by Ezra E Manes
Is the glow I see coming from my angels?
SIX
WAKE-UP CALL
An encouraging, rhythmic female voice urged Carlos to waken. The prickling sensation of muscle and bone stimulation brought him back to the reality of the rehab process. He felt much better when the stimulation therapy stopped. He knew that medications and nanoagents would continue working to restore his fitness. The unit that had been his bed for over a decade suddenly tilted upright, then adjusted to form a support seat.
He took a deep breath as he came to rest upright and opened his eyes. He felt a rush of adrenaline at the sight of the beautiful, nude woman sitting facing him. She had fair skin, dark-auburn hair, and a curvaceous yet trim figure. He savored the sight of her unclothed and smiled at the way her nipples protruded. He wasn’t the only one who was cold.
Having Gloria in good health and this close was the best thing he could hope for at the conclusion of the waking process. He sequenced open the eye-controlled virtual status panel, and a quick check verified all was well with her. Her recovery process mirrored that of his.
Gloria stirred and opened her eyes. He watched anxiously for any sign of discomfort in her expression. She seemed surprised for a moment to see him, and then smiled weakly.
She slowly mouthed the words, “I love you.”
Those words thrilled him. He mouthed back the same endearing words, trying his best to vocalize them, but couldn’t. It would take longer to recover his voice.
Gloria fidgeted, and he couldn’t help but smile at sight of her disheveled hair. It was significantly longer than normal, and oddly, he found it sensually attractive. But then, just about everything about her was sensually attractive to him right then.
He continued perusing the rest of her body, pausing at the sight of the dark hair at the cleft between her legs. He imagined it would feel silky smooth, like the hair on her head. Maybe it was so stimulating because he had never seen it before. She and all other women he had known at the Messier Colony kept their lower bodies devoid of hair for sanitary reasons or because it was considered stylish. He had done likewise after reaching adulthood.
The sight of her pubic hair and the thought of how it would feel, coupled with her nudity, stimulated some very primitive feelings. Her eyes focused below his waist, and she smiled at the evidence that all his muscles were awake and functioning properly. Then she selfconsciously looked upward, trying to see her own hair.
He could imagine what she was thinking, wondering what her hair looked like after over a decade of inattention. Her smile changed to a frown. He had never met anyone as particular about maintaining her appearance as she was, and especially her hair. Her mind had clearly shifted to another channel from his. Besides, they couldn’t do anything in their current situation. He tried to divert his thoughts to other matters, with limited success.
He coached himself to be patient. He could manually release the binding straps if an emergency required it, but they would disengage automatically as soon as the nanotubes embedded in the hibernation cell padding finished their job. The tubes provided conduits for food supplements, drugs, and injection and recovery of biomedical agents, molecule-sized nanoagents deployed to remove or repair damaged tissue.
At times he couldn’t believe how quickly he and Gloria had come to love one another. Sure, some of it was the imprinting effect of the Ferguson Relationship Bonding Process. But there was something different and special about the relationship that had evolved.
Carlos smiled at another thought. How could two people who had very focused, analytical personalities, and both engineers at that, get along so well? Wasn’t it supposed to be opposites that attracted? Gloria’s background was in engineering design, anchored heavily in the mathematics of advanced energy conversion systems. His background was more in applied engineering, specifically in advanced electromechanical systems.
He tried to scratch a particularly annoying spot on his face but couldn’t because his arms were still bound by safety straps. Having a beard was something new and irritating. It would have to go, and the sooner the better.
He and Gloria were alone in their small compartment, just as the other five partner sets were in theirs, a level of risk reduction against a breach of the hull and any crew compartment caused by space debris. Gloria had her eyes closed and appeared to be sleeping. This was her first time through the process, and she appeared to be handling it well.
He activated the virtual status display to check on the other team members, though he knew they were in good health; otherwise, Eve would have notified him. He started with his good friend George Sayer and his wife, Amanda. He was glad to have George as the propulsion engineer and Amanda responsible for life-support systems.
The status panel indicated all was well with the couple. On impulse, Carlos opened a viewing window into their compartment. He was startled to see them sitting naked, talking to one another, with George in an obvious state of heightened attention. Carlos immediately closed the window and sat flushed with embarrassment. What had he expected? He had seen team members many times with their clothes off, but always in a professional setting. He had just invaded their privacy.
He recovered and proceeded to check out the other couples, but via status indicators only. He checked Laura and Alex Brown next. The internist and her surgeon husband were doing well. He checked on Samuel Osborne and Karen Sarkofsky; the communications officer and the psychologist were also recovering nicely.
The other two couples’ status was normal as expected. Licia Wells, the team exobiologist, and her partner, Jorge Shivaro, the environmental engineer, had integrated well with the others before launch. As had Maxwell Williams, a geologist/archeologist who was also a whiz in robotics, and Sharon Ling, a sociocultural anthropologist.
Carlos closed the status panel, and then tested his voice, which was weak but functional.
“Eve, was that you talking to me earlier, nudging me to wake up?”
“Yes, Commander Sepeda. Welcome back to the conscious state of mind. It is good to have someone to converse with again.”
What was this “welcome back” stuff? When did the Eve unit ever look forward to someone talking to it? The virtual interface unit had never said anything like this to him.
“Was that also you addressing me in the Zilan language, assuring me everything was all right?” He wanted to ask if Eve had communicated directly with him via his embedded neural interface but was reluctant to do so just yet.
“Yes, Commander.”
“Why did you choose that language instead of using Universal English?”
“I thought use of the Zilan language might inject an air of intrigue, stimulating your mind to become active more quickly. Was I wrong to do this?”
“No, and it did stimulate me.” But not half as much as this conversation!
Gloria opened her eyes and had a puzzled expression on her face. She must have heard Eve’s comments, which were surprising coming from a bounded, rule-based interface unit. It was not a “thinking machine” per se. Then why was Eve now referring to itself as “I”?
Could the Eve unit have responded this way of its own initiative, or had Mission Control programmed it remotely while he slept? Had it been Eve singing to him when he first saw the bright light early in the waking process? He wouldn’t ask those questions now, for he wasn’t ready to accept the implications of a possible affirmative answer. He would address them later with George, who understood how the central processor and virtual interface unit worked better than anyone else onboard.
“Eve, where are we in our journey? Are there messages from Mission Control?”
“The New Horizon is almost a year and a half from the planet Zilia,” replied Eve. “There is a wake-up welcoming message from Mission Coordinator Fremont Jones. The Messier mission staff has transferred to the spaceship’s archive memory the important information gleaned by monitoring signals from Zilia over the past decade.
“Messier also provided a
synopsis of significant happenings at the Messier Colony and on Earth. There is also summary information about other extrasolar initiatives, none of which have been very successful.”
“Thank you, Eve. I’ll let you know when to play the message.” He chided himself mentally for thanking the EVECI.
Eve’s comment about Earth’s unsuccessful other extrasolar initiatives did not bode well for the Messier Colony, or the newly discovered civilization on nearby Zilia. Trying to keep up with the influx of immigrants from Earth had sorely challenged the colony. Carlos again felt a wave of concern about how conditions on Earth could influence how they would deal with the newly discovered civilization on Zilia.
However, there were a few things more important than this right now. He looked again at his lovely companion. They would need time to rest, become reacquainted, and satisfy that dull ache in the lower part of his body, and not necessarily in that order.
Some forty hours later, the New Horizon crew assembled to view the video message from Fremont Jones. The message was intriguing and included his usual dry humor.
“Welcome back from the far side. We have received status messages indicating all aboard the New Horizon are in good health, much to our relief, and I am sure to yours. For your information, the Messier Colony, and distant Earth are doing very well.
“The basic mission plan remains unchanged, although we have learned considerably more about Zilia and its inhabitants. In fact, I believe we have learned about all we can without having someone present on the planet. In addition, we’ve learned more about the other intelligent, nonhominid race located out toward the constellation Sagittarius, but nothing specific about their intentions regarding our neighborhood of space.
“First, regarding the distant race, they are indeed on an aggressive expansion program and now occupy a large region of space extending some fifty light-years toward Earth. Their exploration and colonization efforts are far beyond anything possible for humans to achieve in the foreseeable future.”
Carlos recalled that Earth’s moon research station had first detected extraterrestrial signals in the year 2131. This discovery was fortunate, for Earth was facing a global crisis brought on by depletion of natural resources, an extended drought, politico-religious conflicts, and the resulting famine and civil strife that threatened to crumble modern civilization. The detection of another intelligent race in a distant solar system had provided a rallying point for the world community. This had led to launch of expeditions to nearby solar systems, including the Nepali A solar system discovered low in Earth’s southern observable night sky early in the twenty-first century.
“We don’t have any indication these nonhominid extraterrestrials have become aware of us, or of the Zilan civilization, but I’m sure they have,” Fremont continued. “Moreover, we haven’t done anything intentional to let them know we are aware of them. They’re clearly a future threat to us but don’t spend much time worrying about that; those on Earth are worrying enough for all of us. Their having characteristics of both animal and plant life has kept Earth’s scientists scratching their heads trying to make sense of it. The combination seems impossible, but hey, who said we had a lock on the way evolution should occur everywhere in the universe?”
A near-term threat might not be apparent, thought Carlos. But concern about encroachment into space close to Earth by these extraterrestrials was a major factor in selecting destinations for the first two extrasolar colonization expeditions.
“More importantly,” continued Fremont, “regarding the nearby Zilan civilization, it’s much more advanced in many areas than we had originally thought, and more backward in other areas than we expected. As you would expect in a utopian-like society, they’re not consumer focused. They have a communal society focused on the welfare of all in that society. They appear to hold all property in common community ownership and employ a system of credits based on level of community service to access goods and services.
“You probably know this, but it bears repeating. They don’t know what war is, although they have had some political conflict among the large governing regions in their inhabited areas. They’re strongly religious and don’t believe in separation of church and state, as we have practiced for centuries. They have somehow made this work for well over a millennium, probably because there is only one major religion.
“I’ll mention a few examples of where the Zilans have and have not advanced, and then direct your attention to the more detailed information stored in your archives.”
The ensuing summary revealed that the Zilans had developed advanced photonics technology centuries before Earth did. They applied this technology in global electro-optic networks, which supported all levels of communication in government and personal messaging. This was likely a major factor in Earth and the Messier Colony not detecting their civilization earlier. The Zilans had gone through an extended period during which almost all messaging was over the networks; the use of radiated energy techniques in communications was minimal.
Their laser and other directed energy technologies were quite advanced, which was of high interest to those doing weapons research on Earth. It was doubtful the Zilans had ever thought of this technology from a weapons perspective. The photonics technology also produced very-high-speed computing devices that were impressive.
The subject of weapons research disturbed Carlos, and it bothered others of the team as well. He had not seen civil conflict firsthand, but he knew it still occurred on Earth. Because he was of the first generation born in another solar system, the concept of war was alien to him, just a distant problem that had occurred on the planet of origin. The thought of facing an enemy in space was something he had never seriously considered.
Another surprising point was that the Zilans were backward in developing medical practices. They practiced a holistic approach to treatment, one clearly tied to their strong religious beliefs. They believed in treating the entire body, mind, and spirit to achieve a healthy, whole person that could best ward off any disease. They administered drugs and performed limited invasive operations, but only as a last resort. They sanctified their personal temples, their bodies, and abhorred invasive techniques. In spite of this, their population appeared to be in excellent health, with individual life spans on average somewhat longer than those in Earth’s civilization.
So, who really had the backward medical practices? Carlos mused.
“One last thing about their society,” Fremont continued. “Advanced learning is a respected art on Zilia, and they revere people who have the aptitude and willingness to devote their lives to learning. They’ve developed advanced mathematics to describe or explain about anything you can think of that has a cause-and-effect relationship. Their mathematics appears to be more advanced than ours and could be of great value in astrophysics and propulsion systems research. They just haven’t applied the math tools as we would.
“But enough of discussing the Zilan civilization. You’ll learn much more from the archive data we’ve provided. Carlos, after a reasonable recovery period, I expect you to provide a summary of how the crew is adapting. I know what the machines are telling us, but I still like to have a person in the loop.”
Fremont concluded by indicating that Earth still wanted to impress the Zilans with how much more advanced Earth’s technology was than theirs. To this end, Earth would make first contact with the Zilans in about four weeks. This contact would be via probes already launched into their system from the New Horizon. Earth’s goal was to elicit an invitation to send a diplomatic mission to Zilia.
They expected eliciting this invitation to take several months after first contact, and then Earth would orchestrate the deception of launching a mission to Zilia. This would give the impression a spaceship from Earth could reach Zilia in about a year, not the twenty-eight years it would take using their fastest ship, or the twelve years it was taking from the Messier Colony. Earth would introduce the New Horizon team at the appropriate time as diplomatic r
epresentatives en route to the Nepali C system, or as the Zilans called it, the Arzét star system.
Carlos felt his anger rise as Fremont again addressed the deception. Nothing but grief would come of such a blatant deception once the Zilans became aware of it. What was Earth’s true motive in doing this? Were they so close to discovering faster-than-light-speed space travel that the deception would be a moot point soon? He doubted that.
Not knowing the answers just fed his aggravation. Nevertheless, he kept an outwardly calm appearance—the team had signed on for the mission knowing about this deception. All they could do if questions came up about when the New Horizon had launched would be to indicate Earth would address any specific questions regarding technological advances in space travel.
The hyperspace communications would enable almost instantaneous communications between Earth and Zilia, which should further impress the Zilans. The only significant delay would be the propagation delay between the orbiting communications probes and Zilia. The crew would monitor communications, and the plan was to transfer liaison responsibility to Carlos when the New Horizon was two to four months out from Zilia.
Carlos knew a more difficult part of the deception for the crew would be to keep secret the existence of the Messier Colony. With twelve people trying to keep the secret, a slip of the tongue by someone was likely. And besides, the Zilans would surely learn about the colony soon enough once initial contact had been made, for they would surely start scanning space for other signal emissions. The Messier Colony had minimized emissions after launch of the mission to Zilia, but he doubted they could enforce this well enough to prevent detection.
“Wow, some of that was pretty heady stuff,” George said as the message ended. “To hear the other extraterrestrials are much closer to us is disturbing.”
“I wouldn’t want all the worries those on Earth have to deal with,” replied Carlos. “We certainly face major challenges at the Messier Colony, but our small society is well prepared to meet them. It’s surprising the colonization expeditions were launched at all, considering the turmoil back on Earth.”
