Quantum Times (2 page)

     “So what do you think we should do?” he asked her.

     “How should I know? But I hope our generals in the Pentagon are thinking about this!”

     “Gabriela – that is a great point! And guess what? I actually know one of those generals. My Dad’s younger brother, my Uncle Mark, is a general at The Pentagon. I saw him a lot when I was growing up. He’s the one who first got me interested in science. He gave me a pretty good telescope for my twelfth birthday.  Of course they have hundreds of generals there but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s caught up in this. Maybe they all are! He does some sort of advanced weapons development thing. I’m going to call him!”

     Brigadier General Mark Randall was right then sitting in his office at his desk with Colonel Jake Schneider sitting across from him. Mark and Jake had been friends ever since they had met at a Seminar at MIT on nuclear engineering. Since the seminar was about the use of tactical nuclear weapons, one had to have special clearance to even know the seminar existed. That had been ten years earlier and they had worked together ever since and had become godfathers for each other’s kids and that sort of thing.

     They had just come out of a briefing where most of the officers there had more stars on their uniforms than Mark did. Mark and Jake had already attended several meetings just like it in the few weeks since The Object had arrived so dramatically overhead. Each meeting started with a discussion about whether there were any new developments. Several of the generals would then voice guesses about what was going on but then admit they did not have anything new to add. The second item invariably would be about the timing of the arrival of The Object and the destruction of North and South Korea. It rankled everyone that the timing was so close together.

     Then one or another of the brighter generals would remind everyone that the timing had to be coincidental if The Object really was from “Outer Space” since distances just across our Solar System were so vast let alone from anywhere more remote in the galaxy. Then as that realization sank in there would be stunned silence until one general or another would plaintively say, “Are we sure that The Object is actually from Outer Space”? Could Russia or China have put it up there? Then another round of silence until another general would say convincingly that there was no way that the United States could do it and if we couldn’t do it then no other country for damn sure could do it! And that would for a moment make everyone there feel a little better until they realized it actually made everything worse.

     So then the meeting would come to a very desultory close but before it ended the generals would come up with a wish list of what they would really like to know and then Mark and Jake and a few other lower level officers like them would be given an even longer “To Do” list than the one they had from the previous meeting. But when it came right down to it though their instruction was easy – FIGURE OUT WHAT THE OBJECT IS AND HOW TO DESTROY IT!

     Mark Randall had spent his career in the Army figuring out how to destroy things and he was very good at it. In truth though, he had rarely seen any of his plans actually put into effect. He had done a tour in Iraq during the first Gulf War but that was the only action he’d seen and even there the really clever things he had prepared were never needed. He knew he had received his last promotion and with his thirty years in, he realized this assignment was probably going to be his last. The worry was that it might be everyone’s last assignment.

     Jake Schneider was in many ways Mark’s alter ego. Where Mark was creative and theoretical, Jake was practical and disciplined. Mark determined what should be done and Jake made sure it got done. They looked enough alike to be brothers, both were a little above average height, fit and trim with straightforward features that didn’t reveal much and had enough creases in their face and tightness in their jaws to suggest they took things seriously.

     “So where do we start today?” Jake asked Mark.

     “I guess we start with what we know, but that sure as hell won’t take long.”

     “We don’t know shit!” Jake responded.

     “True but let’s go through it. We know The Object is about the size of our average aircraft carrier. We know we can’t penetrate what is inside it, if anything. We know its dimensions but we don’t know its mass or actual composition.”

     “But it could have a large fighting force in there with weaponry we can’t even imagine,” Jake added.

     Mark continued, “We know that it apparently arrived here completely undetected.”

     “Yea… like a frigging Klingon Bird of Prey out of Star Trek using a cloaking device!”

     “Exactly. So we should assume it has the ability to reflect radar and perhaps even deflect light itself. Which means that were we to attack it, it might be able to just disappear on us. It would be there somewhere but we wouldn’t know where.”

     Jake just shook his head, “We will have to shoot at something we can’t see with missiles that just disappear before they hit the target.”

     Mark went on, “That’s the next thing we know: The Object can somehow eliminate our missiles with no apparent leftovers – no explosion, no fragments, no nothing. No energy signs. If they can do that to missiles streaking at them, what else can they do that to?”

     Jake held up his hand to stop Mark. “They? Who’s ‘they’? Is there a ‘they’?”

     “Something or somebody sent the video and the text message about not shooting anymore missiles at it. This is something else we know. And I’m going to keep saying they until I know better. They somehow know how to speak English…and damn near every other language in the world. And beyond that, they somehow could hack into every computer and smart phone in the world at the same time and deliver the same message. We can’t do that. Google can’t do that. And our friends at the NSA can’t do that.”

     “I sure hope these guys are friendly!” Jake muttered.

     Mark’s cell phone rang and he checked the caller ID and saw it was his nephew. He was about to push the call to voicemail but frustrated with the direction of his conversation with Jake, he took the call. “What’s up David? I’m sort of busy right now.”

     “Hi Uncle Mark. Sorry to disturb you but I’ve been assigned to write about The Object for The Washington Post and I wondered if The Object was communicating with the Government in any way? Are you caught up in any activity related to The Object?”

     “You know if I am, I couldn’t tell you. Everything about The Object is classified right now.”

     “I thought that would probably be true. But I had to ask. And we hadn’t talked for a while, so I just thought I’d call.”

     Mark was about to end the call, when he thought of something. “David, what exactly does The Post want you to do?”

     “The editor knows I have a lot of contacts in the physics community. He wants me to write about The Object from the standpoint of the science involved. There seems to be a lot about The Object that doesn’t seem to make any sense to us. What we have already seen from it we would have said was impossible.”

     Mark realized that he needed to reach out to the science community more than he had been doing. “Yea, I know. Are you going to speak to that Nobel Prize winning Physics professor you wrote the book with – Dr. Wheeling?”

     “He’s next on my list.”

     “Perhaps you could do something for me. If he has any ideas about The Object – no matter how farfetched, could you call me and tell me about them?”

     David thought for a second, “Sure, I’ll do that. But I have to ask you a question first. And I realize you can’t tell me anything you know. But it would be very helpful in my conversation with Janis Wheeling if I can tell him what the Government doesn’t know.”

     “You want to know what I don’t know?” Mark asked.

     “That’s it. I want to know if the Government knows any more than what the public seems to know. Has there been any communication with it”

     Mark paused again. He understood that he probably shouldn’t say anything. But he thought David’s help might be useful. “Sorry David, I can’t tell you anything. There is…nothing, I repeat nothing …I can tell you. You got that.”

     On the other end of the line, David smiled. “Yes Uncle Mark, I got that.

     Mark said again, “You come up with anything, you call me!”

     “I got that too….Say hello to my favorite aunt.”

     “I will. Come see us soon.”

     Jake looked back at Mark when Mark ended the call. “What was that all about?”

     “That was my nephew. He writes science based stories for newspapers, including The Washington Post. He’s been assigned to write about The Object. Normally I wouldn’t have said anything to him, but David is a brilliant kid – I guess he’s not a kid any more, I think he’s about 33. Anyway, although he dropped out of his doctoral program in Physics from Columbia, it wasn’t because he wasn’t smart enough. I think he was just too ADD. He was the kind of kid whose teachers were always writing on his report cards that he should be doing better. He likes bouncing around, chasing whatever he finds interesting at the moment. But he is tightly connected to the physics community including a recent Nobel winner who he co-wrote a book with. David has the ability to not only understand theoretical physics but he can explain it so that ordinary people can understand it.  My guess is before we’re done with The Object we are going to be exploring a whole new world of physics – and I want all the help I can get!”

     Jake just shook his ahead again, “This is not good! This is not good at all!”

     The Alien looked up at the sign that was obviously meant to be a location identifier. “Times Square” it read. It had taken a little while for him to realize that signs like that one were location aids. It was so primitive yet apparently necessary even in this city that he had been briefed was one of the great cities of this world. Once again he was surprised at how greatly the technology at use on this planet varied. Some of the technology here was quite advanced, especially in certain nations; while in other nations people lived as they would have a thousand years earlier.

     Without question he thought that to understand the civilization and culture of any new world one had to commingle with the people, walk the ground they walked, watch their daily habits. In no other way could one truly assess the dangers and recognize the opportunities. It was one thing to observe and study from their low space orbit, quite another to mingle among them. This was why he was now out walking the streets of New York City while others like him were in other major cities around the world.

     Though he had worried that his costume and cosmetic adaptations might be inadequate, now he no longer worried. Just here on this busy corner he observed humans looking far more diverse to each other than his deviation to their norm. As he became more comfortable in his surroundings he found he liked the frenetic busyness of it all. The noise and clamor, the roaring traffic, the frantic racing about of all the yellow vehicles, and the pedestrians hurrying around to fulfill personal missions, all left him with a sense of visiting back in the history of his own home planet. It must have once been like this, he thought.

     As he walked he noticed the sky darken and the city transform to a blaze of lights but there was no loss of energy or dynamism. The mood of the humans he watched had changed slightly from the daytime but whether they were happier or not, he could not tell. He wondered if these “New Yorkers” were any different from the people in smaller American cities or towns. Would people in Beijing or Moscow be the same? There was so much they needed to learn for their mission to be successful.

     He came upon a vast open parkland with people sitting on benches or strolling or running down a myriad of pathways. He kept walking and observed as full darkness fell that the crowd of people had vanished. He kept walking northward. Out of the park, he approached a neighborhood where people seemed to live in high rise buildings showing wear and tear that the buildings he had passed earlier did not reflect. The stores on the street also shared in the general disrepair.

     As he passed along a particularly shabby and ill-kept alleyway, he noticed that three young men seemed focused on him as he approached where they were leaning against the side of a building. “A long way from home, aren’t you?” the tallest of the three spoke up as the three of them stepped in front of him to block his passage.

     Quickly the alien looked them over to determine their probable intention. On other worlds he had seen their kind before. Their facial expression and unkempt appearance communicated to him all he needed to know. With them there were no smiles of fellowship or offers of assistance. Further, they believed themselves to be menacing and took satisfaction from that. They believed themselves to have power over him. These three sought to victimize him in some manner.

     His instructions were clear about such encounters: be friendly, say as little as possible and go on about his way as quickly as possible. He did not think that approach would work with these three, but he would attempt to do so. So he answered in a respectful manner, “Yes…actually. My home is far away. Thank you for asking. Have a good evening,” he said and then tried to walk around them. The three seemed to have anticipated his movement and once again they moved to block his path.