by C. J. Odle
“Each one of these is a device on your world. If you took all of them and put them together, still you would not have as much power as the Pyramid.”
Jake didn’t know what to say in response. Yet one important question needed to be asked. “Why have you come here?”
Sirius didn’t answer; instead, it turned to the Pyramid in the middle of the room. Images kept flickering across the ethereal screens in the air, never pausing, never slowing. Jake tried to concentrate, but the slew of fragments tumbled too rapidly to discern patterns. Were these images Sirius’s answer to his question? There was stock market data from New York, a time lapse of orchids flowering, a children’s television show.
There seemed to be no order to it now, no reasoning behind it.
“What is all this?” Jake asked.
“We cannot reveal this information to you,” Sirius replied. It didn’t look back from its work. Jake was clearly not as important as a historical documentary, a selection of poems, a thermal image of the Yukon.
“Why am I here?” Jake asked. “Why did I get those visions of you?”
“We cannot tell you that either,” Sirius replied. The lack of emotion in the alien’s telepathic responses had the kind of flatness Jake knew from his encounters with city hall. The same “it’s more than my job’s worth to appear remotely human” feel. Although in this case, Jake reckoned the alien had a reasonable excuse.
“Well, what can you tell me?” Jake demanded, aloud this time. His voice was shockingly resonant after the silence of telepathy. Like yelling in the middle of a library.
The two aliens conferred silently in front of him, as if they were parents trying to work out how to speak to a child about a difficult topic. No, not like that. More like some government department trying to work out which sections of a document to redact. At one point, the aliens became animated, thin arms and three-fingered hands waving around as if arguing.
Sirius finally pulsed another answer Jake’s way. “We are downloading and analyzing all the available information on your species.”
“What do you mean?” Jake pulsed back. “What information?”
“All of it,” Sirius sent, turning toward him as if it should be obvious. “Your ‘internet,’ of course, the contents of individual devices and tablets, data produced by our own observation devices and satellites.”
“How does your computer do all this?” Jake asked.
“It contains enough power to access your satellites, in addition to the terrestrial internet,” Vega explained. “It searches out signals from beyond our ship, and once connected to them, it can penetrate all live computers on each individual network.”
“The download takes less than thirty Earth minutes but has been run multiple times. Each update is amalgamated,” Sirius pulsed, its forehead furrowing. “With something as important as this, it is imperative that we work with the sum total of data available.”
“As important as what?” Jake sent. “What is it that you’re not telling me?”
Vega answered. “It is not possible to discuss our objective, Jake. Not yet. We are busy, and you need to rest. The operation went well, but your body still requires one cycle of sleep for healing to complete.”
The alien walked to the console and lightly touched one of the crystal buttons on the surface. A shelf extruded from the softly glowing wall to the left, holding a container of food.
Vega picked it up and handed it to Jake. “We will be waiting for you.”
Sirius gestured toward the entrance and then turned to press the fingers of its right hand flat against the side of the Pyramid. The images cascaded even faster across the gossamer screens.
Jake knew there was no point asking further questions. He walked out of the room and turned right, the neurons beneath the crystalline surface of the tubed corridor firing softly as he stepped along. What were the aliens doing? And why had he been called out to the desert by his visions? The way Sirius refused to answer his question about that made him think there must be a reason. Jake gazed at the floor and slowed his pace.
The aliens possessed psychic abilities and technologies far superior to those of his species. Sirius had been almost dismissive of human computers when explaining the power of the Pyramid. A device so powerful, it had the capacity to download the contents of the terrestrial networks in less than thirty minutes, and then analyze every scrap of available information about mankind.
Why would they need so much intelligence? For an invasion? It was what aliens traditionally did in movies, but that would only require data about Earth’s defensive capabilities, wouldn’t it? Not every item of public and private communications. The need for such comprehensive research implied that Sirius’s and Vega’s mission concerned all aspects of human life, and the scientific nature of the observation suggested… what? An alien equivalent of a wildlife documentary? Look at all the humans, aren’t they cute? Or it could be for some other purpose; something utterly incomprehensible to the human mind.
Jake reached the open aperture of the room where he’d slept. The door closed after he stepped in, and the bed glided silently into position. He sighed and plonked down, suddenly overcome with fatigue. He remembered the container of food in his hand, and pulsed into it. The lid again opened like the petals of a flower, and the peachy aroma escaped. Jake picked up the shell-shaped spoon and began to eat. The first time he’d eaten the thick porridge, his energy levels had soared, but now, he barely had time to finish before collapsing on the bed and falling fast asleep.
Jake woke up feeling refreshed and calm. The door slid open as he got up, and the bed receded silently into the wall. He stepped into the curved corridor and turned left to walk back to the control room. Jake felt the telepathic presence of the two aliens about twenty seconds before they came into view, waiting for him by the entrance.
“Come with us. It is time to tell you more.” Sirius gestured for him to follow.
Sirius and Vega walked twenty-five feet up the crystalline corridor before an aperture slid open on the right and the aliens stepped through. As Jake followed, he found himself in a small, circular chamber ten feet across. It had the same pearly-white walls and floor as the other rooms he’d been in, but quartz-like crystals extruded from the ceiling. The door closed, and the ceiling began to pulse with an intense white light. His vision went blank.
Jake assumed the aliens’ ship would be orbiting above the world. Instead, as they were transported by a shaft of light to the ground, he discovered they were still in the Mojave, tucked away in the dunes. Jake gazed at the impressive toroidal disk of the spacecraft. It glowed majestically in the dark and was suspended thirty feet above the ground, anchored in perfect stillness by a column of light that passed through its middle from high above and struck the desert floor.
The stars stretched across the night sky like a glittering celestial tapestry.
Vega pointed to a cluster of them. “This is where we have come from. You would call them the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters. Our current worlds are there.”
“Worlds?” Jake asked. “Not world?”
Vega spread its hands. “Once we lived on one planet, but that was a long time ago. We quickly spread out, and we learned as we went. The Pleiades has been our home for the last fifty million Earth years.”
“What did you learn?” Jake asked.
“You could not begin to comprehend,” Sirius sent.
“We learned about the universe,” Vega pulsed. “About the ways time can be manipulated and the body renewed. We learned how to shape life and how to utilize the inherent capacity of our minds. We discovered how to extend our life spans almost indefinitely through cellular regeneration and consciousness transfers.”
“Eventually,” Sirius sent, “we looked for bigger questions to explore. Finally, we began the biggest experiment of all. Startoucher.”
“It is our ancestors’ project,” Vega sent. “One that Sirius and I were assigned to oversee, two hundred and fifty thousand Earth year
s ago.”
Jake gasped. The two creatures in front of him were older than any civilization on earth, older even than humanity itself.
“We told you about the tissue regeneration,” Vega explained. “We have transferred ourselves several times as well. Avoiding madness proved difficult for a while. For a long period, we experimented with other physical forms, but this… this is us.”
“What is Startoucher?” Jake asked.
“More than 3.8 billion Earth years ago, our people harnessed comets,” Vega pulsed, “and seeded them with life, subtly distinct on each. They wanted to see how different starting points would shape evolution. They sent the comets to world after world, anywhere capable of supporting life.”
“Are you saying you initiated life on Earth?” Jake sent, then shook his head. “No, it can’t be right.”
“Is it so hard to accept?” Vega asked. “Your scientists even have a word for it—‘panspermia,’ the theory of life arriving on comets. Evolution as you know takes billions of years to unfold. Phase two of the project began when Sirius and I were assigned.”
“Phase two?” Jake sent. “What did you do two hundred and fifty thousand years ago?”
He could hardly believe he was asking that.
“We started humanity,” Sirius pulsed. “We wanted to observe the effects of introducing modified DNA into archaic great apes, ‘hominins,’ to see if it would bring us closer to the project’s goals. On other worlds, we engineered different forms of intelligent life. On this planet, we created your kind.”
Jake didn’t know what to say. The two aliens in front of him were literally claiming to be his creators. It was like getting to chat with God, if God had been a short, translucent white alien. As shapes for a creator went, it was hardly the most impressive.
“And what are the project goals?” he asked.
Vega’s fingers moved slowly up and down. “The project was started so long ago, there is some confusion over the aims of the very first experiments.”
“What we know with certainty is that for a billion years,” Sirius pulsed, “the objectives were varied. Eventually we narrowed our focus. We wanted to understand the role new beings could play in developing a world, and we needed to create genetic diversity as insurance against the future. We possessed so much control over our physical selves, the only way to produce anything new was to introduce a random element and let evolution take its course.”
“Has humanity brought you nearer to your current goals?” Jake sent.
“The Pyramid will—” Sirius pulsed but stopped as suddenly as it had begun. Jake faintly heard the whirling blades of a chopper growing closer by the second. He searched the night sky and spied the winking lights. Its path would not cross directly above the alien craft, but it would fly close enough. He studied the column of brilliant light that passed through the middle of the ship and realized it cut off abruptly at the top. Jake guessed there must be some kind of shield over the craft, preventing it from being visible. Otherwise, the aliens would have been discovered soon after landing. Still, Sirius had seemed distracted by the noise of the chopper.
“It is time, Vega,” Sirius sent. “The Pyramid analysis will be finishing.”
They returned to the control room of the ship, where the Pyramid continued to stream images across the ethereal screens. Everything his species knew, or said, or built, existed somewhere as data. The aliens were analyzing it all as part of their experiment. The same experiment that had brought life, and then humanity, to Earth so long ago.
Now Jake thought he could understand what they were trying to do. These two beings were responsible for the birth of humanity, and they wanted to test the progress of what they had engineered. Jake had the brief impression of a large family looking to welcome a long-lost member, learning all they could before they finally revealed the truth.
But another explanation loomed. One far more human in its unpleasantness. The whole process reminded him of something he’d done too many times in his career to ignore it.
“You’re building a case file,” Jake sent, gesturing toward the images on the screens.
“The analogy appears to be broadly correct,” Vega pulsed with a hint of apprehension. “We are trying to see how our human experiment has gone.”
“And whether to continue it,” Sirius added, stepping in front of the Pyramid and studying the colors flickering across its surface.
“Whether to continue it?” Jake repeated. “You’re not just talking about stopping observing, are you?”
“No,” Vega admitted, throwing its thin arms up in the air.
“We have a duty as scientists,” Sirius pulsed, turning from the Pyramid to look directly at Jake. “To both this world and the universal consciousness. We introduced life to this planet. We have given it time to grow and adapt. If one species we created evolved to be a serious threat to its home world, or eventually to the worlds beyond, we would have no choice but to remove it.”
“Remove it,” Jake echoed. “Just like that?” Fear, disgust, disbelief—and anger pulsed through his connection with the aliens.
“We must consider the possible harm of not acting,” Vega sent. “If a species kills everything around it, we would be responsible. Please calm down.”
“You’re talking about killing billions of people the way I might destroy a wasp’s nest,” Jake pulsed with an energy that was like a spike in an electric current. “You have no right!”
“We have every right,” Sirius sent with a stern resoluteness that carried a hard metallic feel as it slid into Jake’s consciousness. “The right and the responsibility. There are species in our experiment who have thrived and evolved successfully, but mankind…”
“You’re talking about this like it’s nothing,” Jake complained.
“Not nothing, Jake,” Vega pulsed softly and then raised a thin hand to silence Sirius. “We understand the scale of what we might have to do. But you’ve experienced the universal consciousness. We must consider the greater good.”
“Whatever the cost?” Jake asked. He’d felt the scope of the cosmos, but he was still human.
“Whatever the cost,” Sirius answered.
“And why I am here?” Jake sent, glancing from one alien to the other. “You still haven’t given me an explanation.”
The Pyramid started to emit alternate waves of brilliant yellow and white light.
“Wait,” pulsed Sirius. “The results are coming in. Your role will be clarified once the Pyramid has reached a conclusion.”
Chapter Ten
As the night drew to a close, Gemini’s initial excitement had turned into something approaching frenzy. And not just because they’d run out of pizza an hour ago. Billy and Adam tapped away on their computers, trying to make sense of what they were seeing.
“Could it be the Chinese?” Adam asked, running his hand over the top of his Afro.
“You think everything is the Chinese,” Billy said. “Just because they hacked through your firewalls that one time…”
“It has to be someone.”
It had to be. For the last day or so, something sinister had combed through the net like a search-engine spider, but far more sophisticated. Or, at least, more powerful. Not much sophistication was involved in taking everything it found.
Marina sat on the beanbag, turning over tarot cards. “We must try Jake again.”
“Again?” Billy asked, his face incredulous. “It’s four-twenty in the morning.”
Marina flipped a card. “He’s important. I can feel it, like he’s connected to the aliens in some way. I… I could have sworn I saw him yesterday, and tonight I’ve been getting visions too.”
“Isn’t seeing someone who isn’t there kind of the definition of a vision?” Adam grinned, his white teeth flashing.
Marina shook her head. “It was as if he was actually here in the room. Very different from tonight’s glimpses of a desert.”
“Could it be an alien landscape?” Billy asked, no
t looking up from his keyboard.
“I don’t know,” Marina said. “Maybe. But Jake’s been in those desert visions too, so probably not.”
“Unless he’s been kidnapped and taken to an alien world,” Adam said.
“Jake did tell us he’d seen a jellyfish-skinned alien in a desert,” Billy added.
“I called him six times last night, and each time it went through to his voicemail.” Marina said. “Same thing happened the day before when I left a couple of messages.”
“Definitely kidnapped by aliens.” Adam nodded.
“Maybe he didn’t want to speak to us because he’s freaked out,” Marina suggested, putting her cards down and brushing some fluff from her long purple skirt. “He did leave in a hurry. Perhaps he’s been busy with work or friends, or even just lost his phone.”
“I guess all that’s technically possible,” Billy said, looking up with his eyelids blinking rapidly. “But chances are, he’s been taken. That’s totally awesome!”
The trouble was, Marina had started to suspect he might be right. “Guys, we really need to contact Jake. Can’t you find out where he is?”
Adam turned to Billy. “I’ll call Sigma. He should have the results by now, and it’s nearly seven thirty in Canada. You try our favorite cop.”
Billy nodded. Around six months ago, he’d trawled through the LAPD website looking for a suitable candidate to exploit with social engineering. Sergeant John Richards ticked all the right boxes. Middle aged, active in his local community, and with a recent appointment to missing persons. Further digging online also revealed a keen interest in muscle cars and a year-old divorce.
Billy had then sent an e-mail with a phishing link, purportedly coming from a female organizer of a muscle car rally the handsome policeman had attended. The intrigued officer couldn’t resist clicking the link to claim his two free tickets to the LA auto show, and from that point on, Billy had access to his computer by exploiting his internet browser and outdated version of Windows.
After reviewing the sergeant’s e-mails, it became apparent that warrants for phone location data were usually served electronically, especially when the case was urgent. Three months ago, Gemini had photoshopped a search warrant as a favor for a hacker friend, and within twenty minutes had received the triangulation data for the cell phone in question. Software vulnerabilities in the LAPD e-mail server allowed all relevant correspondence between the sergeant and the network operator to be deleted.
