The guy offering the job was a big shot, rich guy out in Sioux Falls. At least it was work. Better than nothing. One more dollar for one more drink.
Rick called for another whiskey. He’d decided he was getting well and truly drunk tonight.
SLAM.
A man’s hand hit down on the bar beside Rick.
“Hey, boys, looky here.”
Rick turned to look at whatever asshole was standing next to him. A large man in a neon green trucker hat and turquoise cowboy boots stood beside him. The boots had a thin LED light running across the bottom. A genuine, modern-day cowboy.
Rick wanted to laugh but he knew those clothes were all the rage in the city.
The cowboy stood in front of two smaller, but equally stupid looking men.
“You’re that SpaceForce goof,” the man said. He spit when he talked.
Rick looked at the man and moved a hand to his face to wipe the drop of spittle that had landed on him.
Then he looked at Bob, as if to tell him that whatever happened wasn’t his fault.
“Yeah. It is you, ain’t it,” the man said. “I saw you from the other side of the bar and I knew it was you.”
Rick didn’t look at the man. He was used to this shit. Used to keeping his head down.
The man brought his face closer to Rick’s and spoke under his breath.
“How about you tell us the story of your daddy going up into space and killing all those boys.”
His belly rubbed against Rick’s black leather jacket.
His breath reeked of whiskey.
Rick clenched his fist and tried using one of those calming methods he read about in a health services brochure last time he was in the back of a police cruiser.
“Yeah, why don’t you tell us why they all had to die and you got to stay behind?”
Rick’s jaw clenched. He leaned back and ran his hands through his hair. He was trying to stay calm. He wanted to punch the guy square in his fat face, but he restrained himself.
“Move along, buddy,” he said through gritted teeth.
“I ain’t your buddy, SpaceGoof.”
Bob slid Rick’s next drink down the bar. The man stopped it before it got to Rick and picked it up.
He was proud of the maneuver and looked to his two friends to make sure they’d noticed.
He was about to drink it when Rick grabbed him by the wrist and shoved the drink into his face. The shot glass shattered in the man’s mouth, cutting his lips.
Rick grabbed him by the back of the head and pulled him down, pinning his face against the bar.
“Okay asshole, you want to hear stories about space? I’ll tell you a story. My father was captain of Olympus Mons. He fucked it up. Everyone died. Their corpses are still floating around up there, frozen crystal solid. Their trajectory means the ship will slingshot Mars and won’t burn up until it’s caught in the gravity of one of the gas giants hundreds of years from now. Makes a pretty picture, don’t it.”
He slammed the man’s face against the bar one last time for good measure.
One of his friends stepped up to the plate next.
“Your father is the reason we’re losing to the Russians and Chinese right now. He went psycho and fucked us all in the ass. We’ll all be eating noodles and writing in squiggly lines the way things are going.”
“Go fuck yourself,” Rick said, giving the two men a chance to back down before he did to them what he’d just done to their friend.
“He was a traitor. You’re a trai…”.
Before the man could finish, Rick’s fist was in his face. The second man came forward with a swing and Rick ducked it. He grabbed the man and pulled him close, then kneed him in the groin and sent him stumbling back, knocking over a table and sending the drinks on it crashing to the ground.
Bob had let the first one slide, but this was getting out of hand.
“Rick Frost, you son of a bitch,” he yelled.
Rick looked at him apologetically then ducked a pathetic punch from the last guy still on his feet. He slammed the guy’s face agains the bar and let him slump to the ground on top of his friend, the neon cowboy.
Rick turned back to the bar and sat down.
“Before you say anything, Bob, I know. I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the damage.”
Bob was about to say something, give him hell then let him pay for the damage, when a bright light stopped him.
Something flashed across the sky and everyone in the bar could see it through the window. The night sky was lit up like daylight for a brief second.
Rick turned around to Bob. “You called the cops, Bob?”
Bob shook his head.
Confused, Rick walked to the window. He looked down at his watch. It was definitely after dusk.
He walked outside to investigate. A large streak of light, like a comet or meteor, was falling from the sky.
Either that or it was a satellite.
And that made Rick smile.
This might be his big break. Fallen space tech could fetch a pretty penny from the right buyer.
He made his way to his truck.
As he got inside, he realized just how drunk he was. He couldn’t drive.
He sat in the passenger side and voice activated the truck. It quietly turned on. He didn’t like letting the self-drive take over, but he had no choice.
Now he had to find where the hell that thing had fallen to.
3 John Slate
Sept 22, 2051, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Poor bastard, John thought. He closed the window on his desktop and reclined back in his office chair. He took a sip of coffee. It was burnt. It always seemed to be burnt these days, ever since MIT found a cheaper cafeteria service. They were always looking for a way to penny pinch. If it meant more money for John’s research, he didn’t mind. It never did.
He looked back over the news footage. How did they not see anything? Why didn’t he switch on his video monitor? And why the hell did Mission Control lose communication with the astronaut, not once but repeatedly?
None of it seemed to make sense to John. He prided himself on his ability to see through the bullshit of bad reporting and deflective PR statements. But this was bizarre. Too bizarre. He took another sip of his coffee and winced. It was time to get back to work. When he found some free time he would do some more digging. His seniority at MIT afforded him a high-level national security clearance. Maybe the unredacted SpaceForce mission reports would detail something the media had missed.
Catastrophe in space always carried with it the threat of lost funding. John couldn’t help worrying this mishap would affect his research in some way.
He sighed. It was late. 11:32pm. He should get home. But he didn’t want to leave the office.
Nothing would be waiting for him back home. He decided to stick around for another couple minutes.
His assistant Deb had emailed him about something strange in the Oort Cloud.
He opened up the spreadsheet she sent him and scanned over the numbers. He took another sip of coffee, then thought about spitting it out. He didn’t. He swallowed it and felt the coffee grains glide down his throat.
She’d highlighted the thermal imaging numbers but had failed to spell out her concerns in the email. Somehow, John managed to give people the impression he only wanted to communicate in numbers. He liked the aura it gave him but it sometimes meant he had to work harder than if he just spoke to his staff like a normal person.
“What did you want me to find, Deb?” he said to himself.
He scrolled through the sheet, between intermittent sips of his bad coffee. On the third sip, he spotted something unusual. He stopped, rubbed his eyes, and checked again.
“That can’t be right.”
The janitor’s head poked through the door. “You say something, John?”
“No, no, sorry, just talking to myself again, Bill.”
John had a penchant for talking to himself when he was alone in his office. A fe
w heads would peek into his door every now and then, checking on him, making sure he hadn’t completely lost it yet. There was a secret bet running through the office about how long it would take for him to snap. When you worked as many hours as he did, you had to pay a price. John’s eventual insanity seemed like a reasonable bet.
He looked over the spreadsheet again. He scrolled down. Everything looked normal. That was, everything looked normal until he got to the outer regions of Jan Quadrant 5. The numbers were off. Way off.
It was only recently that scientists had been able to map the outer parts of the Oort cloud. For years, the Oort Cloud was just a theory. The Dutch astronomer Jan Oort predicted its existence in 1950, believing that a thick bubble of icy particles surrounded our solar system. He theorized it was where most comets came from. After the launch of the Einstein Deep Space Telescope in 2031, we got our first glimpse, albeit a blurry one, of the Oort Cloud. The new telescope detected a film, just like a bubble, 5000 astronomical units from our sun. To put that distance in perspective, the media had hammered into everyone’s head that the earth was just one AU from the sun. It was exactly as Jan Oort had predicted. It was a marvelous achievement. John was part of the team that initially found it. The day they got back those first few readings was one of the happiest of his life.
Discovering the Oort Cloud didn’t exactly change the world like the discovery of tiny bacteria on Mars, there was no Oort-fever, but it was something. It was a boring discovery. The kind of discovery only a man like John would love.
John threw his half-finished coffee in the trash and picked up his phone. He called Deb. Something had to be wrong with the telescope. These numbers didn’t make sense.
Deb picked up the phone and let out a big yawn.
“Deb, are these numbers correct?”
Deb was a doctoral candidate at MIT specializing in interstellar comets. She was assisting John until her dissertation was complete. Although she felt that assistant didn’t properly describe her role. Babysitter was a more apt description.
“Yes, Dr. Slate. Yes, they are correct. Do you really think this is an appropriate time to call me? I was just about to fall asleep.”
“Any ideas what it could be? Interference? Malfunction?”
“I already thought of that, John,” Deb replied, obviously annoyed.
John changed his tone. He didn’t want to piss her off. He couldn’t lose another research assistant. “Uh, yeah, sorry,” he sputtered. “I’m stunned, you know. It looks like it could be a collection of comets. I mean, if the data is true. It’s a cluster of massive, rocky comets. But it’s weird.”
“I know,” Deb responded. “They lack ice. I mean, these things are way hotter than anything else out there.”
“Did you send your findings to NASA? They really should be looking at this, too.”
“Already done. I sent it to your friend, Chris Dellon.”
“Chris? That asshole.”
“He was your best man, John. And he’s the head of NASA.”
“He was my best man,” John said, trailing off.
“What happened between you two was ten years ago, John.”
“The man married my wife.”
“She was your wife. You divorced Sharon three years before he proposed to her.”
“Bastard,” John said. “The piece of sh…”
“Listen, doctor,” Deb interrupted. “When he saw the data, he said he was going to call you. Apparently, the NASA math wizards noticed something else they wanted to check with you.”
“Did they say what it was?”
“No. They only said the math didn’t make sense.”
“Hah,” John snorted. “Chris was never good with numbers.”
“Just answer the phone when he calls.”
“I will.”
John hung up and reclined in his chair. He couldn’t leave his office now. He needed to wait for Chris’s call.
Had Chris really been married to Sharon for ten years now? Where had the time gone?
He shook his head. He looked at his phone. Why should he wait for Chris to call him? He found Chris’s number on NASA’s registry of employees and called him.
He rubbed his eyes and looked over the numbers once again as the phone rang for Chris.
4 Sandra Connor
Sept 22, 2051, The Smokey Mountains, North Carolina
“Did you pack a midnight snack?”
Sandra Connor closed the trunk of her car. They were parked off the side of the road, just outside their camp ground. It was late, but the moon was out and it was bright. Sandra waited for an answer from her children. No response. She turned toward them. Both her kids gave her a look that disappointed her. “I’ll take that as a no then?”
“We were going to,” said Bobby, her youngest. “But we forgot.” He let out a big yawn.
Bobby’s sister, Claire, turned to her brother with an incredulous look. “You idiot!” she spouted. “Why would you say that?”
Claire raised her fist as if to hit him. Bobby cowered.
“Enough,” said Sandra, picking up her backpack and crossbow from the ground. “I grabbed them for you. I was just testing you. You both failed.”
Sandra picked up Bobby and Claire’s backpacks and handed them to the two children. “Now, put them on,” she said.
The kids both put on their backpacks. Bobby struggled with his. Claire hung her’s off one shoulder. Since their father passed away, raising both of them was a struggle. Sandra did her best, but she always felt it wasn’t enough. She knew Bobby needed a male influence in his life. And she knew Claire needed an outlet other than punching or mocking her brother to get rid of her anger. But seeing the two of them dressed in their hunting gear made her smile. Their father would have been proud.
“Come on,” said Sandra. “We’ve got a bit of a hike ahead of us. There aren’t any deer around here. Oh, and remember, be as quiet as you can and keep your eyes peeled for bears.” She gave her kids a devilish smile.
Bobby turned to his mother with a frightened look. “Bears?”
“Yes, Bobby,” said his sister. “Are you deaf? She said bears. You know, the ones that like to eat weak little boys like you.”
“Claire,” said Sandra. “Stop it! They like to eat little gils, too. Remember that.”
Bobby stuck his tongue out at his sister, but ran behind his mother when she raised her fist.
“Don’t worry, Bobby,” said Sandra. “I’m only teasing you. Any bears in these woods are carefully tracked and monitored by national park drones.,”
Sandra looked up in the sky. She could see tiny black objects buzzing around like little bats. They were the national park drones. They used thermal imaging to monitor the wildlife in state parks. They were the same drones that sent updates to her phone detailing where the wildlife currently was. Not that any hunter worth their salt would use that data during a hunt. That would be cheating.
Hunting was so different when she was younger. Before technology changed everything. When you could still get lost in the woods. That’s when you felt alive. That’s when you learned how to survive. That was why she took her kids hunting at night. It was the only time you felt vulnerable these days. They’d each learn a valuable lesson tonight.
She looked at the live drone map on her phone and zeroed in on their location. She always set location markers and waypoints when she was in the woods with the kids. She looked at the thermal image. Three small red shapes stood out among the cold blue forest. She resisted the urge to do a sweep of the park and turned off deer tracking. She left it on for other animals, turning on notifications for predators. The woods were surprisingly full of life since the new conservation legislation had taken effect. Sandra led Bobby and Claire away from their car and followed a path toward a plain she knew usually contained deer. They would be there in an hour or so.
The kids held up well for the first thirty minutes, and then Bobby started to complain.
“I need some water, mom,” Bob
by said.
“Bobby, if you drink all your water now, you won’t have any for the walk back.”
“But mom.”
“No buts, Bobby. You’ve had plenty of water to drink already. You’re probably more hydrated than a fish.”
Sandra brushed her hands through her son’s brown hair. He looked so much like his father, she thought.
The walk to the plain had been good so far. It was cool. But she didn’t mind.
“Mom, can I go on ahead?” Claire said, motioning to her younger brother who was stumbling slowly along the path.
“On your own?”
“I want to prove to myself I’m not afraid.”
Sandra shook her head. Her daughter always knew exactly what to say to get her way.
“Just go as far as the plain. It’s the green waypoint. Wait there for us.”
Claire ran on ahead before Sandra had a chance to reconsider. She was the adventurous one. She had inherited her mother’s stubbornness and her father’s love for the unknown. Sandra tried not to worry about her. She was tough. Not a lot of twelve-year-olds would venture anywhere alone in the dark. She was mature too. Sandra trusted her to look after Bobby when she was working. She relied a lot on her daughter. She looked back at Bobby. He was stumbling and tripping with each step. She shook her head.
Sandra wanted this to be a family adventure, but knew that if she tried to hold Claire back, it would come back to bite her in the ass. Raising children was about picking your battles. Although most days she felt she failed that test.
“Are we there yet?” Bobby moaned.
“Almost. Just a little farther yet.”
“Where’s Claire?”
Sandra looked down at her phone. Claire’s warm body could be seen on the park live feed.
“She’s just arriving at the plain now.”
“What’s she going to do when she gets there?”
“Probably just look at her phone,” Sandra said, smiling. She sighed. Going out into the woods used to be the only place you could go to get away from technology. Bobby pulled out his phone but Sandra took it from his hand. “Not until we get to the clearing,” she said.
The Fermi Paradox Page 2
