Explorations: First Contact

by Isaac Hooke

***

  “As you might imagine, the crew was under a great deal of stress. Two decades of waiting only to find… a black ball in space. It was a frustrating experience, to be sure. And it was taking a toll on everyone. Even me.

  “I spoke to the Captain frequently. In his quarters. In the boardroom. Sometimes on the bridge, if he’d let me. One of my unofficial duties was to gauge the decision-making choices of the senior command. Ensure protocols and procedures were followed. The mission was too important to leave it to humans without the benefit of government and bureaucratic oversight, which we had, albeit in the limited form of Doctor Poitras’ staff and myself. I was tasked with supervision, not intervention. We were a diplomatic mission, after all, and we knew nothing about our target. Nothing other than an apparent massive advantage in technological capability over our own.

  “I began to suspect we were being watched. At best, anyway, I had to assume the Sphere Builders knew we were there.”

  One of the men wearing lab-coats leaned over to another. “Not the builders of the Sphere ship—we don’t think. Why does everything have to be a damned sphere?”

  Pierre continued, “It became clear to me that the crew was becoming erratic. Undisciplined. We noticed it first in the younger men onboard. There was a measured increase in official reprimands and disciplinary action. There was a lack of civility and unprofessionalism that was at complete odds with their training and background. Worse, a statistically significant proportion of it was directed towards the female staff aboard ship. While there were incidents of aggression among the men with each other, the patterns were frequently surrounding domestic issues involving the men’s partners, or one another.

  “Initially, I attributed it to stress manifesting as a form of sexual tension. Highly unprofessional, but I had no other explanation for it. I mean, it’s 2178! This kind of behavior is just not tolerated, especially aboard a Canadian deep space contact vessel.

  “I began a monitoring program and collected data. I have full access to the ship’s systems so it’s a simple matter to correlate behavior with environmental factors, if they exist. After a month of close monitoring, I’d made a terrifying discovery…”

  ***

  Begin VR playback, Crewcab-L12 : 2178-12-24 23:46:07

  “Nakajima carries the puck into the neutral zone. Federovski is coming up the side. Pass by the Ranger winger intercepted by Cochrane! Cochrane skates hard, but Kimmelsohn strips the puck away in front of the net…”

  Kyle Daniels took a swig of his Dark Horse rye as he watched the game unfold around him, the holo rig filling the small room with a virtual hockey rink.

  “Nakajima skates in hard, crushes Cochrane in the corner. Varma joins the scrum and tries to dig the puck out…”

  “Are you watching hockey?”

  Another swig of whiskey. “Does it look like I’m watching hockey, Pierre?”

  “Varma kicks the puck out with his skate and Nedermeier picks it up at the hash marks. Snap pass to Gregor as Cochrane floats back to cover the net. Kimmelsohn sweeps in to get around him. Nakajima drifts back to center as the puck goes back to Nedermeier…”

  “It looks like you’re watching Toronto versus the New York Rangers, May 9th, 2154, if I’m not mistaken. Third game in the first playoff round?”

  Daniels was about to take another swig when he was interrupted by the announcer.

  “… Drills one to center and Cochrane tips it up past Kimmelsohn’s glove!” The crowd erupted around him in the tiny cabin, the seats in Madison Square Gardens, half-filled with visiting blue-and-white-wearing Torontonians, went crazy. “He scores! Nedermeier to Cochrane. What a play! Uh oh, Nakajima didn’t like that. It looks like he and Varma might start something going…”

  “Of course, Toronto gets eliminated in the semifinals that year…”

  “God DAMN it, Pierre!” Daniels threw his glass into the wall in the direction of the voice, shattering it and splashing the contents across the wood and steel cabinets. “Computer, stop playback.”

  The holographic hockey rink vanished and Daniels was returned to the dim lighting of the evening program.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you knew.”

  “Fuck off.” Daniels stood up and grabbed a towel from the pile of laundry on the floor, stalking to the foot of his bed before stooping down to pick up the shards of glass, placing them carefully in the towel.

  “I will get the concierge…”

  “No! Just leave me alone. Goddamnit. Why the hell are you even in here?” Glass tinkling in the towel as brown sticky liquid ran down the wood. “You’re like the worst imaginary friend ever.”

  “I’m sorry. I like to spend time with all the crew.”

  “You’re in here all the time, aren’t you? You’re probably in here when I’m jerking off.”

  A pause. “I do exercise my better judgment, Kyle.”

  “Lieutenant Daniels.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  The room was quiet while Daniels wiped up the rye off the cabinet with a discarded tee-shirt. He opened the drawers and wiped out the insides where the liquid had splashed, mostly missing his underwear and socks.

  “Kyle?”

  An exasperated sigh. “What?”

  “I’m sorry I spoiled the season for you. I thought you knew.”

  Kyle tossed the towel and dirty tee-shirt into the corner to take out with tomorrow’s laundry. “It’s OK. The Leafs always lose.”

  “Kyle?”

  “Yes?”

  “Merry Christmas.”

  ***

  Begin VR playback, Bridge : 2179-02-17 13:31:18

  “We have movement on the surface!” Lt. Daniels turned excitedly in his seat, away from the holo displays showing the scene from his remote, an exuberant smile on his face.

  “Put it on main display, Lieutenant.” Cdr. Edmunds requested, hands behind her back at the railing at the front of the bridge.

  “Aye, ma’am. Putting it up.” Daniels shoved the image onto the big wall display and the starry image outside was replaced with a black wall. “Hang on, switching to IR.” A quick change and the scene shifted. Grey-white dots moving almost imperceptibly against a cold black background.

  The staff on the bridge leaned in, trying to make sense of it. Silence encased the bridge, save for the clicks and beeps of the ship’s instruments.

  “How far are we from whatever this is?” Captain Macdonald stood up and pulled on his moustache. His jacket felt tighter against his shoulders, and he considered getting it resized. He’d been putting on mass in the last month or two.

  Daniels consulted his terminal and brought up a wireframe of the sphere inset into the display, a representation of the Halifax orbiting above. The wireframe spun and zoomed in on the far side, and a new dot appeared above the surface, with a callout reading CP021. “Our probe’s about a million kilometers above the surface. Halifax is about 8 AU out.”

  The crew watched the displays for a moment.

  “Can we get any more detail than that?” Commander Edmunds asked, leaning on the railing, trying to make out anything in the grey soup of infrared. “Anything, Signals?”

  “Nothing yet, ma’am,” Daniels reported.

  “All’s quiet, ma’am.” Bouchard shook her head no, her braided hair falling on her shoulder.

  “Captain Macdonald! We must begin the contact protocol. Now!” Doctor Poitras’ frustration burst out of her. “It’s been nearly six months and now we have evidence of life here. We must begin communications with them before they misinterpret our presence here.” She stood straight, arms stiffly at her sides, face a combination of consternation and sincerity.

  The Captain looked from her to Commander Edmunds, who returned the glance with the briefest of acknowledgements. “Very well. Sub-lieutenant Bouchard, please commence contact protocol. You may sound the horn.”

  “Aye, sir!” Bouchard entered the sequence to commence broadcasting as a horn sounded on deck. Then it sounded again, a long mournful s
ound like a bassoon at sea reverberating throughout the cars.

  “Well, if they didn’t before, they know we’re here now. We just lit ourselves up like a Christmas tree,” Captain Macdonald mused, stroking his beard.

  “Start the clock,” Cdr. Edmunds asked their tactical officer, Lt. Christopher Taggert.

  “The clock is running, ma’am.”

  Doctor Poitras relaxed visibly, while everyone else on deck became more tense.

  The Captain leaned over to his executive officer and spoke quietly. “It’ll be hours before we hear anything, if at all. I’ll be in the boardroom.” Then, more loudly for the bridge, “You have the deck, Commander.”

  Edmunds nodded. “Aye, sir.”

  ***

  Begin VR playback, Boardroom : 2179-02-17 13:42:02

  Captain Macdonald strode to the windows, embedded displays in curved cases giving the illusion of an exterior view as he unbuttoned his jacket. It was constricting his neck and it felt good to loosen it.

  “It’s good that we’ve initiated the contact protocols, sir.”

  The Captain didn’t answer. He took his jacket off and undid his cufflinks as he continued staring out into space. The black sphere 8 AU distant was a small black disc against the starry background. He leaned back on the glass-smooth black oak table and stretched his back, sore from his morning workout.

  “I’m worried about the crew, sir.” Pierre tried again. “Their behavior is unusual. Sometimes erratic.”

  “You’re hardly qualified. Stick to your job. We’ll ask when we need your advice.”

  “It’s affecting you too, sir.” Pierre hesitated. “You’ve gained almost 10 kilos of muscle mass. Your BMI is down 5%.”

  The Captain’s jaw clenched and he felt his neck tightening, so he undid his collar. “I said I’d ask for your opinion when I needed it. I need you monitoring our contact attempt.”

  “I am, I am.”

  Another lengthy pause. The Captain breathed in and relaxed.

  “Don’t you find it odd that there are elevated hormone levels ship-wide? None of the medical or environmental staff are aware of it.” Pierre waited a moment for this to permeate, the disembodied voice equivalent of looking at his feet. “I can see it changing all of you. There have been… incidents.”

  “Pierre, you are dismissed.”

  The boardroom fell quiet. Captain Macdonald stared at his reflection in the curved glass of the window and flexed his pectoral muscles and arms. He was definitely going to need to see the ship’s tailor.

  ***

  “I tried to talk to the Captain about the altered chemical levels onboard on multiple occasions. I’d run analyses on the environmental systems, spoken with the ship’s medical staff. No one was aware or even willing to talk about it. I wondered if the atmosphere on board was a product of the ship’s crew going through some kind of physiological change. Perhaps it was some kind of post-displacement reaction, or the body’s response to countless sub-space tunnelings over two decades.

  “The frequency and amount of sexual intercourse occurring around the ship had increased several hundred percent. Women of child-bearing age were becoming pregnant, sometimes in spite of contraception use. There were disturbing accounts from the younger members of the crew injuring themselves.

  “The only other possibility that occurred to me was that it could be the ship itself. Perhaps it had been programmed to emit human growth hormones at the moment of arrival. I began to question what other hidden agendas may have been programmed into the ship that might begin to take effect at the moment of our arrival around Tabby’s Star.

  “The crew were all taking life-extension drugs and treatments. Perhaps these were beginning to take hold of them? The Captain himself appeared to have dropped almost ten years. Perhaps that was why he wasn’t interested in what I perceived as a potential threat to the ship? The Commander, too. Our most senior officials on board were changing in front of my eyes and they themselves couldn’t see it.

  “For the first time in my mission, I began to doubt the project leaders who had commissioned this mission.

  “Worse, I began to doubt myself.

  “What if I had been complicit in these contingencies and then had my memories removed? What if they had chosen not to tell me this was going to happen because I wouldn’t know how to cope?

  “I began spending more time alone. Running diagnostics and monitoring the crew from a distance. I could no longer relate to them. In private, they were copulating like animals. Primal. Unapproachable.

  “They didn’t want me around.”

  ***

  Begin VR playback, Bridge : 2179-03-02 05:12:01

  The Captain lounged in his seat, one leg over the armrest with the flaking leather, orange pekoe tea in hand on the other. He’d shaved this morning and ran his free hand over his chin and head. They were satisfyingly smooth. He wore a tee shirt and the naval combat trousers instead of his usual navy blues. He was early today. Excited.

  He sipped his tea and looked around the deck of the bridge. “Where is everybody?” he half-joked. Daniels and Bouchard weren’t at their stations yet. Franklin sat at the helm, preoccupied with the morning’s systems checks. Taggert slumped sleepily at tactical.

  Commander Edmunds walked onto the bridge from port, casually acknowledging her Captain with a wave. She’d forgone the usual bun she wore at the back of her head and in its place was a pony tail. The Captain regarded her as she walked smartly past him to her station.

  Daniels jogged onto the deck, disheveled and out of breath. He ran to his station and the junior officer stood up, glad to be relieved. “Sorry I’m late, sir.”

  “No problem, Kyle. Anything to report?” The Captain sipped his tea.

  “Checking.” His subordinate, Cadet Johan Andersen, was still standing beside his station, waiting to be relieved as Daniels noticed the Captain’s choice of beverage. “Hey, why don’t you run and get me one of those. There’s a good lad.”

  Cadet Andersen grumbled and wandered out, passing a flustered Sub-lieutenant Bouchard on her way in.

  “Sorry I’m late, sir.” Her face was flushed.

  “Seems to be a common apology around here, Annick. I suppose I won’t write you up, this time.” The Captain smiled at her over his mug and she turned away, face turning redder.

  As Bouchard took her seat, she noticed spikes and waves on her display – histograms of electro-magnetic activity. “Sir, our EM drone is receiving signal from the ground workers,” she said, referring to the indistinct blobs they’d been monitoring on the surface of the sphere. The crew had begun theorizing they were a work crew performing some kind of maintenance. “It sounds like… bees, sir.”

  “Can we have a listen?” Macdonald finished his tea and put the cup down on his console.

  “Aye, putting it on speakers,” Bouchard announced. The bridge filled with an electro-mechanical buzzing interspersed with rapid-fire clicks. “It’s a weak signal and highly directional. I think our probe’s pointed at one or two of the individuals. We’re only a few kilometers off the surface and haven’t detected anything until now.”

  The buzzing faded from the speakers as the drone flew past the source.

  The Captain looked around the bridge, an idea crystallizing. “Franklin, spin up the displacement engines. Let’s put ourselves right on top of them and take a better look.” The waiting around was getting on his nerves. It had been two weeks since they’d begun observing whoever was down there, without so much as a peep on comms.

  “Sir?” Franklin looked up from his diagnostics. This was an unplanned displacement and they hadn’t worked out the navigational parameters to feed the engines. Worse, the engines had been dormant for six months and it might take a while to spin them up.

  “I want you to drop us fifty thousand klicks off the deck above our targets. That should be a good range to do some proper science.”

  Daniels and Franklin exchanged a glance across the deck, which Commander Edmunds h
appened to notice.

  Edmunds turned to the Captain. “Sir, I think we should think this through. Certainly worth talking it over with our political emissary and chief contact officer.”

  “Nonsense. This is a research vessel under the direction of the Canadian military, of which I am the senior ranking officer. I say we take a closer look.” He returned his attention to the helmsman. “Franklin, do you have the displacement program ready?”

  Franklin was computing furiously, numbers rolling by on his heads-up displays floating around him. He swung the globe surrounding Tabby’s Star about and pulled out a vector from the surface, carefully controlling the perspective in virtual space, then fed the parameters back into the engine. “Got it, sir. Ready.”

  Taggert busied himself accounting for all their probes in space, prepping them to account for a shift in the command and control center that was their ship. “Hold on, please. I need to get all our probes into a safe flight pattern while we jump. Flying over the surface of the Sphere is tricky, and the comms outage from a displacement will leave them without a control signal…”

  “Yes, yes. I don’t need a song and dance from you.” The Captain waved at his tactical officer. “Do what you need to do, but be quick about it.”

  Beads of sweat stood out on Taggert’s forehead as his hands flew over the tactical displays, arranging the whizzing probes into a safe holding pattern above the surface. “Remotes standing by,” he announced with a outrush of air. “Sir.”

  “Commander. You may have the honors.” The Captain waved at Edmunds, retaking his seat and picking up his near-empty mug of tea.

  Edmunds turned to the helm. “Double check your position. We don’t want to land on top of this thing.” She hesitated, then added, “Or inside it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Franklin rechecked his positions on the computer and made a final adjustment. “Got it. Ready.”

  Commander Edmunds turned around for a final go signal and heard The Captain humming “Fifty Mission Cap” by the Tragically Hip and tapping his tea cup. He nodded to her, a slight frown forming on his face, annoyed at the inaction.