by Nick Cook
‘Could it have been a craft with a type of very advanced stealth technology?’ I asked.
‘Even if it was, we would have detected something. Previous verified UFO encounters have been picked up by our radar systems.’
Steve shook his head slowly. ‘God, you lot and your ability to suppress the truth. Conspiracies layered beneath conspiracies, oh what a surprise.’
I rested my hand on his shoulder. ‘We need to take a deep breath here, Steve.’
His eyes caught mine. ‘I know, I know.’
I turned my attention to John. ‘Do you have any theories about how alien code can possibly run on a human-designed computer?’
‘From what I’ve seen so far it seems to have actively altered its code into a binary format to make it compatible.’
Steve’s expression sharpened. ‘That’s seriously impressive, isn’t it?’
‘Very. Certainly nothing that we have ever produced could hope to match what this code has already achieved across multiple non-compatible systems with the level of control that a human hacker could only fantasise about.’
I put my hands on my head. ‘I can’t believe we’re seriously having this conversation about an alien program.’
Steve nodded. ‘Me too.’ He glanced at Graham. ‘Everything I thought I knew is being turned upside down.’
Graham met Steve’s eyes for the first time since this conversation had started. ‘That’s how I felt too, Steve, and I wish I could have told you before, but I couldn’t. And I also realise how difficult this must be for you and Lauren to take on board, but based on my own experience of living with this secret for the last six years it will rapidly become your new reality. And with that level of shift in your world view nothing will be the same for either of you ever again.’
To live with that sort of secret all that time… ‘I can far too easily imagine what that must have been like for you, especially not being allowed to discuss something so incredible with anyone else,’ I said.
Graham nodded. ‘It certainly hasn’t been easy.’
Steve actually gave his friend a small smile and the tension in the room notched down a fraction. ‘I can imagine.’
‘I’m really sorry, my friend,’ Graham replied.
‘I know you are,’ Steve replied.
‘At least this time you don’t have to bear this burden alone,’ I said.
‘That’s very true, so let’s see if we can get to the bottom of what’s going on now,’ Graham replied.
Steve turned to John. ‘OK, if this latest signal wasn’t from this world, but didn’t come from a single source, what explanation have you guys come up with for that? You must have one, right?’
‘There is an extreme possibility that it was the original signal and that particular transmission actually came from a parallel version of Earth,’ John replied.
I gave him a long hard stare. ‘So along with everything else, you’re now trying to tell us that your people believe you have evidence that multiverses exist?’
‘It’s actually been a hypothesis for quite some time to explain where at least some of the UFO craft originate from.’
Steve gave him a slow clap. ‘This night just gets better and better. I’ll need to hang out on conspiracy websites and post some updates after this. Those guys are going to love all this.’
Kiera scowled at him. ‘Please don’t make me regret my decision to fully brief you.’
I crossed my arms. ‘Will you stop with all the implied threats already, Kiera? You’ve just dropped the biggest revelation in history on us, so don’t be surprised if we need a moment to adjust to it.’
‘Sorry if you misunderstood me. It wasn’t an implied threat; it’s a very real and implicit one,’ Kiera replied.
Steve shook his head. ‘Graham, I’m starting to get an insight into what you had to deal with after the original signal.’
‘Exactly that, I’m afraid. And take my word for it, these guys are experts at finding your pressure points.’
I shook my head at Kiera and returned my attention to John. He seemed far more reasonable to deal with than his officious boss. ‘Are you certain that this latest signal is from a nearby parallel world source?’
‘We won’t know until we’ve had more time to analyse it,’ he replied.
Graham raised an eyebrow. ‘Actually there is a very quick way for us to work out if this signal has travelled millions of light years to reach us or not.’
I nodded. ‘We should have thought of this earlier.’
John gave us a puzzled frown. ‘Why, what are you suggesting?’
‘It’s easier if we demonstrate,’ Graham said. He crossed to one of our computers and pulled out the data capture roster for tonight’s session. He clicked on the attached file and turned on the computer’s speaker to press play.
At once the sound of static filled the room and my vision started to dance with spots of light.
‘That’s the sound of this signal?’ Kiera asked.
Steve nodded. ‘And I realise it sounds like random white noise to you, but that’s because the signal is so complex. The difficulty comes in trying to work out if it actually contains anything but random noise. We now know, in this case, that it contains sophisticated code.’
The blurred points of light began to focus in my eyes…
‘Apart from the small clue it swamped your systems and is now compiling itself into some sort of program,’ John said.
Steve snorted. ‘That aside.’
The spots of light converged and formed a series of geometrical symbols that superimposed themselves over my view of the control room. ‘Guys, I’m guessing none of you are seeing anything odd at the moment?’
Everyone looked at me and shook their heads.
‘That’s what I thought. It appears that as I’m listening to the signal, it’s triggering something very specific with my synaesthesia and I can tell it’s not random.’
Kiera stared at me. ‘Why, what are you seeing, Lauren?’
‘A sequence of circles, squares and triangles all pulsing rapidly in front of me.’
‘But how can the signal be triggering your ability so specifically like this?’ Steve asked.
‘A great question – I’ve only ever seen random patterns before. This is almost as if the signal has been written in a way that can utilise my synaesthesia as a means to communicate.’
‘How can that even be remotely possible?’ Kiera asked.
I shrugged. ‘Maybe its creators have a form of synaesthesia themselves and they constructed a language around it.’
‘OK, that’s certainly worth considering,’ Kiera said.
‘Lauren, if you’re right, with your ability we could have the key to deciphering this, if it is a language,’ John said.
A pulse of excitement ran through me. ‘I’m certainly up for that.’
Graham looked at Steve and then me. ‘And have you both noticed the other significant detail about the sound of the signal?’
My eyes widened as I realised what he meant. ‘There’s no whistling noise in the background.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ Steve said, beaming at us.
‘And the significance of this is?’ Kiera asked.
‘If a radio signal is coming from a source such as a pulsar on the other side of the universe, by the time a dish like Lovell captures it, it’s already passed through millions of light years of space in between,’ Graham replied. ‘During that journey, the radio signal would have to pass through gas nebular, hit tiny particulates of matter – general navigation through the detritus of deep space. And as it hits all those little speed bumps, they cause a radio signal to deviate slightly. It’s that deviation, however small, that creates the background whistle that grows exponentially the further away from Earth the signal’s source is.’
‘And with this signal, there’s no whistle, so that confirms it was created by a closer source?’ Kiera asked.
‘That’s what this quick kick-the-tyre
s test would suggest,’ I replied.
John scratched his neck. ‘So it sounds as if we’re already narrowing this down to being another broadcast from a parallel world. However, unlike the original signal, this time the signal seems to have come from multiple sources.’
Instinctively I could feel we were on the right track now and a tingle of excitement was growing in my stomach. ‘So then we come back to what this program was designed to do?’
A chime came from the MI5 computer system.
‘I think we’re about to find out,’ John replied.
The monitor glitched in front of us.
My skin prickled as a single word appeared:
Sentinel.
Steve whooped and punched the air. ‘It looks as if we’ve just received another message from a parallel world.’
Chapter Eight
Could we have really just received a message from a parallel dimension? A prickling sensation ran through me as the enormity of this began to sink in.
So the human race wasn’t alone in the cosmos and we’d just been handed direct evidence of it, even if the aliens were next door in another parallel Earth. And somehow, impossibly, they were able to use my synaesthesia to communicate with us.
Right person, right time, right place, a coincidence – or could Lovell had been targeted because someone with synaesthetic ability worked there? My mind tilted on the edge of a precipice as I glanced to the window, half expecting to see an alien peering at me and nodding. No, that just had to be luck. After all, at least one in two thousand people had synaesthesia. Not that many, but not crazy odds either.
I returned my attention to the signal.
Around us the sound of the static began to rise and fall like the crashing of storm waves upon a shore. The symbols flowing across my vision intensified and every screen in the control room glitched briefly before the same word appeared on each and every one.
Sentinel.
‘How can this be happening, John? I thought you’d locked the code down in our computer using Digital Fortress protocols?’ Kiera asked.
‘It shouldn’t be able to do this, but based on the fact that the code has cut straight through our firewalls like a blowtorch through tinfoil, we may be dealing with some sort of sophisticated computer virus.’
‘Whatever happened to the we come in peace speech?’ Graham said, shaking his head.
‘In that case, initiate phase two of Digital Fortress immediately,’ Kiera said.
John rushed to the network rack and ripped out the Ethernet cables tethering it to our wall sockets. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. ‘All physical connections to the outside world have been severed. The virus is now effectively sandboxed on our system. However, to be on the safe side, I would recommend that until further notice we also cut all contact on MI5 operative mobile communications and with the outside world too, to make sure that we leave no avenues open for this virus to escape this facility.’
Kiera nodded and clapped her hands together. ‘OK, everyone, please hand all your phones over to John until further notice.’
John started walking around the room, gathering up the team’s phones.
‘Can you be sure this thing is really a virus, Kiera?’ I asked.
‘We can’t take the risk that it isn’t and it’s always safer to assume the worst case,’ she replied. ‘If there is hostile intent here, at least they won’t catch us on the back foot.’
I could understand her caution and could even see the sense in it, but I instinctively felt it was the wrong way to handle this situation.
John approached Kiera with a bulging bag of phones. I assumed mine was in there too.
‘I’ll need your mobile, Kiera,’ he said.
‘Of course.’ She handed it over to him.
John closed the bag. ‘I’ll just go outside and grab the phones of our two guys guarding the perimeter.’
Kiera gave him a distracted nod as she gazed intently at me. ‘Are you still seeing those symbols, Lauren?’
‘Yes, and sharper than ever,’ I replied.
‘Then we need to explore your theory that they’re some form of language. For all we know the program may have already given us the we come in peace speech, and we just haven’t been able to understand it yet.’
‘Worryingly you’re almost starting to sound reasonable now,’ Steve said.
‘Aren’t I full of surprises?’ Kiera flashed him the briefest smile but then her normal hard, thin-lipped expression returned. ‘Lauren, maybe the first step is for you to transcribe what you’re seeing and for us to send it off to our cryptologists to decode after John’s had a look.’
‘That makes sense,’ I replied.
I settled myself into a chair and picked up a pad as the shapes continued to dance within my vision. Next to me, I noticed a green light blinking on the webcam clipped to the top of the computer station. In a corner of the large screen a video window showing real-time footage of me appeared.
John appeared in the doorway of the control room and stared across at the video images of me that were now on every screen in here.
‘I thought you cut the connection to the outside world, John?’ Kiera said.
‘I did,’ he replied.
Steve gestured to the webcam. ‘Are you sure? Because it looks as if someone is trying to start a video chat session with Lauren right now.’
‘Could it be Anton from St Petersburg?’ I asked.
John glanced at the network rack and shook his head. ‘As I said, every external connection has been cut. Maybe it’s an internal source somewhere on this facility?’
Kiera’s gaze sharpened on Graham. ‘You have told us about all your staff on site, haven’t you?’
‘Of course I have,’ he replied, as he shot Steve a questioning look.
Steve held up his hands. ‘I promise we’re the only ones who have been on site tonight.’
My own huge image on the big screen stared back at me. ‘This couldn’t be the alien program doing this, could it?’
John scratched his ear. ‘Possibly, but why?’
Steve’s eyes widened. ‘What if it’s another attempt to communicate with us?’
‘How exactly?’ Kiera asked.
‘Try talking to the webcam, Lauren,’ Steve said.
My mouth grew dry as I peered at the webcam. ‘Why are you here?’
The video of me suddenly looped and white dots appeared over my face, marking out the movement of my lips and eyes.
John peered at it. ‘That looks like some form of facial-scanning algorithm—’
An ear-piercing shriek cried out from the speakers, cutting John off and filling the control room. We all clamped our hands over our ears, but as quickly as the sound had roared up it began to soften again to a more comfortable level.
I gazed with a sense of fresh wonder as a green colour started to bleed into the symbols floating before my eyes. Of all the things that I might have expected to enter my mind, it wasn’t an old memory that I hadn’t thought of in years…
It had been in the middle of the night, when an old school friend I’d lost contact with had called me from Australia having tracked me down via a mutual friend on Facebook. As she’d told me about how she’d moved to Melbourne with her boyfriend to work as a graphic designer, I’d been filled with a sense of intense happiness at being reunited with my long-lost friend. The feeling was so powerful it was as if I was reliving it now. Then the static ebbed to silence, the memory faded and the symbols disappeared with it. At once the feeling of happiness vanished from within me.
‘Whoa!’ I said.
‘Did the program just respond to you asking it a direct question?’ Kiera asked as she rubbed her ears.
‘I think so, but not in the way you might think. Just let me try something to confirm it.’ I returned my attention to the webcam. ‘What’s your purpose here?’
Once again, there was a shriek of intense noise, but slightly quieter than last time. The symbols appeared, b
ut this time they were tinted red and a fresh memory flooded through me…
I’d been in Birmingham, walking back from a pub late one night when a guy had started to follow me. Every instinct had told me I was in danger. I’d almost run into an Indian restaurant for safety, but just then the guy had walked on. I’d called a taxi home anyway. At first, I thought I’d just been paranoid, until the next day I’d seen on the news that a similar-looking guy had attacked a woman that same night. I’d then suffered a major guilt trip about not immediately ringing the police to report him.
My heart raced and my palms grew sweaty as the same feeling of dread that I’d experienced that night returned to me.
I swivelled in my seat to face the others. ‘I have no idea how, but the symbols that I’m seeing are also triggering specific memories with very strong emotions attached to them. When I asked why Sentinel was here, it triggered a memory of a reunion with a friend. However, when I asked what his purpose was, a memory of a moment when I’d been in danger surfaced.’
Kiera’s face tensed. ‘So this Sentinel program is here because there is some sort of threat to us? Or is he the threat?’
‘Lauren, why don’t you ask the program directly?’ John said, his eyes sliding towards the door.
I nodded and returned my attention to the webcam. ‘Are you the threat to us?’
The symbols shifted back to green in my synaesthetic vision and once again the memory of my old friend surfaced.
I turned to the others. ‘I’m as certain as I can be that this code isn’t the threat here.’
‘Can you try asking who or what the threat is?’ Steve said.
I peered into the lens. ‘Can you explain what the threat to us is?’ I asked.
The symbols turned purple and a complex formula appeared, hovering before my eyes.
‘Quick, give me a pen,’ I said.
