud, grime, mold, dampness, shivering, or general discomfort. Maybe I’d be home soon.
I was still wearing my own clothes. I brought my sleeve to my nose. Totally clean, it smelled fresh, as if dried on a clothesline in the sun. I examined the cuff and rubbed it with my thumb. The rip that had been there was gone, but with no new stitching. The cut edges had been fused together somehow.
Sliding up the cuff of my jeans, I moved my leg around. The arrow was gone and so was the pain. I moved my hand to my ear. It was like new! No more missin
g chunk.
I looked around the room. Everything, floor, walls, my chair, was light blue. A table sat nearby, and four things pointed at me from a variety of angles. From the dark dots at the centers, I guessed cameras. I twisted around. More cameras behind me.
But the world seemed different somehow. Richer, wider, more three-dimensional. Wait a second! I closed my left eye. I could see! I’d been blinded in my right eye on a mission years ago, but now I could see again. Wow, wow, wow! I saluted to one of the cameras. Thank you, dinobirds.
I luxuriated in my recovered visual bounty and looked over at the table. It held twenty to thirty objects: rocks, leaves, pieces of cloth of different colors, plastics of different shapes.
A door dissolved open, and one of the creatures waddled in with a slow, deliberate parrot gait. When I stood, it squawked, ruffled its feathers, and flew back out the door. Literally flew. That little cockatoo head crest thing popped up, too. What a chicken!
I stepped toward the table but bumped into the same kind of force field that had herded me into the aircraft. They were playing it safe. That was reasonable; I was a scary creature. Perhaps it was a barrier against germs, too.
I sat back down and waved at the camera. Ten minutes later, the creature returned, and I made no sudden movements.
Standing by the table, it put its hand on its beak and said, “Marbecka.”
“Hello, Marbecka.”
It was a bit smaller than the other dinobirds I’d seen, with a lighter beak. Apart from that, they all looked the same to me. Perhaps I’d be able to distinguish them at some point. I decided, arbitrarily, to think of this one as a female. Maybe because her name ended with an “a.” Stupid, I know.
She replied, “Hello, Jake.”
Impressive. She knew only two words in English, one being my name, and yet was able to speak them like a native. Someone hearing our interaction would get no clues she hadn’t grown up speaking English.
Wasting no time, she walked to the table, picked up a rock, and held it toward me. She waggled her head, but that meant nothing to me.
I pointed to it. “Rock.”
Her head crest popped up a little, and she picked up a second rock, identical to the first. She held them both out.
I nodded. “Two rocks.” Got it. She was learning English. She now knew the word for “rock,” knew the word for “two,” and understood how to pluralize a noun.
She held the rocks out and said, “Two rocks.”
I nodded my head vigorously. “Yes.”
She put one rock back on the table, held out the other, and said, “Two rocks.”
I shook my head, exaggerating the gesture. “No. Not two rocks. One rock.” I stuck up my fingers one at a time and counted to ten.
“Yes.” She did the same with her fingers, counting with excellent pronunciation and memory. The only imperfection in the pronunciation was that she sounded like a parrot. Like, Rawwk. One, two, three. Polly want a cracker!
I laughed then took some initiative to show her one way to make a question. I pointed to one of my fingers. “Finger.” I held up two fingers. “Two fingers.” Then, I held up three fingers. “Two fingers?” I greatly exaggerated the upward inflection at the end of the question. “No.” I shook my head. “Three fingers … three fingers?” Big inflection. Nodded. “Yes, three fingers.”
Marbecka turned away. Apparently she wanted to do things her way. Hey, I was just trying to help. What a bitch.
As the lesson continued, she learned more words for things. Then she moved on to adjectives—green cloth, red cloth, two green cloths, etc. Verbs were next.
Her left ankle, the one with a rounded box on it, twitched, and a hologram of me appeared. I jerked my head back. Full sized and real as day, it walked across the room, right through the force field. She pointed to it and then looked at me and waggled her head.
“Jake walks,” I said. Head waggle equals human eyebrow raise. I filed that away.
My alter ego flapped its arms and flew around in a circle. Weird and silly, but I got the message.
“Jake flies,” I said.
A second Jake materialized and flew around the room in formation with the first.
I nodded. “Two Jakes fly.”
My effigies landed on the ground and walked.
“Two Jakes walk?” Marbecka used the inflection perfectly. She had evidently paid attention even when I’d misbehaved.
I nodded. “Yes. Two Jakes walk.”
The lesson continued for three more hours, and we made a lot of progress. Well, she made progress. I didn’t learn anything.
Marbecka left, saying, “Hello, Jake.” I didn’t correct her—I was ready for a break. Maybe a sightseeing trip, dinner with the king, that sort of thing. I wanted to ask “What happened?” and “Can you please send me home?” I was pretty sure I could convey those things with a series of drawings.
No. The lesson continued, but now I interacted directly with the computer.
For example, the computer displayed objects or scenarios, and I described them. It had already incorporated the things that Marbecka had learned—the rising inflection for questions, for example.
The lesson turned to written language when the computer displayed: 100% Cotton. MACHINE WASH WARM WITH LIKE COLORS. Ah, the care label on my jeans had survived my time in the wilderness.
After only a few days, Marbecka had learned enough English to instruct me on my next task: creating a video journal of my experience, starting from the moment I had been transported to this universe.
She told me to describe exactly what happened. “Leave nothing out,” she said.
My life depended on obeying her, so I sat in the strange chair and looked directly into the camera.
I cleared my throat. “That morning, with my sleeping wife snuggled against me, I had no idea that in a few short hours, I’d be the only man on Earth.”
* * *
The dinobirds took great pains to keep me comfortable but didn’t permit me to leave the lab. They added a bedroom and a bathroom, with fixtures based on my drawings.
For example, I drew a pretty good picture of me taking a shower, and the next day a shower appeared in the bathroom. But I hadn’t conveyed that the water shouldn’t be ice cold. So, I drew a picture with Earth’s polar ice caps connected by a line to a candle, and they added a temperature control to the shower.
Bottom line: I was comfortable but I was a prisoner.
The lessons continued day after day. After a few weeks, I was going stir crazy.
Marbecka’s command of English was astounding. Pronunciation was perfect, and she never forgot a word. On the other hand, she sounded a bit like the instructions from a cheap Chinese product.
“On this day, Jake, my ambition is to navigate among your enlightenment of recent historical events in your universe. Please recapitulate the visitation of the Cronkite alien.”
“Hold on, Marbecka. I’m impressed with how quickly you’ve picked up English. But you’ve learned it from me, so how come you construct your sentences so differently. Why don’t you talk like me?”
“I mentioned this on an occasion of previousness. Your mode of speaking is in basic conflict with our inborn neural structures. Engage in a trial of speaking your mind backwards, and you may understand. I will work on it, and improve, I will.”
The Chinese-English instructions were sometimes written by Yoda.
I stood and paced then stopped and leaned toward her. Leaning was an aggressive thing with them. I’d have flared my tail if I had one. “Marbecka, I’m going along with your program since you’ve assured me it’s important. But do you understand I need to go home to my wife? Don’t you birds form a bond with your mate as the birds in my world do?”
“It is low in importance.” She rocked back and forth on her perch.
“Your bonds are?”
Her crest popped up. “No, your need is of minimal importance.”
“No, Marbecka, it is not of minimal importance.
” I blew out my cheeks and walked away from her. “You haven’t given me any—”
I heard flapping, whipped around, and she was gone. Typical. I clenched my fists and looked up at the ceiling. “Aargh!”
She always left the room in response to conflict. I would have slammed my fists against the force field, but I was on camera. Being seen as violent wouldn’t help the situation. I needed them to trust me.
She came back into the lab after ten minutes and fluttered to her perch. “Jake, I request you utilize your imagination for this example of hypotheticalness. To save your world, conceptualize that you need to engage in communication with your sharks. You appropriate one and learn its language. If it doesn’t—”
I held up my hands. “Spare me. We’ve been through this many times. I’ll go along, but not for much longer.”
She waggled her head. “Define ‘spare me.’”
“No.” I sighed and crossed my arms. “Okay. Cronkite. Are you ready?”
“Story time.”
“Yeah, story time. Three years ago, every human on our planet sneezed and was then gripped by pain.”
“All seven million of them.”
“Seven billion, not million.” She knew our numbers, but I could not seem to get through to her how many people we had had on our Earth.
“Okay.” She displayed the dinobird skeptical posture—her head turned away.
“All seven billion—with a b—people sneezed. It turned out this was caused by an altruistic drone we call DJ1. It was searching for intelligent beings, and the sneeze was a side effect of its survey beam. Unfortunately, an evil and mentally disturbed alien had followed DJ1 to our solar system. Are you with me?”
“Yes, Jake, I am here.”
“Right. This alien tried to take over our planet for himself.”
“What appearance did he have?” she asked.
“Well, I told you about photoshopping an image. He could photoshop live video. He substituted an image of a famous news anchor, named Walter Cronkite, for his own. So, when he talked to us, we saw Walter Cronkite talking. That’s why we called him Cronkite.”
