Anomaly

by Peter Cawdron

  “But why?” asked Mason.

  “Why indeed,” replied Bates. Finch zoomed in on his face, capturing his expression.

  “It's following a preset path of action,” said Teller. “Bates has a good point. From day one, the anomaly has been invasive and intrusive. Everything we've seen suggests the anomaly is deliberately disruptive, wanting to catch our attention. But it's important to note that it is not here to satisfy our agenda.”

  “No, it's not,” agreed Bates.

  Anderson added his thoughts. “We know the alien entity is modifying the environment within the anomaly to suit itself. This may just be another phase, another prelude. Perhaps it’s still establishing an environment in which it can propagate its biology.”

  “After almost two days?” asked Bates. “When it could turn platinum into gold in little more than a nanosecond? No, if it's taking its time, it's for a reason. If it is empty, it's for a reason.”

  “But what reason?” asked Teller.

  “Beats me,” said Bates. “We may not understand its reasoning, but it has chosen to take its time.”

  Cathy was standing in such a way she could take in most of the anomaly as the backdrop to the conversation. She could see the winding umbilical cord within the sac deep inside the swirling blue orb.

  “Whatever ends up growing inside that thing,” she said, “it is going to be big.”

  “Should we be worried?” asked Mason.

  “We shouldn't,” said Teller. “The whole tone of our conversation with the anomaly has revolved around science. I'm betting that will continue. It's not aggressive, it's not threatening. It is self-restrained. We need to be patient.”

  “Oh, that's never good to hear,” said Cathy. “I bet the pundits are having a field day with this, trying to out-guess you guys, whipping up a frenzy. The media isn't good with patience.”

  “Teller is right,” said Mason, turning toward Finch and his camera. “There's considerable anxiety out there, but it is important to emphasize this thing is going slow for a reason. As alarming as this may seem, the anomaly appears to be taking its time so it doesn't freak us out.”

  “Absolutely,” said Bates, also turning toward the camera. “Remember, this thing was able to instantaneously transform elements. If it wanted to build something in the blink of an eye, it would. We have to look at its current actions as a deliberate effort to slow things down, to avoid any misunderstandings and give us time to observe it in action. We've just got to do the one thing no one likes to do, and that is, wait patiently.”

  “So what now?” asked Mason.

  “We wait,” said Anderson. “We watch and observe. And when it's ready, it will let us know.”

  Mason looked at Bates and Teller, who both agreed.

  “OK,” said Mason, walking off.

  Finch looked disappointed. He spotted a few scientists setting up what looked like a satellite dish, something to eavesdrop on the anomaly, and went over to find out what they were up to, his camera constantly streaming video out to CERN in Switzerland, and then on to the Internet at large.

  “Looks like we get a nice quiet day,” said Cathy, turning to Teller. “It would be a great day to head off to the beach.”

  She was joking, Teller could see that.

  “Yes, it would,” he replied, smiling. “Hey, were you serious last night about wanting to go shopping?”

  Cathy looked at him sideways. She instinctively knew he had something else in mind, and that seemed to bother her. Teller called out after Mason, jogging off after him. Cathy followed along.

  Mason stopped, his hands resting firmly on his hips, his suit jacket open and his tie loosened.

  “I'd like to go shopping,” said Teller.

  “Shopping?” said Mason, rather impatiently. “Am I hearing you right?”

  “Yes,” replied Teller before Cathy could stop him. She had her hand out, almost at the point of pulling him back. She must have thought he'd gone mad, he figured.

  “Make out a list of what you want and I'll get the quartermaster to pick up what you need,” said Mason.

  “I can't do that,” said Teller.

  “Why not?” asked Mason, clearly not amused. The scowl on his face showed he had more important tasks to attend to.

  “Because I don't know what I need.”

  “Then why do you want to go shopping?” asked Mason.

  “Why does anyone want to go shopping?” asked Teller rather innocently. “I want to look for something, but I don't know quite what.”

  Mason shifted his weight. He didn't look impressed. Anderson walked over, listening in.

  “Think about it,” said Teller. “We're looking for innovative ways to interact with the anomaly. I'd like to get in an environment where I can think outside the box.”

  “In a shopping mall?” asked Mason, surprised by the concept.

  “Yes. I've got a few ideas. But I suspect they'll become more concrete if I can get my hands on stuff.”

  “How is going to a shopping mall going to help?” asked Mason. “Couldn't you just go online, pick out what you're after and we'll get one of the Marines to run out and pick this stuff up for you?”

  “It doesn't work like that,” said Teller. “It's about stimulating thinking. It's about seeing things from a different angle. It's about escaping this bird cage.”

  “The last time you did that,” replied Mason, “I had to flood New York with troops to get you back.”

  Mason turned toward Cathy, asking rather aggressively, “Did you put him up to this?”

  Cathy held her hands up denying any responsibility.

  Teller ignored him. “Listen. We're divorced from reality in here. We're in an artificial environment. Everything's regimented. It's contrived. I think that by getting out in the real world, it will open up other possibilities for consideration. The human brain works best when it's stimulated.”

  “He's got a point,” said Anderson, offering his unsolicited opinion.

  “He's got a point?” exclaimed Mason. “Are you kidding me? The real world doesn't consist of shopping malls. The American world might, but not the real world. Find me a shopping mall in Afghanistan. Find me one in Malawi. Find me a Wal-Mart in Terra Del Fuego. Find me a Costco in Mongolia. Come on. Don't play me for a fool. What is this really about?”

  “OK,” said Teller, swallowing a lump in his throat as he spoke. “I want to go shopping for toys.”

  “Toys?” cried Mason, looking at Cathy and Anderson, looking for some kind of support from them for his sense of disbelief. Teller grimaced, this was worse than he expected.

  “Bear with me,” said Teller. “Toys stimulate and educate the mind at the same time. They teach us how to interact with our world. I think they could be invaluable in providing a stimulus for lateral thinking when it comes to communicating with the anomaly.”

  “Toys?” repeated Mason, somewhat hung up on the point. “What? Like Lego?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Anderson, turning to Mason. “A couple of days ago, you'd have thought releasing a balloon inside this thing was a dumb idea, and yet it was just what we needed to kick-start things. Maybe Teller's got a point.”

  “Toys,” said Mason, shaking his head. “OK. Talk to Sergeant Davies. He'll arrange transport and a protective detail. But I don't want you going more than a couple of blocks. OK?”

  “Fine,” said Teller.

  “What about Grand Central?” asked Anderson. “It's over on Park Avenue, less than three blocks from here.”

  “OK,” said Mason. “But no further. And you stay in constant radio contact.”

  “Great,” said Anderson. That took both Teller and Mason by surprise.

  “What?” asked Mason. “You're going with them?”

  “Absolutely,” replied Anderson. “I think our grade-school teacher has a valid point. We need to stop thinking like scientists stuck in a basement somewhere, never seeing the light of day, trying to analyze this thing too closely, and start looking a
t how to simplify our approach. Sometimes, you can get too close to an experiment. Sometimes, you've got to step back so you can see the forest among the trees.”

  Teller was smiling.

  “All right,” said Mason. He pointed a stern finger at Teller, adding, “But no more riots. OK?”

  Teller laughed. “Yes, dad.”

  Mason walked off, shaking his head. Anderson went off to arrange their transport.

  “What do you think you're doing?” asked Cathy.

  “Getting you your day trip,” replied Teller. “And, besides, I really do think there's some value in a change of scenery. I've got a couple of ideas, but I think just being there will help to stimulate some alternative concepts about how to communicate more effectively.”

  “You're kidding? Right?” asked Cathy.

  “No,” replied Teller. “I'm quite serious. After all, what are kids but someone learning about our world afresh? I think if we look at the anomaly like that, we might be able to simplify our approach and move things along.”

  “You sure are weird,” said Cathy.

  It took almost four hours before the Navy SEALs were ready to go. Although reports of violence within the city had subsided with the National Guard out on the streets in force, the SEALs weren't taking any chances. They arranged a convoy of three Hummers. The SEALs welded what looked like a cow-catcher on the front of the lead vehicle; a series of pipes had been welded into a V-shape so as to form a slanted, plow-like structure stretching across in front of the Hummer radiator. One of the SEALs explained it was intended to break down barricades and push aside any disabled vehicles. The rear vehicle had a 60mm machine gun mounted on the roof. What had started out as a casual outing had turned into a major military exercise.

  Anderson, Cathy and Teller sat in the middle vehicle, while armed troops rode along outside their Hummer, standing on the sideboards and holding on to the roof. The convoy barely broke 25 miles an hour as it drove down East 47th street bristling with armament. These few blocks looked like a ghost town. There were no pedestrians, no traffic. The streets had been cleared by the New York Police Department. Squad cars blocked off the intersections, giving them a clear run to the mall. People peered nervously out of their apartment windows, curious as the convoy rolled slowly past.

  “Lady Gaga doesn't get this kind of treatment,” Cathy noted as they pulled up outside the mall. Teller was feeling more and more stupid with each passing moment. Nothing was ever simple. It should have been, but at each point the sense of overkill dismayed him.

  “So much for blending in with the shoppers,” said Anderson.

  “I didn't mean for everyone to go to such efforts,” said Teller. “This was supposed to be something easy to do during our downtime.”

  “You had better find something of value in there,” said Cathy sternly. “If they find out all you wanted was a doughnut it'll be the Navy SEALs starting the next riot.”

  Anderson laughed. “She's right, you know.”

  The sight of armed SEALs walking around inside the mall, their fingers poised over the trigger of their M16 machine guns, was unsettling to the shoppers, especially those with children, although the kids didn't seem to mind. The soldiers were friendly enough, but the stark reality of their presence was upsetting. Teller asked the sergeant to have his troops shoulder their weapons and wait outside the department store on the second floor. The sergeant said he wasn't supposed to let the group out of his sight. Teller assured him that if they ran into any trouble in the toy department there were plenty of Nerf guns. He told him they'd be able to hold their own until reinforcements arrived. The sergeant laughed and waited by the main entrance. The store manager had served in the Marines, so he brought out a case of Pepsi for the soldiers. Nobody complained.

  “Funny that,” said Cathy, as they walked inside the store. “No one else wants to come in here while there's an armed guard outside. You'd think they'd feel safer.”

  “Would you?” asked Anderson.

  “I guess not,” said Cathy.

  Teller headed for the toy department. His mind was already kicking into overdrive, thinking about the possibilities, looking for fresh ideas.

  “So, what are we looking for?” asked Cathy, grabbing a shopping cart and heading off after him.

  “This,” said Teller, picking up a packet of 64 colored felt-tip pens.

  “Would you like a coloring-in book to go with that?” she asked. “Perhaps some crayons as well?”

  “Oh,” said Anderson, ignoring Cathy. “I see where you're going with this.”

  Cathy screwed her face up a little.

  “It's a spectrum,” said Teller. “Look at the way the colors slowly vary from red to blue.”

  “So?” replied Cathy.

  “It's a sample, a thin slice of the electromagnetic spectrum,” said Anderson, instinctively picking up on Teller's point. “The entire spectrum is incredibly vast. There are radio waves that span several kilometers in length, while visible light is squeezed into a narrow band between 380 and 700 nanometers. X-rays and gamma rays are even smaller again. The orders of magnitude that lie on the spectrum would make it difficult for any alien species to know quite what we see, or if we see anything at all.”

  Anderson was rolling his hand, mimicking a wave, trying to help her picture what he was describing.

  “OK,” she said. “I know I'm going to regret asking this, but, what is a nanometer? Other than ridiculously small?”

  Teller opened his palm, gesturing toward Dr. Anderson. Teller had a fair idea, but wasn't exactly sure, and didn't want to mess it up. He felt a bit of pressure to be precise, but the reality was, he was more instinctive in his thinking than someone like Anderson with his decades of scientific experience. And Teller felt a little intimidated by that, realizing he was a bit of a citizen scientist, full of ideas, but lacking any real depth.

  Anderson picked a bag of marbles out of a display stand. He held them up, saying, “A nanometer is one billionth of a meter. If we use the Earth as a point of comparison, it would take roughly a billion marbles laid end-to-end to circle the planet. Imagine trying to see that line from outer space. You see, a nanometer is so small as to be invisible to us.”

  “And it brings up an interesting point,” said Teller. “We live in moderation. And I don't mean in terms of economics or anything like that. Our experiences are all limited, being extremely narrow and restricted. We don't see things that are super big or super small, super fast, super hot or super cold. Everything about life on Earth is moderate by comparison with the universe at large.”

  Cathy listened intently, intrigued by the concept.

  “The smallest thing we can see is something like a strand of hair, and yet that's not small at all. It's at least a hundred thousand nanometers wide. We live in temperate, moderate climates. Our coldest day is nothing compared to how cold it gets in the shadows of the moon. We fly in a plane at hundreds of miles an hour and we think we're going fast, when our world is hurtling around the sun at almost seventy thousand miles an hour. We look at the sun and it seems tiny, yet it is over a million times bigger than Earth.

  “We are so isolated and insulated from the reality of the cosmos around us. It's like we've lived our entire lives in a religious cloister and have never seen the world beyond our small courtyard.”

  They were standing in front of an inflatable bouncy castle by the toy section. Neither the attendant nor any of the kids that would normally be swarming within were anywhere to be seen. A small electric pump whirred away, continually pushing air into the flimsy structure.

  “If the Sun were the size of Earth, then Earth would be considerably smaller than a state like Pennsylvania,” said Teller. “And yet, our sun is tiny in comparison to other stars. But to us, stars are immaterial, almost irrelevant to daily life. They're just tiny sparks of light in the night sky, twinkling before our eyes like jewels.

  “We have such a narrow band of experience, we don't realize just how limited it is i
n daily living. Our view of reality is so narrowly focused, so moderate in the scale of things, that it is entirely misleading. So when it comes to talking to our extraterrestrial friend, there's a good chance we'll miss anything he has to say if we don't make sure we're both on the same frequency.”

  “He?” asked Cathy.

  “She,” Teller conceded, grinning. “But you see my point. We need to establish a baseline, let them know what we can handle, what the limits are for our senses, while trying to understand the range in which they operate.”

  “And a bunch of felt-pens is going to do that for you?” she asked. “Surely, NASA can do better than that.”

  “Oh, yes,” replied Anderson. “But it's a good starting point for planning. It sets the upper and lower bounds of what we can see, it defines a set range.”

  “We think we see all the light there is,” said Teller, “but we see only a fraction of the light that is emitted by a star like our sun. UV light, as an example, can burn you on a cloudy, overcast day, even though it doesn't seem that bright outside. We miss UV light entirely.”

  “And here I was thinking you were buying a present for Susan,” joked Cathy.

  Teller was too focused, talking himself through the logic. Whether Cathy or Anderson was there was irrelevant in that moment. Teller was talking to himself more than anyone else. It was a bad habit. His sister had chewed him out about it on more than one occasion. She told him he was especially prone to rambling during those long Thanksgiving afternoons, sitting around watching the Macy's parade. She'd call him a geek, but it wouldn't register. She'd toss grapes at him, or popcorn, and snap him out of his introverted focus. Cathy, though, was far too polite, so Teller continued.

  “We communicate via our senses. When it comes to communicating with the anomaly, we need to show it what our senses are capable of detecting. A bunch of felt-pens is crude, but right here, in these sixty-four colors, you've got roughly the band of light we see every day.”