Ishiguro admired this galaxy, roughly 2.7 million light-years away, still quite close relative to other galaxies, but far enough for Ishiguro to take his next trip back in time. He advanced the slide show to an image of the nebula of Andromeda, taken by the radio telescope, noticing stars that no longer existed but from which light continued to shine through the vastness of time and space. He admired the enlargement in the center of the spiral galaxy, swelled by blue-white blazing suns, creating a stellar rainbow toward the outer edges of the nebula, feathery rings of violet, green, and dull red fading in the hazy distance.
Ishiguro continued on his journey through time and space, focusing next on the Pinwheel Galaxy, fifty million light-years away, a faint smudge of light through the ten-inch telescope, but a magnificent sight when viewed on his screen. He held his breath in silent admiration of this celestial cloud, alive with supernovas, imploding stars whose vast energy caused gas and elements to condense, then ignite again in a violent cycle that triggered the formation of new stars.
For a moment the astrophysicist felt like a cosmological archaeologist, digging through the layers of history, inspecting the relics from times past, preserved by the vast distances that light had to travel. He compared the electromagnetic energy across the entire spectrum, as captured by the radio telescope, from the time galaxies were formed to the present, making observations, taking notes on his engineering notebook, proposing theories of universal expansion, of the fading glow from the Big Bang, wondering, admiring, thinking, dreaming.
The Stanford graduate shut off the PC and lay back on the grass, gazing at the stars, dreaming about the birth of the universe, about how it all begun, about the Big Bang, the moment in time when the infinitely small universe, compressed into a space many times smaller than a proton, burst outward with the power of a trillion stars, setting time and space to zero, marking the cradle of the heavens. Shaped by the forces of gravity, electromagnetism, and nuclear fusion, this infant cosmos began to expand. Quarks, electrons, and antimatter formed. Matter and antimatter collided. Quarks combined, creating protons and neutrons, farther expanding the universe, shaping the laws of physics that Ishiguro had mastered at Stanford. Electrons combined with nuclei, triggering the birth of the first elements, hydrogen and helium, which, shaped by the enlarging forces of the universe, molded the first stars. The nuclear fusion of those first-generation suns formed heavier elements, beryllium, iron, zinc, copper, incorporating them in second-generation stars, and continuing in a perennial nova-supernova cycle that formed the first galaxies, the first nebulas, always expanding, always growing, always changing.
And it’s still expanding, he thought, suddenly frowning when hearing hastening footsteps on the cobblestone walkway between the radio telescope and the observatory building.
“Ishiguro-san! Ishiguro-san!”
The scientist sighed, peering at the intrusion. Ishiguro considered his time alone with the stars sacred. These short periods of isolation, away from the drudgery of the daily problems of running Cerro Tolo while keeping his corporate sponsor apprised of their progress, was really the reason he had taken on the study of the universe as a career. He needed this time alone to think, to look inwardly, to absorb the vast knowledge that was out there for the taking, for the interpreting, for the analyzing. If only he had more time, like Galileo Galilei, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Johannes Kepler, to be alone, to let his mind wander, to consider new possibilities, new concepts, to appraise new philosophies, to ponder on past theories and formulate new ones that fit the most recent observations. If only—
“Ishiguro-san!”
“Yes, Kuoshi-san?” the scientist asked patiently, forcing control into his intonation. He had come to dread these week-long visits from the corporate types. At least Kuoshi wasn’t as inflexible or radically bureaucratic as the last corporate liaison, who got transferred to another job eight months ago. But there was something about Kuoshi that troubled Ishiguro, though he couldn’t figure out what. It seemed that there was more to Kuoshi Honichi than the role he played as corporate liaison. “What is it now?”
“We tried to radio you, but—”
“I never take my radio on my nights off, and this is precisely why.” Ishiguro stood and began to collect his gear. “So, tell me.”
“Another one!” the corporate liaison hissed. “We’ve detected another signal … from the same origin!”
Ishiguro suddenly forgot all about his contempt for the corporate robot standing in front of him. Leaving the telescope and his laptop behind, he snagged his engineering notebook and headed toward the walkway.
“What about this equipment?” he heard Kuoshi screaming from the field.
“We’ll get it later!”
“But this is expensive hardware! What if it rains?”
Ishiguro smiled inwardly. How typical of a corporate executive to worry about a thing like that while on the verge of making the discovery of the millennium. “You haul it in then!” he shouted while going inside.
This morning, during one of her daily Internet excursions, Jackie had discovered that the timing of last night’s signal from the southern constellation Centaur coincided with what appeared to be a worldwide computer freeze event, blamed on a new type of virus. Fortunately for Ishiguro and his team, the virus had not reached their systems in the Andes, not only sparing them from this dangerous event, but also allowing them to capture the incoming signal from outer space. Had their workstations been frozen, like so many other systems across the globe, the radio telescope would have stopped acquiring signals during that portion of time, missing what now seemed to be one of the most important cosmological events of the millennium.
Scrambling up the observatory’s steps two at a time, he reached the main floor. The lights were off. Jackie and three technicians huddled around a glaring monitor, its pulsating glow forking through the spaces in between their bodies, casting a wan hue inside the large room. The clicking of his shoes broke up the silence, mixing with the humming of dozens of small fans cooling the HP workstations.
Ishiguro peeked in between two technicians, who politely stepped aside after noticing him. Jackie worked the mouse, clicking her way through layers of menus on one window while another window displayed the signal from yesterday’s event in red and what had to be today’s signal superimposed in blue. Beneath that window, a close-up map of the southern constellation Centaur displayed two X marks, one in red and another almost on top of the first in blue, their overlap shade reminding him of the violet hue of the nebula of Andromeda’s feathery ring.
“They’re not technically from the exact same origin,” Jackie said, zooming in to the point in space between HR4390A and HR4390B. “But awfully close, about two million miles apart.”
Ishiguro thought about that for a moment and suddenly opened his engineering notebook, making a few notes. “Hmmm, that’s interesting.”
“What are you doing?” asked Jackie.
Ishiguro closed the notebook. “Let’s assume that the signal originated from a planet circling the smaller of the two stars, HR4390A, roughly five times the size of our Sun. If we also assume that this planet circles the sun at about the same speed as our Earth, sixty thousand miles per hour, that would translate to just under 1.5 million miles in a twenty-four hours pe—”
“What’s going on?” asked Kuoshi, struggling inside the room while hauling the ten-inch telescope and the laptop.
“Hold on, Kuoshi-san. Anyway, the fact that the signals are two million miles apart should be expected if the transmission is coming from another planet. Can you zoom in as much as possible and clean up the image to see if we can spot the planet?”
Jackie shook her head. “I tried the strongest setting, but all I get is this.” She clicked the mouse a few times and the image on her screen changed to one of near total darkness, save for a dimmed violet-white haze on the right.
Ishiguro leaned closer to the screen, trying to make out the round shape of a planet in the vastness of spa
ce. He could not.
“There’s a few more interesting things about this event,” Jackie said, tapping her screen with a pen. “Yesterday’s signal pulsated for twenty seconds. Today’s pulsated for only nineteen.”
“Like a—”
“Countdown?” she said.
“Maybe. It could also just be interstellar noise altering the original transmission. Have you been able to make any sense of its content?”
Jackie shook her head. “That’s another thing that seems unique about the signal. It’s so polarized and of such narrow beam that you almost need to be right on the intended target on Earth to pick it up.”
“So you can detect it but can’t get a clean download of its contents?” asked Kuoshi Honichi.
“Right,” she said. “Sort of like watching a car with tinted windows drive by. You see the car but not the driver or what’s in the trunk. You need to be at its destination in order to see all of that.”
“Where is this point on Earth?” asked Ishiguro.
Jackie made a face. “That’s the last issue. Since we weren’t sure if this signal would ever come again, we focused our efforts on scanning the sky around its point of origin. We know that the signal’s headed for our planet. In fact, it looks like it’s being beamed down somewhere in the American continent, north of the equator and south of Canada.”
“Great,” said Kuoshi, throwing his hands up in the air. “That sure narrows it down! What am I supposed to tell Osaka now?”
“Hey!” Jackie began to get up, her index finger cocked at the corporate liaison. Ishiguro put a hand on her shoulder while rapidly adding, “We’re scientists, Kuoshi-san, working on what could be the discovery of the millennium. The only way to be successful is by cooperating with each other and understanding the difficulties of the task. Now we need your help. We think we have a good fix on the point of origin, but we need to nail down the destination. For that we will need a minimum of three satellites to perform a terrestrial triangulation.”
Jackie exhaled heavily and remained seated, seemingly satisfied with Ishiguro’s diplomatic intervention. Kuoshi nodded.
“All right,” Ishiguro said, pacing in front of the group. “We have to do this by the numbers. Protocol is to contact another researcher with a suitably equipped radio telescope to confirm the event.”
Kuoshi nodded. “Nobemaya. They have the best radio telescope in Japan.”
“Okay. What about satellite coverage of the next event?”
“Which should occur tomorrow,” added Jackie. “Assuming that the event is following a pattern.”
“I’ll have to contact Osaka and set it up with our own satellites.”
“Okay. Now, Jackie, get on the phone with Nobemaya and follow it up with a detailed E-mail. If the contact is confirmed, we’ll need to inform the International Astronomical Union, as well as the secretary-general of the United Nations, again following international protocol rules for extraterrestrial contacts.”
“No,” Kuoshi said. “One step at a time. First the contact confirmation. Then we wait for instructions from Osaka.”
Jackie stood next to her husband. “What do you mean?”
The corporate liaison crossed his arms, prepared to stand his ground on this one. “This operation is financed by Sagata Enterprises. Our executives will decide on the appropriate course of action once the contact has been confirmed by Nobemaya. Those are the rules. If you deviate, your employment will be terminated. Now I must contact Osaka.”
The Japanese technicians from Sagata lowered their gazes. Ishiguro held Jackie back as Kuoshi left the room.
“Those … those bastards! I knew they would do something like this if we ever came across a signal!”
Ishiguro held her from behind. “Easy, there. Easy. Let’s take it one step at a time. First the confirmation of the contact. Tomorrow we’ll also find out about the origin. Come. Let’s go get some fresh air before you have to contact Nobemaya.”
They left the building not just to get out of the stuffy observatory room, but also to have some privacy. Ishiguro didn’t trust the technicians from Sagata any more than he trusted Kuoshi Honichi.
A crystalline sky greeted them, having a soothing effect on Jackie Nakamura. She took a lungful of some of the cleanest air on the planet. It was cold and dry. The distant, snow-covered peaks of the highest mountains in the Andes looked down upon them beneath the starlight.
“This signal wasn’t beamed for the exclusive monitoring of Sagata Enterprises’ executives,” she complained after a minute of gazing at the stars.
“Let’s play ball, as you Americans like to say,” said Ishiguro. “That way we’re kept in the game. Our options remain open. Once we learn enough, we can apply some pressure to get this released.”
“Why do I get the feeling that they have already thought of that possibility?”
Ishiguro patted her cheek. “You’re worrying too much. Right now you should be ecstatic that it was you who first detected the signal yesterday. Do you realize that you could be the very first person on the planet to ever have picked up a signal from outer space—with scientific data to back it up, of course.”
Jackie considered that for a moment and then smiled. “When you put it that way … I guess you’re right.”
“You bet. And don’t worry about Sagata. Kuoshi is simply following orders. Sagata can’t contain this for very long, and when word gets out, you’ll be the one on the covers of Newsweek and Time. Heck, maybe they’ll even take your picture next to Jodie Foster. The actress next to the real thing.” He grinned.
“That’s why I love you,” she said. “You’ve always found a way to calm me down, even back in college, when I couldn’t sleep before an exam or a dissertation.”
“I’m always here for you.”
Ishiguro embraced his wife and gazed at the stars.
Chapter Four
000100
1
December 12, 1999
“I tried to call you,” Troy Reid said the moment Susan stepped into his office, “but the phone—”
“I took it off the hook. I was hoping to get a good night’s sleep and come in fresh in the morning.” She made a face while sitting down. “Obviously you had other plans.”
Troy Reid regarded her haggardly from behind his desk. He actually looked pretty consumed himself. Dark and puffy skin encircled his bloodshot eyes. A salt-and-pepper stubble reflected two days without shaving, and Susan thought she could smell his perspiration.
“Looks like our friend’s back,” he said in a voice hoarser than usual.
“That’s what your two boys said, but couldn’t provide me with any details,” she replied.
“Same time as before, exactly eight oh one in the evening, local time.”
“Did it also last twenty seconds?”
Reid slowly shook his head. “That’s what I thought at first, but the official time was nineteen seconds.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Nineteen, huh? Exactly nineteen?”
“On the nose.” Reid locked eyes with her.
“You don’t suppose…” she stopped.
“A countdown?”
She nodded. “Why do I get the feeling that tomorrow there’s going to be another event at the exact same time?”
The aging Bureau officer frowned. “And it’ll probably last eighteen seconds. I know. That’s the first thing that came to my mind. That’s why I sent for you.”
Susan stared in the distance, the intriguing finding overshadowing her exhaustion as well as her annoyance at being here again. She abruptly stood, snagging the carrying case next to the chair. The sooner she got started the sooner she could think about something other than killing herself. “I’d better go check the contents of the cocoons.”
“Let me know what you find. It’s obvious I ain’t going anywhere.”
2
Susan Garnett’s system finished booting up, and she launched a program to access the information in all deployed cocoons.
SEARCH COMPLETE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO VIEW CONTENTS? Y/N
Susan pressed the Y key and the script automatically read the target address of each cocoon, mapping it to a string of binary code that acted as an access key, allowing her to view its contents. There was only one file inside each cocoon, just as she had suspected. The original virus had pierced each of her hundreds of software traps, infecting a decoy file inside each trap. The moment the decoy became infected, the trap’s software automatically made a copy of the infected file and placed it in a separate directory within the software trap. This directory then cocooned itself, isolating the copied file from the original virus, which self-destroyed during the event.
Susan ran a script against the file in each cocoon, comparing a copy of the original, untainted decoy file with the infected version inside the cocoons. The difference between the two files yielded a passive copy of the virus itself. Susan dumped this inactive version of the virus trapped in each cocoon into a secured directory that acted as a petri dish to keep the code contained in case for some unanticipated reason it decided to wake up. She had to be cautious. She was obviously dealing with a highly skilled hacker, probably the best in the world to be able to pull a stunt like this one.
The custom petri dish software performed a comparison of the viruses, searching for differences in their signature strings. The process took less than one second of real time. She read the results on the screen.
She inspected the signatures of the viruses from the first six cocoons for several minutes, the extreme complexity of the virus making her hold her breath. She browsed down and glanced at three more screens of signature files before going back to the top. The lines under specific bits within a byte highlighted the differences between the strains trapped in each cocoon.
“Here you go,” Susan heard Troy Reid say from behind. Her superior placed a cup of coffee on her desk.
“Thanks.” She picked it up and took a sip. Black and very hot.
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