Calm chaos. A boring dystopia. An anticlimactic Armageddon. The extreme turned out to not be all that outrageous. Can you imagine such a thing? Where everyone is going mad, but doing so in the most mundane way possible? The impossible has happened, and now we all collectively “deal” with it as if nothing impossible had ever happened in the first place. It was a weird dichotomy.
I guess I now understand what Douglas Adams meant with some of his characterizations. The good ol’ English acceptance may not be just a British trait after all, but instead, a human one. Americans have just been good with ignoring it up to this point.
I walked into my usual grocery a few days after the Event, and the shelves were not the stereotypical panic-fed wasteland of stripped metal shelves covered only in scraps of shredded plastic. Instead they were fully stocked, ready for the day’s shoppers to calmly take the sundries down and place them reverently and thoughtfully into their plastic carts. I half expected a Mad Max styled end days scenario, where everyone dressed in mismatched leather and adorned improbable mohawks and facepaint, fighting each other over gasoline and bullets.
Alas, I was disappointed to find my butcher friend Herb at his counter, humming as unpacked the seafood that had been flown in early that morning from the coast.
“Herb.”
Herb looked up at me with a smirk. “Ah, my favorite customer. I knew you would be in today for my… perspective.”
First off, Herb said that to everyone that wandered up to his counter. Second, he had been in the military many years ago, working as a security detail in the Air Force. He never told me where he was stationed or what security he helped enforce, but I always suspected it was something big and dark. Dark as in a site that normal people like myself could only view from the perimeter fence, and that was miles and miles from the actual base. We had struck up a conversation about the bombings in Afghanistan when I had made an offhand comment about stealth bombers, and he laughed saying he saw the first one take off himself. I grilled him incessantly for months, but only managed to free bits and snippets about this time in the Skunkworks program. He was the closest that I had to military intelligence, and he was a lowly security guard, decades ago.
“Actually, I ran out of food, but since I am here,” I grinned. “What do you think?”
“I think the world has changed under our feet, most of us just haven’t realized it yet.” He continued to lay out the fillets on the ice carefully transitioning them from the plastic lined box to the case cooler with the roiling condensation curling about at the corners. Herb shrugged, “I would say I have realized it, but nothing has happened, so why worry? We all seem to be carrying on anyway.”
“That is a good perspective, I suppose.” I chucked a thumb over my shoulder indicating the other patrons of the store, all calmly shopping behind me. I was still partially disappointed there was a lack of leather and mohawks involved. “It would seem that we are all mostly in that state of mind.”
Herb chuckled, making eye contact with me over his thick black rimmed glasses. “I always wondered if I was going to see aliens. But never did. Just engineers with clipboards pointing at planes in a bunch of strange shapes. And now… I am the meat and seafood counter supervisor at a Kroger, and goddamned aliens landed in our backyard.”
“So you think it is alien?” I confirmed.
Herb rolled his eyes as if that was the silliest question ever. “Of course it is aliens, Chuck. No government on this planet has the resources like that. Even ours. Especially ours! With our damn idiot inbred president and useless politicians from both parties. No… Chuck, the Spike is something not of this planet. I mean, I can see it from my house! And it is what? Fifty? Seventy? Miles away from here? The talking heads on the news say it has to be over five miles high. And the tip of it is barely scratching the surface of the plains it is standing over. That is aliens. No doubt.”
Herb hated politics… it seeped into nearly any conversation. I had gotten used to it.
“Why?” I waved my arms around comically.
“Why are they here?” Herb stood up straight thinking it through. He grabbed the empty box and dropped it to the floor behind the cold case. The ice in the box made a wet slapping sound as it hit the floor. “Why would anyone, of any intelligence, travel the vast distances above to do anything but learn? They would be the best of all intention, right?”
And this is why I found Herb to be a fascinating individual. Right here. He was a deep thinker, and no one seemed to realize it. But I did. “What do you mean?”
“Well… think about it. You are the sci-fi/fantasy author, right? Extrapolate it out. If a group of beings could get through the horrors of evolution, then get through the horrors of social evolution, then get through the horrors of technical evolution, and somehow, managed to not obliterate their planet or force their species into extinction, it would be the best possible outcome right? The resulting race that came from that brutal process would not only be the strongest and the smartest, but they would be the kindest and the most benevolent. A system that favors the individual is doomed to fail… but a system that favors the collective will overcome. Sadly, our human race has yet to figure that one out. But maybe these folks in that massive Spike thingy did. I think…” Herb pushed his glasses up his nose with the back of a blue glove sheathed knuckle. “I think those people are exactly the kind of beings that would think it important to find other living places and other thinking creatures, like them. They are in that Spike biding their time. That is what they are doing.”
I had my own theories of course, but I wrinkled an eyebrow upwards anyway. “Biding their time?”
“Yeah, they are doing what any patient parent would do.” Herb shrugged again, tilting his head as if it should be obvious. “They are waiting to see how we react.”
I nudged my front door open with my foot, and carried my groceries to the kitchen table. My dog, Sully, had died a few years ago, and I had never had the heart to get another one, so it was just me and my thoughts in my small ranch. But it was mine.
And like Herb, I could see the Spike from my kitchen window. The top of it disappeared far into the clouds on the horizon, not so much a shape, but an imposing shadow. As if their was a memory of something out on the plains of Colorado. Something that had existed before the dinosaurs had roamed the planet, and this part of the country was deep under an ocean.
“Hey Google, turn on CNN,” I called out.
“Sure. Turning on CNN on your Living Room TV.” The soft voice replied from the wall. An interview erupted into being.
“…and our special coverage of the Spike continues. With us we have the Dr. Donald Levi Hirschel, a well regarded author and currently a tenured professor at MIT. His background is foremost at the crossroads of two different fields of work, the burgeoning study of exobiology and the long storied history of astrophysics. Thanks for joining us remotely from your offices today, Dr. Hirschel.”
“Of course, Samantha, glad to be here.”
I glanced over the TV as I shuffled the food parcels into their appropriate locations. Dr. Hirschel was an olive-skinned gentleman of an indeterminate age beyond the over-the-hill hump. He may have been early fifties, he may have been early seventies. While his hair was white, his complexion seemed to allow his age to hide, nestled within the folds of skin that happen to the best of us after we hit thirty. The interviewer was the stereotypical host, with a severe blond haircut, tasteful makeup, and the barest glance of high fashion taste was edged out by the tight angle of the camera.
“As you, our viewer, have been watching in our special coverage of the Event, we have been studying the Spike currently hovering over the plains of Colorado, about an hour and half outside of Denver. As of this hour, and since it’s sudden appearance, the Spike has not moved or made any changes that has provided us any clues. In your estimation, Doctor, what do you think the Spike represents?”
Hirschel scratched absentmindedly at his upper lip as the host relayed the question, and a small picture-in-picture feed from one of the many CNN news vans currently camped out in Colorado kept the Spike centered in their shot. It looked very much like a malformed railroad Spike, and I assumed that is where it’s popular name had came from. It was tapered and narrow at the lowest point, rising upwards inscrutably to a wider section that tapered again into another more squat flattened point. It was if a black diamond had been formed into a widely shaped dagger with a pommel at it’s end. Right now, the long tapered blade of said dagger was hovering feet from prairie. In the small embedded shot, prairie hawks could be circling far above the ground in the distance, making the Spike loom all the more. All any cameraman needed was the wide angle shot, and since the object made no noise, it was not visually exciting beyond the fact that our human eyes was witnessing something that had never been witnessed before in all the documented history of our planet.
“I think it represents nothing…” Hirschel started before getting interrupted by the host.
“Oh come now, Doctor, you have to have a professional opinion on what this… thing is,” Samathana Host-Lady waved a pencil encumbered hand in front of the headshot. “Everyone has an opinion. Is it an invasion? A study? An introduction?”
“As I was going to say, the Spike itself represents nothing beyond the fact of it’s presence. All we can do is study it ourselves and hope that whatever it is, is studying us in turn. If I personally were engineering a first contact event with another species, I would go as slow as I could.”
That caught the host’s attention, she appeared to drop whatever she was about to ask and shifted gears. “You mention ‘slow’, why is that, Doctor?”
The good doctor waved a hand as if should be obvious. “We are primal creatures. Animals really. Made of flesh, evolved on this planet, for this ecosystem, to survive. We think we are above all that, but we are not. So let’s play a hypothetical game, Samantha… let’s say you know of alien creatures that are living in a rarely used part of your home. Like a closet. In this closet, these creatures have lived their entire lives, not knowing that they are in a closet. They have lived, procreated, and died in that closet for millions of their years. You come across them, and you could obliterate them by just running a vacuum cleaner over the carpet, or you could study them without their knowledge, or you could attempt to interact with them.”
I laughed outright. I had written a book ten years ago about this very thing. It was titled The Age of Everything, and it was my breakout success that had granted me the freedom to be a full time writer. It surprisingly had found a healthy market, and while it had not made my nom de plume a household name, it had made me enough of a nest egg to waltz through another couple books with my publisher without constantly worrying about the double headed wolf of Starvation and Destitution being chained at my office door.
“Ah, alright. I guess I would study them,” Samantha CNN lady said.
Hirschel nodded. “You could. But there is a limit to your study. You are talking to me right now, we are both human, and I can assume that you had a childhood, like I did, you went to a school, like I did, you have had loves and tragedy, wins and losses, friends and family. We intuitively know each other’s humanity. But can we do that with an alien? Can we ever truly know something other than us? Studying would be superficial. It would give us surface observances, but that is it. We may be able to infer a thing or two here and there, but in the end, we actually would not manifest of a deep connection to the other. They would remain… alien.”
“But…”
This time Hirschel interjected over the host. “Think about our art, our history, or culture. Can these things be understood through subjective study from above? Can an alien understand what the Mona Lisa is? Or Michelangelo’s David? Or what the Ode to Joy does to the human heart? Can a study of the human species explain love, loss, faith, or something as intuitive as humor or abstract as philosophy? The fundamental aspects of our humanity are difficult subjects for purely observational study.”
“So you are telling me that the aliens would only come to interact with us?”
“Eventually. Inevitably. But on their time, not ours.”
“I believe I understand this hypothetical situation, and I think I follow, but again, why ‘slow’?”
Again, I laughed, then I answered for Hirschel on the TV, “Because time is the only regulator for cultural exchange.”
“Because time is the only regulator for cultural exchange,” Dr. Hirschel repeated a half-second later. “That is a quote by the way.”
“Holy shit,” I said, dumbfounded. “I have a fan! And he is a professor at MIT?”
My phone started ringing. I answered, “This is Charles.”
“Oh MY GOD, Chuckiecheese. You just got quoted on national TV by the king nerd of nerds.”
“Hey, sis.”
Aubrey giggled. “You have no idea what I would pay to have Mom see this.”
“Yeah, well Mom would have not called the guy a nerd. She probably would have slapped your shoulder for saying such a thing,” I shot back. “Thanks for bringing Mom up though. Until that very moment, I was having a sublime moment with myself.”
Aubrey gagged over the telephone.
“That is not what I meant, and you know it,” I sniffed. “Grow up.”
“I am your kid sister. I am never going to get as old as you. So you can’t tell me to,” Aubrey teased. “Can you believe it though? Your debut novel just got name-dropped on national TV!!!”
“What?!” I exclaimed. Because, of course, since I was talking to my sister, my attention to the TV had evaporated.
Aubrey squealed.
“I will call you back.” I hung up on my sister and turned up the TV.
“…and this book lays out the plan that I think we should follow in a first contact scenario. There are some procedural changes that we should make to allow more of an up front multi-national approach to this event, but for the most part this book, The Age of Everything by Charles Squire-McKinnon has it right. In fact, while our U.S. Government has their first contact playbook prepped since the early seventies, it is not nearly as holistic, globally aware, or societally and environmentally conscious, like this approach is,” Herschel held a battered well-read copy of my first printing up for the camera. I recognized the cover, as my first printing was currently framed on my office wall in a tastefully lit shadow box.
My phone started ringing again. I turned down the TV volume and made a mental note to grab a YouTube video of this broadcast to go into my “yay me” file.
“Uh…” I cleared my throat. “Sorry, this is Charles.”
“Charles, love! Today, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you are my favorite author,” my publishing house handler, Gabby, beamed through the phone. Her smile was so potent, I could feel the electricity of it in every syllable even without seeing her.
“Hey Gabby.”
“Tell me that you are watching CNN right this moment!”
“I would be if my phone would stop ringing,” I admitted.
“Oh stop. You must talk with me. You should know that my phone has been ringing off the hook. It seems that Dr. Hirschel has been a guest on three different news segments today, and has pitched your book as a viable first contact plan in every single one. I literally just got a call from my boss asking when we would be having our first press conference. I have a feeling that whatever copies of your book exist are about to go flying off the shelves. We ordered another run just to be on the safe side. And to think!” Gabby took a really deep breath, dropping her voice a few octaves in a conciliatory tone. “And to think we were discussing dropping your book to out of print just last week. I do not know how much you already bribed this Dr. Hirschel, but I think you will owe him dinner nevertheless! Has your agent called you yet?”
“She is in the Maldives with her family until week after next, so unless you know how to reach her sat-tel, she is out of pocket,” I relayed.
“Shame. I guess I will have to make the sacrifice to be your temporary agent. I will even do it for free.”
“Well considering you and I do not have any sort of contract, and if we did, it would violate my existing contract with Madeleine… that would make perfect sense,” I said sarcastically.
“Oh you are such a cad, Charles. I am flying out this evening. Any decent hotels?”
“Good luck on finding one. You know… that huge Spike thing? It happens to be located literally at our doorstep here in Denver.”
“Well then, get your spare room ready. I will not be an intrusive guest, love.”
“What? No…”
“Sorry, love, you are breaking up. See you in the morning.” And of course Gabby was gone. Typical.
I held the phone as it started ringing again, trying my hardest to ignore it as Dr. Hirschel was still waving my book on screen in silent pantomime. I had at some point muted the volume.
“Huh.” I looked at the ceiling imagining what my mom would say if she was still around. Probably something like ‘get over yourself’.
As promised, as I was drinking my morning coffee, I found Gabby on my doorstep, twelve large Coach bags on the sidewalk behind her, all thirteen tan things sitting forlornly in the bright sunshine of a typical bluebird Colorado day. Whatever cab, Uber or Lyft that had dropped her off was long gone, probably in a rush to get far away from the woman. She stood, bold and bright, in a purple ensemble that would not have looked out of place on a runway in Madrid or Paris.
Not that I would know anything about fashion. But she looked fancy.
“CHARLES!” She exclaimed as if proclaiming a birthright for an audience.
“Gabby,” I replied calmly. “Need help with your bags?”
“I did not bring an entourage… and as you appear to not have a doorman…” She trailed off expectantly.
I sighed, and started hoofing the bags inside the entryway, dropping them just beyond the French doors to my small office. Gabby strode directly to the back of the house, looked around in dismay and waved at me as I struggled to get her bags inside.
Her disembodied voice floated out the front door as I attempted to lift the largest bag and failed. “How do I turn the TV on?”
“Make yourself comfortable,” I called back.
“Already have my dear. I brought my own wine,” A hasty swallow and a renewed shout. “How does one turn on this fancy TV of yours? I see no remote.”
I dropped the last bag in the unceremonious pile and joined my hasty guest in the kitchen-slash-living room-slash-great room. Gabby was unbearable to some, but I found her downright entertaining. She was a character that should not exist in our world of real time feedback loops of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Radical Candor. But she did. Almost as if she was a revolt to such things… she was an affront to the raging culture war of acceptance and tolerance. She was anything but tolerant. But to me, she was an odd sort of friend. And I knew deep down that she would always take my call.
“You do know that it is 8:30 in the morning, right?” I said.
Gabby lifted her folding plastic wine glass in a mock toast. “This? Oh, SkyMall has the best things. Never too early for innovation, my dear Charles. Now… please tell me that you are open to what, three? Four? No it was eleven! Eleven camera crews have asked to get an interview, mind you. Not even an exclusive… they just want to talk! You must capitalize on such a rich opportunity. As your agent…”
“Temporary agent,” I corrected.
“Hmm, yes, as your ‘temporary’ agent,” Gabby twinkled, using her fingers to emphasize the air quotes, “I must insist you take at least ten of them.”
“Three.”
“Ten,” Gabby took another sip from her glass in anticipation of my answer.
“Three.”
“Fine, all eleven then. Splendid!” She raised her glass in celebration. “Now please, turn on your TV.”
“Three,” I insisted.
Gabby stuck out her lip, and pushed her extravagant sunglasses to the top of her head. “Fine. Three. BUT! You must do a press conference if I set one up.”
“Fine.” I turned my head towards one of my hubs. “Hey Google, turn on my TV.”
“Sure. Turning on CNN on your Living Room TV,” The hub replied as it always did.
“Oh God. Charles. Your shelf is intelligent. I never would have guessed you are a fully licensed nerd,” Gabby grinned. Her eyes were liberally brushed with a similar violet as her pants suit. Under her black pixie cut, she radiated a special kind of high maintenance. A sense of power. She reminded me of Bowie. If Bowie had been female and book publisher.
“You knew I was a nerd when I signed with you, Gabby.”
“Ah yes, of course,” Gabby grinned, her Madonna-like tooth gap proudly displayed. “Now hush, love. I have phone calls to make.”
My doorbell rang at 9am. As I approached the front door, I watched a black helicopter land in my damn cul-de-sac.
I opened the door to the straightest man I had ever seen. His stature screamed military, but he was not in any sort of uniform. Just a suit. A suit that screamed military, if that was such a thing. The helicopter cut its engines and the noise subsided as the prop wash faded across my neighbor’s lawns, tipping only a few lawn decorations over. A black car nearby had a single man leaning against it, and he was definitely Army, because his uniform left zero doubt.
“Yes?” I asked the man, looking over his shoulder at the heli. No one was stepping out of it.
“Charles Branson?”
I sighed heavily. “Yes.”
“Nicolas Lencioni, US Strategic Command.”
“Oh, of course you are. Do you have credentials you would be willing to let me look at?”
“Who, oh, who is ever at the door?” Gabby leaned back over my couch, one of her three cell phones pressed against her head.
I tilted my head back. “Only the US military, Gabby.”
“Oh, good, good.” A pause. Then she leaned back into view. “Military or not, you are still doing a press conference, love.”
The man handed me a small flip ID wallet. Sure enough the name read Nicolas Lencioni, the small laminated rectangle claimed he was indeed from US Strategic Command. I handed it back with a nod. It looked official enough. Not like anyone was looking to assassinate a middle class author out of spite.
“Sure, come in,” I said. “Step into my office… we can talk in peace.”
I shoved one of the many suitcases out of the way with my foot.
“Family?”
“Gabby? Ha. No. My publisher,” I replied.
“Ah,” Nicolas nodded appreciably as if that explained everything in the world.
“So no General or Commander or Sergeant or something? Just Nicolas Lencioni?”
The straight man tilted at the waist slightly as if he had caught a light breeze. “Used to be. But now… my role is a little different. I am a private citizen that happens to work on special projects for certain departments that require more finesse than the US Government and Joint Forces can bring to bear when things are critically important.”
I saw right through it. “You’re a fixer.”
“Something like that,” Nicolas shrugged. “I am being told that you are our alien expert.”
“I think your bosses should stop watching Fox News and CNN,” I said with a smirk.
“Perhaps. It just so happens that I have someone on my team that insists that you come in for a chat.”
“Does that explain the helicopter blocking traffic right now?” I asked.
“It does.”
“And who is the person that insists on talking with me?”
Nicolas the straight man gave a light shake of his head. “That is classified.”
“And where would I be going?”
Another shake. “Also classified.”
“Of course it is,” I replied. “So you are expecting me to get on that black helicopter by myself without any idea where I am going or why?”
“Essentially.”
“Nicolas. You suck at your job of a fixer,” I teased.
“I was told to give you this,” Nicolas pulled an envelope from his suit jacket, holding it out expectantly.
I took it, looking it over. It was a plain white envelope, no writing on the outside, but something heavy was lumpy and loose within. I ripped open the end and tilted the envelope into my palm, an old necklace landed in my hand.
I recognized it immediately. “Shit.”
“She said you would say that too,” Nicolas ducked his head like a bird. “Your publisher friend is free to come if she would like.”
“And where are we going?” Gabby asked from the doorway, one bespectacled hand on her hip, the other holding her wine glass at shoulder height, as if she was carrying an expensive bird about the house.
“That’s classified,” Nicolas replied as if on autopilot.
I stared at my palm as memories rose from the palm of my hand like a miniature tornado. The sparks and embers of far off emotions and half-remembered parts of history spiraled towards me, forming a tunnel that would lead me to someone from my past. I was not sure I wanted to go down that path, but Gabby saved me the trouble.
She smiled widely at Nicolas. “Excellent, love. Let me grab my purse.”
I have never ridden in a helicopter before. First, for those that have never done it themselves, it is loud. Very loud. They make you wear these can headphones that block out everything that is ambient, like someone is planning on unloading thousands of rounds of ammo near your head at any moment. AND SURPRISE! That is exactly what a helicopter sounds like on the inside. All I could hear was the internal radio between the passengers… although the pilot did not say a word to us, I had to assume he was talking to somebody, because his mouth appeared to be moving for some reason.
Said pilot pulled on the controls after we all ensured our straps and belts were locked, and Gabby let out a small shriek as the helicopter left the ground.
“I THOUGHT YOU FLEW ALL THE TIME?” I felt like I needed to yell with the surrounding cacophony wrapping around us.
“ONLY FIRST CLASS, LOVE,” Gabby yelled back. “THESE WHIRLYDEATHMACHINES ARE BUILT ONLY FOR TERROR.”
“Actually, this is one of the safest helicopters ever designed,” Nicolas voiced calmly from his side of the cabin.
Gabby looked perplexed. “BUT THE SAFEST ONE OF THESE IS STILL A DEATHTRAP. I COULD BUILD YOU THE SAFEST MOTORCYCLE IN THE WORLD, AND YET… STILL ONLY A FAST WAY TO DIE WHEN YOU HIT ANYTHING LARGER THAN A BENTO BOX!”
I grinned and enjoyed the ride. I unfortunately knew where we were headed. Directly towards the Spike.
I remember reading H.P. Lovecraft when I was a teenager. The sense of dread and the tingle of madness in the writing. Those monsters could not be understood. It would drive the mortal mind mad. Seeing one of the elder gods would melt one’s consciousness, and they would devolve into a puddle of mumbling gibberish, tearing their own eyes from their sockets.
The Spike was nothing like that. It was more like a volcano that had erupted from the ocean. Powerful? Yes. Scary? Undeniably. Make one go mad at the sight? Of course not. That is ridiculous. The Spike was strange, yes, but it was not melt your brain kind of event. Maybe that is the reason that everyone was staying so calm. It was crazy, but it wasn’t madness.
The helicopter banked gracefully away from the Spike as we drew near, and I was able to get the closest look that very few had had the privilege to witness since the Spike had appeared. Even Gabby was at a loss for words as it filled our vision with its grand edifice. The surface was black as night, but even then, it had variance in the surface, like a shimmering quality that mica or dark chunks of quartz carries within. And it had texture as well. Not a smooth glass, but like a stone, again making me think of mica or quartz. This massive ship appeared to be like it was grown. Not built.
The surface had no windows, no lines or lights. Nothing that looked different from the rest. It was a mountain of black that hovered over the plain silently, without any perceivable engines of force to counteract Earth’s gravity or to reposition itself against the winds that often whipped across the Front Range. As we banked, the fields below the Spike began to come closer, and I saw the sheer size of the military presence that had established itself around the base of the Spike. It was if the military had unfolded a massive origami of function and purpose on all sides of the Spike. A massive roar opened on the opposite side, and I whipped my head around to see two fighter jets scream by at speed, their non-reflective metal bodies making the helicopter feel like it was standing still and not at all descending rapidly towards an impromptu landing pad laid out with simple lights nestled among the clumps of the prairie grass and tumbleweeds.
When the helicopter touched down, again Gabby shrieked. Nicolas slid the door open and motioned for us to follow, after giving us instructions through the headsets to keep our heads low and to move quick from under the rotors. I followed behind Gabby as she chased Nicolas as best she could in her inadequate foot wear, up to a open air Humvee that reminded me more of a Willy Jeep than the ones I saw in the movies.
The three of us sat quickly and we were rushed away from the helicopter pad, among rows of tents and prefab metallic and plastic buildings that appeared to be out of some Star Trek episode. A little voice in my head told me those were hazmat enclosures. I looked up and the sheer scale of the Spike took my breath away. Seeing it from the air and seeing it from under its terminus were two completely disconnected experiences. The Spike was literally a mountain worth of scale hanging eerily in the sky as if God himself had hung a decoration from Earth’s stratosphere.
“My God, Charles,” Gabby exhaled.
“I know, right?” I replied, not taking my eyes from the long narrow underbelly of the Spike.
“Yes, absolutely. You understand! The fact that I am out of wine is indeed a travesty.”
I looked down and tsked. “It is only 10am. You have the rest of the day to find some more.”
“True, true. One must remain positive.”
Nicolas waved a massive prefab sitting on large pylons that looked like feet. A giant appeared to be sleeping here. “We are here. Head up the main stairs, and your host will meet you there.”
“Who is our host, Charles?” Gabby asked.
“An old friend.”
“Ooh, mysterious,” Gabby sighed. “Fine. Keep your secrets.”
“She is an ex. Well, THE ex. My ex-wife.”
“No!” Gabby bit her lip, looking as if she had just won the lottery.
“Yep.”
“Ooh, delicious!” Gabby smacked her lips as if enjoying a delicious morsel.
The Humvee bounced over the uneven ground and pulled up to the stairs with a rough stop. The three of us climbed out the best we could, and headed up the stairs. Sure enough, standing just inside a wide open pressure door, was a person that I had not seen in over twelve years.
“Charley.”
Her voice sounded the exact same.
“Charles, now, actually,” I corrected.
“My apologies. Truly. Come in…” She paused on seeing Gabby. “And who is this? Nicolas?”
“His publisher,” Nicolas waved.
“Gabriella Santa Lucia Preston-Ortiz. Pleasure. Although, my friends call me Gabby. Are you going to be my friend?” Gabby smiled widely, again pushing her sunglasses up to the top of her head.
“Sure? Why not?” My ex-wife put out her hand to shake Gabby’s. “Dr. Eliza Branson.”
“You kept my name?” I said surprised. “Jeez, Lizzie.”
“It’s Eliza, actually.”
“Fair enough,” I muttered.
“Oh stop, CHARLEY. You are such a terror! And LIZZIE, I like the informal names the best! If I am going to be GABBY, then I must insist none of you act like little wayward assholes, and this day will stay absolutely pleasant. Pleasure, to meet you Lizzie. May I inquire where the ladies is?”
Lizzie spun in place as if she was suddenly mounted to a lazy susan under her feet. “Down the hall, second door. Can’t miss it. We will be in this conference room right here. Don’t wander off, guards won’t appreciate it.”
Gabby gave a nonchalant little wave and headed away. Lizzie motioned for Nicolas and I to head into the well appointed modern conference room. There were smart surfaces hanging everywhere, and even the tabletop was an intelligent screen.
“Water?” Lizzie waved at the mini fridge in the corner.
“Sure.”
“How you been? How is Sully?” Lizzie asked.
“Dead. Fine. Flip those,” I paused. “You know what I mean.”
“Oh. Wow. Sorry to hear that.”
Her face actually looked like she cared. Maybe people can actually change. When we divorced, I was certain that she never would.
“Thanks.”
“How is Aubrey? Your mom?”
“Aubrey is well,” I snorted lightly. “Still Aubrey. Smart-ass in all her glory. Passed the bar last fall.”
“Oh good for her. She was great at arguing.”
“And Mom… she, uh, passed. Cancer.”
“Oh, God. I am really sorry, Charley.” Lizzie’s eyes were round.
“No worries. Your dad?”
“He passed too. Hit by a bus of alcoholism. Renal failure, then liver shut down. He eventually seized out.”
“Its been years since the last time we spoke,” I pointed out like an idiot.
“Yeah.” Lizzie frowned.
“Yeah,” I repeated. As an idiot, I just leveled up.
The uncomfortable silence hung in the air around all three of us, and Nicolas finally cleared his throat. “Dr. Branson here asked that you come to discuss a few things, if you don’t mind Mr. Branson.”
“Of course,” I waved for Lizzie to go ahead, thankful for interjection.
“Because we have time.”
“Huh?”
“I should say, we have all the time,” Lizzie reached across the table and pressed the corner of the interface, and queued a video up. “This is from two days ago, in this conference room. These cameras are just for video, they don’t capture sound.”
The video started, and the timestamp showed early morning two days ago. The camera view was immediately obvious, and I looked up towards the corner. It was nestled in the corner with a wide angle lens, barely noticeable in it’s small little square alcove. On the video, the curved wide angle view of the conference room looked like it did now, except all the chairs were empty, and the table top was bare. The next moment, three people appeared sitting at the seats, arms either resting on the edge of the surface or underneath, water bottles, jackets, and bags arrayed unevenly about. It was as if the footage had been spliced in by an amateur video editor. I flicked my eyes back to the time index in the corner, and it had kept counting away as if everything was completely normal. Then another second later, the people and all of the evidence of their presence before vanished. The room appeared just as it had at the beginning.
“Wait… was that…” I started. The realization of what I just saw hit me like a ton of bricks.
“Yes, it was us,” Lizzie added.
“No. It wasn’t,” I countered. “Can I watch it again?”
“Sure.”
Again, the video started with an empty conference room. Then three people popped into existence, talking as if nothing was awry, and then after about three and half seconds, they clipped out of existence again.
“That was us! Just a minute ago. Talking about my mom, your dad… Holy shit. My jacket, the water bottle placement…”
Lizzie frowned again, her skin pinched above her nose just like it did when we were married. “Yep.”
“Wait. What made you sit there? Right now? Today? You saw this video. Why didn’t you try to sit on this side of the table?” I pointed at my own lap.
“Great question,” Lizzie said dryly. “Among the ten billion questions this video represents, you go straight to the philosophical.”
I spread my hands wide. “Come on Liz. It’s me. We were married for god’s sake. You know exactly where I would go with my questions. You probably already played this out twenty different ways in your head before I even showed up.”
Lizzie rolled her eyes as her frown morphed slowly to a smirk. “True. I did.”
“And you probably have had, what, ten different very smart people look at this?”
“Three actually. But they are the very best,” Lizzie said. “Consensus is that the video was not edited, modified, or tampered with. The video from all the cameras goes to a central repo here at ops center, dedicated space on encrypted high availability flash array. Even the rack it is in biometric locked.”
“So why did you sit on that side of the table?”
“Because, the Eddies work like that.”
“Eddies?” I raised an eyebrow and leaned back in my chair.
“He should sign a NDA first,” Nicolas interrupted. “Your thumb on my screen here, after you read it through.”
I took his phone and read the single paragraph. It basically said that if I opened my mouth, I would be legally obliterated into space dust. I pressed my thumb against it and handed it back.
Liz continued. “Eddies, like eddies in a pool or a stream. An unstable current that shifts and moves as the dynamics adapt.”
“This base was established about four hours after the Spike appeared, what everyone is calling the Event. We have been calling the t-zero marker of it’s arrival the ‘Event Horizon’ just to keep it simple. We got lucky. Channel 9 news here in Denver has a new long range traffic and weather cam array installed, facing north up I-25 on the edge of the Platte valley. This array has a couple really neat cameras, one happens to be a high speed capture at low resolution, and a couple other lower rez cameras running at normal speed, one video, one thermal. We were able to correlate the camera’s footage speed and use the thermal signature to pick up the Spike’s presence versus it’s ‘non-presence’. At 3:31:08.394 on the array’s high speed, the Spike appears. The millisecond prior at .393, there is nothing there. Here at the base of the Spike, the Eddies started exactly 24 hours after its arrival. Exactly. We have another video like this, from a perimeter camera that shows a truck appear in frame, and then three and half seconds later, the truck disappears. At first it was a security event. But now we know that was the first one we detected.”
“And you called me here because?” I managed to get out, before the door crashed open and a slightly disheveled Gabby barged in, breathing heavily and eyes wild.
Gabby bustled to a seat as if she was made of lightning and purple cloth and dropped into the open chair as if she had just ran a marathon. “OH MY GOD.”
“Went the wrong way and had to run from some guards?” I teased.
“No.” Gabby’s face was dead serious, her eyes looked stricken with something. “I don’t know what happened, but I was in the bathroom. Then I saw myself in the bathroom. It was me. Same outfit, same make-up. Standing right where I had been standing as I looked in the mirror. She didn’t see me, but then she just… POOF! Was gone. I screamed. I think. Maybe it was just inside my head. Hard to tell now actually…”
Lizzie handed Gabby a water bottle. “Drink this.”
Nicolas handed Gabby his phone. “Sign this.”
Gabby looked at the phone with distaste. “I never touch another person’s phone. Disgusting, Nicolas. Honestly.”
“Just sign it, Gabby,” I said.
“Fine, love. For you.” She pressed a finger to the screen as if it was made of her own personal kryptonite. “I need my hand sanitizer.”
Gabby started rooting through her bag again, hastily spraying her finger tips and rubbing them together feverishly. “NOW. Can anyone share why I am going crazy?”
“It’s normal around here,” Lizzie said. “You are seeing past and future versions of our current timeline. We don’t know why. We can’t interact with these events. The three and half second events affect our senses and our equipment, but they are not actually present. There is no physicality to the objects or people. The ones that have tried to touch these non-present objects or people just come up with empty air.”
“So why am I here?” I asked again.
“Because of this,” Lizzie pulled up another video. This one was outside, facing the Spike. The camera was focused on the base of the Spike, near where it touched the ground. A stationary humvee appeared suddenly, and two people were standing beside it. One was me. The other was Liz. The Spike’s tip started to glow, and then suddenly, the footage was back to it’s previous view. No humvee, no people, no glowing Spike. Three and a half seconds.
“I am wearing those clothes right now.”
“Yep.”
“And here I was thinking that I was asked here because of my book.”
“You are actually. I was going to bring you in to discuss first contact prep with my team for a pitch to our leadership, and then the next morning, we had this footage. My guess is that the timeline was established, the choice had been made, and then it was inevitable. The Eddy proved the rest.”
“So you had to do it because you saw a video of me?” I asked.
Gabby noisily slapped her water bottle down on the table. “I am so confused right now.”
“I am sure teams will be studying this event for the rest of our lives, so I don’t have the real answer for you. But I can tell you that when the Eddy is observed, that the observers DO EXACTLY what is shown. We have zero control of the event once it is witnessed. I couldn’t sit on that side of the table, because I was unable to. I couldn’t even think otherwise. It was… natural to sit on this side. The outcome is inevitable. Just as you and I, standing in front of that glowing Spike will be inevitable. We have ran through this here on base twenty two times. Twenty two future events, probably double or triple that number of observances of the past like Gabby’s experience in the restroom.”
“Liz, this is crazy. There is no way. It is cause and effect. There is an order to events. They have to happen before the result. The consequence always comes after the action.”
“What if they don’t?” Lizzie asked seriously. For the first time since I had arrived, she looked scared.
“Well there goes the PRESS CONFERENCE CHARLES.” Gabby threw her bag to the ground in either very well played mock frustration or very real indignation. It was hard to tell. “Just when I thought I had things lined up. And now, my favorite author is going to be blown into bits by a glowing death laser.”
I ignored Gabby as best I could, and conciliatory patted the back of her hand as she tried to get her breathing under control.
“Remember when we used to get drunk in college and talk about stuff like this?” Lizzie continued.
“Of course I do. That is where my book came from, Lizzie. It was from our talks. I think I wrote it to mourn our marriage actually.”
“Well that’s tragic,” Gabby observed worriedly.
“You should have been in here earlier,” Nicolas said deadpan. “Dead parents were involved.”
Gabby made a face. Something between disgust and horror.
Lizzie ignored both of then as well. “I read it you know.”
“The Age of Everything?” I asked.
“All of them. They are all quite good, Charlie. I am really proud of you.”
“Huh,” I was surprised. Her behavior felt new, as if we were in uncharted territory. It felt like something was happening that should have happened back when we were actually married. “Thank you, Lizzie. That means a lot.”
“CAN WE PLEASE GET BACK! To the time whirlpools or whatever they are?” Gabby sighed. “This is cute and all, but I am still freaking out over here. And I am from New York. I am used to all sorts of crazy.”
“The Eddies are only happening here at the base of the Spike as far as we know. The furthest one was no more than a kilometer out. Our perimeter is firmly established miles away, and nothing has gotten out that far. We are using drones… We have them run continual zigzag sweeps over the fields with IR flashers sending patterns at each other in their net. Then each drone broadcasts it’s own position and signaling to the nearest IoT hub for real time processing. If the pattern shifts or any drone changes locations instantaneously, our trained neural network can follow the Eddy as it moves away from Spike. The water analogy fits these Eddy events really well. They are like small wakes in our timespace. They ripple downwards and out from the Spike, and carry a ways out only to dissipate. The team has labeled it Temporal Fallout.”
“You think the Spike is not only from elsewhere. You think it is from elsewhen… time travel?” I ventured.
Lizzie nodded enthusiastically. “The planet is rotating, and our planet is also revolving around the sun, which is orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy, which itself is traveling towards another galaxy. We are blowing through space at about six hundred kilometers a second in multiple directions at once. Imagine a huge curving spiral of spirals, and each second we are six hundred kilometers further along that convoluted path. Now imagine that you are looking for intelligent life in the Milky Way…”
“I am still not following,” Gabby said exasperatedly.
“And I don’t think I am either. Remember, I was not the smart one in our old dynamic?” I admitted.
Lizzie took a deep breath. I could tell she was thinking about how best to summarize for us plebs.
“You would have to come at the problem not from the space side of the equation, but the time side. And I think we are seeing the results,” Lizzie pointed at the table of the paused video loop. “At some point in the future, or at some point in the past, we encounter each other’s evidence of existence. Then the one that found the evidence, starts to work their way up the timeline or down the timeline to a point they determine is the best point to…”
“To what?” I asked.
“Intercede,” Lizzie finished.
“Ha. I get it now. We have time,” I grinned.
Lizzie returned by grin wolfishly over the table, “And time is the only regulator for cultural exchange.”
“Stop. Someone. Stop. Charles, love. Explain what is happening here,” Gabby’s eyes were bloodshot. I had no idea the last time she slept. Especially since she had shown up on my doorstep with a wine glass in hand.
“Gabby, in every exchange of two different cultures here on planet Earth, what has happened?” I asked. I knew how intelligent and well read Gabby was. She played her shtick well, but underneath all of her glam and bluster was a serial reader that had probably consumed entire libraries since she had learned to read.
“Oh I don’t know, violence? Subjugation? Death? Disease? War? Pick any of them. Pick all of them.”
“True,” I admitted. “For large scale, energetic culture exchange, you are right, it did not end well for the natives when the Spanish or the English or the Dutch arrived, but what about cases where powers were too far flung or there was an equality of power, what happened in those cases?”
“Like the Japanese and the Spanish?” Gabby asked. “They became points of learning for the people involved. It was discovery.”
“Exactly,” I said. I waved my arms about to explain the dynamics. “They would share and appropriate parts and pieces of culture. The more interaction, the greater the impact. However, as soon as you introduce time into it, everything becomes regulated. Time prior to the modern age meant months of travel for any significant distance, years for round trips. And for cultures that were spread extremely far apart or by conditions that put impediments on either society, those interactions slowed down to a crawl, giving the cultures time to adapt.”
“But the stronger one would eventually overtake the weaker or smaller one,” Gabby commented.
Lizzie drummed her fingertips on the table. “But what if you could design for that? Think if we took a scientist’s approach to first contact. How could we design the experiment to not go beyond any limits but still satisfy the required conditions and outcomes?”
“Well as my butcher would say, they are waiting to see how we react. How could you design any experiment without knowing something as fundamental as that?”
“But we have reacted,” Lizzie again waved at the table. “All of this. The military, the jets, the tanks, and the soldiers… we have sent teams to measure every-goddamn-thing at the base of the Spike. And nothing. Yet we have this video, of you and I standing out there and then… something happening.”
“Expecting something to happen,” I added.
“Yeah.”
“But,” Gabby spoke up finally. “If they are able to do all the things you say they can do, than they already know.”
“So, where is our Humvee?” I asked.
“I can’t let you guys go down there,” Nicolas replied firmly. “We would need approvals from leadership. Eliza, you know that the General will not approve of this.”
“But you said it is inevitable. What did you mean?” I said.
“Those twenty two events that we have found and determined to be in the future… We have tried to subvert them.”
“Eliza. I do not think this is wise,” Nicolas brought a finger up. “There is not consensus on this, nor does the leadership think your theory is correct.”
I thought it was better to push. I made eye contact with Gabby and she subtly nodded. “What happened, Liz?”
“The first few were not a big deal. Someone having lunch, or making a routine perimeter check… one of our soldiers was sleeping in his barracks, or one of my staff reading quietly in the canteen. But then we got one of my staffer, Gerald. He started to obsess on cause and effect, arguing with us about fate and free will. He immediately spun on the impossibility of it. He would never commit suicide.”
Gabby put her hands to her mouth. “Oh my god…”
Lizzie’s voice was monotone. “Gerald insisted. He insisted! So we did what he asked. We gave him a sedative, we strapped him down, and locked him in his room.”
“The outcome was the same,” I guessed.
Lizzie tilted her chin to her chest. “The sedative kicked off some form of a psychotic episode. He was manic, tearing his straps, using his bed leg to pry open the lock… then somehow, delirious, he found the guard station, and the recording played out exactly as we had seen it, two days prior.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Nicolas sighed, steepling his fingers together. “All it proves is that we get a snippet of information that could have played out a whole bunch of different ways.”
Lizzie pushed herself from the table, putting her feet up on the empty chair adjacent. “No, Nick. It proves that it is immutable. Because since it is our future, and we observed it, it became both the present and future simultaneously. The probability space shifted from one side of the curve to the other. Without observation, the future is a set of probabilities, but the moment that it is observed, that uncertainty is no more. It means that the path we are on is already set, because any choice we make NOW to subvert THEN is actually the choice that leads to THEN. Any action. It doesn’t matter.”
“So hypothetically, if I were to go the guard station now and blow my brains out, the timeline would play out with me still ending up at the Spike with you at some point later today,” I said. “No matter what.”
“Yes.” Lizzie showed no hesitation at all.
Nicolas shook his head, “But I know that without an explicit order to get to the Spike you will be forced to stay put…”
Suddenly the room shifted as if I was drunk, and I tried to look towards Gabby to make sure she was alright, but my eyes moved slower than they should have. Lizzie’s head tilted back slowly as if she was about to sneeze, but the sneeze never came. I moved suddenly, against my will, and I could see my hands, blurry against the surface of the table, as if I was indistinct for a moment, unbound from the reality of the conference room. A split-second later, I was standing at the window of the conference room as if nothing had happened, except that I had moved completely from where I had been, seated at the table to where I was now, looking out at the base prefabs.
“But I know that with an explicit order to get to the Spike, that you will be forced to go,” Nicolas finished.
“Did anyone else feel anything a moment ago?” I asked, looking at the back of my hands. They looked like they always had.
“May have been the wash from another Eddy,” Lizzie ventured. “We have had reports a few people feeling dizzy or sick for moment, and our data shows that where they were standing was ‘splashed’ by an Eddy, every single time.”
“Wait, Nicolas. Did you just say we will be forced to go to the Spike!?”
Nicolas looked confused for a split second, and then nodded. “Of course, that is what I said. The General will insist that you go to the Spike. I will call a car around as soon as you are ready.”
Something was not right. He had said the opposite, right? I was sitting at the table. Gabby was drinking from her water bottle, looking worn out. Lizzie had leaned her head back as if to sneeze, but never had, and…
“The probability,” I murmured.
“What?” Lizzie said.
“The probabilities. What if their technology wasn’t just about time travel or space travel or anything like that? What if it was something else… like…” I felt it right on the edge of my tongue. Lizzie was looking at me with an odd detached look. “Like, shifting threads of the same-but-different reality playing out in real time. What if they could shift their way through those probability states? They could see all of the probabilities and like a conscientious shopper, pick the one off the shelf they liked the most?”
“Why?” Gabby said.
“Because…” I started.
The room shifted again, a smaller change this time, as Gabby’s head tilted downwards and she put her head on her forearms, appearing to be asleep. Lizzie’s legs all of sudden were on the table, not the chair, and Nicolas did not appear to move, his fingers still forming a tent in front of his face.
“Gabby?” I asked.
“She fell asleep a few minutes ago,” Lizzie smiled. “She did say she had been up for nearly 48 hours.”
“Uh…”
“Are you ok? Your face… you have this look,” Lizzie sounded concerned.
“Gerald,” I guessed. Now I knew why she had that detached look. She had seen it before.
“Yes…” Lizzie said carefully. “How did you know?”
“I have a different theory. But I think I need to save it for the drive,” I said. “Just a hunch.”
Nicolas pulled out his phone and started texting. “It will be here in a minute. One of the motor pool guys will bring it over.”
“Are you sure you are ok?” Lizzie stood and walked over to me by the window. She put a hand on my shoulder.
“I think I have to say yes,” I replied quietly and looked back out the window without another word.
The first few minutes of the ride was silent beyond the growling roar of the engine, as we swayed and pitched our down the recently created double track road to base of the Spike. The military guys had slapped a vest on me with a bunch of sensors and doodads, but nothing seemed out of place. Or I should say, out of sync.
“What did you mean back there, Charley?” Lizzie asked, finally breaking the silence. She was driving, her smaller frame looking slightly out of place behind the huge steering wheel.
“Do you ever think about what happened between us?” I countered.
“You are not ok,” Lizzie breathed.
“Your right, I’m not. I don’t think I have been to be honest. What broke us?”
“We were busy. Different careers. Different interests. We were an odd match in college as it was. We were only married for two years, Charley. Its not like we had a decade or two under our belt before calling it quits. We were young, we got lucky to figure things out like we did.”
“Plus you didn’t like my dog,” I sighed.
“Well, he was an asshole.”
I laughed. “Yeah, he was. But he was my asshole.”
“Now, you answer my question. What changed back there?”
“The word you used. Intercede. Why did you pick that?” Answering questions with questions was going to piss her off, but I felt contemplative.
“It felt right. Like the aliens aren’t here to convert us, or destroy us, or whatever. They are here to insert themselves into our common consciousness.”
“Hmmm.”
“You still didn’t answer me.”
“Gerald didn’t kill himself. At least the Gerald you knew and the Gerald that killed himself were not the same man.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The Eddies. They shift time forwards and backwards right? But just observation. They don’t shift matter. And you have made the assumption that they are not interacting with reality beyond us observing it. Whatever phenomena we are observing, it isn’t reality.”
“That sounds factually correct,” she said.
“But what if they could shift matter? What if the probabilities where shifted alongside time? If those were aligned and focused with each other on specific event… on a specific observer…”
“Wow, you have not lost your touch with thinking about things differently than me, that’s for sure,” Lizzie whistled through her teeth. “I fail to see what this has to do with Gerald.”
“They did it with me. At least twice. Whatever outcome they desired was better served by changes. They pushed me into a different probability. One moment I was sitting, then the next, I was standing. Then again, one moment talking to Gabby, the next she was asleep. The decisions and outcomes in the room changed both times. I think that… the Gerald that observed his death was shifted into a set of branches that lead to him doing exactly that. And he knew it along the way, because he was the observer.”
“That sounds like fate,” Lizzie scoffed. “Just a different way of saying it.”
“Maybe it is.”
We sat in silence as the Humvee chewed up the distance between the base prefabs and the massive black thing hovering above us. The proportions of the Spike were already skewed, but coming directly underneath it made it feel as if a meteor had decided to park itself prior to it’s destructive impact. But any moment, it could change it’s mind and impact the Earth, just like the one that wiped out our dinosaur friends.
“We are here,” Lizzie looked at me carefully. “You know, I do miss you sometimes.”
“Why didn’t you call?” I asked.
“I don’t know. You could have called too.”
“Yeah. Your right,” I admitted.
“Ready?”
“No. The moment we stand out there together, it becomes real.”
“But any choice we make here will lead to that anyway, right?” Lizzie asked thoughtfully.
“Where we holding hands in the video?”
“Maybe…”
“I would like to if you don’t mind.”
Lizzie smiled softly. “I would like that.”
I opened my door and stepped out. The tip of the Spike tapered to a needle. I could barely make out its end as it floated above the ground. The bluebird sky, the brush, the clumps of grass… all of it didn’t seem to mind it.
Lizzie walked up and put her hand in mine. The tip of the Spike started to glow.
I realized that we had nothing but time. We had eternity. I smiled and squeezed Lizzie’s hand.
In the bright wash of the light, I felt her squeeze it back.