Anomaly

by Peter Cawdron

  Cathy's eyes were glazed. Teller reached out and squeezed her hand in support, but there was no response.

  “He had brown eyes,” she said, her head turning slightly to one side with that realization. “Brown hair and brown eyes.”

  She tried to put on a brave face, sitting up slightly and composing herself, but still looking past Teller, looking back in time as she relived those few fatal seconds.

  “He had a bandanna over his nose and mouth, but I could see his eyes. And he was wearing a New York Giants t-shirt. A white one, with a blue football helmet printed on it. My brother has a t-shirt just like that.”

  Cathy sobbed, burying her head in his shoulder. As she did so, she knocked her plastic dinner plate on the ground. Scraps of food and a couple of chicken bones rolled across the rough concrete.

  “Oh, look at what I've done,” she said, being jolted back into the moment. Cathy wiped her eyes and ran her hands through her hair. “I'm so clumsy, so stupid.”

  “Don't worry about it,” said Teller, kneeling down and cleaning it up. He put the plate on the coffee table, saying, “You're not stupid.”

  “I must look a mess,” said Cathy, sniffing.

  Teller smiled. He took her hands in his, but she pulled them away again, much quicker this time. Her eyebrows narrowed as she said, “Eww.”

  “What?” asked Teller, confused.

  Cathy handed him a napkin, saying, “Greasy hands.”

  Teller laughed, wiping his hands. He reached out again, saying, “Is this better?”

  “Yes,” she replied, smiling, and then laughing.

  “Is it wrong?” she asked. “Is it wrong to just go on? I mean, life goes on! To see a life end like that, and then to have a glass of water, or something to eat, to go to sleep, or to watch TV. It just seems weird. You know? It feels wrong.”

  “It wasn't your fault,” said Teller. “You did what you had to.”

  “I know, but knowing that doesn't help.”

  Teller put his hand on her knee.

  “It's OK to feel bad. It means you care.”

  Cathy wiped her nose. “Oh, I hate feeling like this. And look at me, I'm a wreck. Make sure Finch doesn't see me. I don't want to be his next human interest story.”

  Teller looked up. Finch was nowhere to be seen. “I think he's over on the other side, by the mess tent. He's probably getting some coffee or something.”

  Cathy sniffed, trying to gain some composure.

  “I know it's hard,” said Teller. “But try to focus on the positives. Look at the wonderful things around you.”

  She turned her head, taking in the anomaly. The swirling eddies of blue and white formed marble patterns, rising up hundreds of feet above her in a smooth arc, slowly blending into each other.

  “Well. It sure beats covering World Education Week.”

  “Oh,” said Teller. “It's been an education.”

  “Hah,” said Cathy. “Yes, it certainly has.”

  “So what do you make of all this?” asked Teller, waving his hand toward the giant blue sphere towering over them, trying to help her bury the past few minutes.

  “I don't know,” replied Cathy. “I haven't really stopped to think about it too much. The last few days have been a blur.”

  Teller was quiet. He wanted Cathy to talk. It would be good for her to talk about something other than the riot.

  “For me, the anomaly is a curiosity,” she began. “I mean, it's interesting and all, but if I was at home, if I hadn't been caught up in all of this, I'd probably be watching re-runs of Gilligan's Island by now.”

  Teller burst out laughing. It was such an unexpected proposition that he wasn't sure what to say in response. He was overacting a bit, trying to shift her frame of thinking. Her outlook was outrageously different to his, but that was something he loved about Cathy, she never ceased to surprise him.

  “As fascinating and impressive as it is to hear about a super-earth, it only holds my interest for so long, and then I find myself wondering about whether I could go home for a while and catch up on some laundry. I'd love to pick up my iPod and head off to the gym for an hour. Just be normal for a bit.”

  Teller was taken back by the notion. “I'm sure you could,” he said, thinking about it a bit. “We're not prisoners.”

  “Oh,” she said, pushing him playfully, “I know. But you guys take it all so darn seriously. I mean, you can barely pull yourself away after an eighteen-hour day. I'd feel as though I was betraying everyone if I went off and did a bit of shopping at the mall.”

  Teller smiled.

  “Maybe that's what we all need,” he added. “A little bit of perspective; a reminder of reality. Maybe we should organize a day trip to J. C. Penny's for the whole team.”

  Cathy laughed. Her demeanor had changed. Her cheeks, which looked so pale just minutes before, were full of color, blushed and radiant.

  “To me,” she said. “The idea of talking to an alien is like walking on Mars, it just seems so far from reality as to be absurd. But here we are, making it happen. Well, you're making it happen. I'm one of the cheerleaders.”

  “You're more than that,” said Teller. “Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the human race is its diversity. And you bring diversity to the team. You may not have a Ph.D. in physics or astronomy, but neither do I. You're a much needed counterweight to all of us geeks.”

  “Are you saying I'm fat?”

  Teller laughed. “Not at all.”

  She was coy, playing with him, which was something they both enjoyed.

  “At some point,” she continued, “you're going to have to introduce your friend to a real American.”

  Teller looked at her sideways.

  “You know, someone normal.”

  “Normal?”

  “Yeah. Your average American Joe. We can't have alien life thinking we're all a bunch of geeks. You're going to have to introduce him to the American stereotype. The white-collar office clerk punching invoices five days a week to pay off a mortgage on some aging, converted trailer home. You know, never made it to college, dreams of being a center for the Chicago Bulls, enjoys a few beers with his friends while watching the play-offs. That kind of stuff.”

  “You've got a point there,” conceded Teller.

  “Not everyone's a super nerd,” she added. “No offense. I mean, I love you, but you're hardly the typical American guy.”

  Love. Teller hadn't expected that word to slip in quite so casually, but he knew she meant it in the social sense. It was nice, though, to hear her say that so naturally.

  “And what about the rest of America? Mexicans, African Americans, Native Indians, Chinese Americans? For that matter, what about the Fighting Irish, or the Italians? And what about the rest of the world; the ethnic and cultural groups that define the Africans, the Indians, the Chinese, the Polynesians and South Americans? At some point, you're going to have to parade them all before the anomaly.”

  She had a valid point.

  “Look,” she continued. “Here comes Bates. Ten bucks says he's got some esoteric quirk to tell us about, something like they've detected pimples on the alien's ass and that's a sign of uber-intelligence.”

  Teller tried not to laugh as Bates walked over, handing both of them a couple of high resolution images of the alien embryo. Teller looked at Cathy. She seemed to know what he was thinking. Without saying a word, the look in his eyes said, See, Bates doesn't take you for granted, he gave both of us a copy of the image. She raised her eyebrows as if to say in reply, is that a pimple on its ass?

  Bates was oblivious. He was too excited about the image.

  “They're quadrupeds with bi-lateral symmetry. Four digits on each limb, Teller. Four digits.”

  Teller looked up at him, not quite getting it.

  “Computers are built on bits, binary values that naturally group into numbers like four, eight, sixteen, thirty-two, sixty-four, etc.”

  “Ah,” said Cathy, pretending to understand.


  Teller knew exactly what she was doing, she was joking around with him, but without Bates realizing what was going on. Teller's mind was torn between the non-verbal banter going back and forth between them and the concept Bates was putting forward.

  Bates missed it entirely. “For five fingered creatures like us, everything revolves around the number ten, so we struggle with concepts like an octal base or hexadecimal arithmetic. When it comes to working with computers, we have to abstract all that away and hide it in the background, but for these guys, it would be natural, they'd already be speaking the same numeric language as any computer.”

  Cathy handed the image back to Bates with an emphatic “Brilliant.”

  Bates was taken off guard with her burst of enthusiasm and missed the sarcasm in her voice. He took the photos from them and walked off, saying he had some ultrasound images Teller should look at.

  Cathy put her hand on Teller's thigh, rubbing it gently as she said, “Duty calls, my dear. But, as for me, I've had enough of squiggly little alien embryos for one day. I'm going to go and find myself a TV with Cable and watch something mindless, like how to renovate a bathroom, or cooking adventures in Patagonia. Call me a couch-potato, if you want.”

  “They've got tubs of Ben & Jerry's ice cream over at the mess tent,” said Teller, figuring a bit of comfort food was probably of interest.

  “Well, why didn't you say so earlier?” she cried.

  Cathy leaned over and kissed him briefly on the lips before getting up and walking off. There wasn't much in it, but it felt wonderful. She was quite something, he thought, enjoying their quirky, blossoming, whirlwind relationship.

  Chapter 17: Mall

  Teller slept in. It seemed to be a regular occurrence. Getting out of bed, his body ached. Yesterday, he'd been a bit stiff and sore in the morning, but once he warmed up he felt fine. This morning, though, he felt like he'd been hit by a truck. If anything, he felt worse today than he did the day after the riot. Lactic acid caused his muscles to seize, and he forced himself to get up and have a shower.

  After almost forty minutes standing under the stream of hot water, relishing the gentle pounding of multiple thin jets of pressurized water, the skin on his hands started to wrinkle, so he figured it was time to move on. After dressing and grabbing a bagel for breakfast, he walked over to the research trailer.

  The anomaly towered over the research center. A swirling mass of blue and white, the anomaly looked considerably bigger than it had when the slab had moved within it. The NASA scientists said this was an illusion, but the massive sphere, reaching up over twenty stories in height, looked intimidating. The gases within the anomaly had cleared a little since yesterday, and the sphere was somewhat transparent. Teller could see the faint outline of buildings on the other side. The creature growing within was still too small to be seen clearly at a distance, but the umbilical cord, if that's what it was, stretching, snaking and winding off to one side, appeared to be about the thickness of the hose on a vacuum cleaner. Teller was surprised by how far it stretched out from the center, extending almost three-quarters of the way toward the edge of the anomaly. And it was in motion, slowly rotating. At a guess, Teller figured it terminated at the outer edge of the egg-like sac surrounding the alien embryo.

  Secretly, he hoped the alien wasn't going to grow to fill that space, as the size alone would be enough to terrify people with visions of giant killer creatures invading the city. Like something out of Godzilla or Cloverfield, they'd feel threatened and panic. Fear had a way of distorting reality, making it difficult to see beyond the end of one's nose, thought Teller. To be honest, for all his bravado about how exciting and adventurous it was to be in contact within an alien species, there was a part of his mind that feared the worst; that expected to be chased by monsters. It was silly, of course, but that was human nature, always falling for emotions over rational thinking. Fear was a much stronger stimulus than logic, stirring the instinctive, evolutionary drive for self-preservation.

  Cathy came bouncing up to him as he walked toward Mason and Anderson. Someone had changed her batteries. The difference between now and last night surprised him. Perhaps she just needed to get things off her chest, he figured. Once the air was clear, it was easier to move ahead. She kissed him on the cheek, and he felt like he'd been shot full of painkillers. All the aches and creaks in his body faded.

  “Thanks for listening last night,” she said. “I really needed that.”

  “Hey, I think it helped both of us,” he replied. “Did you find any re-runs of Gilligan's Island?”

  “Nope. But there was a reality show about cooking.”

  “And what is it you like about cooking shows?” asked Teller as they walked into the shadow of the anomaly. He wasn't really that curious, but he wanted to show some interest in the things that interested Cathy. If she found it interesting, there had to be something to it, despite his stereotypical masculine misgivings about the subject.

  “It's cooking for lazy people,” she replied, having a laugh at herself. “It's all over within an hour and there's no cleaning up.”

  “But you don't get to taste anything,” said Teller.

  “Oh, the dishes they cook probably don't taste as good as they make out. The way the judges carried on last night, you'd think the chocolate dessert gave them an orgasm.”

  “Ha!” cried Teller, having been taken completely off guard by Cathy once again. He wasn't sure, but he figured he was probably blushing at the thought. Teller was somewhat of a prude, whereas Cathy was easy-going. And he liked that about her, she brought him out of his shell.

  She pushed him playfully, laughing as well.

  Anderson called them over to one of the monitors on the side of the NASA trailer.

  “Look at this,” he said, pointing at the screens. “What little we thought we knew yesterday seems wrong today. This central area, here, at the heart of the anomaly, has remained roughly the same size. What we thought were appendages have turned out to be recursive, arching back within the organism.”

  Teller was beginning to regret sleeping in. He'd missed more than he realized. Anderson continued to explain their observations.

  “Rather than being a separate entity, like a fetus would be in a womb, this looks more like the anchor point of the umbilical cord stretching out to the wall of the egg sac. So the cord is tethered here, at the heart of the anomaly. Look at the radar imaging.”

  Anderson flicked through a few screens and brought up a false-color image showing pulsating fluids pumping outward within the cord. Bates came over, as did Mason.

  “Rather than being the focal-point for a growing alien embryo,” said Anderson. “It appears the entire organic structure originates from here and provides nutrients or cellular material to the outer wall. The cord appears to be feeding the growing egg-sac surrounding the core.”

  Teller looked at the anomaly, then back at the screen.

  “So it's empty?” he asked. “That whole vast sphere is empty?”

  “Seems that way,” said Anderson. “The end-node, where the umbilical cord attaches to the outer wall of the egg-sac is now larger than the nodule in the center. Any ideas?”

  Teller shrugged, looking at Bates and Mason. Finch was hovering in the background, trying to record the conversation without distracting them.

  Anderson brought up the image of the outer wall of the egg-sac as he continued describing what they'd been able to observe. “Look at how the cord fans out when it reaches the sac-wall. It branches out with what looks like arteries and veins. That placenta-like mass must be about a foot across, but then it fades, and all we have is the semi-translucent sac-wall.”

  Bates asked, “Why would it build an empty biological environment? Why wouldn't it fill it with something?”

  “And what could it sustain?” asked Teller. “I mean, look at it, that inner sac is at least ten stories high in itself. It dominates a significant proportion of the whole anomaly.”

  “There has to be a
purpose,” said Bates. “Whatever it is building it is requiring time, effort and energy to construct. It has to be deliberate.”

  “Can you tell anything about its construction?” asked Teller.

  “Without a sample, it's impossible to determine composition, but the xenobiologists are saying it's most likely carbon-based organic chemistry, given what we can determine from the environment.”

  “Is there anything in that egg-sac?” asked Cathy.

  “Not that we can tell,” said Anderson. There's probably some kind of fluid, as there would need to be something counteracting the surrounding pressure. But we really have no idea at all.”

  “Could it be building something that's transparent to our eyes?” asked Cathy.

  “Yeah,” said Teller, liking her question.

  Anderson rubbed the stubble on his chin before replying.

  “We're observing this thing at every wavelength, looking for the most subtle variations, anything that would reveal the internal composition, but there's nothing there. Anything invisible to our sight would still show up in either infra-red, ultra-violet, or x-ray wavelengths. Any time you introduce something with a slightly different density, it will distort the electromagnetic spectrum in one way or another. It's just not possible to make something entirely invisible at all wavelengths.”

  “We don't know that,” said Mason. “After all, up until a week ago, we would have said it was impossible to defy gravity.”

  “It's not likely,” said Bates. “It would be inconsistent with everything we've observed so far. The anomaly has made no effort to conceal its activities. From ripping up a New York intersection to burning lithium, to transforming a section of the Earth into something from a gas giant, everything we've seen when it comes to the anomaly has been overt. There's no reason for it to suddenly pull some hocus-pocus magic act on us now and cloak its activities. I think the answer is simple. It is empty, and that is deliberate on its part.”